They call me Frank these days

And the name implies me many ways.

My character is blunt, somewhat unswerving.

My features rather crude, I am a creature

Of many parts, they say, unnerving

In random chaotic fashion. But, anyways,

I function. Admittedly with little passion.

Those hormone fires sparking desires,

That smolders into what inspires humanity

To love, to hate, to insanity, to inanity,

Do not reside in my inside.

My thoughts have space,

Do not jumble or collide.

I am a spare parts man. My maker

Doctor Frankenstein, gathered fingertips,

A fine array of noses, lips,

A box of ears and bellybuttons, fifteen,

Pink, well formed and quite clean.

My bones had lain with frozen stones

For decades, disinterred but well matched

And sturdy. Three from an acrobat, one,

A delight, once lived inside a knight. Two patched

Out of pieces from a horse, a cat, and just for fun,

Two from a calf

And one from a giraffe.

Am I human? Mostly, I would say.

But can any normal human say more?

Speaking Frankly it seems not.

Any peek into the random mind

Would find, perhaps a common spot

Where each could join, relate.

Happily to twist and knot.

But minds are vast topologies

Teeming with mythologies.

Here and there a mountain peak

May glisten in the light

Of clean perception,

A point to guide the wild ride

We all endure for reception

Of markers inside

To know what’s wrong,

Or what might be right.

But deep down low, below

Where fantasy is spun,

Where hot blood must run

With energies that spark and glow,

Where frigid caverns harbor fears,

Stalactites bleeding tears,

Strange pallid creatures spawn and grow,

Blind, with trembling antennae feeling

To supplement their senses, reeling.

Here is where our mind appears,

Here is where the join begins,

Where necessities and desires

Ignite to free their eager djinns.

Being thus, both minus, plus

In fragments of humanity

I teeter in my loyalties.

Inflections there roil and muss.

Internally no royalties

Dictate my state of insanity.

My mind, from the good doctor’s hand

Was pieced in ways, sometimes grand,

Sometimes out of opportunity

From a mélange community.

Centrally there was the plan

To integrate disparate parts

With surgic skills and arcane arts

To merely duplicate a man.

But my baron had a mind

Of extraordinary kind.

His thoughts were rather wild and free

That wandered into rare country

And harnessed serendipity.

He viewed the brain as working space,

A foundation kind of place, a base

Whereupon to erect, construct, and intervene.

Intimations, cross connections, strange collections

From exotic sources. Monkeys, mice, even horses,

No sense to be conservative, release creative forces

And sweep the whole horizon on the biologic scene.

With appreciation and surmise

He snatched the brains for eagle eyes

And to set the world agog

Applied the slimy senses from a frog.

Out of a squid he stole great nerves

Laid out in lines, tangles, curves

To olfactions from a dog.

Thus it went, adventure bent,

And no particular intent

But merely elected eclectic enterprise

To appropriate variety to human guise.

So thus am I constituted

In ways strange and convoluted

Some parts blatant, some more muted

To contain within my brain

Much surmised and quite a bit

Simply grabbed and uncomputed.

But now the doubts, most elegant,

Are running out in this rant.

Am I animal or plant?

I really cannot say.

A few genes from mushrooms

Were inserted

(Some upright, some inverted)

Fitting in quite alright

So I’m mildly saprophyte.

The conclusion, in confusion, comes to admit

I’m a bit of this and that most adroitly fit.

My claim to humanity, although sincere,

Based on just my form is not too clear.

I walk like any bird or man

Converse like any parrot.

My fingers are slightly thick

Resembling a carrot.

I cannot classify my thoughts

As fish or fowl or oyster.

Some ideas float to me

Not fitting for a cloister.

My mosaic being borrowed with great plunder,

Is strange undoubtedly, and something of a wonder,

It partakes of living things, a smorgasbord of life.

Nothing clear nor direct, not any absolute,

Not more human than an ant, or, perhaps a newt.

I am a universal, a poem said to living,

Proteins intermingled and delightfully forgiving.

It’s not a bad thing now, amidst our human fighting

To be a being out of many, accepting, not benighting.

All living things, derive their wings,

Their eyes, their ears, their hearts,

All their bones and working things

From each other’s working parts.

For life is made to see, to hear, to dance in sunlit joy.

It matters not what parts you’ve got

Or what you might employ.

We live, we love, we reproduce,

We are of Earth and air,

We’re born to laugh and love and sing

And strike away despair.

I am a being of all of us that walk or swim or fly,

Exist in space, seize this time that flows so quickly by.

I am you and you are me, it’s all so very clear.

Our time is always merely now, our place is always here.

So join with me in ecstasy to surely be aware.

This world is made to be played, intensively to care.