David Franks Week - polaroid by Jenny Raccuglia

David Franks Week - poem by Jenny Raccuglia

where are you David Franks?
I just wanted to tell you.
I tore my house apart.
boxes full of paper. words everywhere.
when I met you the first words you said to me were "what do you do?"
it was not a poetic greeting and I was annoyed by the cliché.
I held my wine glass up to you and said "this."
you were so excited by this.
one word.
I just wanted to tell you.
I looked for you. in the alley where you still lived without me.
with your words.
You were not a doctor. You did not heal anyone with your hands. No blood or bones or heart was ever healed by your hands.
Your words.
I looked for you.
For days for a scrap of paper from you.
I burned everything else not thinking.
About sticks and stones.
You knew how words could destroy, but you didn't choose that if you could help it.
You wanted to tell us what it meant, because we don't know how to really be alive. We were the birds pecking at the gravel for food, oblivious.
Where are you David Franks?
Not in my boxes of paper. Of receipts, or bills, or my wedding iCards, or baby announcements.
I have handwritten letters from FDR in boxes in my house now, but no words from you.
I just wanted to tell you.
I thought maybe I tucked your last letter, your offer of forgiveness and letsmovepastthepast letter, in a book.
Maybe I put it in Confederacy Of Dunces, you read it to me when it was too hot to sleep. Maybe in The Wind inThe Willows that im reding to my children. No, that's my life now without you.
And there are no words from you.
I really just wanted to tell you.
But I am just stuck. Boxes full of paper, millions of words.
But none from you.

David Franks Week - poem by Andy Devine

And Birds Breakfast Eating in More Morning of the Wife

A, a, a, a, a, a, a, ago, air, alive, all, all, almost, an, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, answering, answering, any, anybody, anymore, anything, arm, arm, armchair, arms, around, at, at, at, at, at, away, away, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, backyard, backyard, backyard, bathroom, bed, bed, behind, behind, bending, bike, blinds, blouse, blouse, book, book, bra, breakfast, breaking, breaking, breathe, brushing, but, but, but, buying, by, called, calling, car, climbing, clocks, close, closing, clothes, couch, could, could, couldn’t, cupboards, day, day, dinner, dinner, dishes, doctor, doing, doing, doors, doorway, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, drink, drink, driveway, driving, dying, ear, eat, eating, eating, either, enough, enough, eyes, face, face, face, falling, find, floors, flowers, folding, forgetting, front, frozen, furniture, gas, get, getting, getting, glass, glasses, go, going, going, gone, goodbye, goodbye, got, grass, hadn’t, hair, hair, hair, hair, hands, head, hear, heat, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, herself, herself, highway, hip, holding, hospital, house, hung, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, in, in, in, in, in, in, into, into, kept, laundry, legs, lighting, lights, lipstick, listening, listening, live, living, living, living, locking, looked, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, lunch, machine, magazine, make, making, making, making, matches, matching, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, mirror, mixing, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, name, name, near, newspaper, next, number, numbers, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, off, off, off, old, old, old, old, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, or, our, our, our, our, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, outfit, oven, over, pants, photos, picking, pills, pills, place, places, planting, plants, pulling, pumping, putting, radio, reading, records, riding, rinsing, rolled, rolling, room, room, rooms, running, saying, see, setting, settings, shading, she, she, she, she, she, she, she, she, she, she, shirt, shirt, shoelaces, shower, sidewalk, sit, sitting, sitting, sitting, skirt, sleeping, slow, some, standing, standing, standing, steps, still, stove, strands, stripping, sweeping, table, taken, taking, taking, taking, talk, talking, teeth, telephone, telephone, that, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, them, there, through, through, through, tie, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, too, toothbrush, touching, touching, trash, trying, tucking, tucking, turned, turning, turning, turning, turning, unbuttoning, until, underwear, unzipping, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, used, waistband, waking, walking, walking, walls, wanted, was, was, was, washing, wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t, watching, water, waving, we, where, wife, wife, wife, window, window, windows, with, with, years, yet, yet, ,, ,, ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ., ..


Andy Devine’s alphabetical fiction and essays have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, and Taint. In 2007, he published a chapbook, “As Day Same That the the Was Year” (Publishing Genius). WORDS (2010, Publishing Genius) is his first book. Andy Devine Avenue — in Flagstaff, Arizona — is named after him.

