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View Full Version : Jack Frost’s Talkin’ Blues



MarkBastable
03-25-2011, 06:51 PM
Jack Frost’s Talkin’ Blues
(Lifecast Cryonics Facility, Arden, NV)


Ice in the Nevada sky.
Frost on the cactus-flowers.
Hailstones rattlin’ ‘gainst the tin roof of hell.
Drove along a dry creek, skirtin’ the chainlink,
Scoped by a ghoul with a nightstick,
A buzz-cut three-headed hound.
This ain’t no place for a breathin’ boy.
All flesh and blood is crystal and slush.
All flesh and blood is crystal and slush.

Talked to a traveler -
A snowman dozin’ in the carrion heat.
He came in on an air-conditioned wolverine -
Friends, family and a wreath of edelweiss.
In his crocodile billfold
Was a draft for twenty-eight thousand bucks
(The price of coffee and a donut, he figured)
And a picture of his homecomin’ parade.
A tattered black-and-white to remind him of himself.
A tattered black-and-white to remind him of himself.

Las Vegas on the skyline.
Chill summer sharks and popsicle sweethearts.
Snowman’s breathin’ out clouds of winter.
Life’s a gamble, he said - but he got hisself a system.
Snorin’ on the martini pillow, dreamin’ of the MegaLotto,
He sleeps like a stone, sleeps like a fossil.
And in the blink of a garter-snake’s eye
All he loves turns to sand and weed and desert air.
He sleeps like a baby in a shiny frigidaire.
Sleeps like a baby in a shiny frigidaire.

Jerrybaldy
03-25-2011, 07:10 PM
Sounded like it came with music. If it isnt a song it should be .

jajdude
03-25-2011, 09:21 PM
Nice one. The title and the verses reminded me a bit of an early Dylan song.

deryk
03-28-2011, 01:29 AM
Reminded me of Lightning Hopkins a bit at first, but I need to brush up on my blues as it stands. As good as the last stanza was, it was almost too over-saturated with changing images to feel like a blues. I feel like you shifted from a great blues to a great, densely-shifting stream of consciousness and back to blues at the end. Minimalism is more of a must.

MorpheusSandman
03-28-2011, 05:09 AM
There's definitely a musical quality to this but I love the flow and the fresh originality of the images. It feels like it was inspired by the Beats, but without some of the obnoxious tendencies that I dislike from them. A very fun piece.

munkinhead
03-29-2011, 01:34 PM
I have seen Far Arden
and Carole Lombard's ghost,
and, between the two of them,
I miss Carole most.

qimissung
03-29-2011, 02:35 PM
I agree, this should be a song. It's got a very rousing feel to it, and the images are off-beat and zany. You Brits seem to enjoy the mythology of the desert; this is the second such poem I've seen here with this theme.

Delta40
03-29-2011, 04:24 PM
Now everyone has suggested it should be a song, I can't actually read it without attaching some corny, imaginary music to it.....grrrr

MystyrMystyry
03-31-2011, 05:46 AM
Music aside I thought this well done - more please!

MarkBastable
04-01-2011, 05:58 AM
Thank you all for the comments.

As people have said, the poem adapts the form of a strain of the blues - and it's intended to invoke a musical kind of feel, but if it needs music, then I'd say it has failed as a poem.

It was written when I was working on the novel Icebox, a central theme of which is cryonic suspension. One of the main characters is a country-blues singer. In fact I wrote an entire album of songs for him (lyrics and music, in the case of the rest). This piece, though, was intended to work on the page.

Only one song features in the book (not this one), but composing them all was an interesting and enjoyable way for me to get to know the character.