i feel haunted.
not by ghosts but by you.
everywhere i turn you are there.
sour candies and baby’s breath.
pink roses and backwards caps.
i am haunted by what you were to me,
how it will never be like that again especially.
oh to have that erased.
would it be a waste to have not felt it?
do i regret you?
us?
147 days.
one hundred and forty-seven days.
goodbye.
Forty Seven Scars
But Who’s Counting
Miracle Man
3/11/2023
Forty seven scars,
each a telltale sign of some trauma
while traveling the highway of life.
Each has a story to tell
which induces thoughts
I’d sooner not recall again.
But the mind is a complex thing.
Seems visual is connected to recall,
which makes my daily shower,
sometimes, become show and tell think.
Carryover effects is the psychological injury
that some have bequeathed me.
But life is good and God has blessed me
with a high tolerance for pain.
I’m just a Tough Old Bird
who’s seen a few rough days,
Who continues to think, that,
Believing is mile one, on the highway to Becoming.
Tom
She is forty-seven, but insists on being with our twenty-five-year-olds.
I have heard her in the office hallway begging to be invited to things.
I will bring a really good present if you invite me to your wedding.
I will buy a round of drinks if you let me come to your Friday night deal.
How did a person arrive at forty-seven and not have friends?
I am unsure why she is so needy, but she is in all of their social posts.
Throwing hatchets, on a sail boat, at their baby showers.
Her smile seems forced, but not as forced as the two next to her.
If they did not invite her, would she stalk them?
Wait outside their homes?
Follow their cars to the event?
Part of me says YES.
Paint a blank canvas any way you want,
that’s the beauty of changing.
Which one can muster?
now?
lines
red, blue, black ... in colours
oblivions?
always same
metamorphosis
like a shepherd of one sheep
who has colours
to brush it to consternation
if out of one thousand
brushes
a light to be absorbed
may be only forty six and seven
or indigo
poets are scarce today
because nothing succour
is honey here
safe perhaps, locomotions
twisted how?.
Her husband’s angry words were like shrapnel,
They exploded in her brain.
Forgiveness was not easy.
He thought it was over.
The words kept popping up in her head though.
She never fully forgot them.
She heard these words every December,
She heard them whenever she saw a Santa Claus
For he had been dressed as Santa at the time
he spit these words at her like maiming bullets.
She remembered his mother had been in the room,
and somehow that had made it worse.
Her husband had no idea the words were still ricocheting
Forty six years later, but they were there
Because they were being relived every Christmas.
Often times the fierceness of the words relived was worse than the original.
She divorced him forty-seven years after they were uttered
Because it was Christmas and she could not let them go.
I threw my coat into the back seat because it felt like summer.
Forty-seven degrees! A heat wave after the below nine’s we had been having.
Let’s go swimming! I yelled to my husband who was still curled up in a blanket.
Shivering, because he claimed it was still winter. It’s forty-seven! I screamed.
I ran back outside to see if the yellow daffodils were up yet. They weren’t.
Then I got out my tiller, but alas, the ground was still frosty and hard.
Maybe I can mow? I thought. Then I remembered I gave my lawnmower away.
I called the gardeners. How soon do you think you can come? I asked them.
They thought it was hilarious that I was asking. In a month or two, they said.
I am ready for spring now! I thought. So I took out my paints and began to create.
I made roses lilies, geraniums, tulips, a giant rainbow, faeries, two dragons.
If spring cannot come to me, at least I can come to spring. Right?
Forty-Seven Years
By Franklin Price
12/21/2016
Forty-seven years of marriage
And love transitioning
I look back on with memories
And what true love would bring
When we met, began as friends
No spousal thoughts were there
Had bonding with each other
Friendship, to love and care
Love with passion to begin
Always to feel the touch
Anywhere at any time
There never was too much
As time went by and life went on
Responsibility would change
Our daughter growing older
It was time to rearrange
Love for three instead of two
Readjustment was a must
To make a love and life for all
A relationship to trust
Got her through school and college
Now she's married on her own
We now have two granddaughters
Who are raised and mostly grown
The love's still there, was meant to be,
From that start long ago,
My wife is still the one I love
There is no doubt, I know
Retired now, we live alone
The love for us; no end
Best friends and sometimes lovers
On each other to depend
At sixty you've spent twenty years in bed
And two years of eating when your fifty
I've stopped counting the grey hairs on my head
My skin is loose and everything's squishy
My spine's compressing, causing me to shrink
The birthmark on my face, now on my neck
Crows feet are one thing, I've got spiders feet
One thing after another, I expect
Do I qualify for seniors rebate ?
Clerk asks at the store who looks about ten
Forty seven, do I look sixty eight ?
I cannot handle that happening often
I'm ok with the aging endeavour
I feel as though I've been here forever
August 22, 2016
Each new cast lives life
Providing your leg support
Becomes its purpose
How wonderful!
I have just learned
there are forty-seven hills
in San Francisco.
I am doing imaginative leaps...
First, I imagine they are all the same size
and how that would look
on lemon, lined paper.
Now I am thinking they go down
in equal measure
to the ocean,
and how I would run down
all the way
to the cool ocean, dive in,
and while I'm swimming,
look up at all the hills.
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7/22/2015
Contest - Your Favorite Poem Form
Sponsor - Nayda Ivette Negron
3rd place win
Proverbs eighteen twenty two that's
how I feel when I think about you,
obtaining a gift I didn't deserve and
I'm not worthy for, but I guess that's
favor no matter what the score
looks like God made it possible for
you to shine in my life and I'm
grateful, thankful for this moment
and this is where the search ends
my heart, mind, body, & soul it's
yours to own it, I will never disown
the love the connection that we
share, in today's society love is like
an unplayable game of truth or
dare, but I'll gladly leap into this
head first because I know what
holds us close, that three strand
rope and I don't ever wanna let go,
your vivid imagination of what our
future will be it seems so perfect like
God himself prophesied this in your
heart, so knowing that I'll gladly run
this Marathon with you just tell me
where do we start