Toon River: Not Dead Yet

 THOMAS WAYNE

What shall I do tonight? Shall I write a novel?
Shall I create and manage a business, a fortune?
Shall I raise a son who will thirst for justice?
Shall I enjoy the peace I've earned with the love of my life?
Ah. I have it! I shall take my wife and son to the theater.
Yes, and we'll enjoy a simple story of right and wrong,
And then we'll step out into the night and be killed.
Pretty much like every night. 

It's a full life,
Being an inspiration to the family you love.

.

Toon River Anthology, part 17

CASPER

You look like someone who could use a friend!

But never mind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned,

It’s not to go down that road. The only times

I thought it was going to work, I still got the shaft.

They went to Heaven. Yeah, Heaven! And I’m still here.

How long has it been? A century? A millennium?

So pardon me if I'm just a little bit down today.

It’ll pass. It always passes. I’ll be cheerful again. 

I’ll be a real Pollyanna, and I’ll have adventures.

As to that stone and what it implies, all I can say is:
I WISH!

HOT STUFF

Born a devil, lived a devil, died a devil.

No, not one of those tall devils, or the fat ones—

Just a little one. Cute, harmless. An imp, really.

Sometimes unexpectedly good, never evil.

Mild pranks, hijinks, tomfoolery, a hot foot or two.

I used to think I’d grow up and get big,

I’d be a regular Mephistopheles!
FEAR ME!

But no.
If anything, my belly got rounder,

And my head got cuter. Just don’t pat it, Bub,

You’ll burn your hand! (That’s devil humor.)

There was my life: It was OK. I hung with my friends,

Swiped an apple or two.
Not too good, not too bad:
Born To Raise Heck.

.

way down upon Toon River

Freckles Friendly

A lot of people, when they talk about their life,

Say, “Sure, I did what I did. I had no choice.”

I’m not judging them, but that describes me:

The poor friend of the richest kid on earth!

What else can you do when one family

Owns everything in the county, in the state,

And the pampered heir decides that he

Has to cultivate the poorest of the poor

To show that he has the common touch?

You going to put your foot down, show your pride

And listen to your kid brother cough all night

In the leaky room you share with your folks?

So you listen to his golly-gee platitudes

And you thank him for everything you get,

No matter how trivial or useless it is.

And try your damnedest to save a little,

Shopping at the company store: lotsa luck!

And one day, maybe, you survive it all

And you escape him and go to another state,

Start your own business, and tell folks

That your last name has always been Welloff.

.

Toon River Anthology Excavates Comic Books (continued)

DOROTHY “DOT” POLKA

Names are destiny. You have to choose carefully.

Dad and Mom loved to dance. They were the Polkas!

They thought I’d be a dancer too, but I wasn’t like them.

My aunts thought it would be cute to dress me in dots,

Like my name! I was surrounded by dots as a baby.

I couldn’t get over them. They became my life.

Dots here, Dots there. It drove Dad to distraction,

And Mom eventually left us, crying. She still loved us,

But she couldn't cope with it, and she fled the state.

I hardly noticed when she left. She wasn’t a dot!

Partnerless, Dad soldiered on. When I was fifteen, I had an accident,

Fell off my polka-dot bike, hit my head. I was okay. 

But when I realized that I could see spots, beautiful spots, 

Any time, anywhere, just by hitting myself on the head,
My doom was sealed.

.

Toon River Returns

.

It's been a while, but the epitaphs keep on coming:

RICHARD $ RICH, JR.

I had wealthy friends, but I preferred the poor kids—

Bedraggled ragamuffins with bad hair and no fashion sense. 

How they gaped at my opulence! How they thanked me

For any little crumb of generosity that trickled down.

“Kissing up,” some called it. I learned the term

From our second Cadbury, on his way out: Bitter!

They could have had an easy life if they’d kept to it,

But when their voices changed, so did their tune.

They still thanked me, but there was some edge to it

That I couldn’t abide. They thought they were entitled!

