CHARLES SCHULZ’ “KIDS”
I
Stupid cartoonists
and stupid Lucy, griping
at a starry sky.
Nobody really
thinks your wee anxieties
are this fussworthy.
Or that your little
life, daily composure, will
somehow shrink the night.
II
Oh, brother! Only
an only child could have this
big a moony head.
Sally surely was
adopted and Charlie Brown
knows it but won’t tell.
This independent
blonde girl barely registers
on his self-regard.
III
In their fifty-year
childhood, Sparky never got
past the first eighteen.
Snoopy’s teargassing
at the Daisy Hill Puppy
Farm--sharkjump?--discuss!
Or introducing
Franklin, a black character
who was simply black?
IV
What was funnier:
the round head kid’s frustrations
or beagle’s fancies?
Lucy’s little bro
contemplating his blanket
and smoking his thumb?
The German-surnamed
pianist’s love-resisting
monomania?
V
My priest pulpited
upon the Peanuts phenom
and divorce, Sparky’s.
Humor is waning
lately: the implication,
sin, the wages: duh!
The man’s overworked,
I thought, raising two sets of
kids can hammer you.
VI
Joyce was certainly
his muse, unacknowledged, his
Norse Alice Kramden.
Unbarren. Bestowed
him a girl, then a Linus
and a few Reruns.
Settled an estate
around this milquetoast of a
one-man industry.
VII
Crisp lettering, bold
silence, warm meditations
on the most minute.
Schulz was sad and fused
his autobiography
into every frame.
So we were treated
to his affair and breakup
through chatty Snoopy.
VIII
Google Earth clearly
shows Sparky and Snoopy’s home
ice and tennis court.
Googling the Moon shows
the Sea of Tranquility,
where boy and dog roamed.
Beyond that the Star
of Bethlehem, which Linus
mentioned on TV.
IX
Throughout an anxious
childhood, real children’s voices
skated in your rink.
Real psychiatric
kids, inked and lined in pain and
shades of awareness.
Likely as Shermy
to grace an old friend with an
o-how-i-hate-him.
X
Sit and draw. All you
ever do is sit in this
stupid room and draw!
(Silence). (Silence). (More
silence). Well? What do you have
to say for yourself?
(More silence) (No eye
contact). (Rapt concentration).
(Scribble, scribble). “Sigh!”
