writing – Page 5

Danger Will Robinson!! (haibun)

August 5, 2025October 25, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry8 Comments

So this past Monday was a haibun prompt from Frank at dVerse Poets. The prompt is here and emphasizes “silver”.

(I did stretch things a bit for a haibun)

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Austin Road Elementary school, Mahopac NY, early 1970’s.

In the back of the school sat the playground, some basketball hoops, a baseball diamond, grass in an open field that, to the left, as you faced it, sloped slowly up a lazy hill to some broken rock walls lining the top and the sides and over and beyond but here squaring the top of that hill like an uncomfortable, torn hat.

That was our boundary as maybe it had been for some farmer at another time, our boundary that we weren’t to cross, the only stipulation being, if we were to wander up the hill, to just make sure that we stayed in sight.

Well, it was the early 70’s and our teachers weren’t always all that vigilant while grabbing their smoke breaks and coffee and “minding” us. As long as our heads were counted at the end of recess they were good.

My best friend, Dave, and I in an early spring, with a step just beyond our wall squared confine and out of sight, through a break in one of the walls even further up the slope, further to the left, discovered the bones of a roofless old car, with rotted seats, gaps where the doors had been, tire rims and a still steering wheel and tall stick shift. Dave and I and a couple of friends we recruited after the discovery, were always chomping at the bit for recess so we could get to that car as it became our spaceship, specifically the shiny magical flying silver “Jupiter 2” from “Lost in Space” as, every day, while playing our designated roles of Will, the Major, Penny and Judy, we would also trade off one of us getting to play the robot (oh my, a dual role!) that gleaming also magical silver (just like the Jupiter 2) metal behemoth of a glass headed mechanical friend and protector with fancy weapons and the coolest robot voice while we re-enacted some of the show’s stories or made up our own.

But the real excitement was which one of us today, in our trade off, would get to wave our arms dramatically and frantically in the midst of whatever new danger presented itself to us in our latest space tale, which one of us would get to yell “Danger Will Robinson!” or which one of us would simply just say “It does not compute” to whatever story we were playing that maybe had hit a bit of a creative lull.

We didn’t have a Mom and Dad Robinson in our old, long ago abandoned car silver dream Jupiter 2 imagination. They just smoked their cigarettes and drank their coffee down the hill from us on this strange new planet.

And none of us, even if we had an extra friend join in our fun, ever played the Doctor either. EVER. He was just a meanie.

And, well, we also weren’t jaded and conniving and cynical and devious enough to pull that off just yet.

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Gleaming alien sun’s

robot protects my childhood

fondly from today

A New Captain’s Chair To Cardan Four (simple post about a chair)

August 2, 2025November 30, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry7 Comments

Finally got myself the new PC chair I’ve been wanting. The old one, though of sentimental value, really needed to be retired, not completely, but at least to a different corner of this room, a sort of studio apartment in my sister’s basement, it has a small fridge an air fryer and a microwave so studio apartment enough … and it is still cat worthy with a plush blanket on it. It was Shoes the Big Orange’s fave spot that we occasionally had to fight over, like cats and humans.

But this chair is 20 years old, bought at Staples with an old friend in tow back then, a new radio show partner and a way to christen my new solo apartment and our new gig, but it was eventually like sitting on a slab of patio stone, just with arm rests and minus patio stone parties and the smells of grilling but, more importantly, a slab of patio stone, just with arm rests and minus patio stone parties and the smells of grilling AND no head support.

You see, I have an old man card now and one of the stipulations with being a card carrying old dude is that you fall asleep in chairs. You are even graded on it by outside observers (Beck, my Sis, or Nephew Matt or even some cats though their marker card is a bit of a disdainful mystery) and my grades were pretty top notch according to them, though I just have to trust that they are being honest with me. I mean, I’m reporting this back to the old man guild so …

But in this meeting of old fella requirements I was finding myself with cricks in my neck and sore shoulders as my lolling head had no aforementioned support.

