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Keith Frantz Feb 2020
Excitement catch me
So long have I wondered
From around the bar
Across the years

Our kiss once long ago
Ignited my flame
So far I've come
Where have you been?

Reconnect now
Fluttering joy
Anxious desire 
To discover how

Meet me at sunset
And I'll whisper you truth
So long have I waited
To taste you once more
Keith Frantz Jan 2020
My feelings never go away 
I continue to brutally pound them into submission 
Until my very heart's blood howls
Minute by minute 
Year after year
To hide them
So they won't bother you anymore 
You cannot even see me
I am unrecognizable
Keith Frantz Dec 2019
Pointing and Tweeting 
and Lying out loud 
Misinforming, Misdirecting 
and Masquerading as proud
A Fool’s Grand Folly 
proves to allow
Our once Great Nation sanctions
The Shame of Now

No longer the beaming beacon 
of Freedom and Light
Lost drowning under agendas 
of a fascist Right
Our promise of Equality,Opportunity, and Justice for ALL
Has dimmed deep dark
Led by dishonorable leaders 
with minds too small

Lie upon lie 
to seize and deny
Each worthy Virtue
As lethargy stands by
To ignore is to condone 
this integral deceit
Lighting matches in the wind
at a scheming Witch’s feet

Political shame 
is nothing new
Its open promotion 
defines Red versus Blue
But our current taste 
for Snake Oil Greed
Summoned upon us 
with foul racist creed
This Demon’s charm
Hastens reckless danger 
Has brought us harm
Unstable chaotic anger

Voter apathy 
has thus condemned
Heads and feet 
buried too deep in sand
Qualifying lies
EACH AND EVERY DAY
This cancer has spread
“But the economy…” they say!

At what cost 
is you dignity lost?
When the lines of life and decency are crossed...

Bragging and gagging
The few who spew through
False rallies and chants
Show us how 
the ignorant rants
Further convey
The Shame of Now

Manipulation of masses 
televised showing their *****
Compassion gone, 
Our Character drawn
Hate and Greed 
Their ugly seed
Dividing is no great mystery
Exacting this moment in history

Love and Compassion 
No longer in fashion,
Diplomacy and Compromise
Cuffed behind 
self-righteous disguise
Gilded ideology 
and forgotten vow
Convey the disgraceful 
Shame of Now

Gone now too,
Our Golden Rule
The Bully stalks on
A sullied Fool
Human rights aside
Jackboots must abide
We've lost our soul
To the latest poll

Non apologetic rhetoric 
Inviting a World thickly sick
Embattled, embittered,
Disastrously entwittered
But crisis mode 
Has always shown
To tow the load
We MUST always reap
What we have sown 

Soon critical mass
Will expose this ***
For all he's said and done
His base too
Shall also rue 
Days of ugliness won
A National Reckoning 
Is overdue
The Conscientious beckoning
For all things true

Until this time
Heed my rhyme!
Of Machiavellian theft
Cunning deceit and lying
With Hope for a future bereft
Of stolen children forever crying
Until Election Night
We FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

Yet We remain bewildered how
We must face 
The Shame of Now
Keith Frantz Dec 2019
Dogs will save us.
Dogs will save us from ourselves.
They will save our souls 
and lick us until we giggle.
Dogs will cure cancer 
and end our suffering.
They will teach us to appreciate art 
and guard us from the monster 
under the bed.

Dogs will be our best friends.
They will save our marriages 
and emancipate our embittered youth. 
Dogs will champion us 
against the inhumane atrocities 
and tragic sadness 
of our battered world.


They will regulate the cat,
announce the mailman, 
and keep your neighbors honest.
Dogs will wake us 
with their breath 
and melt us with their eyes.
Their expressions alone 
will tell us tales as old as time. 


Each dog is a brilliant magician 
and will perform extraordinary miracles 
in an accidental moment.
Every dog is also an empath 
and all dogs remind us to care.
Dogs instinctively know 
what you're thinking 
and feel what you're feeling.
Dogs will train us in love, 
expose us to death, 
and make glorious our lives in between.

Dogs will forever anticipate your return.
Your turn of the doorknob 
remains their obsession.
They will always appreciate your cooking 
and approve of your outfit. 
Dogs will share their fur 
on your coats and gowns 
which will immediately admit you
to random strangers 
as one of their doghaired tribes.


Dogs will help you 
find the candles and the matches 
when the lights go out. 
Dogs will save you 
when your lover leaves you 
and dogs will mend your broken heart. 
They will pick up the sharp, painful pieces
of a shattered life.
Dogs will save you.

Dogs will pant you 
into soft, necessary naps.
Dogs will wag their tails
to find your lost keys 
and make it rain in your garden. 
Dogs will strike a global peace accord 
and defecate on the lawns 
of white collar criminals. 
Dogs will save us.

