.

The Pietà or Mickey Mouse?

A book I’ve read depicts a boy
Who’s searching for creative joy.
His mind can’t focus on a vision,
So he’s weighed down by indecision:
To carve the rock behind his house—
The Pietà or Mickey Mouse?

To chip away each chunk of rock
From the backyard’s formless block—
Should he chisel out a sculpture,
A sacred scene of Catholic culture:
Christ’s grieving Mother holds her Son,
Through Whose death our victory’s won?

Or should he just dispense with grief
By choosing comical relief,
An icon adding smiles to faces
Of children throughout many places,
Tall and proud and high as noon:
An eight-foot, 3-D, stone cartoon?

As a poet, I relate
To trouble choosing the boulder’s fate,
Compelled to write the truth my readers
Have all had stolen by their leaders—
But sorrow entering my brain
Can chip away at staying sane.

.

.

The Gray Pants

I knew a heavy man from France
Who never should have worn gray pants.
You couldn’t tell him; he was pushy.
He covered thus his Gallic tushie.
He bent and showed his derrière—
An elephant stood there, you’d swear!
To laugh, I knew, would be barbaric,
Yet I fell over in hysterics,
And that is why that man from France
Never should have worn gray pants!

.

.

No Hoots Left to Give

I gave away too many hoots—
I frittered hoots on dumb disputes,
Believing in my absolutes
A little common sense refutes.

I detoured down too many routes;
I gave away too many hoots
And saved no hoots to put down roots,
But spent my hoots on substitutes.

Like spending cash on prostitutes,
I spent my hoots on vain pursuits.
I gave away too many hoots
With no more thought than simple brutes.

You shall know them by their fruits
When they shall lead you ’way with flutes.
Too late it finally computes:
I gave away too many hoots.

.

.

Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives near Austin, Texas. His poetry has also been published in Snakeskin, Sparks of Calliope, Atop the Cliffs, and the Asahi Haikuist Network, and his short fiction has been published in Nanoism.

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23 Responses

  1. Julian D. Woodruff

    Oh, better go with Mickey, I think. A copy of the Pieta would surely be vandalized (as was the original).

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Good point! Though there’s something to be said for rousing people’s emotions enough to move them to vandalize your art…

      Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    The final stanza of “Pieta or Mickey Mouse” is poignant. That’s grown up, and it’s carefully contrasted with the boy’s choice earlier. His lacks a sense of decorum. He could have crafted a Mickey Mouse also, but material and placement and even method would be different. And parental sanity should guide his approach to that boulder, but we wonder!

    “No Hoots Left to Give” lets the title repetend fall gradually to the bottom of the stanza–appropriate technique. Hoots here, I would think, means insignificant verbiage. There could be double meanings if you’re thinking of specialized jargon. Either way, I like it!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Margaret.

      The last stanza was based on my own feelings about writing serious poems like “Elegy for Miran Sutherland” and “Two Empty Chairs” versus writing silly poems like “The Gray Pants” or something with elements of both like “No Extra Lives” and “The Adventures of Verb.” I write as an apostolate, but sometimes writing about everything that’s wrong with today’s world can be really depressing.

      As for the last one, I was using “hoots” in the context of the saying, “I don’t give a hoot.”

      Reply
  3. Phil S. Rogers

    No Hoots Left To Give. A poem that ‘rings a lot of bells’ when you are older.
    All a pleasure to read.

    Reply
  4. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Mickey Mouse or the Pietà. Now there is a choice we all should appreciate. It is rather like deciding which way to go on writing some of my poems. Even as an adult, sometimes there are crossroads leading to completely different outcomes.

    “The Gray Pants” is a fun revival of the old rhyme in which kids revel of “I see London, I see France…”

    Like Margaret, I am thinking there may be more than one meaning for hoots. It brings to my mind “a waste of breath,” “waste of words,” or “waste of brain power.” I enjoyed all three very much.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Roy. I’m glad you enjoyed them.

      Yes, you’ve deduced the meaning behind the first poem. I go through the same process myself.

