Shlomo Franklin: The Poems, The Songs and The Patchwork Spirit

      Photography: Zosha Warpeha


             Shlomo Franklin is a rare breed of songwriter, poet and traveler, mystic wanderer, more interested in where the story leads than what the telling of it might bring him. Like Whitman, he is uniquely American, but in a broken hearted sort of way, he doesn't have many illusions about this country, and likewise, where our old American bard saw a little girl holding a doll with a missing eye on the side of the road, he saw also that that child would go to bed hungry at night and mourned in the pit of his soul such a sorry state of being. Seems like the poet got there first in terms of telling tales of the forgotten, downtrodden, trampled upon, Franklin kinda has his eye on this too. He might be young but he's paying attention, listening, learning, and finding a few hard  fought truths of his own to throw out  there into the world. Folk music is his trade but stories and poems are hammering away in his heart all night too. He's more Dave Van Ronk than Dylan, something wiry and unsettled, yet kind and quiet at times, interested in other people's stories and what they might add to his own. After all, those who rise to the top can hardly hear anyone else's story but their own. Blessed are those who land somewhere in between. Currently on tour and set to play his last show tonight in Texas before heading back up North to New Jersey, the South has left him a little unconvinced of its beauty, "all you see for the next seven hundred square miles are dollar stores, gas stations, sex shops, and taco trucks. I don’t love any of it. There’s no romance around these parts" he writes in Flat Earth. A place of bulletproof wind and straight faced mechanics, this place "makes you anxiously lay awake hopelessly awaiting some sort of doom or salvation." "So good morning to you; good day, good god, and goodbye." Brings to mind Buddy Miller's "A Showman's Life", "a smoky  bar and a fever chase of a tiny star... Nobody told me about this part, they told me all about the pretty girls and the wine and the money and the good times, no mention of all the wear and tear on a heart." Franklin knows there are those nights when a room is packed with friends and strangers who are all ears and heart, and the nights of an almost empty room, loud drunken, sloppy talk of people too busy tryin' to find a partner for the night to give much of a damn about the music. So why do we do it? Franklin asked me to say something about this. But I think the proof is in the words, the songs, and those rare, few and far between moments of transcendence which sometimes find us  when we've just about lost all faith in the path. Is it worth it? I think so.




Flat Earth 

There’s a certain kind of quiet that you only hear when you’re down south. Somewhere between the Bible Belt and the badlands.
Places where the swamps threaten your safety and the hurricanes wreck havoc on your household. 
There are no basements around these parts.
You can’t go below the earth. 
You only go below the ground once and that’s when you’re dead and gone. 
The earth is flat around here. 
I like it. 
This kind of silence makes the midnight feel less menacing and somewhat mediocre. 
If you walk across the boulevard past the traffic light, all you see for the next seven hundred square miles are dollar stores, gas stations, sex shops, and taco trucks.
I don’t love any of it. There’s no romance around these parts. Even the nighttime isn’t sexy. The alcohol will get you through a days work but that’s about it.
There’s no romance on a flat surface. You find love in the crevice of continuity. The inevitability of life makes you sit at the edge of your seat, makes you anxiously lay awake hopelessly awaiting some sort of doom or salvation. Both options are welcome upon the pine needled hills of New York. 
Here in Texas the world is flat and the breeze hums a flat tune. Seven palm trees in a deserted cul de sac and I don’t hear the bow of a single violin. There are no orchestras in ordinary America. Name one composer who hails from Houston, Texas. 
The bulletproof wind blows across the straight faced mechanics and my engine runs clean across the tracks. I sleep through my night without waking up once and in the morning I don't remember any of my dreams. 
So good morning to you; good day, good god, and goodbye. I’ll see you next time when I’m looking to take a week off and I’m too limp to go hunting and too tired to shoot pool. I’ll find you on the slopes of Nazareth in fishnet stockings and bow n’ arrow eyes. I’ll look through the windowpane of Greece and cum a thousand rivers over the skylights of Venice. I’ll pull you from the badlands, lead your horse to dry ice and sing to you the windmills of your mind, the Noel Harrison version. 

