FRANK'S BRUISED MANDARIN TOUR DIARY ENTRY BY CAConrad

MARCH 5th, 2009. We're at Anne Boyer's apartment in Lawrence Kansas with her amazing daughter Hazel. Anne is on the porch cutting Magdalena's hair right now. It's a warm, sunny day and birds are ALL OVER the eaves and branches singing their most luxurious possible anthems! Magdalena's bits of hair fall to the ground and the birds eye the soft tufts, planning new nests in their vivacious bird brains. When I was a boy my grandmother cut my hair outside once. She put her Jolly Green Giant kitchen towel around my neck and shoulders. A robin hopped closer and closer to us, then snatched a blond curl from the grass and flew to the nest so the baby birds could sneeze and shit in plush comfort AND I WAS SO FUCKING PROUD and it was one of the happiest days of my young bird brain life.

Anne Boyer was one of my favorite poets, but now she's one of my favorite people on earth! I LOVE Anne. There's so much to say, but don't want to say too much, you know? I mean I don't want to say anything that will embarrass Anne, SHIT, I SHOULD HAVE ASKED, HEY ANNE, CAN I BLOG ABOUT THAT? Down the road from her home there's a house, very large house, like a mini mansion, and in ENORMOUS black letters on the front of the house are the words RED RIGHT RETURNING. What the FUCK does that mean? It MUST mean something very VERY important to put it on the side of your house. And, it wasn't on paper, and it wasn't on plastic, it was ON THE HOUSE as a permanent message. Red right returning, red right returning, red right returning, I just don't know what the fuck it means, WHAT THE FUCK does that mean? I asked if we could stop of the way back so I could knock on the door as ask, and everyone said SURE WHY NOT, but then we forgot.