David Franks Week - poem by Kate Wyer

hey, this is Baltimore and your voice--

first heard in my dead dad's old beater--

was stolen with the radio but I used to

repeat your CANNA CANNA GET AN and then

the bam ba bambam

when I was driving and ravenous for pulse


yes, I noticed your big shoes, worn and without polish

and the way everyone gave way when you

walked and the deference they showed and

the seats given up but I couldn't just say,



Hey, hello, I'm Kate. I could have, I guess.

And then maybe you would have given

me some untoward line and a story

to repeat and if I continue this coulda coulda

we mighta had a laugh

about how there isn't such a thing as normal sex

in a Christian Nation, so why not try for the slow

flush of cheeks, we’re all perverts here and

amen and amen and amen.

David Franks Week - poem by Michael Ball

Ask Don't Ask
for
David Franks


Big Bird did a poodle hump
twice
on my left leg
at Brewer's Art

David Franks Week - poem by Justin Sirois

I Didn’t Pay Attention
for
David Franks



I can only say good things

now that you’re dead – that’s the rule

people follow

or maybe I can say really good bad things like

he could peel a banana with his mind

or

he used to host spider eating contests

in bed.

Sometimes you flirted with my girlfriend

& that was ok.

I liked that girlfriend, too


*


if you hold a stethoscope to a banana

do you hear the hands that picked it?

You’d say

Well of course, you ninny!

& then I’d help you find a chair


*


I wondered if all of it was true

& now all of it is true


*

sit down, David!


*


you called me a few times & I didn’t

pick up the phone.

I think, when you’re young, you can chat & chat

up all night pondering death & The Milky Way

& then you forget all that

until you’re truely alone

& there’s a spider in your bed


*


a real man

(a man in touch with the real)

never stops wondering

about the banana

or what church bells can do

besides being church bells


*


did I tell you

he could peel a banana

with his mind?

David Franks Week - poem by Jamie Gaughran-Perez

Dear David,

I'm writing this on the train because time is short again.

I'm sorry I didn't change the overhead lightbulbs when you were away. It would've been a nice surprise. You would have smiled and it wouldn't have been at someone's expense.

And I'm sorry we never got a chance to walk around Fells Point like you suggested – you and me and my daughter. She would've thought you were funny on a good day.

And I'm sorry I didn't return your call that time and that other time. My marriage was falling apart, and I'm trying to have more in the tank for my daughter. She's getting so big.

I'm afraid of being old and alone and worthless and forgotten, David.

You weren't afraid. Not that I saw. The kids would say about your work, He doesn't give a fuck! But you so gave a fuck.

I cried at one of your readings. I don’t do that.

You had a great laugh, a bullhorn, and once, a little shaving cream under your ear. Sometimes you took so much, but man, you had the best Thank You.

Be well.

the last thing David Franks said to Ric Royer

David Franks Week - poem by Dan Gutstein

LOITERING.

He ain't crazy; he's psychotic. They got him for felony loitering. Felony spray-painting a bull's eye and felony jumping off a building. Felony masturbation. Across from the truck garden. Across from the mending court, lightning kindled by a patriotic fireworks barrage. The chess match not in endgame, but knight forks king and rook. (This is a problem.) The short dude wins twenty bucks. "I am an Uzbek," he proclaims, beating the left side of his chest with his opponent's fist. Cartoon characters and their wig bubbles: "Joe goes on about mojo after he washes up with GoJo." That rat is both glossy and confident because someone took a personal interest in that rat. Fed it lots of Aunt Jemima. Muthafuckeyyy.

Brother JC Crawford

Is that you, Franks? Is that you?
The internet says so.

I don't really believe it so much.

.

Brother J.C. / Jesse Crawford

Grande Ballroom/MC5 Master of Ceremonies and All Around Scenester

The following image and text is excerpted from the official program of the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival.

.

If you're from Detroit or Ann Arbor and you listen to the rock and roll radio you'll know his voice even if you can't place his face. If you were one of the legion of of MC-5 maniacs back in 1968 and 1969 while it was happening you won't be surprised at all, not one bit, when you see him walk out on stage to announce the artists for the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. And if you were at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler back in December of last year, you know him too, even if you weren’t quite sure who he was or what he was doing there.

Jesse Crawford's back in town, for all the people who don't know him yet, and he’ll be acting as master of ceremonies for the entire Festival, introducing the artists on stage and generally keeping things moving along as naturally as possible. And, as an extra treat, Jesse will be playing drums Sunday afternoon with the Mojo Boogie Band, bringing his involvement with the music featured at the Festival to full circle.