Clockwork On A Dime 

Leading someones handshake to a sheet of glass on a landscape image of a dreamlike mountain range 
I hail a cab and watch it pass
Sitting on the edge of a basket full of birthday heartbreak 

I surrender to the suffering of my screenplay acting every stanza out on center stage 
I’ve read all the author’s written before I’ve even turned the page 
A hundred visions within me that are never seen 
A pure heart is not always clean 

And I’ll show up with your sweater and my heart
I’ll give it all back make believe we weren't apart 
I’ll take it all away turn ‘round the wheels of time 
And we’ll go disappear into the night like clockwork on a dime 

And I detect a vague distance a burnt out breeze on  a boulder in the brush underneath the trees 
I crawl through time and space with a henna on my shoulder blade like a kid in a candy shop without a penny to his name 

When it’s 1am and I’m weeping to the quiet canary night 
And I’m losing time just sitting here
I hear the bark I dodge the bite 

Your fingers like stalactites pointing to the heavens 
I built up all the past upon pen and paper and the present  
I bid farewell to my reflection almost every single night 
I sing the song of slaughterhouses like butterflies in flight 

And I’ll show up with your sweater and my heart
I’ll give it all back make believe we weren't apart 
I’ll take it all away turn ‘round the wheels of time 
And we’ll go disappear into the night like clockwork on a dime 




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The Red Rose Motel

It was winter and you were still living in the woods. I helped you stack firewood while you spoke about Native American feminism and I drank the last of those dreadful IPA’s. I listened with half an ear and heard Christmas songs in the other ear and a half. 
You’d talk for hours and I was just there to take it all in with an occasional “uh huh” and “yep, I’ve been there too”. 
You wore brown moccasins that were worn out and aged like an old pirate. Like a bad bottle of wine. Your father made them for you while you were still a little girl, you said. You had more energy than a black stallion and I always slept too much. Your country cottage and thin cot on the cherry wood floor made it impossible to wake before noon. 
You’d make coffee and talk to me about something your brother once said and I’d listen and watch the creases in your eyes form and reform with every passing syllable. 
You were ten years older than me but sometimes you seemed more like a lost adolescent. 
You’d kiss me at lightning speed and I’d cum within ten minutes. I never lasted long enough for you to cum through penetration unless you’d let me start off by eating you out for a half hour. I always liked your red pubes and thin thighs. You were as womanly as they came but not like the magazines. You’d moan like the blue moon breeze and I’d trace my tongue over your sagging tits with desire and delight. You were happy and I think I was too. We’d go for long drives to the hardware store across the Delaware river and the farmers market on Route 17. I never liked your choice of vegetables but a good cook can make any stinker taste sweet as apple pie. So I ate your asparagus and artichoke and quinoa and horseradish. We’d fuck in your antique kitchen cause you liked the cold counters and the way they brought a rush to your naked ass. I loved your body and intended to bring it all the pleasure I possibly could. We’d kiss by the fireplace and listen to bad show tunes and you’d talk about your father’s alcohol problem and your mother’s bad taste in men. You’d babble until the rooster crowed and I’d sleep until I was fifteen minutes late for work. 
My shift always ended before yours so I’d drive out and shovel your walkway, feed the hens, and put a pot of water on the stove to boil. We’d drink dandelion detox tea cause you said it was good for me and raw local honey cause we knew it was good for the soul. 
We didn’t do much but we did just enough. 
I loved you for a minute. I loved you with the kind of love that lasts a lifetime but never grows strong enough to make you want to stay longer than three months. 

I went to Virginia to do stage lighting for my cousin’s play and you didn’t call on my birthday. We drifted apart and I still think of you every once in a while. I’ve seen many and you have too but I’ll always miss you, never enough to come back but just enough to make me say that I love you and I hope you’re doing well. Maybe I’ll see you again soon in the not-so-distant future. 


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Head over to www.shlomofranklin.com/ for more.
And buy some damn fine music over at shlomofranklin.bandcamp.com/

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