It wasn’t enough that I let them ride my golden wagon

Down a hill of gold coins and jewels any more. No,

They betrayed my trust. Small gems “accidentally” stuck 

In a shoe or a ragged pants cuff. Dishonest!

I might have even let that go unpunished, if it hadn’t been

For their miserable attitudes. Oh, we’re so poor. We’re so cold.

Our mom is so sick. Our dad got laid off at your plant.

Can’t you do something? You were our friend!

What do you mean “were,” you ingrates?

I sent them away. No sense of respect. Sad!

Who needs them? I have this huge mausoleum now:

A solid gold statue of myself by the best artist,

And my personal police force to keep out the riff-raff.

.

Oi! Post number 100. Some people get to 100 in a month. It took me about nine years. We'll see how long it takes to get to 100 comments—presently at 59, and half those are me answering back.
.

Toon River Anthology continues

It's a long one this time!

.

ALEXANDER BUMSTEAD

No disrespect to Dad, of course, but I never really understood

Why Mom insisted on combing my hair in just that particular way

With those little ‘dags’ always sticking out on the sides. 

The lookalike thing was fun when I was little, but as I grew up,

I wanted to be myself, to be my own man. I asked to change it

When I was sixteen, but she got around me just as easily

As she always got around him. The hair stayed as it was.

I even kept wearing those one-button shirts, just like his.

Years passed. After Dad died, I finally ventured out

And found a college 300 miles away — close enough

For visits, but far enough that I felt independent, able

To make my own decisions and, more importantly,

To make myself something other than a living memorial

To my father. The barber I chose said he’d never seen a cut like it.

I told him to take a picture, because it would soon be gone.

He trimmed it down into a generic cut that I picked

From the poster by his mirror. He chatted away as he cut.

I mumbled assent occasionally, thinking of my new, different life.

For me, the cut symbolized everything regrettable about Dad:

Eccentric, almost willfully so; sticking out inconveniently, 

Yet docile, deferential, even kind of dumb. I was done with it.

The barber brushed and patted and sprayed it with something,

And told me I looked great. In the mirror sat the new man,

Moving when I moved, standing when I stood, brow furrowing

At the exact moment that something looked unsettlingly familiar.

The shop faded away, leaving only me and the staring stranger.

I pushed my hair to the right. He pushed his to the left. I pushed mine back,

As did he. My heart thumped, and I wished I had a sandwich.

For no reason I know, I was holding the barber’s skinny comb.

My hand moved, held it under my nose, not unlike a mustache,

And I knew. I knew him then. I knew myself, and I knew why Mom

Spent all those mornings brushing and combing and spraying my hair

To avoid this moment: The man in the mirror could be none other

Than Mr. Woodley — Herb Woodley, from next door. Dad’s best friend

Who’d died in retirement, down in Florida. The resemblance was clear.

The intolerable moment passed. The barber was still talking. I settled and left.

For the next while, I kept to my room until it was long enough

To restore the way I’d always looked. Well, I stayed in college two years —

Enough to learn I was no office worker; I ended up becoming a mailman.

.

toon river anthology strikes again

RIP HAYWIRE

Sweet Mother Macreedy! I hate to disappoint you,

But if you’re here for a tearful admission 

Of my gnawing fears and secret doubts, or

An ironically revealing origin story, or perhaps

The news that I was put here by the betrayal

Of a colleague or a loved one —

My dog, maybe — then you’re out of luck.

Dead? No way! I don’t know what this is about, but

It sure as hello kitty isn’t my grave or my stone.

Death is for saps and sidekicks. No sirree Bob,

I’m not under this dumb rock. I’m somewhere else,

Sticking my neck out, enjoying an honest rhubarb.

This? This is a dream, or some imaginary story,

Maybe even a sinister plot by my enemies

Meant to fool someone or other. Happens every day.

