Look, I know who he is.
He’s the kid who’s been in second
grade for five decades,
the youngest icon
for balding men
there ever has been.
But get this:
I was working as a clerk,
tending the drawer
as a corporate whore in a
music store (I was poor
and needed to pay my bills)
and I’m chill, until
this woman with only two
decades more of wrinkles
on her face,
invades the perimeters
of my personal space.
Today’s case: she wants to know what’s on
“in-store play”.
Okay, I was in
a nostalgic mood
so I soothed my cravings with Vince
Girauldi’s Charlie Brown Suite,
A sweet gem packed to the brim with jazz sins,
piano patterns that flatter my ears
that parents actually allow their children to listen to –
I look back over the counter
and the woman is flabbergasted over
the line casted.
Her, so wide, like Monstro the Whale
can’t take the bait and
I wait for her brainfuel to replenish
Which apparently diminishing like a gasline in Phoenix,
As she says, “but you are too young to know Charlie Brown,”
And she continues with, “Aren’t the Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles more up your alley?”
MAN DOWN!
I lost my ability to collaborate my brain hemispheres
so I could decorate my next words:
EXCUSE ME, you old rotting BITCH!
But Bon Voyage Charlie Brown was released in the 80’s
And I rather EAT turtles than WATCH them,
But THANK YOU for your insensitivity to the probability
that some people aren’t responsible for the BULLSHIT
that happens in this world.
THANK YOU, for your generation fighting
a meaningless war in Vietnam.
THANK YOU, for your generation sending my generation to Iraq.
THANK YOU, for inventing LSD, infecting hippies
so we can watch John Lennon leave Paul for Yoko Ono
OH NO! Tell your parents they should have zipped their pants up
because their Baby Boom doomed my chances
OF EVER GETTING SOCIAL SECURITY!
I apologized for my orgasm of sarcasm.
I’m just sick of agism.
I just lost a promotion to someone I’ve worked longer
Than because they had twenty more years
of WTE: Wasting Time Experience,
so, like Charlie Brown, I know what it’s like to have
the football pulled before you get a chance
to kick it.
From: Chainsawsmoking: Poems Wrapped in Cellophane
Summary
“Charlie Brown” by Aaron Hopkins-Johnson is a poem centered on arizona, music, identity. Its imagery is anchored in Phoenix. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
A personal, first-person speaker combines recollection with direct emotional address.
Style and form
The poem is musically inflected, line-driven, compressed, typographically emphatic, first-person. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include arizona, music, identity, aging. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “Charlie Brown” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
Explore this poem
Source & rights
Source: Chainsawsmoking: Poems Wrapped in Cellophane (Lawn Gnome Publishing, 2016)
Rights: © 2016 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.