Some go
through life
in a sophomoric
zone
Knowing about
strangers
while being
alone
To ever
quote names
or that face
in the crowd
Aggrandizing
self
as their folly
— astounds
(Reading Market Philadelphia: May, 2025)
Say phantasmagoric:
your tongue feels euphoric!
Like some prehistoric,
on feeling dysphoric
over threats meteoric
got an upset pyloric
and downed paregoric.
Were the dino feels real
or is this allegoric?
When you see 'em, you know 'em
but this poem's sophomoric...
Manifestations of your Gauzy Fantasies
Unravelling Bonds of Tangled, Mangled Destinies
Sun of Man Set His Right Eye on Me
Tenaciously Searing, Calculating
To Entrap Me, A Prisoner to His Needs
Inspired A Premedimated Deed did He
With Intent To Plant a Seed!
Stormed Wrecked and Invaded My Archipelago
Pirate Prowess, Sophomoric,
He Stared, I Jeered, Blotted Proviso Smeared
Drenched In Salted Sweet, Freshly Spring Showered Awhile Ago
Armpits Crying, Young Sun, I've Done No Wrong
No Shade to Evade the Soundless Seranade
As The Father, Not the Sun, Pearched In a Chariot
Cascaded, Paraded Crusade
Blazing Rays, No Mercy, No Refrain
Solar Purgatory, Solicited by the Solar Nova Hovering above Port-of Spain
Evaporated Senses, Smothered Disdain, Budding Foliage Scorched and Drained
Organically Syphoning Hydration Reserved for Lack of Rain
Heat Rashes, Depleted Cortizone Stashes
Senses Assunder, Lost in Wander
Drifting Sun Stroked, Begging Pardon, Parched and Punished In Port of Spain!
I have decided go to church.
A deeply prophetic interior voice
has declared:
'enough is enough.'
Since Christians are derided, abused
and killed around the world
without even a headline,
since the intelligentsia and media
jeer at any mention of prayer,
since I am not 'saved' and never shall be,
but since I will always stand for the
guy with the sweaty shirt collar,
the woman who has faith in her womb,
the thin dog under the fat man’s table,
the individual not group-think,
I have decided to join a church.
I am not going, just joining
no one needs to know
except the Jesus in my heathen heart.
It’s just my little church built for one,
and when some sophomoric dimwit
with a college degree in the humanities
mocks my sacred belief,
I will enlighten him or her
with a curse straight from hell.
I thought it once
To confess it to you
But I step back
Thinking of losing you
Friendship is a name
You are my life
I never play with hearts
I swear right now
I don't have any regret
Coz, love is so awesome
As I felt it
But when I tried to live it
It's so difficult
Yet, I will live it
You are the sky and I am the ground
We both are far
But our soul is one
We seem to be together
Love is life
Love is awesome
Love is sacrifice
Love is qualified
I may not confess
The feel I possess
But remember
Action speaks louder than words
I don't know is it a
Love, lust, crush or friendship
But whatever it is
I trust you with no end
I'll never cry for you
But I swear
I can bear the pain for you
Only for you!!
Only for you!!
~Feeling for someone is the best part of your life and heartbreaks are best lessons. Love is for soul mates not for fake dates…
The ex's take the square and
another moment disappears
as the checkerboard plaid host
attempts a sophomoric joke
my eyes dusty from the 70's
painted on glitter spray
yawn as time won't slip away
into dreams of headstands
and pirouettes catapulting
into an air of floating hearts
released from the jar along with
fireflies under everlasting stars
I sit and reminisce about the "good ol' days"
The prelapsarian time before it all went sideways
The details of life were all that I saw
There was no rich, no poor, no petit bourgeois
As an unbeknownst member of the proletariat
I was in a state of semi-permanent merriment
"Class" was not realized until I moved north
And learned a simulacrum of poverty thenceforth
Then I get nostalgic for the radical breakthroughs
And the molting of all my sophomoric residues
I remember when I thought I could see
The world as it is in one, singular, reality
I was sure I had glimpsed some recondite apparatus
Guided by Providence and limitless afflatus
Now I know how naïve I was on both counts
That experience and wisdom are paramount
I look at life through a clear, antiseptic lens
And take a grain of salt with all my realizations
I don't mistake ardor or fervor for absolute truth
I don't swim around in the fountain of youth
I remember the past fondly and store it away
But focus my effort and gravitas on what I can do today
There Once Was
By Franklin Price
3/5/2016
There once was a rich man who spent
His own money to be president
You can tell when he stands
He has very small hands
And to the debates he soon went
He found as he started to speak
That the others their noses could tweak
Some came back at him
But there wits were quite dim
Heads were bursting and starting to leak
He did quite well in the polls
Twice as well as the other poor souls
He rose to the top
As the others did flop
They began setting downgrading goals
The media jumped on him too
His opponents began something new
Came out with rhetoric
That was really sophomoric
Even green slime they did spew
Then one of them said something grand
Its meaning we all understand
You know what they say
In bathrooms every day
About a man having small hands
With that they sunk lower than low
They contested how low could they go
Much lower than we
Thought we ever would see
Did not take him down and then so
The whole party joined in the fray
To take him down in whatever way
Dig up any dirt
Bring on losers to hurt
Guess that's politics of today
'Tis so, I adore a polychromatic Muse.