      “The Gray Pants” was based on an actual sight I saw, someone I knew when I was a teenager.

      I was thinking of the saying “I don’t give a hoot” when I wrote the last one. I guess you could say caring too much is a waste of all those things…

      Reply
  5. Mia

    Joshua, whatever you have done or haven’t, one things for sure, you have written three splendid poems. Really impressive. They are gems.

    Reply
  6. Brian A. Yapko

    Three wonderful poems, Josh, which are also thought-provoking. That choice between the Pieta and Mickey Mouse quite literally demands a choice between the sublime and the ridiculous. There is a hidden layer here which you may not have intended but which I think adds even more weight to your theme: Mickey Mouse happens to be the premiere icon of Disney, which many of us now regard as something of an evil empire in its venal promotion of social engineering in the service of woke ideology. So with this dimension added, your poem also presents something of a choice between good and evil, between tradition and wokitude. When even the smallest social symbols carry all this burden of moral choice, it is no wonder that your speaker feels that chipping away at his sanity.

    The Gray Pants is hilarious. I must say, it is a joy to see you write something this light and bouncy. It’s not deep, but who says it needs to be?

    As for “No Hoots,” the phrase “I don’t give a hoot” traditionally means “I don’t give a darn” or “I don’t care.” Therefore, I read “hoot” here as a slang way of describing “caring.” “I gave away too many hoots” basically means “I didn’t care enough about something that I should have cared about.” (Remember the old commercial “Give a hoot, don’t pollute?”) At least that’s how I read it. At any rate, a delightful poem which needs to be read out loud for its intense cluster of “oot” rhymes to be fully appreciated.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, I disagree with your interpretation of “No Hoots.” You’re right that “not giving a hoot” means “not to care about” something, but I believe Joshua’s point is that for a very long time HE CARED TOO MUCH, and got too exercised and angered by the bad things that were happening around him, and tried to argue against them. The speaker of the poem seems to say (to me, at least) that he has given up that kind of overzealous intensity, and has decided “to hell with the whole thing.”

      However, it’s not a poem of despair or quitting (since we all know well that Joshua is not that type). Instead it is a poem that can be read as forgetting about debate and argument with the enemy, since arguing with them is pointless and debilitating. It doesn’t mean that the speaker will stop fighting; it means that he will disregard the verbal bullshit that the enemy spouts, and concentrate on straightforward attack.

      If this is a brand-new poem by Joshua, I venture to guess that it was prompted by the exchange of views that he and I recently had on the long philosophical discussion thread following ABB’s YouTube video.

      If I’m wrong, my apologies to Joshua.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        That’s not a bad guess, but I wrote this one a month ago in response to frustration with the way the world is going.

        The speaker, in his youth, cared too much about too many things, about many of which he was wrong, not thinking to reserve his mental and emotional energy for things that truly matter (hence lines 7-10). With a little wisdom and experience, the speaker has come to learn the truth of the saying, “If you chase two rabbits, you will catch neither.”

        These thoughts were already percolating when you and I were discussing the video.

      • Brian A. Yapko

        Thank you, Joe, for your pointing out what I had sort of glossed over. Rereading the poem, I think you’re right — the speaker cared too much about stuff that he shouldn’t have bothered with. He should have cared less, not more! My focus on the word “caring” was to offer a different interpretation from Margaret and Roy’s differing understanding of what “hoots” meant. I think we are in agreement that — give a hoot, don’t give a hoot — to give a “hoot” means to care.

    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Brian! I’m glad you like them so much.

      I hadn’t thought of the wokeness of Disney, as the first poem was based on a book I read in childhood (yes, the book actually exists!), back in the 1990s when the worst thing Disney did was glorify idolatrous romance. Your additional theme adds quite a bit to it; I like it.

      I remembered the book because sometimes I end up suffering quite a bit from how today’s world is. Writing about it helps some, and I know it helps my readers (hence lines 21-22), but sometimes having to think about it all gets to be too much. That’s when I have to take a break and write something silly like “The Gray Pants.” Anyway, about a month ago, I thought, “It feels like being that kid who couldn’t decide between carving the Pietà or Mickey Mouse!”

