Frank Zappa

A bicycle hanging from a ceiling fan
A tuba sleeping in a frying pan
Coffee stains on thirty pages of charts
Somebody counting backwards just for starts

The drummer lost bar twenty-three
A tax accountant climbed a marimba tree
Frank checked the score, erased a page
Then added seven bars that nobody played

Joe's Garage still hums at night
Beside fluorescent bugs and studio lights
A fuzz guitar fought a vibraphone
Neither one prepared to leave alone

A waitress from the Valley sold
Three plastic moons and a casserole
A penguin filed a parking claim
Against a tangerine named Dave

Frank Zappa
One more wrong note done on purpose
Frank Zappa
One more joke inside the footnotes
A guitar tangled in extension wire
A notebook packed with odd desires
One crooked grin, one raised eyebrow
Making the impossible practical somehow

Politicians selling prefab skies
Preachers marketing paradise
Five brass players missed the cue
So he rewrote all forty-two

A poodle driving a motorbike
A dentist leading a workers' strike
A xylophone escaped the amps
And vanished underneath the lamps

Yellow snow and dental floss
Movie monsters getting lost
Rubber masks and beauty queens
Science-fiction vending machines

The Synclavier glows alone
Building worlds from code and tone
Half the room packed up and ran
Half requested copies for the band

Frank Zappa
One more wrong note done on purpose
Frank Zappa
One more joke inside the footnotes
A guitar tangled in extension wire
A notebook packed with odd desires
One crooked grin, one raised eyebrow
Making the impossible practical somehow

The spotlight fades, the crowd goes home
A saxophone is left alone
Three plastic moons still circle Dave
Who never won his parking claim

The records spin, the years collapse
The chicken finally learns to drive
The joke survives, the structure lasts
Long after all predictions passed

And somewhere past the radio's map
A strange chord drifts across the night
Still laughing at what sounds right
The impossible still sounds like Zappa