When I was much younger, I wanted to write children's books. I wanted to play with the words and make them jump and dance and do tricks while drawing exquisite pen-and-ink sketches that tugged the reader into the scene. I'd give my little poems names like "Raining Cats and Doggerel" or "Von Braun's Swagger." Here's one I call "Assailing, Assailing":
"Sargasso, seize the scallops,"
Cried the cruller captain's crew,
"Hustle in the mussels
And we'll pop them in the stew."
"Alba, core the albatross
And grind his bones for tea,
For the Prince of Wales
Has left his post,
And joined us out at sea!"
Oh, the rhyming schemes would be perfect, no syllable off the beaten path -- unlike all that stinking doggerel you find in greeting cards or when sportswriters try to be poetic. My beautiful drawing would show the crew wearing ring-shaped cakes on their heads -- with candles and melting ice cream -- and sea gulls pecking at the crumbs as the crew tug on the nets and pull up hundreds and hundreds of scallop shells. And the elfin but muscular Alba will be clinging to the feet of a huge ocean bird and dragging him below decks. This drawing will capture both the excitement and the marvelous absurdity of a child's imagination.
When I was in high school, I discovered the joy of Shel Silverstein, through his sad, sad book The Giving Tree. He followed that with his fun, scary, rollicking children's poems in books such as Light in the Attic or Where the Sidewalk Ends. The best part of Shel's work is that you can pass his genius down generation to generation by giving his books to your children and your friends' children. Which gives you yet another reason to read them again.
As the brilliant, eccentric novelist Tom Robbins once wrote, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
In my imagination, I was Shel. I worked and worked at it, writing more bits of doggerel. This one's called, "Don't be Cilia":
I have a paramecium
I went and named him "Bud."
He loves to hike
and roller skate
and wrestle germs for fun.
He even knows a special trick,
my paramecium
'Cause every time
I call his name,
He makes another one!
Shel, Shel, Shel. That's all I thought about. I wanted to buy a long black gunslinger's coat and shave my head and grow a thick, neatly trimmed beard.
Shel had a bit of an edge to him, so I had to have a bit of an edge, too. I named this one "Pecking Order":
Little boys chase pigeons,
Keep them pigeons on the run,
Eagles pick up little boys
And eat them just for fun.
Nature watches out for
All the birds that peck and coo,
But I'd rather be an eagle,
Wouldn't you?
Next to the words would be a wonderful drawing of a boy shown from above. He has a quizzical look on his face since he's just been plucked off the ground by a mighty eagle with massive wings. The eagle has the boy in his powerful talons, while the pigeons scatter on the ground below.
A bit later in my life, I decided I'd try my hand at limericks -- every book of doggerel has to have some limericks in it, accompanied by lovely pen-and-ink sketches that make the reader laugh. I started with one I call "Yowtch!"
In histories about the Mid Ages,
We read of King Henry's wild rages.
If a word too misleading
appeared in his reading
He hastily burned all the pages!
To appeal to a more common denominator, I wrote one that was a bit naughty. I also made the mistake of telling it to my then 13-year-old twins, who told it everywhere they went. I spent weeks huddled in my room waiting for a call from the principal but it never came. This one is "Mama Llama":
Our mayor, Francesco de Jama,
was casually humping a llama,
when an angry vicuna
said, "Listen here, jun-yah,
You keep-a your hands off my mama!"
The rotund mayor would have a silk scarf cavalierly tossed around his neck as he stood behind the llama, his pants bunched around his ankles. The vicuna, holding a stuffed baby dolphin, would be lecturing the mayor, obviously displeased.
I couldn't think of another dirty one, so I jumped back into the mainstream. My book would have such gorgeous drawings next to the words, which would pop off the pages like this:
The artists rebuke poor Rene
for finishing one work a day.
Though he often complains,
the stigma remains:
He just does it for the Monet.
Our Frenchman Rene has a wild, flowing beard like old chubby Monet had. He's painting furiously in his lovely, upscale studio with struggling artists of all kinds pounding on the doors and windows with signs and banners in protest. A rich gentleman in evening dress is dropping a bulging bag of coins onto the floor and smiling. Rene bows gracefully and you can see a dozen of his finished paintings in the background -- all looking vaguely like the rich man,
Oh, my books will be so great! They will make people laugh and cry and learn important life lessons. And I'll be famous and loved, just like Shel.
Except for one small problem, one that makes me a little crazy sometimes. It's so awful, so sad. It's, well, it's that...I...um...I...uh...I...can't...draw.
I can't draw a lick. I'm terrible. If I were a swordsman, I couldn't draw blood. I couldn't draw a bath. I tried pen and ink once and it looked like a dog had peed on a Rorschach Test.
I was completely depressed about this for a long time. But now I'm at peace with my limitations. I understand and accept what I can do and what I can't. And I came away from this exercise in humility with one conclusion: Shel was a genius; Shel was the best.
I really hope there is some kind of heaven so some day I can see what he's been up to lately. Because if there isn't, what a terrible waste of talent that would be.
For now, rest in peace, Shel. Rest in peace.
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