“Beck, my neck is killing me”

“You fell asleep in your chair”

“No I didn’t”

“Yes you did”

Another stipulation for holding onto to your old man card, the sleeping in chairs part at least, there are many other stipulations some of which include suddenly becoming enamored of particular grocery stores, or gingerly sliding your legs together outside your car to get out (hey, I got back issues!) and making breathy grunts every time you stand up, like EVERY time, but another stipulation to falling asleep in chairs is that you don’t actually admit that you fall asleep in chairs.

“No I didn’t”

“Yes you did” with picture proof “and this is one of the reasons that you always have a crick in your neck”

“Damn … ” you whisper to yourself “Ok fine, but what about sharing a pillow with a blind cat who has a totally different definition of “sharing” than you, and you have to contort your head to fit in the small pillow window afforded you by said blind cat, who also happens to be very stretchy?”

“Ok, grant you that but still …”

So a new PC chair it needed to be, plus no one seemed to be inviting me to the patio stone parties with the smells of grilling anyway.

I went online and did an exhaustive search, researched office chairs, checked google reviews, looked for the most stars …”

“Hey, old man, you fell asleep again …”

“Oh, son of a bitch, fucking stars …”

But I eschewed the research and just decided to go on foot/car, sliding my legs together gingerly out of the car at every stop with breathy grunts, and came across nothing but places that had chairs in big boxes with pictures of how they would look when I did, maybe, get them into a basement room in front of a PC for new more comfortable stories in the Attic.

They all sucked.

Then I thought “wait, how about Staples? I’d been there before for just this sort of thing, where I got this old chair in the first place as I mentioned up top right?”

Heavenly horns, invites to patio stone parties but instead with cushioned summer patio furniture and chairs here, a shitload of chairs. No boxes with just pictures on the side of them, but actual chairs layed out in a corner of the store, a free range land of fully assembled chairs exampling, whinnying, imploring you come grab the reigns, in front of boxes, of what I could expect when I rolled in them, and leaned back in them, and possibly fell asleep in them.

Employee: “Sir, are you awake?”

I was a kid a in a chair candy store and I assed in all of them, every last one of them with a little butt wiggle, some bearing too soft, some too hard, some maybe just right and without spilling any porridge on any of them or anything until?

So, I have a new computer chair now and, as a friend said in response to a text pic I sent “That’s FANCY!”

“I know huh?”

And to another who I also sent a text pic I remarked that I feel very “Spaceshippy” now

“This is ready for the bridge, Captain!” she said

Indeed, now I just need a good take off command to throw at my pilot like all the best captains of Star Trek, like I saw in an episode of Strange New Worlds.

“Tally-Ho!” or

“And umm … Start!” or

“Let’s all go to dinner on Cardan Four!”

Ok, works in progress but I can tell ya that “Let’s all go to dinner on Cardan Four!” could really work, could be a thing.

Man, the food on that moon!

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“Steve, you are asleep in your chair again”

“I know, please tell the guild”

Fish Tales (poem)

July 31, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry6 Comments

A Quadrille prompt at dVerse Poets earlier this week from Mish, another 44 word poem with a prompted single word to include. The word this time around?

“Fish”

The prompt explains, more in full, Mish’s inspiration.

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Fish Tales

They hung

flung

high in the air

where they stunk of

fish

too long in the sun

tales

spun

fish oil charlatan

from podium

none worthy of consumption

‘cept for willing blind deaf dumb

with fetid wine and green crawling buns

fishing false salvation

Star Speckled Black Brighter Days (prosery)

July 23, 2025July 24, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry8 Comments

This week Kim brings us a prosery idea at dVerse Poets, a 144 word piece of prose to include one line from a poem or song. In this case, a line from Dereck Walcott’s “Dark August” …“I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones”

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Star Speckled Black Brighter Days

Great grandfather’s generation were the last to know their sun, before it became blackened by dust, frozen air and profound hatred is what my father told me. But they had sent the following generation and a budding next away, a relatively young handful, in secret, from a remote volcanic island in this wondrous living world of a craft before things became too dire.