Dogs will save the world.
They will walk their humans 
and fertilize our soil. 
They will exercise us 
and make our world grow.
Dogs will change parks 
into open churches 
and turn pet stores 
into grand cathedrals. 
They will inspire 
epic poems
and celestial songs.
Dogs will forever remain
the canine aria
in our human opera.

Dogs will find you. 
They will find their way home, 
find their way home to you.
Dogs are happy to see you…
unless they've dug into the garbage can. 
Or countersurfed away your toast,
your egg rolls, 
or your chicken *** pie!
Even then, the dog will teach us
other valuable lessons. 
Dogs teach us every day.
They teach us humanity.
Ironically. 
Dogs teach us 
to be our better selves.
They do this with 
very little expectation 
and not any pretentiousness whatsoever. 

Dogs offer happy drool, 
warm bellies, 
and cold noses.
They offer us 
immediate compassion 
and direct honesty.
Dogs will discover and expose 
the very best
and absolute worst 
of everything around them. 
Dogs will save us.

Dogs will open the cages. 
And save the whales 
and protect the forests. 
Dogs will watch over 
the battleless child
and dogs will eventually 
end the pointless wars
and our desire for us
to **** each other.
Dogs will sniff 
the crotches of corruption 
and lick the hands of liberty.

All our critical questions
and significant solutions
are accurately answered 
and obviously evident
by the love of a dog.
Indeed.
Dogs will save us.

If you don't have a dog,
go save a dog.
And it will certainly 
Save You.


October 25th, 2019
Keith Frantz Apr 2019
The big, lonely bed, stationary in all its essence, longed for her return. It resented the man now, biting and clawing at his skin. Although he had done nothing intentional or malicious to the bed, the bed held the man accountable and punished him for it.

The bed was nothing without the man's mistress. She had lain on the bed, dressed it with color and sweetness and light. She adorned the bed with her body, her being.
At times, the mistress and the big, lonely bed seemed to meld, to become one. And this had filled the bed with life. The big, lonely bed was not lonely yet.

The man never offered any of this to the big, lonely bed. He would come home late and drunkenly pass out on the bed. He would eat his meals on the bed and pay all his attention to the TV. His crumbs would find the recesses of the bed's matting and he rarely changed the bedding. Sometimes, he would ******* on the bed without a care.

It wasn't clear if the mistress missed the bed as much as the bed missed her. Or if the mistress even missed the bed at all. The bed never spoke of it, as inanimate objects are forbidden from such things. The big, lonely bed considered greatly her long absence now but couldn't quite fittingly express its pain.

The man began enduring several sleepless nights on the bed. He was too determined to admit why. Denial was his restful tool. But the bed did wake him. The big, lonely bed scratched at his comfort. Scratched at the man's contentment and resolve. The bed kept the man awake with pain and desire and awareness. The bed was not going to let the man just “use” it. There is a price to pay for sleep and the big, lonely bed was determined to extact it.

The man tossed and turned these early, restless nights. Embattled by the bed's desperate curse, the man continues to lose precious, precious sleep. He was too self-absorbed to know he was under siege by the big, lonely bed. He tried applying pharmaceutical methods and concocted psychosomatic cures for his lack of sleep. The man began to consider himself an insomniac and openly complained to his friends about it.

The big, lonely bed's desire for the return of the man's mistress reached new levels of retribution as the bed started to manipulate its springs and padding to muddle its very own comfort and purpose. Now the man could only list one way or the other on the bed. He thought about his lost love. And his lost sleep…

The man was also losing to the big, lonely bed. He longed for the slumber he so desperately needed. Without restful peace, he began to teeter near ledges, dangerous and desolate ledges. There he quietly mumbled her name. The man sobbed as he whispered the horrors he had played victim to by the very mistress the bed adored.

The big, lonely bed listened as the man cried his tears of missed opportunities and sincere attempts with the mistress. She had treated him badly. The man's tears fell upon the bed. And the bed absorbed the man’s agony. The bed had been blinded by its own desire for her, never considering the man's love for her and his subsequent loss.

The man was broken now. Broken in his reckless actions and his desperate thoughts to relive and repair the relationship, to fix it. To fix everything, to fix himself. He was broken without sleep.

The big, lonely bed began to sympathize as the man counted the periodic struggles he weathered when confronted by his mistress's manic episodes. The man had indeed survived her bipolar tirades when she encouraged her fueled rage with doses of antidepressants mixed with long-poured ***** and tall glasses of Pinot Gris. The bed remembered these exhausting nights and recalled the punishment the man endured for simply loving her.

The bed did witness the man's suicidal flirtations and pathetic attempts to blame himself. To blame himself for all of it. If he could only share just one more night with her. One more night on his bed with her… in his bed. Talking and laughing. Loving and planning. He could fix this. With the help of his big, lonely bed, the man could fix it all.

