Long Ashtrays Poems

Sweet mother, Virginia Slim wedged between your fingers,  
that last light willed to die at the rig
of a darkened room.  
You—half-goddess, half-ghost, pinioned in some still-life setting
of tumbled smoke and silver hair. ...

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Even the Lazy Lizard

Even the lazy lizard knows when not to beg,
when not to emerge, from behind the hungry black rock of 
another dying hand, hopelessly clutching the mysteries of 
another sit-down, in the serene...

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Three Score and Fifteen Years Ago
By Franklin Price
11/14/2020

Three score and fifteen years ago
I was born upon this earth
Joined a family of eight,
Was the ninth, for what it's worth

Four sisters and two brothers
A mother, father there...

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How small we were sitting in the backseat of that mammoth car. We were dwarfed on the giant sofa-like bench waiting like a great amusement ride about to start. While we waited we explored our...

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Each step upon those attic stairs took me closer
to mesmerizing clouds of sandalwood and jasmine
that lingered in the musty air of a dark, foreboding room
that certainly held more than just my secrets.

Candles burned unevenly on...

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Heaviness painfully throbbed your beating heart, 
as the world could not understand it
and could never see it.
With your slurred words
and tired, dilated eyes, 
I smiled, knowing you were not from here, 
watching you drenched in...

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A room filled with sadness 

Standing alone in a room filled with sadness
Photograph smiles in a frame on the shelf
Ashtrays are filled with a death wish still breathing
Lighting another in spite of myself 

A hand...

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When you have a desire
for something,
You have an intense craving 
that just won’t quit.
For some people 
it’s called a Nicotine Fit.
Desperate people will check 
the ashtrays
Before they ask…
Can I get a cigarette?
They crave and enjoy...

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ROHRBACH CAFE

Intimacy.

A place
of shared warmth, an atmosphere of muted shadows and candlelight,
where
emotions, profoundly sincere,
softly glow,
flare,
then wane
until, fully consumed, they are dimmed
and gentled
by intrinsic breezes of serenity.

A cafe
of quiet murmers, hushed revelations
among tables close,
but afar,
where
evening lit...

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There is no poetry without you  


Softly flows the sunset colors
painted on tired skies with fire
Igniting a wafting cloud in orchid tints,
the fresh scent of pine lingering within its escape

Drowsy horizons boast their claim
along...

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Marquees are bright with neon lights, where crowds line up for movie night
Holding hands, we're in 'The Strand'. The velvet carpet guides us in

Popcorn smokes, .. we're drinking cokes,...  and cracking jokes with Bing...

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I smoked a pack of Marlboros 
Every day, left butts smoldering
In dirty, smelly ashtrays
The nicotine addiction compelled 
Me to quit… yet, I did not
I smoked until there was only
Short, spasmic breaths
Left in my black lungs
And...

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Perhaps the stifled conversation, the contact Of Bodies

Or the Building and Spitting and Swearing

The Light, the graze of many Nameless finger-tips

Or the tenderness, which in the end, Deciphered Nothing.

The words addressed and loved by Someone,

But...

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(a love poem for my son)

Dreams spill out of sleep
sift across the hardwood floor
covers the window 
in colors of May

slamming me back towards childhood
or perhaps just to the ashtray.
One forged with labor
in elementary school ceramics;

patient...

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Alice and Chains screeches the dissonance of deep thought..  
I’m transformed to cigarette chains.  
Curling grass brushes me through imitation iron.

Not as good as dry humping in grass fields behind rehab.

Wait Wait, my...

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7/11/21


Never been the smoothest talker
Got to make the best of it before I need a walker
Had a lot or nothing to offer
Wasn't always worth the bother
4 days a week I work with and help doctors
Occasionally...

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My sister and cancer
 
Maybe it was in 1946
when the winter was very hard
the big lake outside town froze solid
my brother had given me an old pair of skates
something with leather binning, I think
I could get...

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daddy died alone in his home
ashtrays with cigarette butts completely hoarded his deathbed
the smell of smoke almost immediately made my eyes turn red
i regret the 15 years since i last saw him
however i choose not...

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take my ashes 
throw them to
the wind where
they may be
spirited away

taken places
randomly took
take a look and
see where the
rambling winds

have taken me

from here to
Timbuktu i
blew in on
a noreaster
but further

south i was
being sucked
up by a French
maid's vacuum
which...

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I saw you waiting there
In your dirty pants and 
Uncombed Hair.

I was watching as you 
took the cup of coffee from
the couple next to me.

while they smoked,
and talked of a vacation
they were about to take.

They...

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Before corporate café`s took over and Starbucks became so ubiquitous, on every corner of your city, small business cafés thrived.  There was Antique Row Café Ave; four café`s that stood alongside each other, noted...

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I’ve been waiting in this room so long
but nothing seems to happen
Hidden beneath papers and books,
coffee mugs, ashtrays, pencils, paint
but nothing seems to happen
Only I move, through small spaces
Shuffling things and dreaming things
but nothing seems...

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It was Christmas, and we were young,
when the snow was deep
and the lights were strung,
along Stony hill, Allen and Main.
And my uncle`s dead
but he too would light up
on a fifth of bourbon a day.
And on...

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I want to drink that last shot of whiskey and smoke that last cigarette ..

.. before the barman calls out time
and ashtrays are snuggled in warm embrace
within wet dreams,

flushing away debris.

    ...

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How many meals must a woman cook
Before she's considered a woman 
And how many kisses can go unreturned
Before she feels she no longer can
How many scrubbed pots and pans
Before a treat to a meal by...

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