Children Aren't As Stupid As You Think

Children Aren't As Stupid As You Think

Children aren’t as stupid as you think
They ask about the sky
Why?
Is it blue?
They see you
Striding out of Burlington’s and scurry down the street
With a negligee too small
To meet
Your waist, so you sneak to the 11th Avenue strip mall
To find a seamstress
To make it look like you have a set of keys
That opens a door just six blocks up; you never guess
That a pair of eyes in a stupid head is watching you
And sees
A lesson in conspicuous vanity.

You may sigh
And you may blink
But children aren’t as stupid as you think.

The taste of wisdom lingers
Still clinging to our tongues
The cry of devastation
Wraps round our fetal lungs
And plays upon our fancy
A fortissimo of tears
And stifles every happiness
In agony and fears

Into despair and wariness
All trust and virtue sink
‘Cause children aren’t as stupid as you think.

I knew a man named Jacob Pole
Who had a garden like that at Babylon
Rumor had it that he’d stole
Into Eden and tore a tuft of grass to grow upon his lawn.
He always turned the sprinklers on
When the trick-or-treaters came
I didn’t blame
Him for doing that. He kept his windows drawn,
And no one saw his crooked shape, till one night, he choked
On a mustard seed.
The newspaper said he stumbled out the door and soaked
Himself on the grass. I didn’t read
What happened after that.
But I knew that all the ghouls began to scat
And all the children too
Till Jacob, like them, wore a mask.

And it was blue.

So, somebody (I think it was a Neanderthal)
Came at him with a bone and all
And whacked him in the neck —
And made a wreck
Of the sacred grass ― but pulled him from the brink
‘Cause children aren’t as stupid as you think.