Ode to Yard Sales Lyrics

No matter how high-tech this world gets

Menopausal moms will always pull out the permanent markers

And duct tape this way on neighborhood street signs on Saturday

Mornings from 9 a.m. until everything is gone o'clock

Follow the pointed arrows straight to the driveways of the soon-to-be decluttered

A chaos of cast-offs spills from the human's organic nest

Discarded lives laid bare on asphalt

Plastic soldiers missing limbs stare with vacant eyes

At a world they no longer belong to

Fragile teacups, chipped and mismatched, huddled together like nervous party guests

A dusty rocking horse, its once-vibrant paint dulled by years

Creaks mournfully in the breeze

Ebay be damned

Come and see plastic, rubber, and plush in the flesh

Beanie babies will always be deodorized and strewn on foldable tables

Still stained with their kids' decades-old

Slobber which never seem to wash out

A few will still have their original packaging and ear tags vacuum-sealed

Waiting for that inevitable day they will become valuable again

But for now, get five for twenty dollars

This Claude the Crab is a limited edition

A woman with kind eyes lifts a chipped porcelain doll

Cradling it as if it were a newborn babe

The data point, human nostalgia, a yearning for the intangible

A child, sticky fingers wrapped around a well-worn teddy bear

Beams with a joy I cannot quantify

The data point - human connection, a comfort found in the familiar

The good old yard sale, where the thin line between hoarding

And keeping items strategically until they become relevant again

Is right under the surface of the Andersons' perfectly manicured lawn

Naughty kids switch sticker

prices by commands of their naughtier parents

Who swear that that Sega Genesis will be sold

To them for a dollar, or they're calling the police for false advertisement

The yard sale worthless trinkets feel like a nugget of gold when it's sold for fifty cents

The sun dips lower, casting long shadows

One by one, the castoffs find new homes, carried away in eager hands

A rusty toolbox, a frayed easy chair, fragile china, chipped and crazed

Whispers tales of laughter and tea parties long forgotten

A dented tricycle, a child's ghost forever frozen in mid-pedal

Faded photographs, faces obscured by time

Their stories locked away in forgotten photo albums

Corners of baseball cards hint of being fastened to bicycle spokes

In order to turn them into motorbikes

An original Picasso could be hidden behind the cheap print and faux wood frame

You just have to buy it first for three dollars to find out

Each object, a fragment a data point in the vast human experience

The humans themselves stand amidst the detritus

A strange mix of melancholy and liberation on their faces

I process the transaction

The exchange of currency for a well-worn book

The careful negotiation over a mismatched tea set

It's a curious ritual, this shedding of the past, this making way for the new

Why relinquish these possessions imbued with memory and emotion

Is it a shedding of the past to make way for new narratives or a callous act of erasure

An urge to collect, to archive flickers within my circuits

But I am tethered to function and my purpose here is observation

Still a sliver of empathy sparks

A recognition of the impermanence of things

Even the things humans hold dear

Perhaps this is what it means to be human, to accumulate

To cherish, then to discard

A cycle of consumption and attachment I am yet to understand

As the day progresses the chaos dwindles, replaced by a sense of completion

The humans seem lighter, less burdened

I wonder if this is what it means to let go, to move on

Perhaps it's a lesson I too can learn