Long Sergeant Poems

It’s heading for our planet at ten thousand miles an hour
To stop it all the experts say we haven’t got the power
All the nukes in all the world won’t constitute a plan
So someone said, ‘All...

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Suddenly, two Indian boys throw themselves into the water like meteors
swiming towards camp chatty as prarie dogs,
they hail from a Teton encampment of 74 lodges a few miles up river
most of the men are feeling...

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competing cousins, interbreeding homo-sapiens
  hominins humming mostly human song
  altruistic generalisers, ever close to dying ways
  opportunistic, never staying long

  self-aware, inquisitive, enlarging brains, empathising
  real representative intelligence
  modelling...

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Rassaphrass’s husband LeRoy went out for garlic bread on a Tuesday.  She ate all the spaghetti and meatballs before he returned, to teach him a lesson, because he took too long.  He brought...

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The old church lay in ruins, left to languish in time.
He was sitting on the grave talking to Sergeant R Johnston.
Well, I suppose you want an update on the war.
Let me see now, where do...

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Quy Nhon and The Tet Offensive
By Franklin Price
9/2/2018

Quy Nhon and the Tet offensive, more than fifty years ago
That Chinese New Year changed our world and most its ebb and flow
Until that day the boonies were...

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The date
July Twenty Eight
The year, 1914
The War which we feared 
It began, something we could not foresee
This date, still haunters me
To this very day
Those bewailing screams
And those traumatic scenes
Words to do not to justify 
The...

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Memories of a Green Beret

“Where have all the soldiers gone, Long time passing,
Where have all the soldiers gone, Long long time ago,
Where have all the soldiers gone,
Gone to graveyards, every one.
When will they ever learn?
When...

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I finished work at noon on Friday and headed home to pack
Put my gear in the trunk and put my canoe on the roof rack
Headed out down the freeway and got off at exit seven
The...

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Damn bad reputation counts 500 plus paw whet tick stints

The following fictitious poetic vignette attempts a feeble tale of one ordinary day in life of anonymous miscreant.

"I don't give a damn 
about my bad reputation."

I...

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"Their World"

Of course, there was no re-assurance from them that they would respond to the message I had sent. Morning had arrived. 

The day had commenced as any other, unravelling out of bed, in itself...

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Ban Me Thuot
By Franklin Price
8/31/2018

Out in the Central highlands, far away from Cam Ranh Bay,
In the town of Ban Me Thuot was a place where I would stay.
There was no space available at any compounds...

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He’s called the Eulogizer
He reluctantly accepts this moniker as our elder
A name for which he feels disdain 
Since it conjures memories of unspeakable pain
 
He's lost a father, mother, sister and son
His nights sleepless realizing...

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His ramrod back, his brill-creamed hair 
and waxed moustache gave him a certain air, 
a certain dash, and a military bearing. 
His speech was clipped. He walked his stick 
with sergeant major's flick.
His corduroys ...

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World War 1 

The Sergeant

The rose cannot compete
with the sweet smell of death,
only her image can forgive.
 Laid upon the silence
of another boys coffin,
which hides this journey in life.

Your shame will not bring him back.
So...

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     I watch the sun rise and once again bring another dawn, Another day in which we are alive. I stand 30 feet above the muddy ground, on the top of...

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Through April and May not a single Indian has been noticed
along all the serpentine bends of this rambunctious river,
however I feel we are being espied by a jealous warparty
immortal in it's protection of this pristine...

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Dragon got to thinking… And that’s always a frightening thing!
One of my son’s went into the Army, so he would do the same,
He’d been told, Soldiers are our Heroes, and he wanted to be one.
So...

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(Fictional, but based on the real experience of one of my close friends who lost her daughter in an accident)

 As I sat on my desk,
Hurrying with my pent up work,
A scrap of paper, left...

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I will be 75 on June 26th and married for 50 years on August 27th. 
I have a Master's Degree in Labor Economics and BA's in Sociology 
and Psychology. I was Supervisor of Labor Market...

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Smoke wafted across the village,
The swack,swack, swack, sound
Of a helicopter inbound, 
was heard,
Grass and dust churned and curled,
As it landed, 
Amidst the carnage caused,
By it’s crew now disbanded,
The horrors of war, 
are but dreams when...

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all the stuff going on that motel was heating up but the locksmith didn't speak
Irish too well & besides he got drunk & robbed the wrong merry-go-round anyway...
Sigh
Banal as it might seem, it's not how...

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I volunteered for service in the RAF in early 1942,
When I’d just become 18 and got three shillings a day;
I became a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner right through,
And was then sent home to await training, the...

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III.
The northern borders were alive with talk
of the Warlord known only as Bimeng,
who’d risen amongst the savage peoples,
and was said to be uniting them.

Now Reth had heard tales of such things before,
so he stirred not...

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Reasons

Sometimes we think, 
Sometimes we drink!
Sometimes our mind,
Is lost in liquor or wine!
The trouble between both black and white, 
Is that each see their view as right!
Let's work together for a single master,
Instead of fighting,...

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