Letter To Frank

This poem actually started as a Sara Eliza Johnson interaction. I was struggling over three interactions for a few days, all of them nature-based, and then there was C A Conrad's splendid  little weird book, The Book Of Frank. So many of my interactions this month have been homage-based, and I was finding it difficult to write in the style of C A Conrad without feeling like I was just poorly imitating C A Conrad. So I decided to write a letter to his character of Frank, instead.

---

Letter To Frank From My Uncle's Garden, 1982
Adam Stone

I don't know where my parents are But my uncle has this video camera And my cousins haven't surrendered their moods to cocaine and mushrooms yet So they are dancing by the pool I am a scarecrow on the outskirts of their flower garden Staked by dozens of bumblebees as big as my five year old fist All they want is me Dancing with them So that my uncle can capture the abandon of our youth Our dumb rhythms to a song i can't even hear See kids they imagine me saying to my own children in thirty years Once your father was as laughter and jumping jacks as you And you can see it all thanks to this betamax recording A medium which will never die When my parents return from their wherever My uncle pronounces me uncooperative A selfish little nancy My parents do not laugh I am pretty sure my uncle still had the tapes of that party when he died My parents and never saw them We have never needed film to remember ourselves