Long Turkey Poems

The night Before Christmas Eve
By Franklin Price
12/17/2016


Prologue

The Night Before Christmas
A most famous of  poems
Read  to children aloud
By their parents in homes

To children who gather
'Round the brightly lit tree
To hear Santa is coming
Presents for...

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The angles are in the storm
Just before  the break of dawn
Sending a message to everyone
Telling them to remain calm
The angels are singing out loud
They want to break the treacherous cloud
 and relinquish that awful...

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Start and end each day,
and life,
with a taoist egg.

I doubt my eggs are religious.

No, but they are natural,
organic incubators, 
co-arising nondual yolk form
with white-transparent regenerative function,
teleology,
and cosmology, maybe,
if you're a chicken,
or a turkey, 
or a...

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Date:  January  2046

8:45 am  in the Damian Domaine 
Some are sleeping some are peeping
What are we eating? Said Molly to
Dolly. "What ever we can?" She replied 
While still sleepy eyed checking
Supplies. So...

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Turkish Poetry Translations II

Çanakkale Sehitlerine
"For the Çanakkale Martyrs"
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Was there ever anything like the Bosphorus war??
The earth’s mightiest armies pressing Marmara,
Forcing entry between her mountain passes
To a...

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Damian was on the tele-video 
conference with various Prestigious 
Proper people of distinction. The US
Vice president was on Skype along
With Secretary of State. He spoke 
With Russia's top diplomat, Valeiry
Sergei Shonikov, South African president 
Holu...

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NAME: Phil Latio.

QUALIFICATIONS: LLB (Law) PhD (Medicine) & FSC (Federation Starfleet    
                    ...

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The biggest funeral I've ever attended...


Thelma was a waitress at the diner on the corner of 4th and Oak, across from Ron’s DX, in Abilene.
They had an old brass register that rang when it was...

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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
   ...

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What Kind of People Are We

In a Shakespearean sense of tragedy and doubt the well-used
“To Be or Not To Be” from Hamlet is not the question I shall
discuss in this narrative. Rather, I shall consider...

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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...

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* This poem was written for a contest originally, but was used by Professor Anne-Marie Thornton of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, to teach her WAR POETRY class in the spring semester of 2017. My...

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Her small angelic face ...

Once a place where broad smiles bloomed like butterflies on marigolds,
is streaked with the furrows that countless tears have etched into the
layers of dust and dirt and explosive residue that now...

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"The Precipice"



In the Autumn 
she wore a wedding veil
A cold winter would lift it
Kiss her lips passionately to 
speak words of 
LOVE
on a 
late roll call

“Well, that’s insanity for you” 
some snakes would hiss
others rapture-faced
on...

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It seemed to me,
when I was eight,
U.S. Christian disciples and teachers
had been given so much grace

And had fundamentally boiled it down
to settling for such small subcontinental WhitePatriarchal colonizing gratitude
for God's universally healthy
multicultural EarthTribes.

It was so...

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**Trigger Warning**



"I Knew Anne Silently - My Ravenous Poe" 

I knew Anne.
you’d think 
with a name like hers
she’d be able to find her way 
out of unchartered waters.

it didn’t come as a suprise, 
then, on...

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There are actual people
half woman half man
running mornings and
dream people in movies
half language half light.
Tomorrow is John’s funeral.

		*			*			*

This is my minute
my moment
Oops, gone!

Anything can happen
if you don’t resist
Resist!

		*			*			*

But who am I? You think bullets won’t
kill?...

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She dresses the land down
in a virginal bridal gown 
a masterfully cut and sewn chenille 
shines brightly with a fine crystal appeal

Her assistants work quite diligently
to add special touches and then flee
they decorated the mountain peaks 
using all their...

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I awoke to the familiar sound of dishes rattling in Mother’s kitchen and to the thick scent of coffee wafting through the air. I glanced out my bedroom window; the neighborhood was lit by the...

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Again the alarm is set.

Strawberries, date squares…Yum, Yum.   

The alarm rings again. The tea party is over.

 She returns to her perch where her wings are immediately clipped by the Bald Eagle who...

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Dolly woke first kissed Damian 
On his cheek. He was still asleep.
Today was July 27th  Dolly 
Thought, "Oh my Goodness."
"Today is me and Molly's 
Birthday. Justin and 
Jordan turned 10 in April. Now
Me and...

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Mehmet Akif Ersoy: Modern English Translations of Turkish Poems

Mehmet Âkif Ersoy (1873-1936) was a Turkish poet, author, writer, academic, member of parliament, and the composer of the Turkish National Anthem.



Snapshot
by Mehmet Akif Ersoy
loose English translation/interpretation...

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Aah Summer time. The house 
Was quiet. Dolly and Molly were 
The only ones awake and already 
Showered and dressed. Dolly said. 
"Woo I am ready for whatever."
Molly agreed saying, "Yeah, 
Sister girl what are...

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          Johnny and Amber

To get my mind off war and inflation
I’ve watched the trial for defamation.
  But from what I’ve heard
  that scorned Amber...

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Turkish Poetry Translations I



Ben Sana Mecburum: "You are indispensable"
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgul Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you're like nails riveting my brain? 
I see your eyes...

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