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Evnin’, Frank!
Whaddya think we ought to
Talk about today?
I say, I say, I’m bored somethin’ awful
And want somethin’ better ta do.

Well, how ‘bout a nice lil’ chat
On this nice desert night
Down the ole I-40
Striped cross Arizonian country,
Fredd-ma-friendo?

But, Frank, how do ya know
When the conversation
Has reached the point of bein’ nice?
Is there some way to qualify
And quantify
The meaning of our words?

Not just the words, Fred,
But how they are arranged and disarranged
Lends themselves to greater worth
Than diction on its lonesome –
There’s more art in there
When madness has a method.

Quotin’ Shakespeare on me,
Or some perverse Frankspeare?
Huy-huck! Tell me true
And stop skirtin’ ‘round the question
With yo’ politician’s rhetoric:
What makes a conversation good?

I’ll tell ya, some say worth is made
On scales of subjectivity
Or in depths of genuine emotive whats-its
Or dependin’ the circumstantials of sitiations…
But I think it’s the principle of the ordeal.

The principle, huh? Fine and dandy
Considerin’ the principles of the persons involved
Might as well sit on opposite sides
Of the Grand Canyon isself
And shout at each other that the other
Ought to hurryitup and jump the gap.

No, the principle of conversation I mean.
What would it be like if you and I –
Lone men on a long road –
Kept our radio silent and stared
At what lies ahead and not who
We might find. The road would become
Dry, lifeless, bare, and boring.

Yeh, when yur right, yur right. And
Yur right. Maybe it’s better to
Be right or wrong than without neither,
Both judged and judging,
Than to isolate ourselves and form
One world of one mind
With no purpose other than making noise.

Exacitally, Freddo ma friendo. It’s
All one can do to remember they’re alive
On this bleak road, at this stiff wheel,
And I’m glad I’ve got
A philosophizer like you
On the other end.

Likewise, Frank. Likewise, but I must say
That you’re the philisophier
I think. And now I bid you evening,
For I’ve got a small drive
And a Big Mac
That’ll hopefully take me all the way.

To hear you doing fine, in your
Tone and in your lines, is just
Jim-cracking dandy-do.
But keep your ear pressed to the com
For another question I press to you:
Why do we drive?

Whaddya mean?

Why do we drive these trucks cross-country
For little more than cash
To sustain us in-between
Neglected nights and dreary days
Just so we can get behind the wheel again?

I don’t know, Frank. I
Don’t know. I don’t think I want to.
But I do know this –
When we’re in the seat,
Better to sit, than stand
And tumble out.

True thing – if everyone stood up,
There’d be no one left to drive the truck
But that just begs
Us to ask which matters more:
The truck or the driver?

But you cannot argue that,
To man and his business,
The truck makes the driver
Though the driver moves the truck
And both are worth less
Than the cargo itself.

I cannot, I cannot, you’re right ‘bout that.
But it’s better to have
A truck to drive
And a cargo to carry
Than neither at all.
Isn’t that right?
Am I right?

Frank, old buddy,
I’ve got to go.
Another sun is rising
And I’ve got plains to go before I catch it.

Ah, well, take care of yourself,
Freddo ma Friendo.
And remember that the moon
Is a worthwhile object, too.

Copy. Signing off.

Signing out.

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Starting and Stopping
Stapping and Storting
Stopping and Starting

You cannot stop until you start
But the Starting’s still the Stopping’s part
For you don’t know you’ve started until you have stopped
In the lane where the Starters stop for your start
When with a puff and a start you stop all the same
And the Starters’ stop lands square as your blame
Though you never started to stop –
You set out to start –
But a Stopper is what you started out as
And are stuck no matter how much you start
Or stop, keeping time with the Starters
Now that they’ve swept you up in a Starter’s heap
You’re a Stopper until you give up your feet.

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Bowls of nothing every morning,
Bowls of nothing every night –
To eat anything but air
Is to forget the human plight:
That no matter what you put in you
You’re worth no more than shite –
Born as nothing into mourning
That you’ll die as nil by night!

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Look at all them bouncin’ bout –
Jingle Jingle janglejing!
A bunch o silly-lookin’ dolls
Strangled up in knotted strings.
They love those strings of theirs, them dolls,
And try to hold the nylon dear;
But don’t they know it’s all just thread
That hoists them high by heavy rears?

Jangle-krinkle, tinklewink –
They try to kiss the skinning threads
That jerk them, shirk them, yank their heads,
And still with them they’d make their beds
Because it’s wood throughout their heads.
What a pointless, thoughtless lot
That lets their strings jerk where they ought –
But if they sense, they’d certainly not,
Were they aware the Puppeteer’s plot.

The Puppeteer, he ain’t a man
But a autonomy o’ beliefs
Latched to puppets by their strings
(And them to him by griefs)
Made of wounded misconceptions
And thoughts they hope are real –
They jumble up the other puppets
And choke them out with zeal.
The Marionettes keep on a-yankin’
The Puppeteer around,
Though they’ve become so entangled
Up can’t be told from down.

Jingly-tingly jinglejang –
They ring for audience.
But lookee here! Silly we!
The strings have made the dolls immobile;
Their heads hold the only dance.