My grandfather argued for staying, hoping to educate the world away from its end, but for great grandfather?

“I would have learnt to love black days, the ones of space, like bright ones here once but that’s for you son” he told grandfather from inside the volcano’s launch.

“There is no longer any educating, that time is well past. You just go … save us.”

That’s what I was told as I look out at star speckled black brighter days.

Orange Quarantine (song re-visit)

July 20, 2025July 20, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry2 Comments

Spent the weekend doing nothing (holy crap! really?! that’s new … shut up m’fr!) one new post and then just eyes and headphones down to some old stuff, a bit of a re-set if you will as it seemed necessary.

Re-read a lot of old things just to remind myself that I wasn’t totally crazy when I wrote them and re-listened to a lot of old things just to remind myself that I wasn’t totally crazy and could hold a new lyric’d tune when I sang them.

Very therapeutic.

Now, was this enough of a re-set? Couldn’t tell ya, but it was relaxing and I am fan of “me” things, as I should be. Would be a little awkward if not.

Anyway, along my nothing weekend way … this version of “Yellow Submarine” from back in 2019 and of my favorite Beatle.

These are scary days as we watch in real time the attempted destruction of all we hold, have held, dear and this one still works then.

Cheers Ringo

In the land that we call home

Lives a man who was born to be

A simple con, liar and cheat

Living in an orange quarantine

But in this land he would conceive

A man-boy King of him he would be crowned

And to the law he’d not be bound

In his new found Orange Quarantine

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Trading truth for beans, an Orange Quarantine

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

The lies come with a sheen in an Orange Quarantine

Blind loyal friends all love the ride

Cheer-fully they chide Democ-racy

A prop-a-gandist band does play

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Where truth is rarely seen in this Orange Quarantine

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Trump’s pockets full of green, in an Orange Quarantine

(Full speed backward, full speed back stupid USA

Blindly so it is general

Look the other way for me… drop the law if you please

Will do general. General?)

As we live a life unease

All the rich of us (all the rich of us)

Has what they need (has what they need)

To the rest (to the rest)

Shoulder your part (shoulder your part)

In this Trickle Down (in this trickle down)

Quarantine (quarantine…HA HA!)

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Where ignorance is King in this Orange Quarantine

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Of woe we’ll surely sing in an Orange Quarantine

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Bizarro is the norm in this Orange Quarantine

We all live in an Orange Quarantine

Where scary does take form in an Orange Quarantine

JJ and Me

July 19, 2025July 20, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry5 Comments

Got a call from a friend of mine (Friday) while I was still toiling away in the radio salt mines (yes I know, I can be so dramatic). It had been a been a day of pounding that salt into fine powder, one that had lingered longer than the usual, giving me a right on angry headache, even more headache than the usual Friday where shit always lingers and aches said head, salted, longer than any other day of the week. “production Fridays”.

Yeah, they are a “thing” in my small salt production world, with so much stuff, last minute, that just “HAS” to start on Monday.

But when I got that phone call I realized I wasn’t on my way home, and that was my cue to be done. damn the torpedoes Tom and the Mondays, as when these phone calls happen we are usually on our ways. Just some talk while we have our quiet time through some short time drives. There is something to be said of our time in cars.

But I adjusted, just paced instead into a studio where I could talk loudly outside the morgue quiet of my digs on a Friday night (I talk loudly, like wake the dead loudly, so I try to be respectful if I can even if no one may be around)

These calls are check-ins, have always been check-ins, sometimes more for one side than the other, depending, make sures of still breathing (with the hopeful picked up phone for confirmation) make sures of things that friends check in on for a bit of normalcy like how are the cats, what about that game and the latest gimmick that pisses you off or how is the better half or the newbie and his ever growing feet and newfound baseball fascination and new working, ever evolving mind and new singular habits doing?

I have been lax lately on new stuff in the Attic, other than my latest “poem” (poem in quotes as I am not quite sure of it), but I just haven’t “felt it”, haven’t felt need to anything new, I just haven’t for reasons, reasons I couldn’t tell ya of as I don’t know them.

