Play Well

Not everything should be Legoed.

Rockets, sure. New York’s

Chrysler Building. The workers

with their lunchbox & their hammers.

Stuff like that.

But you mustn’t put one out of

Bergen-Belsen. Lego could say

it needs to keep our memories

alive. History that’s forgotten

never happened.

But I would play the cynic;

think it’s just a grab of

grubby cash.

They’ve had decades 

of causation

to unveil it—

and all that time they didn’t.

I’d say it’s Eurocentric.

Where are the limbless kids

of Palestine? The Tutsi

floating head-first in

the streams? Leg Godt has

no excuse. They’ve come out

with bodies of water,

migraine-blue before.

Waikiki anyone?

Maybe sorrow needs its own half-

bricking. A mortician

plunking lilies

on a casket. Children

wait too long

to know of death.

Pain that melts

you to the bone.

Stick an end-

piece in your shag. Walk on

through the hallway

in your nylons. The pair your

cantor gave you

at the end of Yom Kippur.

Then say you’ve heard a

holler like that before.

Compare it to an Auschwitz

shower. The wail of a gaunted

mother for her son. Have the gall

to tell me that

each block is all in good fun.

Andreas Gripp

January 21, 2026

RF Photo