Jackson C. Frank

Clearification

I worry. I worry a great deal about stability int eh future. I dug up some papers the other night in a bench which my mom took in the divorce. She took the bench without looking at what was inside. Over the course of the six years we were a family we accrued a lot furniture, it almost seemed like a hobby of their’s to me. With so much furniture, we didn’t have enough uses so my mother used it primarily for storage. These cupboards, drawers, dressers, they all contained the stuff that was laying around the house.
Card stock
Calendars
Stickers
Photos
Coupons
Tins filled with numerous treasures that erupted memories of humbler beginnings (My uncle’s watch)

This bench had the very same, and like with all other furniture it contained the lost writing of my father. I don’t know too much about his early life after high school. He graduated at sixteen and from there went to college. He was a very Barry Rowen type, know for his humor and wit. In the middle of an October night in the dead town of Alexis his father sat up in bed and held his chest. His wife asked him what the matter was and he believed it was heartburn. She promptly went down the stairs to get some antacids. She returned to find him in distress.
“Are you okay?”
“No”
He was dead at forty-seven.
I’ve been past the funeral parlor where arrangements were made.
“That’s where I picked out the box they put my father in.”
He said this to me a few years ago, before he divorced. He was funnier then, I think, this was a time when we could get a gag going between the two of us, comic genius.
I think about this grand story of a man coming to terms with his fathers death, dropping out of college, falling in love, having his first child, a son. I think how this story is twenty-four years old and the youngest heir, my step brother from Guatemala, Dominic is just about to learn everything. He spelled his name this week and I thought as I have int he past about the time before i could read. In particular I remember sitting in a car in Madison or maybe Jefferson -back home in Wisconsin at least- attempting to decipher a billboard. It’s a large step, reading, there aren’t as many secrets anymore, it’s just the beginning. It starts there, give it ten years and you know when your relationship is about to begin with a girl.

We’re all at this point right now, this turning, I see it in Lou, Brianna, Kirsti, Myself. Where does it all come together and where do we go from here and oh, yes, where are we, and where were we to begin with.
“Tear down the house that I grew up in, I’ll never be the same again.”
I’ve written so much more year after year and a pages document greets every week finding solace in whatever situation. I have pages of reason, epiphanies, transcript, script, ideas, filler...

This boy is fifteen years my junior.
The stack of papers was just that, a huge stack. This was computer paper filled with the processed light purple in of an electric typewriter and notebook paper filled with small comic sans black handwriting, the kind that i modeled my handwriting together because it was simplistic and cool. My penmanship still lack comparatively. I didn’t know what to do with all this documentation, I took it all to my room and my sister was the only one to even catch a glimpse of it. I found page after page of another novel, song lyrics, poetry, and diary.

What do I do with this? How do I use it? Is it kryptonite? Is it brilliant?
It was almost like finding everything I had ever written, and when you find a copy of all the paper you’ve put your heart and soul into, you feel, unoriginal.
When I tell a cheap joke or get antsy from boredom and someone sees it (a girl). I feel like my father, my uncle, my aunt and their coupled sadness. I don’t feel they’re all failures, but they aren’t doing what they wanted.

When do you realize where you are and feel comfortable with your surroundings? I don’t think he’s sad, he has a woman whom he loves now, he has a son, incidentally. What do you when placed in such a situation, all you can do. Raise him!
I thought I’d burn everything I’ve ever written. I haven’t yet. Clearification.

Will this boy come out with pages of his own, will he play soccer, will be a dictator ( that would be awesome, that’s racist, still awesome thought).
I have a blog now which means I can announce my change of religions, my faith in humanity, my atheism realized and not, my love of chris parnell and phil hartman, the way writing the truth about my love can only come out as poetry, my continuing curiosity about Nick Drake and how it will never be satisfied, how northern kentucky drove me to wherever I end up, the girl, the comfort, and the movies that were born out of it all.

School in the morning, High school.
After two five day weekends in a row, I don’t think it can really claim and legitimacy when being in session. Ryle, don’t take yourself too seriously, you’re a girl when it comes to snow.

Chris Parnell

A Monologue No One Bothered to Hear

My name is Barry Rowen.
Yes that one.
I'm not like the others, no I'm Barry Rowen.
You're thinking ",That guy, he's arrogant. He looks like Harry Potter at forty.
He probably listens to Death Cab and loves the movie 'A Walk to Remember"
No.
I'm better than a man I'm a symbol.
people look at me in the hallways and say; "That man looks like he is on a mission!"
That I am.
Aside from my preoccupation with Mandy Moore's filmography...
I have the same goal as any other man.
I long for a love.
A girl who can hum a good tune, one who can break the hearts of many with the simple appreciation for a yellow sun on a spring day.
Here's the kicker.
I met this girl.
And in real life she was as heavenly as I had dreamed.
The parted hair, genuine kisses, and the hug to bond our bodies together for generations.
For, perhaps if this world did survive to any degree, they would learn to love from our example.
Us, their key to success.
It was lasting, it was weathered.
A year and a half and my life was set.
Sixteen months and on nineteen days.
I had never fathomed such a standing ovation.
In a week that ovation sat down.
We walked of stage.
THERE WAS ANOTHER MAN.
An owl...
no seriously




"Weeks spent in a drunk stuper, by all accounts I am a man," I said
but even I Barry Rowen did not believe that.
I was loose cannon that needed a spark.
I slept in memories
and I was hungry for future
There was a scene to be played out in my mind. I would arrive on the doorstep of my fallen love and her winged lover. I would take him aside and say...

"Leremy, we're both men. At least of the male distinction in both our respective species....
I digress you Bastard! Give me back my woman!"
It was uncontrolled and fueled by Bourbon, but the wake up call had not yet come.
He took his wing and with one swift "Thwack" and an expletive filled "Hoot"
I was on the ground.
A brief glimpse of myself in some broken glass lit by moonlight, I didn't respect myself.
I looked just like him, some redneck in a brown wife-beater.
The blood on my lip sobered me up and I walked away.
I sat in my apartment a good while. I went to a movie I listened to some Death Cab.
I wrote a letter to my friend Anita
Then I took a nap.

In a few months and several hours I had moved on.

I am a Man.