But this friend was checking in with me, this time, really, for just that.

You see, he’d actually listened to me when I have said, to him and to others in the past, you don’t need worry or to call, you don’t need to concern. If you are for some reason curious as to a me, just check the Attic in the dust and musk and piled things in newly uncovered cardboard boxes, piled things of still breathing thoughts in an upstairs this is where I’ll be.

He listened, he’d noticed. Shit, I didn’t think anyone would actually listen to my entreats.

What a wonderful discovery … that someone would actually check in with me via the Attic, that they would notice my recent ebb.

It was a good phone call, there are still cats, there are always cats and stories of dogs now in his case, and there are better wives and growing feet and Happy Meals and growing minds and new baseball fascinations (no, I won’t be a dick as to my current opinion of the game in the new rules era) and there are lives to catch up on even in small talk windows.

In studios instead of cars? No matter.

Just a blip JJ. Just an ebb. Still breathing my friend.

Baby General’s Golden Black Heart’s Band / Sky’s Orange When You’ve Got Blind Friends – (Song Revisit)

June 27, 2025June 29, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry2 Comments

(originally posted to my Attic Blogspot June, 2019)

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Yes, I know I have re-posted this one a few times since the initial posting but listening to it again, earlier this week, I realized it could be new right now (just minus the “two plus years ago today” opening line) as it’s like we’re living in some god forsaken loop just minus a four year reprieve of hope and light where the everyday Jane and Joe could have a say again.

So much for that building from the “middle out” thing huh?

I mean he recently tried to play baby General for review for his … the Army’s birthday, of HIS troops (minus all his past disparagements) though I don’t think it quite went the way he envisioned and he probably sent a love letter to Kim Jon Un just to say that his spectacle wasn’t quite up to par just yet and that he would do better next time and it’s certainly not like Trump has stopped bein’ the devil incarnate from his first go round, he’s just more adamant and heartless and evil about it now.

Just ask a gleeful Stephen Miller who, every morning, picks his teeth for morsels of the flesh of immigrants from his dreams and models himself in SS uniforms in the bathroom mirror.

So back to June of 2019 then and one of my many versions of a Beatles tune.

Baby General’s Golden Black Heart’s Band / Sky’s Orange When You’ve Got Blind Friends

It was two plus years ago today

That baby general came to have his say

In a propagandist fascist style

With his lies he’d go the extra mile

He’d hammer them unto the red

IQ’s regressing in his stead

Baby general’s golden black heart’s band

We’re baby general’s golden black heart’s band

We play you all ya need to know

Baby general’s golden black heart’s klan

The torches are only for show

Baby general’s cor-rupt

Baby general’s morally

Baby general’s bankrupt black heart’s band

There’s nothing to be seen here

Just back room in the know

There’s such important work be done

Now won’t you all just pray with us

We love it when you’re dumb

We don’t want you to be in the know

But we make you feel you’re in the show

Keep you happy swimming in the glow

Helps suck you in the undertow

Now let us to present to you

The sad and lonely Orange years

Baby general’s golden black heart’s band

Trump D’s victim’s tears…

What would you say if I sang you a lie

So obvious you can’t deny?

But you take it and then get to singin’ along

Cause re-ality it don’t apply

Oh, the sky’s purple when you’ve got blind friends

Mmm it’s any color when the truth gets bent

Mmm the sky’s orange is the new message sent

What would you say if I filled you with hate

Gave you an enemy you could detest

Locked them away less than human they’re caged

As you lend deaf ear to mankind’s rage

Oh, the sky’s black to go along with blue

Mmm your hu-manity now shares that hue

Mmm your sold souls invent a diff-er-ent view

Could you think you need saving?

That will surely come bust

Do you need to get praying?

But only to an orange need’s lust

Where will we be when sad histr’y holds true

(do you re-alize that there’s a cost?)

It’s measured in lives deemed be less than they be

(can you jus-tify the ones we toss?)