Heroes don’t die. Anyone with the common sense of a flapjack

Would know that. Scrambooch, buster,

And save your flowers for somebody who needs 'em.

still more toon river anthology

.
DAGWOOD BUMSTEAD

Dithers came at me with the ash tray. I ran, of course.
One minute, I was tossing paper airplanes with Crane in Payroll,
And the next, the boss was screaming about the Stevens account
(Which, for reasons beyond my understanding, flew remarkably well)
And the old man went completely ape. Well, I’d seen him like that,
So I ran for the elevator, which closed in my face as usual.
With practiced grace, I pirouetted past him toward the break room,
Trying to put the table between us, but he flung it aside and kept coming.
Long years of running had taught me to head for his office:
Sometimes Cora was there, and he always stopped when he saw her.
This time she wasn’t, so my only recourse was the window.
Hoping to get out on the ledge. The old boy hated heights,
So usually he’d just throw things at me and curse till he calmed down,
But before I could get my footing, he was striking at me,
Red-faced, panting and shaking. I slipped, whirled, and grabbed the sill.
In half a second, he was banging away at my fingers with the ash tray.
When he lost his hold on that, I thought we were done, but he resumed
With his putter. Up to now, there was nothing new about any of this,
But this time, he kept hitting. He screamed. I screamed. I was losing my hold
On the sill, and still he kept hitting. My fingers were bleeding
And my attempts to keep a purchase on the wood only resulted
In trying to cling to a surface slick with blood. That couldn’t last.
When I fell, I was dimly aware that my hands were hurting a bit less
And that Mr. Dithers was still yelling, brandishing the club like a Zulu,
His face getting smaller and smaller as the buildings seemed
To crowd together, as if to witness my descent.
The last thing I remember was my own feeling of surprise
About life, the boss, and the Stevens account. Well.
How was I to know the old man was really mad?
.

Toon River Anthology continues

DENNIS MITCHELL

How does it happen that Mr. Wilson outlived me?

I was young, with decades yet to go,

And I reminded him of it every day,

Sometimes loudly playing games to point up the age gap

Or by frequently speculating on just how ancient he was.

One giddy time, I yelled across the fence

That when I reached half his age, he’d be long gone.

I could see the red run up his neck 

Like Mrs. Dowd’s ol’ cat skinning up her elm tree to avoid a rock.

That changed him. He stopped yelling, stopped cursing,

Stopped trying to keep me out of his house.

He got friendly with me, gave me presents,

Like his old Boy Scout knife, lawn darts, a Zippo lighter.

He convinced Dad I was ready for a two-wheeler,

And later showed me how he could ride with one hand—

No hands! Who knew? All it took, he said, was practice.

When our other neighbor’s moving van backed over me practicing,

Good ol’ Mr. Wilson was first on the scene. Insisted on carrying me in.

The last thing I remember was him murmuring “sleep quietly,”

With a look of mild regret on his saggy, bulbous old features.

.

Toon River Anthology, part 10:

.
AMOS VAN HOESEN

Edda and I were kids together
And she bugged and pestered me,
Put things in my desk and gave me wedgies
Until I gave in and loved her.
So we matured to ripe teenhood,
Two geeky musical prodigies.
(She was also a ballet prodigy
As well as several other kinds.)
Love of my life, we were fated for each other.
On that day in Belgium, we clinched it
Under the piano, and on the piano,
And possibly in it. It's hard to be certain,
And I couldn't bring myself to watch the video.
From there, the path of love ran hot and cold,
As did she. I mostly ran hot, but my feet
Sometimes ran cold. At the end
Of a series of misunderstandings,
I humped the question to her, and she said yes.
She was lovely in her gown. She said yes again
When the old nun asked, and the guests blew bubbles
And took pictures and threw birdseed
And we removed to our own love nest.
She was mine at last, and I was hers.
Tenderly, we removed each other's clothes
And looked into our eyes. She smiled
And came to me, and unhinged her jaw.
That's all I remember.
.

