Commemorating the loss to the world—
                 taken out early by malignant prostate cancer--
                 of a musical and philosophical artist,
                 a political activist, freedom-lover, and human rights advocate:
                                          Frank Zappa

Strange—weird—wonderful—magical—

Tough, truthful, caring, honest, strong, and smart—

A creative giant in music and philosophy—in life, sublime and tragical—

Who channeled his gifts and energies into the heights and depths and breadths of art:

Able to portray and play life’s absurdities, raw realities, and comedies;

Showing humor even in the hard uphill battles, the foredoomed flight of life,

And in the love, lust, hope, hauteur, hurt, happiness, heart, height, and heat of sex.

A voice for freedom, for “live and let live,” and for “to each, his or her own”;

Dark as Rimbaud, as Baudelaire, as Lautreamont—and just as bright;

Lyrical as Sappho sometimes, powerful sometimes as Euripides;

Musically deep sometimes as Beethoven, sometimes musically sweet as Mozart;

Often as gritty with truth as sandpaper dreams—

Cracking the chrysalis of lies with side-splitting satire of Promethean fire;

Lampooning with Zeus-sharp lightning; Vulcan-hot with truth’s stinging sparks;

Roaring out brilliant laughter like searchlights from the underground,

Thunderclaps of laughter crackling—a snickering electric clone of a clown—

Leaving a tall legacy of music, philosophy, humor, art, and love.

I cannot know, Frank Zappa, where you are;

But, as I gaze up to a night-shrouded, indifferent-seeming, silent star—

I hope that—somehow—through that vast, dark, cold, remorseless space—

You have found some happy niche of free creative life above.

 
==============================
Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Monday, December 6, 1993  6:53 AM
Copyright © 2011 by Michael LP.  All rights reserved