Oh you get by when smallish minds stay small

Mmm to think more’s an order way too tall

Ooohh there’s no longer a sure one for all

Do you feel the en-emy’s breath

(when it’s their last just at our door-step)

Does it feel sad em-powerin’

(to de-value them as he has pled)

Oh you get by when it’s a think of group

Mmm it’s much eas’r in an ignorance troupe

Mmm you ‘splain why but only in a vacuum

Yes you get by

Believin’ nationalist lies

You’re just a means to his end

Aaaahhhh

5:39 am

June 15, 2025June 21, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry7 Comments

Now this is kinda exciting, not really but kinda, like hearing that “winner” sound at the Deli when Sandy runs your lottery ticket and you realize you’ve maybe gained 20 bucks back on the hundreds you’ve spent over the last 3 or 4 months trying to grab a dream (you know it isn’t more than that as Sandy ain’t dancin’ or calling a lawyer) but still kinda exciting ‘cause my new headphones are here! My new headphones are here! while Steve Martin bounces in spirit with a phonebook and I literally just ordered them last night.

5:39 am “delivered” email.

Yay and wow and cheers to you Amazon driver person! I hope at least you can go home early and have something of a Sunday.

And yay and wow and cheers to you Jeff Bezos … for like five seconds. You’ve still got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do for your acquiescing knee bent protection money spending sitting privileged in the back bleachers all proudly for coronation photos and your hatred of unions like some sweat shop boss and holding back WaPo opinions and just general Jeff Bezos questions as you aren’t what you seemed.

Shit, I’m guessing 5:39am driver guy or gal might be thinking a question or two as well, just not out loud.

But you get a temporary mulligan, a one I will rescind though and mark that ”gift” 8 on your card in a heartbeat (you really need to work on your putting game. I would have killed you in mini golf … Oh, I know how to play this windmill … and this creepy generic clown with the hole in it’s nose?)

But it is still a little exciting anyway as the duct tape on my old ones was really starting to scratch my ears more annoyingly than it already did. Duct tape can work for a lot of things, as we all know, back car bumpers, corners of cell phones, gas lines you accidentally dug up without notifying anyone you would be digging, small parts of bridges, even relationships if you are into that sort of thing, but headphones? Not so much.

So 5:39am driver gal or guy? Thank you. Now clock out little early if you can. It’s a Sunday.

It’s also kinda exciting as I don’t really do “purchases” other than trips to the grocery store but that’s just a necessity to keep me and my Bella and my Cricket alive, I just don’t do big things and anything over 75 bucks is a big thing for me so a hundred bucks for these new Sony MDR 7506’s is a big thing (I am only name brand on two things, Hellmans and headphones). But my Mom in her infinite Mom’d wisdom left me and my Sis and my Brother a few dollars, certainly not some huge windfall inheritance that the three of us would fight over like in a Lifetime movie or a cage match but enough to have me feeling a little flush for the first time in … well I couldn’t tell ya as I have never felt flush. I love what I do, have loved what I do for too many years now but it ain’t affording me any Rockefeller status so having a couple of extra bucks is new and welcome.

Now Beck (my Sis and housemate and dearest friend and landlady who only asks for a few dollars and be subject to her and her “circle’s” weird blood letting rituals on Monday nights (I think they speak Welsh in them if only to confuse me and Tuesdays can be a bit of a slog) and to be a backup guy for her Saphira, Arthur & Rikki cats if she is out of town down the state at Buck’s place, tells me, knowing me, that it is alright to treat myself to a few things now especially as that is what Mom would have wanted. Hell, I’ve just been happy enough to not have to worry over grabbing lunch “out” and not brown bag it courtesy of Mom without having to crunch numbers so Beck’s assurances and Mom’s extra Momness has been a small bonus and with it? Well, a necessary new computer (a few months ago) and a new pair of headphones to plug into it.

