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Best Poems Written by Robert Franklin

Below are the all-time best Robert Franklin poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

The Captive

She’s trying to be strong. Not like so many times before. Honestly, this is abuse. She has a punch-drunk sense of reason at this point. The distance is old, the winter is long and he’s always in control. It’s old shoe and she’s had enough this time.

Slow deliberate steps in the hallway foreshadow another round of “training”. Prisoners of war might have difficulty withstanding this abuse. She’s sure her rib is broken, but to be fair, she did ask for it. “Discipline is a faithful navigator” he would say. He even sounds handsome when he speaks…..maybe ruthlessly handsome she thinks and starts to deliriously giggle to herself when a million needles stab her in the lungs.

She’s been chained up down here for days seems like. She’s battered, bruised, twisted; her internal organs feel like they’re shutting down. It’s been at least a day since she’s seen him, and she’s thirsty and scared. He taunted her repeatedly asking “why do you do this for yourself?. I need to train you better”. She honestly doesnt know, but she needs water she knows that. And everything hurts.

She knows one thing, she’ll take some measure of power back. He’ll release her at some point, and she’ll turn this around. She’ll exercise some deliverance of her own. But she desperately needs to get away from him; that’s first.

He twists the doorknob, slowly for effect. “His doorknob twist is handsome”, she cringes in pain again, and lowers her head. And her tears rip free from her eyes. He walks in, brings to her a measure of care in his eyes. He raises her face with his finger and says “I think you’ve had enough fancy girl. I’m cutting you loose.” Panic washed over her body and saturated her mind when she moaned “please don’t go, not yet”.

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Thank You For the Morning Dew

You
You should know
You bring life to my day
There’s a sunrise in your smile 
    Brilliant rays break through my cloudy    
    thoughts
    And show me my next step
A crisp morning dew in your smell
   Is the scent of new life emerging
   From a light Spring rain
Your hair falls around your face
    Like curtains revealing the window to my 
    next adventure
Your voice is as soft and revealing as a 
    clear night sky
Your eyes twinkle like Orions shoulders,
    Beckoning me to take an adventure
    That knows no end 
I thank the heavens for giving 
the journey of you to
Me

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

Black Death

A scorpion will never face it’s own stinger.  A bear will never maul itself.   Why then do some men have wounds they wont talk about?

It’s not always the arrow that kills you, it’s the infection.  Gangrene is a slow death, spreading slowly but surely.  It loves an open wound and marches it’s death brigade ever so gradually to the heart.

The unforgiven has a unique gaze his eyes.  It’s says he’s longed for the barrel of his revolver.  Looking at him is like staring right through a bullet hole.  And he knows the choice is simple, cut off the trigger finger that betrayed his love, or just welcome that slow but certain death.  

The path to survival is clear, but he just hasn’t decided yet.

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Deprture

She waited
And dimmed
Burning
The setting sun’s a heavy weight

She wallowed
Rotting
Horizon far behind
A heart’s a lover’s lovelorn urn

She endured
Brazen
Tear shaped
Hornets stitched her broken skin

She remembered
Searing
Slow dancing fireflies
Embers sparkling in his eyes 

She reached
Frail hands
Chilled stone and bone
Heed hot candle’s shapeless wax

She acquitted
Marauder 
Clinical tolerance
High functioning excommunication 

She walked
Discerning
A deep cold abyss
To search within and be swallowed

She walked
And waited
And remembered
Ceremonial departure

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

Psy-Chic

I was walking no particular direction
One ordinary day
On my regular path
Mulling over my sticks and stones
Charms and dolls
When I saw a familiar door
Fresh painted colors on letters that were there before
It read “we all want the same thing; you decide what to do next”

I went inside.
The room inside looked like the alley outside
It smelled like bread
And the clouds rolled in
Red light overhead, she emerged from the apothecary
A Psychic by trade, she was easy on my eyes.
She knew my name and asked me to sit in the cobblestone hallway
Sitting across the alley from me, under a barbershop pole, her earrings twinkled like stars.

She recited a poem to me; the lyrics from my favorite song. Then she fixed her gaze on me and said “According to the cosmos, there’s only now, today, this moment. There’s no past and no future. These are mortal concepts human imagination to create the story of a life.

The past is nothing more than individual memories, from which lessons were learned. Only valuable in the present, to influence the potential future.

A moment is lived when you allow yourself to feel something. A life lived is measured by the collection of moments spent feeling alive. To have comfortably breathed, but not sufficiently lived is to linger tragically lifeless.

Then she knowingly asked me So what do you feel?”
I said nothing
“And what do you want to feel”
I said everything
“You already know exactly what you need to do, to change and grow. And you only have right now, to take action, and leave the ranks of the crestfallen. Decide right now, choose to live and this alleyway will lead you to new future, you create for yourself. But you have to decide now, because your time is fleeting. What’s your decision?”