Toon River Anthology, part 9:

BARNABAS "BARNEY" GOOGLE

Why am I summoned
To return to the world
To be among men?
Years ago, I wanted to be
The center of attention,
The phrase maker,
The hero of song and joke.
When I was slowly pushed aside
By a one-note bit player,
I was angry and resentful.
Tried to reassert myself,
Tried to push back in
To no avail. As time passed
I realized what a blessing it was
Not to stand center stage,
Not to carry everything on my shoulders,
Not to play the clown.
But I am summoned,
So for this brief time, I return
Smile at punch lines,
Google my eyes,
And wait for the time
I can depart again,
A thing without aspect,
Without time,
Just like the world outside.


LOWEEZY SMITH

Oh, I were bodacious.
Tiny waist, nice apples,
Blond hair that fell lak
Water ripplin' down a hill
All the way t' my li'l cut-offs,
Then it were laigs, all th' way down
T'mah big ol' bare feet.
Snuffy caught me 'hind th' hen coop
An' we trysted, an' Paw caught us both.
We said our I Dos in front o' his sawed-off,
An' I started a-swellin' up right away,
Not 'cuz I had a bun in th' oven, mind,
It's jest what wimmen hereabouts do
When we're married, er fifteen,
Whichever come first.
.

Toon River Anthology, part 8

NO NAME*

[*in the Bandar tongue]

I was born to follow the proud destiny of my father

And his father, and his father, and all their fathers

All the way back to the first Phantom in 1536.

I trained rigorously for years, learning science,

Languages, literature, martial arts, armaments,

Just as my fathers had before me.

But our fathers could not teach us who to love,

Or teach a heart to weigh consequences,

And because my father followed his heart, rather than tradition,

I was not suitable for my own destiny. I was miscast.

Father seemed not to notice. Perhaps he was acting too,

Perhaps he was truly oblivious. I played my part.

He was pleased with me right up to the day of his death.

And then I did what I had to do. I looked around

And found another who could fill the role I couldn't,

And avenge my father's death.

I franchised my destiny. I gave my birthright to another

For the sake of the legend of the undying Phantom.

I found one, light-skinned, well-formed, strong, quick-thinking, ruthless.

Now his dynasty will continue the work my forefathers did.

Though I've grown fat and bald, I continue to advise him

Behind the scenes. It's best this way. After all,

Who could ever believe in the myth of the eternal Ghost

When confronted by an undersized half-Bandar

With a round head made to wear a lampshade?

originally published at the Comics Curmudgeon

.

TOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

part 7

MARK TRAIL

I was a confident, take-charge guy,

Savvy to the ways of nature, a two-fisted he-man,

And a family man with a loving wife and a spunky kid

Waiting for me at home after each adventure

With a stack of pancakes to make it all perfect.

Yet I threw myself into peril

Over and over, risking it all on each toss,

Miraculously carried through by brute strength

And my abiding hatred of facial hair.

It was all too easy. I couldn't lose.

I started taking more risks, and more.

I even let myself get shot in the head,

And escaped with nothing but an inch-long dab of medical tape.

It was then that I understood I wanted to die.

My life, I realized, was a sustained falsehood.

And nobody would end it for me. I was too strong.

Well, I finally stopped relying on proxies and did the deed myself,

With organic, sustainable hemp rope.

I left no note. What would I have said?

"I'm sorry, Cherry, but I have been living a lie.

The man you thought you knew was a fraud,

And you may as well know this:

I was only pretending to love pancakes."

.

Toon River Anthology
part 6

JULIUS DITHERS
Even though Cora was friends with Blondie,
She used to ask me why I didn't just fire him
And let him stay fired. He didn't get much done,
And he took long lunches and he goofed off
At his desk all day long. Oh, he was honest
But I couldn't trust him with any important work,
So I fobbed off the clients I didn't care about on him,
And let him reorganize the stock room from time to time.
Some of the board members mentioned him in meetings,
With pointed references to 'Dead Wood' and such,
And one even hinted that those little bits of hair that stuck out
Bore some kind of resemblance to my own. He didn't last.
A man can stand for just so much. No, he wasn't my son,
But I made a promise to J.B. when he disinherited the boy
That he'd always have a job at J.C. Dithers and Company
As long as he lived. I kept that promise, hard as it was.
But I never promised I wouldn't kill him, and one day I did.
.

