[Photo: Big Frank Dickinson]

Fractured Songs
---- Big Frank Dickinson

They tell me their stories of broken hearts;
I record them with sympathetic nods,
While secretly taking notes of cracks unseen -
The futility of their fractured dreams.

The unobtainable objects of desire;
In their hands or at their door,
The bodies sated, the will wants more
Than circumstances or they can give.

Then they hear my story and with incredulity
Ask if I confused persuasiveness with please;
The order of those words no more compelling than
Stripped emotions flung as tunes to the wind.

It's all music; melodies gone wrong
The harmony soon confined to the ears
Of one who hears nothing but the thud
Of a gong, cacaphony mistaken for song.