      Actually, “I gave away too many hoots” refers to caring about too many things when the speaker would have done better to save it for what truly matters (hence lines 7-10).

      Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    Brian’s mention of the old commercial where it was said “Give a hoot! Don’t pollute!” reminded me of an even older one from the early 1960s. It was one of those tedious public-service announcements where the speaker was calling for listeners to fork over money for some stupid social program. The over-voice said this: “Give jobs! Give money! GIVE A DAMN!”

    I was only an adolescent, but the tone of voice offended me. Who was this pompous, overbearing liberal jackass to tell me or my parents what we should do with our money? I learned very quickly that the left was fixated on coercing other people into acts of charity.

    In any case, the American idiom “to not give a damn” is the stronger version of “to not give a hoot.” I’m not sure if either one of them is common in the U.K., where I have heard “I don’t give a monkey’s.” Perhaps one of our English members could explain that expression to us. Susan Bryant? James Sale?

    Reply
    • Paul A. Freeman

      Originally the term was ‘I don’t give a monkey’s toss,’ which is usually modified to ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’, since ‘toss’ is a synonym for ‘masturbate’.

      This politer version basically means the same as the more adamant ‘I don’t give a damn’, or ‘I don’t give a shit’, or, as popularised recently on this site, ‘I don’t give a swiving hump’.

      Also, ‘I don’t give a monkey’s’ (I don’t care for something or someone…) is often used in a jocular, non-confrontational way, though this could depend on the tone in which it’s said.

      Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Joe, Paul is spot-on on the don’t-give-a-monkeys front. Where the hoots are concerned, I used to say, “I couldn’t give two hoots”… always “two”… never a lone hoot. But even though I only gave one hoot and not two… they soon ran out.

      Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Dear Paul and Susan —

      Thank you for the information. I knew that the possessive “monkey’s” had to have something after it. I’m glad to find out.

      Reply
  8. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Josh, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all three of these poems… a great balance of hilarity and sobriety… ‘The Pietà or Mickey Mouse?’ being the finest example. In a world where art is politicized and the artist’s ideals are judged, not the art itself – you have highlighted the huge problem many face. Mickey-Mouse art screams “fake” and I love your clever use of the term to get your point across. In my humble opinion, it should be avoided at all costs… and I know the cost of avoiding anything mickey-mouse is pretty darn high these days.

    ‘The Gray Pants’ is an obese giggle of a poem – thank you! ‘No Hoots Left to Give’, is highly amusing with excellent employment of monorhyme, but it’s the message between the lines, the tears beneath the initial grin, that spoke to me in a voice my heart understands.

    Josh, thank you!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Susan, I’m really happy to hear how much you enjoy these!

      That’s an interesting additional layer on “The Pietà or Mickey Mouse?” I hadn’t considered that aspect of it; see my reply to Brian for what I was thinking when I wrote it. But yes, it’s true: high art is hated by the establishment these days, and low mickey-mouse art is loved. Thank you for that bit of insight into it!

      “The Gray Pants” is a true story, as I mentioned elsewhere; I’m glad you got a kick (no pun intended) out of it. “No Hoots Left to Give” is based on learning over the years to focus on what’s truly important… plus playing around with the form of a monorhyme quatern.

      Reply
  9. Mary Gardner

    Joshua, thank you for these three poems. They are effective together, more so than they would be if taken individually.
    I imagine we all can relate to the first one. There is a need for both: the artistic and spiritual depth of the Pietà and the frivolity of a cartoon character.
    The second poem is a good foil for the serious thoughts of the first one.
    The rhyming in the third poem is a hoot!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Mary. This is how I saw these as well. After all those serious poems about the evils inherent to today’s culture, I went through the same dilemma as the speaker of the first poem, so I wrote it, and then the other two to go with it because I felt like writing them.

      Reply

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