She's a plethora of jolly dramatic hues.
Not to bore yuh surely with rant sophomoric,
But her aura is purely phantasmagoric.
I hear people ask, “Am I her signif other?"
But fear she might see me as only a brother.
It is quite fantabulous and those sorts of things;
So we, the two of us, will be looking at rings.
Yesterday was 6th and it was less romantic,
Waiting for such call is little bit sophomoric.
I think it’s odd to expect nothing on a blissful day.
Little disappointment strikes in my own lay.
Have you remember those last 3 months of 6th?
We were the sweetest couple running with our own old sticks.
I was in the darkest corner for the last 8 hours,
Keeping that old music playing by Swift called “Ours”.
I wanted you to utter those magical words over the phone,
Watching the clock, expecting you to call, is so much alone.
Elevating this feeling is a bit awkward to do.
I guess this is how the spark of love can always do.
You promise that I will always be your only,
Why I’m so much bothered and feeling so sorry.
I guess this one great love is all about sacrifices,
3 months of relationship is ne’er as ill as bitterness.
my life in a nutshell;
I spend each day following myself
And others around
(Yet I keep that coverted at times)
Waiting for a command
or a criticism
that I may have once [l]earned
from my peers
We ask each other
For honest opinions
And then retaliate as if
Having expected to repress anything less
Than aplomb feelings laid out
In our minds
No matter the outcome
I still wonder why I bothered
to listen to the degrading words
At all
My life in a nutshell;
I am intolerant
to these stringent misconceptions
i cannot help to perceive
Of myself
And those who
Guide me
And create short-lived diversions
But today is but an ordinary day
which will repeat tomorrow
Where I will be
Mourning those sophomoric yet moving days
When I did not question
The ingratiating existences
I follow around
My life
Is but a nutshell.
Yesterday is hell sifted away
tomorrow is heaven
a myth...
no bye, no aloha
complex married
misunderstood
unable to communicate
hate
a retaliating stranger who never saw first blood
eyes red
puddled with break down
habits grab for stimuli
the pill, the Beretta for the take down
longing to read, when ability limits him to simply write
this sophomoric curse
pain receptors dulled via sleep
yet the light pink demons creep
reminding blind self
nothing's mitigated
if only he could speak
Brahms whistles from the desk
supplementing a place in life
the creative act
a hard fought solitude
terrible and tremendous
weeks ago
jaws of life pried his body from a car full of lies
lucky to be alive
today
he's stuck in a room of no truths
where enemies pretend to be friends
and blood stains, like cries
never dry...
Yesterday is hell sifted away
tomorrow is heaven
a myth...
no bye, no aloha
Seriously Jealous,
inherently over-zealous,
a calculation of the wellness-
of present day hellishness...
Seriously sophomoric,
traumatically important,
radical-
a spaceship uninhabitable.
Playing a game,
never would have guessed I was a lame...
Being insane,
while people are on their way.
Driving the plains,
with wheel chairs with sprains,
going to work on the veins,
with fangs,
from behind brains,
I withstand the shame,
and accept my fame.
The day i saw
this con man
was night
and wind
was snow
and rain
he was laughing
kicking for fun
white snow balls
and children skulls
angels like flies
were falling around...
It happened the day
I saw this man
an unexploded grenade
was left on the board
killing instantly
the drunken pilot...
That day I thought
was the end of the world
that was taken over
from the foes of God...
I couldn't think straight
i was just a teen
stuck in the middle
of a sophomoric dream...
Save them
from the innermost of
the mind bewildered
the heart diminished
the voice demure to shout
Make them
collapse
with gloomy smile
Fake
intentions frail
of body and soul
promiscuous
Collide
Set free
a sage
in every word
on any page
display the sly wisdom
on vertiginous stage
Break
the rules
with detest for
the inferior manner
of callow honesty
for humane
Sake
Divide
Spare
the nightmare
noxious conqueror
contamination developed
through ferocious heart
in asinine mind
enveloped within rotten flesh
Take
advantage of their
sophomoric trust
sedated senses
and
amaurotic affections
Wake the blight
before they collapse
Deride
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