Jesse came to Ann Arbor from Cleveland, his home, in the middle sixties and he came as a drummer to jam out some blues with folks around town who were into the music like he was. After doing a spell with the legendary Prime Movers, Jesse stopped playing for a while and did some heavy hanging out for a year or so, most notably with his sidekick Panther White and a wide assortment of buddies and pals. In the summer of 1968 he teamed up with John Sinclair and the MC-5, becoming the warm-up man for the 5's dynamite performances and consistently working rock-and-roll-crazed maniacs into a mindless frenzy even before the music would start. His rap of that period can be heard on the first MC-5 album, Kick Out the Jams, recorded live at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit on the first Zenta New Year.

Jesse was known variously then as "Brother J.C.","The Oracle Ramus" (one of the two original prophets of Zenta, a religious movement which holds blues and jazz music as two of its strongest sacraments) and a number of other descriptive terms, but in the spring of 1969 he formalized his name as "Jesse Crawford" and has laid with that ever since. Fired by the MC-5 after the imprisonment of John Sinclair, Jesse cruised into the Motor City radio scene one day and turned the whole thing around for a while.

Jesse's cruise-time program on the former WKNR-FM station in Dearborn was a major force in shaping the musical, and to some extent, the social consciousness of thousands of Detroit rock and roll addicts. From the tunes he played to the rap he laid down around them, Jesse redefined for a while what rock and roll radio was supposed to be about, and in the process he captured the largest audience and the highest ratings of any FM radio personality in town. None of this was accompanied by any compromise in Jesse's musical taste -- to the contrary, he made it a point to introduce people to music that was new to them, particularly jazz and blues, and it wouldn't be wrong to say that at least some of the success of this Festival could be credited to Jesse Crawford and his radio assault of two years ago.

Jesse left WKNR after a regrettably short period of time - less than a year - and soon left the Michigan area altogether to settle in Jamaica, where he-lives to this day. He's been flown back to Ann Arbor to emcee the Festival, and a lot of people are hoping he'll come back to stay.

John Sinclair August 1972

http://home.att.net/~s.m.geer/people.htm

after David Franks

From the film by Paul Shartis - T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G

David Franks mounting Xerox machines at the Social Security Administration

Franks in the early 1970s.

David Franks Week - poem by Chris Toll

No Teacher No Path No Fear
for David Franks


Why is a tic in didactic?
Your Sutra
finds the Word in sword,
turns a shopping mall
into a time machine,
and travels to a future
where full moons
didn’t rule Nazi werewolves.
Why is a circus in circumspect
and who spelled it wrong?
Your shoes are songs.
Explore the galaxy.

David Franks Week - poem by Ryan Walker

the motherfucker in civilization

vs.

the george washingtonification of santa claus

David Franks Week - poem by Adam Robinson

Bolt Thrower

Last year you were the Emperor of Hampden
You were a benevolent emperor but
Sometimes I couldn't understand your words
You spoke too quietly in loud, crowded bars
Still you seemed fantastically interesting
In your wide-striped shirt you looked good
I'll just say it you were a good-looking man
I remember some zipped-up brainiac read, uh, poetry
You kept heckling, you were in tune with everything
You were the funniest heckler I've ever seen
I'm sorry you died before you finished your website
Now you are in the big network in the sky
Do they give you business cards when you die?
Do yours say Emperor of Hades?

David Franks on WYPR - The Signal with Aaron Henkin

LISTEN and PAY ATTENTION

David Franks - Baltimore - Poet - Prankster

Next week is David Franks week.
It's like Shark Week, but with David Franks.

Watch
yourself.

From his obit:

Baltimore's David Franks was the sort of poet/artist whose work makes good stories to tell in bars. There was the time Franks conducted a musical composition played by tugboat whistles at Fells Point, or the time he commandeered a Xerox machine at Social Security headquarters, undressed, mounted the machine and photocopied his body.

.

More

RIP David Franks (1948-2010)

on left.
.
I've never been able to confirm this, but David Franks, besides being a fabulous poet, used to open up for the MC5. I'm not exactly sure what "opening up" meant exactly, but I'm sure it was one hell of a spectacle. Totally badass.
.
We will miss you, sir. More posts to come.
.
David Franks (as read by David Franks, Lauren Bender and Jamie Gaughran-Perez).
.
Click (or right-click and save), listen, enjoy.
.
via Rock Heals