Our thoughts,
And our ways,
Become whiter than snow
When we gaze, without haze,
Lovingly upon the Lord.
We rest, cease the quest
And invest where our fortune
Is outside of time;
outside of oughts.

Somehow it is always my fault,
I'm the one getting hurt and yet
They blame me for their own assault
And still my pain, they just forget

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair.  He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too.  War came and he had to go.  I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942.  He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that  were flying the area where Rommel was fighting.  He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it.  A treasure.

Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head.  He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships.  In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always  a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back.  He was a hero nevertheless.

About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people.  I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.

•###•

•the•message•is•so•phantom•

•strangled•
•during•the•thir­d•act•

•illuminated•
•letters•are•the•ciphertext•

•and•they•glo­w•
•in•your•eyes•
•Bletchley•Park•

•Turing•
•worked•it•out•with•­
•Delilah•

•they•killed•for•less•
•died•for•even•more•

•###•

Dazzled, bewitched, betwixt
Your attention is clearly affixed
To  fantasy, a dream--a non-reality
This sad thing you see as me

But, I love you as you are
Although, your dreams take you far
Away into the distance
Illusion believed as instance

Beauty decried by the blind
Have regard for those left behind-
Sight intoxicating
Left waiting,

And wanting; more


It's just a door!
But, you adore

A projection
Of a reflection

Of what you can't keep inside
The elephant you cannot hide


But, it's just a door!
A portal into possibility
You're wanting more
And never question what you seek

In this hallway
there are many doors
It's easy to run away
And simply choose one that is 'ours'

But, we must question our periphery
Understand not all is what we see
We must find Love internally
Before professing it eternally;
"To truly love another--first, I must love me"

Every day, I open my reality:
I wake up.
I feel.
I choose.
I decide—
knowing so many others
are crying behind the scenes,
and their trembling is raw.

Pain isn’t consolation—
it reinforces the structure of fragility
when the towers are crumbling.

At the core, we return,
squeezing black-and-white struggles
into our veins, into our memories.

To the only home
we never left
our own body.
The first and the last.