Toon River Anthology
part 5

TRIXIE FLAGSTON
It was a static life. I went from bed to bath to floor
And was carried places, sometimes crawling,
Sitting and staring. I watched my family stay the same
For year after year, decade after decade
Stuck in infancy, unable to talk, or walk
My only friend was the dog, and after a while,
He found somewhere else to be.
Mom was the only one who ever changed. Once.
She went from staying home to showing homes,
And didn't even hire a sitter or get my siblings
To pay any attention to me. So I stewed
In my filthy diapers, which led to a rash, which led to infection
And that led to a welcome demise.
My stone is under some trees. I stare at other stones
And never see anybody, and they don't come to see me,
Not even the damn sunbeam!
.

Toon River Anthology
part 4

POPEYE THE SAILOR
I played me part, see?
I ate me spinach and saved me girl
And helped the kiddies and told 'em
To listen to their parents, and I fought
For me country when it needed me.
Bluto was me enemy and me pal,
And I loved him, and he loved me.
Now, I never laid a hand on him, except
To give him a paste on the jaw, but he knew
And I knew he knew, and that was enough.
But it was something you couldn't say in them days,
So I kept quiet and kept on paying calls to Olive's house
But I only felt alive when I was scrapping with Bluto.
I was what I was.


DOLLY KEANE
Would anyone have paid attention
If I'd said "encyclopedia" or "electricity"?
If I wasn't adorably wrong about something,
I was invisible, ignored, unnecessary,
A clown even when I wasn't being funny.
So I went along with it. What choice did I have?
Through seven decades, trapped in that house, in that world,
In that body, in that face. I did my best to radiate
Ignorant, unreasoning cheerfulness
My passing was a mistake, a bid for attention that went wrong.
You should have found me in that "frigidater."
Couldn't you follow the dotted line?


FRED BASSET
This is my grave.
(I am dead!)

.

Toon River Anthology
part 3

ANNIE WARBUCKS
"Daddy" made me feel loved and welcome.
He even got rid of that wife of his
Who acted like I was some sort of trophy;
A proof of her virtue. She was soon gone.
In her place, the lethal Asp and towering Punjab,
And Sandy. Always loyal, wonderful Sandy.
I would see "Daddy" mostly when he came in,
Guns blazing, fists flying, to save me
From the enemies of our country,
As well as from callous orphanages and cruel caretakers,
Just in time to sever them from success
And to protect this nation, and me, and Sandy,
And his own financial interests as well.
As days accreted into years, I wondered
Why my loving "Daddy" always ended up placing me
Back into those dark places where I had no protector
Save the good-hearted weak ones who folded like leaves
And sometimes a sympathetic gangster or mystic,
And I began to notice how my salvation and their demise
Solved at once some pressing business problem of "Daddy"'s
Until, at last, I resolved to contrive a test for him;
A setting of peril for me without any hope of profit for him.
And lo! here I am, beneath this stone forever
As Sandy, faithful Sandy, watches over me
Crying helplessly at the cold white eye of the moon.


.
(Note: I edited out Jamaal J. Jamaal's epitaph that was here, which hinged on a point that might just be too out of date, almost ten years after it was written. It hinged on the fact that characters in "Herb and Jamaal" would use six or more extra words to avoid specificity, e.g. "That popular rap artist," instead of just picking a name. I liked how I wrote it, but it seems a bit obscure to me in 2018.)
.