Also a new computer chair that will be here, I hope, just before my birthday in a couple of weeks which is a big one, no, not the chair (though it does have “executive” in it’s descriptor and will allow me, more comfortably, to fall asleep in it like any old man worth his salt, I mean, that’s what old men do right, fall asleep in chairs?) but a first birthday beyond the milestone of a new zero from a year ago.

You see when you have milestone birthdays, besides being able to exhale a sigh of relief that somehow the universe hasn’t been paying too much attention to the stupid shit that you’ve done for the last ten years, like the blood results for a feared checkup that show Ok counts of what blood does when it’s being counted and not of what you did last Wednesday, but you realize that for whatever this milestone is you could at least say, for a year, that last year I was still in my 20’s or 30’s or 40’s or 50’s.

Why is this a big one coming up? Because I am going to officially be in my 60’s and I can’t get the fuck out now, I’ll have to wait another ten years to say last year I was in my 60’s.

Well, here’s to 5:39 am drivers, duct tape not duct taped to my ear for sound, comfortable eventual chairs and Moms still doing Momness even from the great beyond.

Brand New Trump Key (song) Revisit and Nonsensical Cats

June 7, 2025July 4, 2025by Stephen J Frankenberry8 Comments

Ok, I am going to stretch here just to get to where I want to go, which is to eventually re-visit my version of a Melanie tune from a year ago because it still works and stuff needs be reminded … plus, I got nothin’.

My good buddy Rick, a lifelonger just minus the first 18 years or so (though I’m sure he would have gotten along famously with those first 18 or so) posted this beyond troubling meme to his Facebook page a couple of days ago, a one whose facts we troublingly know too well …

… to which I replied …

Sadly, none of the current Facebook response circle emoji’s really cut it here. I don’t wanna Like it or Love it or Care for it or Laugh at it (as this shit ain’t funny … well it is, but in a tragically sad comic bang my head bloody against the stupid until I am moved to the “soft room” in the wing that people only whisper about or OOOOOH it like “Whoaaa?” this is some sort of surprise, or be Saddened by it as that is just too obvious or Anger at it as that is more obvious still.

No, and I know there are emoji’s that can convey this, but we need an additional circle added here to the Facebook response choices, a “What the Fuck!?” emoji circle, one specifically designed for this current administration or just in general really, one that doesn’t just say “What the Fuck!?” but is understood to say, instead, “What the Fuck U Boxes of Rocks?!” while also implying apologies to Boxes of Rocks everywhere for dragging them into this conversation at all and unfairly associating them here as their “intelligence” far outweighs anything we see on a daily … and they are rocks (sorry, again, no slight intended Rocks … “None taken, we’re rocks, we get it” … cool).

Ok, this all a little too involved, but ya know what, maybe that’s it. A new response emoji circle, not a “What the Fuck!?” but one that is just a confused looking Rock, like a pet one from back in the 70’s that wondered just what the hell you were doing (appreciate the comfy bed of straw an’ all but I’m a rock). Plus, boxes of rocks need be paid their due as they have unknowingly really stepped up their game for the comparisons these days.

… and then there were texts to my sister of pictures of cats and even texts to my nephew Matt of pictures of cats … and that one cool pic of an old ruby red muscle Mustang that I saw at the grocery store on way my home Friday night, stopping for some cat litter and a twelve pack and a dried out dozen wings for dinner, that I missed taking a pic of (though I would at least tell him about it)

… and then I would go on and on and on about what pissed me off on a production guy Friday to either of them or even to cats (there is always something by the way, to piss you off, as a production guy, on a production guy Friday that you can tell Sisters or Nephews or cats about when you get home).

… and then it was to taking pictures of cats while sitting in bathrooms who were wanting for company and marveling at that new clean shower curtain you bought at Dollar General a day earlier, the one that wasn’t trying to become it’s own ecosystem, finally (though the old’s former rainbow of colors were quite pretty).

… and then you would get to that version of that Melanie tune from a year ago and feel like you’d accomplished something even though you had nothin’ other than that old Melanie tune you started with and were stretching this post for to get to, but one that still works.

So “Brand New Trump Key” … a re-visit then it is.

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