Long Walk on 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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Once upon a weedy lawn
At Cedar Oaks Retirement Home
There sat my mother, weak and old
On an afghan knit to block the cold.

It was summer, but in mom's grey eyes
Was winter, when all around us dies.
I...

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History’s Greatest Miracle Play

Let me tell you a story - Prologue

Actors gather to play their parts
To set the stage – backdrops and props –
In history’s greatest miracle play
Called to speak their lines
On redemption’s stage
In a...

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Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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Evening came and the Harvest Moon was about to rise,
little did Johnny know this night would bring him a surprise…

Johnny lived in a mushroom village with many folks just like him. He carried an over...

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I went again today ... to that place, the allurement overwhelming ... the one
we called "ours" so tritely, "mine" before you, "mine" again now, (tho' others
have doubtless staked claimed - ages before and since). I...

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As I woke up this morning I was thinking of what should I do through COVID-19 pandemic.
I said to myself, “I want to go for a walk.”
While walking along the street, people were passing with...

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The tears well up, and scarce could she not moan
When father, brother, husband, all have died.
She now has no possessions, neither home,
But travels to a distant, unknown land:
Once so secure, yet now compelled to roam;
Once...

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Brezsny in quotes:

"Bestow a blessing on a person you've considered to be beneath you
or alien to you."

Donald, may your future communications involve both deeper listening
and comprehensively ecological learning
about our cooperative potential as individually evolving parents,
and...

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In these United States of America, there is a little town not very far off the beaten path. Neither gold nor silver has ever been mined in or near this town of fertile delta soil....

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Santa Claus, we’ve been out of touch 
and I don’t ask for very much 
but I have needs, and I’m in Dutch

I want to see the light of day
oh, and can you give me a...

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We have come to you
Like the sun to the cloud does
Anything you can afford
Please,do,spare us.
We've been under this bridge
even the ants gossips us
Because we share the same meal.
We have come to you
President soldier,Pastor Navy
Money,nuts,fruit-
we'll appreciate!
We...

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The Tale of the Bumpalump

After the Knight had unraveled...Flagan decided to travel
    and get away on a long holiday.
He thought it quite grand to visit a new land
    and...

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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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Slowly he opened the drawer and looked inside.  Some time had passed since he last gazed upon the cloth that lay there.  Years perhaps.  Yes definitely years.  The blotched rusty brown...

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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...

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Once again I tip the scale
And mutter, whoever invented it was a man from hell.
It was not a woman who created weights for size
For women can look past the outer shell
And search deep for what...

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I didn't know if I was blessing blessed being lesser or cursed, (Yes I did)
Or was I overwhelmed in my mess or ( I was being elated)
With the power of the Father
I was being overjoyed...

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Once upon a time a gymnast teacher told a girl, 
and all her classmates, 
to gather round 
to spot the student currently bouncing 
on the trampoline. 

They circled 
to volunteer a ring of imperfectly rhythmed
but...

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In school it was all about Greek and Latin at a stretch it proposed
                     ...

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spend your day expressed by grace ordered from a Payton place
cheer each moment from the edge of the setting sun a very well done
climb each pillar of thought and deed to reach forth every bit...

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My “popcorn town”, Oak Bluffs
on Martha’s Vineyard,
always will be home to me
‘though I now live far away.
We were young when
we bought the old Victorian
with the wide wrap-around
porch. It needed a lot of work
but we fell...

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It is early in the morning; 
I call you a new dawn; 
A day that the Lord has made; 
Of course for us to rejoice and to be glad in it.

Silently singing hymns of praise;
My...

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We’re on October break, which is a 6-day weekend. For the last two weeks, everyone’s been making plans.
“What do you think of Cancún?” Sunny’d asked me.
“The only people going to Mexico are on the cheap...

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It was late in gorgeous springtime, and I was teaching my class,
A lesson in African history, and the events of time's hourglass.

My fourth graders were very attentive, as I recounted the glory,
Of tales such as...

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