I said “I’ll need to think on it”.
And just like that,
I was sitting alone
in an ordinary alleyway,
Painfully comfortable

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

Rattlesnake

Today I went for a hike up a rocky desert hill
A jackrabbit crossed my trail
Peacefully hopping through his daily routine
I saw partridge birds
Consorting about over the topic of worms
I noticed the ease with which they kept their distance, but otherwise unalarmed
They had tools I didnt have
Flight, speed, I’m no threat to them
And I wasnt looking for them
And I wasnt a predator
I was prey

I was looking for a rattleshake
I wanted to be ambushed by her
Understand the shock, despair and disbelief of falling victim
Falling to a viper’s strike
Feel venom wash through me, 
Cleansing me of frustrated indifference
Somehow I have become a predator
Reluctantly feeding on lovely things
So, I needed to feel the pain of innocence

I know she’s deadly,
To be avoided at all costs
But I’d be stunned nevertheless, taken aback by her calloused viciousness
I was thoughtlessly strolling on her trail, but I’d be scared and demand from the heavens answers, pity.
Why did this unprovoked creature do this to me
Her cold hearted act of aggression
Her indiscriminate offensive 
Would leave me overcome with distrust. 
My confidence in nature, forever shaken, convinced all snakes are monsters
I’d be offended
Even as I fell to the ground,
Watching her return to the eggs in her nest

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

Cast Iron Crush

You drove me a little wild.
So sexy
So mysterious
So I poured my lust on you
Just to see if you could handle me
I watched it seep into your pours
I saw it stain your skin
Like a rusty rosé
I licked it off your neck.

You drove me a little wild
So smart
So strong
So I laid my cast iron crush on you
Just to see if you could handle me
I watched you squirm in reluctant acceptance
I saw it reshape your face
Like etching a poem on your bones
I took over your mind

You drive me a little wild
So patient
So wise
So I bared my soul to you
Just to see if you could handle me…

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

Im All Yours

I’m all yours 
Boy
You have all of me
Boy
Whisper your secrets to the wind
So it can blow them through my hair.
Pack your thoughts in an envelope
Then think of my neck as you lick it’s seal.
I’m all yours.

Bring your worst to me, 
Show me your teeth.  
I’ll baptize you in understanding.
Put your cigarette out on my skin,
I’ll carry your mark
It’s safe with me
Think about me when you buckle your leather belt, 
Know I miss your touch
You have all of me

Send your lust with the lovers
I’ll meet them in the chapel
I’ll lay my kiss upon the moon
And send it to you through the night
Draw your bow with all your might 
and fire your need towards someday
I’ll meet you there

When you look for me
Let let my scent guide your way, 
I’ll leave it with the doorman
I’m you’re girl 
boy
I’m all yours
If you can find me….
….maybe I need you to

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

Fever Dream

I’m sick
I’m writing this in a fever dream
I can see you laying here with me
But it’s you who’s sweaty
You’re so pale and burning up
Your eyes are rolling back behind their warm blankets
You’re probably having the craziest dream
You probably see me laying there
Across from you
Sweating
Squirming
Suffering
I bet that hurts you to see
After all,
You so patiently taught me self care
But then you were gone
Now open your eyes
Look at me
Listen
You look pretty bad
I don’t care

Details | Robert Franklin Poem

My Poet

Looseleaf thoughts trailed behind me as I moved between moments.
Onto the next will little regard for the last.
Carelessly discarded attention to detail left a world crafted by outline, but devoid of color
A chapter’s end, always nearing as I furiously scribble out another shorthand experience
Plagued by the wall clock’s siege, pulverizing my moments into powder.
Pouring through the hourglass
Another sunset, another night without reflection, another day with not enough time
The roots of mortality begin to emerge in the corner of my eyes.  
The changing leaves of my tree of life
Time was short, soon leaves will fall
Time was now

And then she appeared
Her sweet song of summer found my ears and I wondered into her timeline
Everything seemed different there, alive, full, colorful
She lived her life as a poet, deliberately accents curating a feeling, 
A sense to pause if the world needs to catch up.
She hung her pages on a clothesline to season in the summer breeze, filled in her blanks with calligraphy, then waited for a blue moon to illustrate

Our gazes collided, and she went straight to my story, deep inside
She looked for my seams and slowly traced her fingers along the stitches, asked about the tears in the leather I’d never stopped to notice
She read me with intensity, then dogeared her favorite pages 
A blurry world came to life with a million points of color when she splashed synesthesia over my imagination.
I felt an ambush of understanding
She cared for me without my permission
The sun felt warm
The day felt longer
Fast changed to full
I felt, everything
She was much

She was my poet and she wrote my next chapter as a love poem