Long Railroad Poems

I wrote a sad but true urban legend called “Dillen and the DMV” last week.
Here follows an update.

Background Review:

One of my health care employees, Dillen, has wicked ADD, borderline intelligence, not qualifying for disability supports,...

Read More

Here he stands, Edwardian vogue, sometimes with his spats, 
sometimes with his brogues below his dungarees. With rounded collar points and tie, and jacket donned below this flying suit, his waste is tied with simple...

Read More

Sneaking into the museum to avoid the sudden rain
Raisin said, “I don’t want to get soaked right through again,
It was bad enough when that truck through that puddle dashed
And you and me - but mainly...

Read More

Additional free advice to those* who would be King from the THIRUK-KURAL with Commentary
[*like presidents, prime ministers, dictators of declining (falling or fallen) nations or even empires]

K442: urranOy niikki uraa amai munkaakkum
   ...

Read More

Imitation! Creative Compliment, Lacking in Originality, or Plagiarism? 

This week takes me back to college days. I was taking a graduate course (as a Physics major)   in 'Modern Poets' at the University of...

Read More

I am an Outlander
Who lives on a high hill
Overlooking a man-made lake
That once was a rapidly rushing river
Along whose banks the Ozarks Bluff Dwellers and the Osage and then Delaware
Hunted, fished, and created shelter
For their...

Read More

'You've thrown me over the edge of the highest peaked cliff imaginable
As I spiral further down, my outer shell gets roughed up
by sticks and stones
until my body is disfigured beyond recognition
as if I'd been torn...

Read More

Within the frame a sepia scene
a dusty porch   a rickety chair   
the fabric of your dusky face creased
with ceaseless sunbaked woes
your old pair of getaway feet gives 
a different walk of...

Read More

Nascent poetic tribute to black history month...
crafted before onset when people of color  
got acknowledged for twenty eight or nine days
depending if leap year occurred. 

Though I yam Caucasian,
rightful to honor most bitter
racist genocidal...

Read More

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...

Read More

Despite the day-to-day signs of man’s bitter degradation, there were many in the South who somehow still failed to see the endless pain of segregation. From the viewpoint of those who never lived there as...

Read More

I dread the United States presidential 2024 outcome...

Whereby yours truly presages and doth abhor
nothing short of an imminent civil war
dwarfing insurrection on January 6, 2021
oddly enough even reducing
ordinary decibels to a mute whisper
madding crowd trumpeting...

Read More

Ford's Theater, April 15th, 1865...
Petersen House, Washington, D.C.

I admit to own a passion
for the Civil War in general,
and the life and death of
the sixteenth president in particular
between a hard spot of whiskey
and draughts of arrack;
nonetheless...

Read More

It was Christmas Eve, a Thursday
On the Northern Express Christmas Train
We were on our way north through the wilds
And our  destination was to be old Hornepayne

One hundred and eighty two people
Three kittens, one goat...

Read More

Curiosity.
Exploring Innocence,
In all innocence.
A journey into manhood.

At three, sweet Linda’s flower bloomed for me
in my driveway under our old maple tree
where pedestrians, neighbours, family could see.

In our innocence- as we explored – they did not...

Read More

Ghostly spirits from deadly arsenal spell haunting annihilation

With mighty mouse and Hercules height 
tried to retrieve sanity spread loose;
a faded unpleasant memory - even enlisting
decades old cartoon characters: 
Natasha squirrel and Bullwinkle moose
flow of electrons...

Read More

Allegheny rail train has been rolling along since dawn.
I can hear the patchy sounds of the horn ushered by the wind.
Sounds at first are muffled but become distinct as the train gets closer.

Gulls hovering over...

Read More

Bygone Days
Written: By Tom Wright
4/3/2007

Remember the slogan
 “Haskell is moving, are you pushing?

The railroad depot stands no more
In the spot it occupied for so long.
Instead in it’s space, a Homeland store,
But in my memory it...

Read More

Permaculturists,
like Taoists
and Buddhists
and Hindus, etc.
Consider neighbors
extended and respected family,
ZeroZone Kin,
regardless of zone status
near or far,
regardless of species,
regardless of living
or gone
or not yet arrived.

Dear Neighbors,

I make no proud claims
of embracing a GREEN lifestyle,
making green integrity choices,
No...

Read More

Cypress trees like evergreen steeples
rise above rows of gravestone woes,
their shadows lie side by side like railroad ties 
across writhing paths banded like snakes;
the gravel birth cords sinuous 
sensing the ground   seeking the...

Read More

Approbation Deeded Gratuitously Just Because...

(this endeavor more self directed to progeny,
whose psyche wounded, strafed, and nicked.)

Incumbent upon me own
     purring impetus, a sincere
desire arose NOT to ask
    ...

Read More

Non labor (relations) day September 1st, 2023 poem

Aye dream of Genie (as a lad din)
Schwenksville, Pennsylvania -
keystone state abbreviated as Pea Yay,
this stupid non huge poem
deployed courtesy scholar
really...a boot nuttin
butta an overrated allay
zee good for...

Read More

November 19, 2001


Dear Doc and Doris,

	It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. I believe it was some years ago at the Sims reunion. That was several years before we moved here to...

Read More

When I was just a  little girl, we lived by railroad tracks;
we loved the steamy, smoky stacks, the wheels clickety clack.
On many days we would find, knocking at our door,
a hobo who had jumped...

Read More

*Bear with the length of this poem. It is very important regarding the Palestine, Ohio Catastrophe.

One of the biggest environmental disasters has happened in Palestine, Ohio
But, the people there are left in it without adequate...

Read More