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I run my bony fingers
Sensitively across the sharkskin serrated surface of
A Brick Wall:
Rough and red
The blood of sweat
Slipping down its cemented hodgepodge
Between the grooves –
Filling the cracks –
Sticky
Warm
The cold of artificial stone
Falsely coated in a
Living crimson that renders it
Human
To the untrained heart.

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Abrupt beginning, abrupt end
I come from light, to darkness, to light again.
All the same, play the game;
Hold back love, hold back spite,
Try to make it through each night,
Each curtain call, each pawn fall –
Every piece must give their all.
The King and Queen each take their space
And thus begins the endless race.

Until the game concludes
Only eagerness exudes.

The board is set, the pieces play
All the same, every day.
The bishop slides to snag a knight,
But that knight’s spite puts up a fight.
Hell is raised, God is praised,
Lesser pieces shocked and dazed.
Their vision scarred, yet no holds barred;
Strategy a mess, moves amiss,
Vitality fades with fatal hiss.

Until the game concludes
Only ignorance exudes.

The King, he slides to take a pawn
But in a mere five moves his Queen is gone.
Duty skewed, anger renewed,
His Highness knows not what to do.
Knight’s L hop, Bishop’s diagonal slide,
Each move the King he takes in stride
‘Till every piece will disappear
And he be left behind in fear.
Begin again.

Until the game concludes
Only weariness exudes.

Blankness, darkness, emptiness,
The game reset, pieces returned,
And just what has the mighty King learned?
Quite a bit, to say the least.
But what to gain?
Sorrow upon sorrow, pain upon pain.
A King, superior in every way,
Grows tired of playing the same old game.
When did it start?
He does not know
It was far too long a life ago.

Until the game concludes…

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There is no through road here
You heard no through road here
Through the road it stops half-through
When the road ran short it grew
And all through roads it ran through
Left there no through road true
‘Til the last through road
In this roadless borough
Ran through and true ’til through
And there was no through road, true?
At least not through for you.

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I notice more because I experience less,
So I call out mankind’s destructive need
To know happiness in sweet excess!

When he or she must soothe abscess
And be freed from some corporeal chain
I notice more because I experience less.

And yet they fall to short-lived obsess
Because what lasts takes too long for man
To know happiness in sweet excess.

Therefore they play and complain all day
Of the pointless pain of living, yet too scared to end it
(I notice more because I experience less).

But I am content with what comes my way
And work with purpose, but no expectation
To know happiness in sweet excess.

It is God’s will and purpose that makes the man,
Not aimless wandering and wasted hands –
I notice more because I experience less
To know happiness in sweet excess.

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Come here, my kitties,
My pretty kitties,
And let an old man’s cracked hands
Run through your soft fur.
On mornings such as this, at 4 AM,
I’d be on a ship, a cargo ship,
Bound for Norway, the Americas, et cetera,
To scatter the spoils of England
To spoil the whole world over
From the Port of our fair Dover.
But I was young then.

Then I was stationed on a crabbing craft
And my back,
Bleached by sun and surf –
Colder than you might realize
Until it whips you to work with salty reins –
Creaked and groaned like the craft’s hull
To a hunched point.
And on that boat
As I heaved in the net
Entangled with seaweed and our paycheck
Labor wore me down.

I wanted a family
But all I got was crabs –
Day in and day out,
Crabs, crabs, crabs…
I could hardly stand it.
Everyday I lamented
Wondering what my future held
Until one night
An epiphany!
As a storm beat us about
And nearly tore the ship to splinters
Under Poseidon’s foot,
I realized the future wasn’t my concern.

God, who works through all time,
Can see to that –
But me?
I can only do the present,
So I ought to focus on the present.
And, in the present of that storm,
I vowed then and there
That crabbing was not for me,
And quit the sea forever.

That was yesterday, my kitties,
You precious, stray, bitty kitties,
When I finally realized my folly
A little bit too late.
Why didn’t you try to warn me
Before my life was spent away?
Why didn’t I try preparing
What was for what I wish it were?
My future seemed so clear to me
But my life was too foggy
Since they was guesses
At what lay ahead
In uncharted, misted waters.

Foggy, misted, just like this morning now –
A kind of morning I never payed attention to
In anticipation for warmer sunrises.
I’ll trust God with those, but for now
The only one who knows me
Are these waters.
I must leave you now, frail kitties,
From our sopping stairs –
Don’t try to stop me
As I walk down the embankment
And wade back into that cold, salty mist
I dreamt my whole life of escaping.
And as the water laps against my toes,
My knees, my stomach, my shoulders,
Into my mouth,
Just watch me, my kitties,
Just watch me from the shore,
And mark how I’m no deeper
Than I ever was before.

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I’m sorry dear, I can’t recall
your name, or where we’ve met before –
But I’m sure – if you remind me –
Yes, I won’t forget again.
By the way, you said you wished
to go somewhere before –
do something as well –
but what it was, I think
that you had something to say?
The last time we met?
The last
When was that?
But you prob’ly don’t remember.
Heck, I’m hardly sure of it myself,
But I’m sure at least
No, I’m not
Or am I?
I’m sorry dear, I can’t recall
your name, or where we’ve met before –
Oh, you’re angry, are you?
I can’t help that
I’ll most likely forget it –
Try making a better impression,
My brain will have an easier time.

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