To Santa Claus and Little Sisters

My friend showed me this poem on Tuesday night. He said it is his favorite poem and has been for a long time. I read it, and appreciated it for what it was - not a colossally amazing poem but something honest. It seems to me like an "internet poem", the type of work that was sent out in so many chain emails in the mid to late 90's. I can imagine its heading now: 'Send to 20 of your freinds or you'll have bad luck for 3 years!!!' But I like to think that it is genuine - that some young kid did have a brain and a pen and scratched this onto the back of a worksheet or into the middle of a notebook full of similar constructions of words and that now it lives on the internet.

I searched to see if it had any story behind it and I found the tiniest hint of a clue - a Time article online with the other version of the poem¹ . At first I thought it didn't tell me anything since the poem ran alone with no further story or background information. But then I noticed the date - Monday, March 13 1972. I would say this proves that it wasn't just some internet poem. It also puts it in a different time period, since it had to at least be before 1970 and could have been written really any time at all before then.




To Santa Claus and Little Sisters

Once,
On yellow paper, with green lines, he wrote a poem,
And called it "Chops",
Because that was the name of his dog,
And that’s what it was all about.
And the teacher gave him an "A"
And a gold star,
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door,
And read it to all his aunts.
That was the year his sister was born,
With tiny toenails and no hair,
And Father Tracy took them to the zoo
And let them sing on the bus.
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a Christmas card
Signed with a row of x's.
And his father always tucked him in at night,
And he was always there to do it.

Once,
On white paper, with blue lines, he wrote another poem.
And he called it "Autumn"
Because that was the name of a season,
And that’s what it was all about.
And the teacher gave him an "A"
And told him to write more clearly.
And his mother didn’t hang it on the kitchen door
Because the door
Had just been painted.
That was the year his sister got glasses,
With black frames and thick lenses.
And the kids told him why father and mother
Kissed a lot,
And that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews,
And the girl around the block laughed
When he went to see Santa Claus at Macy’s.
And his father stopped tucking him in bed at night,
And got mad when he cried for him to.

Once,
On paper torn from his notebook, he wrote another poem,
And he called it "Question Marked Innocence",
Because that was the name of his grief
And that’s what it was all about.
And the professor gave him an "A"
And a strange and steady look.
And his mother never hung it on the door
Because he never let her see it.
That year he found his sister necking on the back porch
And his parents never kissed, or even smiled.
And he forgot how the end of the "Apostle’s Creed" went,
And Father Tracy died.
And the girl around the block wore too much make-up
That made him cough when he kissed her,
But he kissed her anyway.

Once,
At 3 a.m., he tucked himself in bed,
His father snoring soundly.
He tried another poem, on the back of a pack of matches,
And he called it "absolutely nothing"
Because that’s what it was all about.
And he gave himself an "A"
And a slash on each damp wrist,
And hung it on the bathroom door,
Because he couldn’t reach the kitchen.

-Anonymous, a 15-year-old boy who committed suicide two years later²

¹Two versions of this poem exist - the original Time version, which is 17 lines long, and the version posted here. I've posted version two because it was the version shown to me by my friend. I think, also, that it's a more interesting and well-constructed poem. However, I'm sure that version one is the true version and that once the internet swept into our lives, someone took the liberty of embellishing the poem and posting it on the web.

² Again, this is the credit given to both versions of the poem but I think the embellished version was likely not by the same author as the original.