Frank Tedesso

Biography

My will is dust. A little rain could make it into mud. Many things are made of mud. Why not a life? Maybe I should stick to description. I live in 3 small rooms with many pictures on the walls. Faces, many pictures of faces. But only one sorta real here and now Human type face; Mine. But real only in the sense that I'm the only one who can scratch his nose or wreak havoc with mashed potatoes. As for wonder, pain, tenderness - signs of Life, those faces in the pictures are at least as real as me. At least. 2 cats live in these rooms, this home, also. They get on my nerves a lot, sometimes they make me laugh. They got alotta nerve. Too much nerve for 3 small rooms. They have their fun. I'd like to have a house that was all paid for. A house with a backyard. Nothin' grand, just a yard with enough small trees with branches; some sunlight as bright as it would like to be; some flowers, tomatoes and onions; birds on a fence (maybe a white picket fence) and a couple of chairs. A wife comes home. She smells supper cookin' away in the kitchen. She kisses, perhaps me, in that simple way that women sometimes kiss men where the littlest kiss is jam-packed with meaning. I know there are people who live like this. A little work, a little bright sunlight, small kisses, conversation in the kitchen, wash the dishes, bitch a little and live happily ever after. Why not? I know a girl with soft brown hair. There is a danger in her underwear. I'm tired. I'm gonna try to get some sleep. I look forward to Spring. I'm not sure why. A soft breeze rippling my soft head. I shall plant blue flowers in the Spring, and pepperoni. Pepperoni growing wildly by the pepsi Cola Tree near where the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups twineth. A wondrous Spring may yet be waiting....

For more information on Frank, please visit: www.rebeccamartin.com/franktedesso.html

Comments on 'When Mohammed Came To The Mountain':

An apocalyptic vision of the violence and obscenity of the act, and the devastation left in its wake.
- Suzanne Vega

'When Mohammed Came To The Mountain'

[ mp3 sound clip ]

could it really have been beyond reason,
calculated without regret.
this shattering of all proportions convinced us of what.

was the yawning, lazy blue of the sky complicit.
were birds caught off guard.
where were the birds
when sudden renegade moments,
with an appetite for lives,
cut loose from time
and tore the hour open
with a precision beyond comprehension.

the solid structure of the morning swayed,
and then became a waterfall of artifacts
cascading down through the air.
lunchtime apples,
neckties, bought haphazardly but given with great affection on
father's day and christmas eve;
watches & clocks emptying themselves of lost time as fast as
they could;
a spider who toiled his life away unnoticed,inside the
leaves of a camellia plant on the window sill;
many final words
& the last rags of breath;
dozens & dozens of broken eggs from the cafeteria,
ideas extinguished in mid thought,
birthday cakes,
tomorrows still & sleeping , small as caterpillars on the
under leaves of time.
a scrap of dark blue,chinese silk
from a stylishly sexy blouse;
[who shall kiss that torn breast now.]
skirts pulled up & up & up.

even the air seemed to be falling.
strangers dropping down through the darkness,
suddenly flung together and married.
nothing in between themselves.
weddings performed in all directions.
you cannot separate yourself from such moments.
an incredible descending,
unbuttoned and plummeting.
skulls slammed open & shut,
open and shut.

did starfish emerge
from the ruptured socket of the sea
and swim up river
to bear witness
to the remains of names,
naked & divided from bodies now,
piling up on the air.

the morning decomposed quickly,
devoured by some terrible awakening
and by its own uselessness.

all this hysterical information
swept over
indecent,
gawking ,
wounded logic.
details hidden in the bellies of snakes
burst forth
with inhuman surprise.
the uninhibited imagination of Death's pigs
suckled at the living
with wretched awkward skill.
in the forsaken belly of the world
had some other,more horrible virgin birth occurred;
or did the snake just fuck eve again
because the gods of men were hungry for vengeance & another little
snack.

fragments of meaning falter
in the anarchy of such dreams.
the wine where oysters once suckled
and grew fat
beneath the stairways of harbor seals,
still laps at the tip of manhattan.
yet so many things are lost amidst the tangled, threadbare
latitudes of history.

in dense silence,
washed over by oblivion,
the soul wears a thousand years lightly
as she undresses her dead,
and places them in arms
where centuries have no idea
of the obscene nothingness
hanging now over the ruins.

you keep watching the sky,
but you stop looking so furiously at the emptiness.
the infinite,indifferent blue has filled it
and yet has not filled it,
because the emptiness ignores it.

the truth is unmiraculous here.
it killed a summer dress.

you live with this strangeness.

in a furnace of melting metals,
innocent as a tea pot,
worlds evaporated.

2 corners bound by water,
one by light & mortal odor,
and one by the mournful auger
falling over the city now
of what all this becomes next.

only winter,
arranging the snow,
and the exhausted and separate moon,
ask nothing from your heart.....