Long Air conditioned Poems

The Highways and the Byways
By Franklin Price
10/27/2107
(Inspired by Nancy McIntyre Stepp)

 The highways and the byways
Of this life in which we've grown
Bring back many memories
Of  places we have known

The Interstates most boring
They bypass most...

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I Love You, Daddy
                        ( Previous title has been changed!)


Golly! I do...

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I’ve never put a candidate’s bumper sticker on my car before—
why not take sides—what are you waiting for?
Death puts a stop to daily low intensity warfare but in the meantime—
     ...

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I was only allowed to go, after much whining 
     begging, promises of unlikely saint-hood
     if my brother, (much to his displeasure) made a pledge
  ...

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Eating Words

On my way to the gym to shape my well nourished body
I travel a whole Universe of madness from leafy suburbs
high walls electric fences barbed wire marble statues and
well manicured lawns a distasteful reminder...

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My child, a baby Ziger, or a zigoid, introverted when I asked him how many apple’s he’d had to eat today, since it was nearly his birthday and we Ziger’s enjoy a plentiful fruit harvest...

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I stood and cried in The Magazine Bus,
Deep in New Orleans, in the city rush, 
as it plowed and choked along
like a curved-back dinosaur
wheezing through the swampy ways, 
rattling electric wires in a maze
of strangling...

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We owe it to our doctors 
 


We owe it to our doctors… 
The ones who took it to be part of Sun Pharma’s greater mission;
 
To prevent disease rather cure
Cure and control if that happens at all; 
Defying...

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The morning sun’s oppressive; a nasty b*tch in heat on Rizal Avenue,
Where vendors hawk their cigarettes, baloot, and dog meat barbecue.
The jeepneys buzz the intersection like a hornet’s nest,
But it’s quiet down the mountain once...

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From my mother's womb I yelled into the room,
mattress on the living room floor,
my bro I replaced as the youngest, his face
as he screamed and ran out through the door.
I tell you (no fooling) my...

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Silicon city
That pulsates,
Both day and night,
The Tech Capital
And the sky, veiled
With urban haze
And dense, sprawling cityscape.

Grey city of its
Gridlocked roads
Surrounded by
Towering skyscrapers
Inspiring
The coder
And the entrepreneur.

Glass city
Of its
Modern offices
And its apartments
Compact and sleek,
New and bold,
A striking,...

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If, as hippy folklore claims, it never rains in California,
Then the watermark is never washed out of the phoney cheque,
And when you’re dead and gone there’ll be no one here to mourn ya
For it was...

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While Shuttered Up Inside... ©ozy
Snug Air Conditioned Demesne...

Analogous to my boyhood
     cosseted and bereft, I assay
to poetically elucidate how majority
     of mine years found me
  ...

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Appointment to have organ removed by robot-assisted surgeon.
Air-conditioned, no mosquitoes in the OR. When you arrive
You'll remove all your clothes. Naked before the ladies, nurses
Who have seen it all before. Mainly remember you're not unique.
Think...

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I have this lucky shirt…I feel the luck in this shirt is strong…
I’ve worn it many times and every time I wear it…luck has come along.

I wore it on the first leg of our trip...

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Bermuda Triangle

This event was terrifyingly true,
Out in Atlantic, on the ocean blue.
It was ‘81, after we left Fort Lauderdale,
Hoping for happy Bahamas vacation tale
Aboard chartered sailboat, ketch of 52 feet,
Even air conditioned for the Florida...

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Down a runway skybound
to cross a continent, 
see from a window
a city fall away
with bright beads 
strung along a coast,
then turning inland, 
clumped townships 
shrinking to solitary lights
sunk far apart
into hours
of featureless dark. 

Disconnected
from the...

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The night lingers, yawning, 
Stretching its limbs across the sky;
It lies there so silently, so languidly
As if awaiting the early rays of morning
To come by- I wake-
I wake to the sounds of silence and 
Like...

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1. Form: Free Verse/Theme: Indulgence

Singing those praises in church,
I see a vision of a parched earth.
Geosmin scent ascends;
or descends. Transference
between reality and surreality.

My mind is soaked in soil microbes,
no shower sensation in sight.

Today it might...

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Well perhaps I should talk about foreclosure,
Let’s see, at first as it begins to happen
 it feels like your life is being flattened
By a big ole dozer.
It is an especially dire , disheartening fate,
When one’s...

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With the cross purposes of taking up the slack of my composition and by the way taking some snacks as well, I dragged my feet into the Mc Donald restaurant and randomly picked a seat...

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jungle justice
is a shame to kill 
a human being 
lesser than an 
animal 
is too bad 
when the one dat 
is killed commits 
the crime out of 
an arching stomach
empty for days 
without hope of...

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I stand and watch the exodus of ants
Through sig sag tracks, they wind their way
They march like disciplined soldiers
Never deterred by hurdles on their way

Are they fleeing from an imminent danger?
Or are they on their...

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"Beings who have been closed off from the sky
Can no longer treasure the ground," said Zamba the electronic fortune teller.
from the air-conditioned arcade.
Kids ran around him, fighting over little gold coins.
"It's as if the arcade...

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On my way to work this morning,
Sandwiched between two perverts,
I opened my eyes to look beyond the sky;
Someday, I will be out of this bus!

Standing in an overloaded BRT is quite a challenge,
Different flavors ...

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