Zoiks!
I remember the big dopey dog,
a Great Dane, I realize now,
simultaneously both dumber and smarter
than the humans nearby,
a dog with ghostly fears
and a traditional dogly appetite,
that is to say, huge and unending,
a dog who occasionally rode roller skates,
flailingly, limbs like pinwheels
hinged at the shoulder with brads
like primary school paper crafts,
a dog who spoke a doggy English,
like ruh-roh, huh?, huh-uh, hee hee hee hee,
and Scooby Dooooo!,
and his sidekick Shaggy,
the tall skinny embodiment of slackerdom,
chin stubble and a metabolism to die for,
who almost always did the bidding of his
smarter, normal-er friends
even amid fear and kneeknocking,
who singlehandedly passed the hippie-ish practice
of injecting “like” into random places in conversation
to an entire generation of American youth;
“those crazy kids” who
banded together in random solidarity, who
split up when clearly they should not, who
meddled and solved mysteries, who
unmasked sneaks and liars and grownup cheats, who
faced scary fears head-on with humor
and Scooby snacks;
those crazy kids who
woke up early on Saturday mornings because they
could and didn’t have to, who
revved their brains on obscenely
sugary breakfast cereals, crass commercialism
aimed at tender impressionable youth,
and cartoons, a medium, a pastime, an obsession
from which we learned story,
the value of repetition, formula,
the fun of a life punctuated by timely sound effects
and a canned laugh track,
a variety of music both new and old, and that almost
anything is possible
(we believed).
Photo credit: Thomas Hawk via Foter.com / CC BY-NC
This post is a blend of the A to Z Blog Challenge and NaPoWriMo. To read other A to Z bloggers, click here. Today’s poem is off prompt, a fitting ending to the challenge for a bruise-pusher, I suppose.
Pushing the Bruise 
Zoiks! You used it! Congratulations on making it through A to Z.
“Simultaneously smarter and dumber than the humans nearby.”
I think this describes many dogs I’ve known.
Hah! I removed the ‘n’ and had Shaggy’s favorite exclamation. It was a fun walk down memory lane, complete with some YouTube time suck. I almost wrote that about dogs–‘like any other dog I’ve known’–but I ended up leaving it out.
Once again, your imagination has captured mine. Well done on the A-Z challenge my friend. I have loved seeing these poems of yours, often thought-provoking, sometimes whimsical, occasionally beyond my comprehension and every word of value. Thank you.
Thanks! Feels good to have to completed it…and to have it behind me. Of course, now I’m taking up another self-challenge for May, so…
Such a fun zany show. Underappreciated by my kids today, though. 🙂
Kids these days… Well, there’s no accounting for taste. 😉