The afternoon cartoons were hosted by Benny Carl
An Italian Catholic as I later learned
He drove through the schoolyard of Our Lady of Sorrows
One recess-time when I was a second-grader
Children surrounding his car as if it carried Beatles
Who were as yet still schoolboys themselves
The kids had never seen a celebrity up close
But I held back
Judging it rude or worse unsafe
To approach a moving vehicle

It comes back to me now
School day afternoons
On one channel
There were only two or three
Benny Carl presented
Warner Brothers cartoons some of them quite old
Enchanting me with their trombones
And their wriggling clarinets

In the following half-hour
On the other channel
Benny Carl’s rival Cousin Cliff
Showed Popeye cartoons and Three Stooges shorts
My brothers and sister and I considered ourselves winners
When we saw Curly instead of Shemp
In one dramatic moment Cousin Cliff
Issued a warning
In a southern drawl to his tender audience
Not to imitate the Stooges’ actions
They are clowns

Around this time in my life
Ruff and Ready and King Leonardo materialized
On Saturday mornings
Made especially for television
And I knew that they were something different
Because Popeye and Bugs Bunny
Still sometimes appeared
In the movie theater

And soon Huckleberry Hound and his spinoffs
Invaded the afternoon
And I must have been just the right age
Because it never occurred to me
Loving them as I did
Or at least addicted
That their limited animation
And their stereotyped repetitive music
Sparing the company’s budget
Were really kind of ripping me off

And later
Too much of a mediocre thing
Cartoons and comedies
Car crashes and criminals
Howling conveniently at all hours
From a thousand static or streaming channels

Politicians plutocrats and propaganda
A mandated minimum of bared bosoms
Like the plastic mass heaving in the Pacific
The unreal reality of self-published posts
And pages like this one
Poetry without form
That grotesque contradiction
And with our eager connivance
Too much of everything cheap
Borrowed mortgaged or charged to the card
Has laid waste our powers