Long Fifty one Poems

Psychologically still thirteen 

Ordinarily meaning pre Internet days
familiarization with me would entail
bringing the avid listener 
into my private mancave hideaways
less a physical place than a juncture in relationship, 
(whereby one or the other of us)...

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POETIC PREFACE:

An inner conflict dust brew
within this scribe, who offers ye to chew
(like sweet treats metaphorically) thee do
tee incumbent, when Doomsday clock
counts down minutes few
according Al Gore rhythm
unstoppably ticking,
when life gets turned to global goo
tenderized...

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The Cowboy
A hundred thousand miles
were written on his face
He'd earned near every wrinkle
Did this cowboy known as "Jace"
He'd ridden cross the country
From Death Valley up to Maine
In weather full of sunshine
To the roughest hurricane
He owned...

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Five rings for fifty-one again and once more winning brings,
another pot of loser’s beer for throwing rubber rings.
That’s twenty-seven ‘freebies’ in a row, so by now it looks
like I’m the bloke who changed the record...

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Why is that while Iran is threatening USA's citizens on our soil? They want to target the fifty-one anti-Iranian regime former President Donald Trump's administration. According to CBN News, they are asking their supporters to...

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Or Bored With The Rings

Carved into a tree in Mirkwood:
Watch out for Treebeard, girls. He's fast!

On a restroom wall in the Shire:
Hoo boy! that Bilbo Baggins,
I'm so tired of His Naggins.

 
Scribbled on the pink...

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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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Philippines, my country of birth,
one of the countries in Southeast Asia.
It is an archipelago or group of islands,
with more than seven thousand islands.

Luzon, the largest island in the northern
part of the country, is where I...

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Indirect interference into interesting iconographic inked inner initiative is not a carefully stepping clam, a carved tree cake nor a dune of a moon. Taking no bistro out for a walk or a cafeteria for...

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His sister said to Johnny
“You’re going to go to war
The draft board called your number
They’ll be knocking on your door”
Johnny said “I don’t like marching
And I’ve never loved the sea
That only leaves one option
It’s the...

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Dear child,
Do you see the lady in the red dress?
She has eyes like diamonds
Crystal clear, sharp, blue and shining.
And a smile that could
Stop your heart cold
And then, in a moment, bring it back to life,
She...

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How did America declare its independence day, 
A successful war which gained America's freedom against England. 
A war fought with sacrifice. It conquered it's freedom July Four Seventeen seventy-six. 
It has been celebrated for two...

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Actions speak louder than words, it's true.
Folks may doubt what you say but they'll always believe what you do.

Don't let the best you have done in the past be the standard for the rest of...

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Here's another story about Granny
I think she's probably done it all
This was way back during prohibition
When they outlawed alcohol

See, my granny was a moonshiner
This is about her very first still
She had to make sure no...

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Fifty-one autumns ago on a vibrant blue sky morn,
I was running in my high school girl's cross-country
race in Bethpage Park, Long Island, N.Y.,
as many ponytails bounced under canopies of
red, orange, yellow leaves on the runner's...

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Age One to five,
diaper, t-shirt, panties, petticoat, dress, hair ribbon,
Six to ten
car coat, patent leather shoes, apron, white pedal pushers, ruffled top,
Eleven to fifteen
Liz blouse, go-go boots, faux leather jumper,
bellbottoms, polyester pantsuit,
Sixteen to twenty
shirt dress,...

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Tandy was the homecoming queen,
Every boy’s fantasy;
She wed the high school quarterback,
They split at thirty three.

Tandy was still quite beautiful,
And had her choice of men.
But they always disappointed,
It seemed she couldn’t win.

At thirty six she...

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The Clock
to Barbara with all my love Frank
By Franklin Price
1/26/2016

The clock stands in our living room in a place where it should be.
It represents my love for you. It's there for all to see
Walking past...

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My daughter heard
a Decent Cool-lio smart phone stranger
(with an African sounding name)
give a four fifty one Fahrenheit warning
Some said: the fellow was loco insane
Others said, 
not taking heed was the crux to blame

Mr. O Mgeni
said...

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1967.
A pink '59 Cadillac.
With gorgeous chrome-laden tail fins.
Yes, I said 
Pink.
The two squirrels sitting 
inside were trying to use it
As a girl magnet.
The owner was 15.
Not licensed yet.
My third or fourth cousin was driving it.
Wearing...

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Have you ever mourned the blah-ness of your life? Yearning for something new to happen?
Daring to hope for something fresh to be excited about?  Wishing your days away, worried that it has not happened?...

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I browsed thro' an old Sears-Roebuck Catalogue the other day.
The necessaries shown in its pages would be antiquities today.
It illustrated harness, horse shoes, things to tend horse's withers,
And displayed everything from anvils to fifty-one string...

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Gettysburg Hauntings

When General Meade met General Lee
At Gettysburg in 1863

Sons of the South battled Northern brothers
And neither side has ever recovered

Fifty-one thousand lives lost in three days
Of a summertime swelter, July haze

Souls rose not to...

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REFLECTIONS
Dr. James E. Martin

The year was nineteen sixty six,
I decided it was time for a major fix.
The war in Viet Nam was going strong,
I knew that for me it wouldn’t be long.

School deferment would soon...

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Grammie’s Basement

A quiet place of rest covered with the dust of decades
Where wicker chairs of discarded summer days
Sit with tangled strings of Christmas lights on their laps
Alongside ornaments of glass so thin a whisper shatters...

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