Toon River Anthology
part 2

PHILLIP WINSLOW
Dottie and I saw him in the window,
A small puppy, looking helplessly at us
Canting his head as if to hear something
We had just said. We brought him home
To the delight of the children. In my mind,
I had some reservations about his paws,
Which looked too large for such a small dog.
"He'll grow into them," Dottie said,
As if that was a good thing. And grow he did
Until he was bigger than any of us,
And willful, and selfish, and bone stupid,
Although he was clever at driving a car,
Making phone calls and operating a computer.
He was less like a dog than he was a demon,
Sucking the life out of our family,
My marriage, and our finances
Until the day I called him out to the car
And took him far away, into the mountains
And tried to lose him on a lonely road.
I got the beefsteak out of the trunk
And called to him to have a treat
But when I looked up, he was in front
And had undone the parking brake somehow
And he rolled right over me before he went
Clattering down the road, until the car stopped
Gently, the front bumper just touching a pine tree.
My last moments seemed to stretch out for me,
Seeing the quizzical expression again on that face,
With that long-ago puppy's face showing behind it
And I saw the irony as well, and had to admit
That in a way, it really was dog-gone funny.

ALAN THE ARTIST
Talent only takes you so far.
Praised in school, successful at first,
I saw my path to fame, to glory,
To all the good things in life.
But ideas were few, and I went
To the pool of creativity, which I found
In a glass pipe Jones gave me
Along with my first taste of the stuff
And I painted, painted, until I thirsted,
Went back to the pool, then painted some more.
But before long, the thirst was more important
And the next trip to the pool, and the next,
And my curtains grew tattered, and I began
To leave my shirt unbuttoned at the top,
And I even forgot to brush my teeth some times.
And then I sought out Ray, who was looking for me,
And things went bad from there, and I perished.
Students of art, always try to find yourselves
A cheaper form of creativity than mine,
And lay in abundant supplies
Before you prime your canvas.

[note: Alan was an ephemeral subplot in Apartment 3G.]
.

Toon River Anthology
part 1

(originally from The Comics Curmudgeon)

PRIVATE BEETLE BAILEY
I trembled between them. There was no escape.
Then I saw the recruiter's door. I stepped inside.
Things blurred for a while, and I came to myself
With my porkpie hat gone and an army cap in its place.
And I found that in giving up freedom and self,
I had gained blamelessness and slack,
And what was at first temporary became instead
The permanent surrender of choice in exchange
For the permanent evasion of responsibility.
And as I stayed at Camp Swampy, year after year,
I was astonished one day to realize with a start
That nothing ever changed there. Nobody left
And nobody new came in, and nothing happened
Until the day I realized I had been dead thirty years
And that all of us were already in our private hell.


PETER PARKER
I never asked to be bitten. I only wanted
To listen to a scholarly talk about science
But there it was, I had great power now
And learned quickly what that entailed.
A lesser soul, gaining what I'd gained
Might have succumbed to vanity or greed,
But I had the lesson of Uncle Ben before me
And set out to make the world a better place
Whether the world wanted it or not.
For my pains, I was scorned, excoriated,
Lied about in the paper, and had my image
Which I provided for a modest fee, paraded
Before the credulous public as a menace.
Is it any wonder that I finally surrendered,
Took the easy way out, married my girlfriend
And stayed at home most days, watching TV?


THE UNKNOWN PLUGGER
Here I lie, in a humble pine box
None of your fancy caskets for me
If I'd died a few years later, it might have been
A cardboard carton for my eternal rest.
I didn't ever ask for much from the world;
Just a small-screen TV and a padded chair
The one to sleep in, the other to sleep
In front of on the nights when I didn't have to go
And work the next day. I kept my personal data
On the icebox in the kitchen. My watch
Only told time, and didn't bother me with
Phone calls, headlines, music, or games.
When I was hungry, I ate a burger with fries,
Drank the cheapest coffee, married a big chicken,
And played board games with my bored kids.
Until the day I felt my heart burst in my chest
And couldn't puzzle out the medicine cap in time.
Now I nap under a piece of granite,
Carved with my parents' names, with a line
Left for my family to fill in with mine
When they can afford it.

edited to subtract the lemons [and again]
. 
.