Ken Taylor
snoopy recollects the salad days
it’s a beat tale by now – you all know it:
i cut my teeth in the funnies.
good thing i took corporeal mime
in the city – useful for keeping
still across four panels some days.
the boss made it all pop on the page.
we ad-libbed our angst:
AAAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!
and it was c.b who came up with:
“wah wah wah wah wah wah.”
hard not to go up on your lines
when a chin raised to the sky and let fly.
kismet how it all fell into place.
i met shermy in a tap class.
used to catch schroeder’s act at
the village gate before sam shepard
dreamed of being a waiter there.
marcie, frieda, and rerun all rose
through the groundlings. and c.b.,
well, he was a genius and like all great
clowns made it look impossibly simple.
i was small town, so the shift
to the coast and tv was huge:
youth, beauty, kissing the hem…
“they don’t call it show show, babe”
a producer schooled me in los feliz.
anyway, i never worried because
i played younger than my years
and kept my weight down
so the extra pounds the camera
slaps on didn’t show. the boss
was wide open to the moment
so when he aimed to make linus
more of a philosopher than he was
i took his blanket in an improv
when i couldn’t brook the heaviness
and that became our gag.
he did hold on to that killer piece
about the meaning of christmas –
still slays me when i catch it.
nailed it in one take. the boss
challenged us to stretch:
lucy was actually quite shy.
pigpen, immaculate. sally was a slut.
some of us still keep in touch.
others have passed on. woody
keeps a bungalow at the château marmont.
c.b.’s in a shotgun in soho.
violet cashed in on google stock.
double-p is sautéing in two pans
somewhere in minnesota, but it’s cool.
we all knew that was her way.
i’ve re-settled in appalachia. my roots.
“dancin’ with what brung me.”
the residuals set me up in a manse
and a big-assed piece of land.
me and the boys knock back a few,
get after some rabbits on occasion.
i fart a little when i move too quick
and in the languid summer days
when i drift to sleep on the rooftop
of my set-piece, i dream of me
breaching aerial boundries.
Ken Taylor lives and writes in North Carolina. His poetry has appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, The Stony Thursday Book, The Fish Anthology, elimae, MiPOesias and is forthcoming in The New Guard. He was a runner up to the 2010 Fish Publishing Poetry Prize. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
