Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Franklin Chess Nov 2016
You said I'm a stranger.
That's selective.
We swapped virginities.
I painted your home,
And sat, and sipped
With your RFC Nandad;
Carried he and his Lady to the mausoleum;
Listened to her stories about Eleanor and Henry.
Bubba (a name you gave your Grandmother)
Sold me her car for a dollar.
I couselled your mother back into your heart;
At peril, tried to sneak your nephew back to your sister.
Your great-uncle gave us his Florida condo for a week,
I drank tea from a saucer at your Thanksgiving dinner.
I took the gun out of your father's mouth.
A stranger!
Tell the girls that.
Tell the grandkids Granda is a stranger.
Truth is strange.
Fiction estranges.
  Mar 2016 Franklin Chess
Francie Lynch
Trust a liar
To equivocate.

Trust a thief
Won't discriminate.

Trust your government
To disappoint.

Trust Justice
To miss the point.

Trust your parents
Til you find a voice.

Trust education,
If you want a choice.

Trust your friends
To have your back, front and sides.

Trust your children
With your life.

Trust your partner,
Like no other.

Trust one's self
More than anyone else.
off the roof  
like
rain  
from  
the
gutters
eaves
filling    
with
blue  
berry
ink
i    
taste    
the    
sweetness
on
the
warm  
tongue
of    
pages
before    
they

blow

away            
with                  
my                            
                      
breath                                  
.
SoulSurvivor
(C) 1/16/2016
  Jan 2016 Franklin Chess
Sjr1000
The Garden Buddha
sits
between
the
Rosemary, Dahlia and Boronia
fragrances in the breeze

Welcoming Accepting
the sun, the rain,
the star lite night sky
fierce frozen mornings
the snow when it comes,
the spiders, the slugs, the mosquitoes, the flies

Garden Buddha
quarter smile
whether or not
I sit beside him,
Unattached to all he sees
a study in the 7 Dharmas.

The Garden Buddha
being is all he knows.

While I worry
about this and that
fearful thoughts in the days and nights
all attached
to
love and loss,
fears and triumphs
births and debts,
what people think
will poems trend
whether there is food on the table
whether work will extend
whether or not I am part of the latest fashion trend.

The Garden Buddha
doesn't care or not care
about any of those things
his eyes
never waver
they always look inside out
outside in.

The Garden Buddha
stone of course
his smile
never goes away.

In the end, though,
nature will always have the last say
I can accept it
or not
Be filled with longing
suffering or accepting

life on life's terms

The Garden Buddha
will be here
long after
my last
dying day.
Not a practicing Buddhist, but have always had a fascination with attachment, longing and acceptance.
Franklin Chess Oct 2015
I never meant to live with you,
And certainly not at twenty-two;
Now I've lived to sixty-two,
And ready
Just to die near you.

— The End —