The bed did take pity on him.
The big, lonely bed understood now. And welcomed the man that night, lonely no more.
April 18, 2019
Keith Frantz Apr 2019
I'll write this to you, father, in the first person. First person narrative is your preferred narrative  This was my midnight dream between the days of Sunday, March 31st and Monday, April 1st, 2019. You have been dead just three years and 14 days.
Your honorary NCAA basketball pool bracket, in which I enter in your honor every year, was busted last night when the Duke Blue Devils lost to the Michigan State Spartans 68-67. Your bracket name was Ogre1. Just as it was in real life.

The dream was bizarre, as most dreams tend to be but you walked hard in this dream and I still wondered, as I woke, which places in my subconscious you walked so hard to convey your message to me.

We waited for you. The three faceless and I. And there was a child. Perhaps an eight year-old boy with us. He was waiting too. Faceless. I imagine he was me but there's no real telling in a dream as there is no real telling of any dream. Just scattered attempts at placing all the players and places and things in some justifiable juxtaposition…

We waited. We waited for you to arrive after your board meeting. The four of us. And the boy. Five together. The other three adults were too familiar. We waited in your 1972 Buick Estate Wagon. The four of us across the bench seat in the front. The boy laid in the back back.
I knew he was there as he periodically popped his head up in anticipation for your arrival. He began to look a bit like you. A bit like me.

You appeared as a hurried specter across the lawn of my childhood home. A lawn I had mowed a thousand thousand times. It was raining slightly and I could see the lawn as it grew in the night air. Your obsession with fertilizer and having me mow it egregiously throughout the seasons had awarded you your goal of having the best lawn in the neighborhood. I will forever mow your lawn in all dreams.

A cigarette lingered in your right hand, you held a smart, tight satchel of work papers in your left. You got in the back seat and laid down. Face up at first, until you finished your smoke. After you had extinguished it in the clean, shiny metal ashtray in the armrest attached to the door, you turned away from us in the front seat and laid on your side. The boy peaked over the seat at you. You winked at him before closing your eyes.

I could not tell if you were awake as we pulled out of our driveway. The driveway where you had single-handedly beaten the neighborhood kids in basketball games. Beaten us a thousand thousand times…

We drove off in the dark and slight rain. I had no idea where we were headed. And it didn't much matter as the three other faces became clearer. Each face dreamily and slowly morphed into characters of my psyche. Obama was driving. Next to him was Hillary. Squeezing me against the shotgun door was Trump. Supertramp's “Goodbye Stranger” played purposefully on the AM radio.

The two were smiling. And laughing about something. Mr. Personality next to me was complaining about how someone had said something about him and much ado about something being somebody else's fault. My disdain for him only grew when I checked over my shoulder to see if you were okay and I caught the stench of his lies right in my face. It tainted my nostrils and contaminated my mouth as I turned. His breadth, his revolting self, was bleeding into my space. I detested him for intruding in my dream… my dream about you.

He was there, however, to build balance. A reckless balance. An ugly, reckless balance between us. Your wife and I often contemplate whether you'd lock horns with this particular buffoon if you were still among the living. Or would you continue your downward spiral of consuming your daily allotment of FOX News propaganda channel horseshit and play today's version of Archie Bunker??

Lois and I tend to think you would see right through this malevolent con man and wave the old Republican flag for Kasich, McCain, and those who fought the good fight. But here he was. In our car, with us, smooshing me against the door. Belching foulness. And going with us wherever we were headed. Headed with unnecessary balance.

We arrived at a retreat.
A recreational retreat somewhere in what could easily have been deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains. An early evening summer day.
A warm, almost purple twilight glow laid over the entire forest like a visible snow globe, encasing us as we each headed to our cabins.
The three politicians faded but the boy remained.

We wanted to follow you to your cabin. Follow you to make sure you got there safely. You had aged suddenly, during the ride. You walked tenderly, with purpose, favoring your lower back and your knees. I called after you. You didn't look back.

The retreat had scheduled activities. Most were hokie and I knew you'd pass on the therapy and “treatments”. But they offered a jacuzzi crawl and that fit the bill. I knew you'd enjoy that one.

I hovered now, like the specter you once were. I could see the compound from above. I watched as the boy went to retrieve you from your cabin and accompany you on the jacuzzi crawl. You had gone ahead. I was now a prisoner in the mind's eye of the boy as we, as I, raced through the encampment. Looking for you, searching for you.

A trail of mild destruction led me after you. A lawn chair knocked over, a picnic umbrella on the ground, low branches splintered…
It was if we were tracking an obnoxious and ornery silverback toward his next jacuzzi!

Then I found you. The boy found you. You were floating ever-gracefully in the jacuzzi on the aft deck of the Crown Princess. We were sailing to Hawai'i and had at least another day out before arriving on O'ahu.

This, the dream, and this realm, was the last earthly jacuzzi you enjoyed. How we found you, Ogre1, here in this dream, is a mystery.

April 1, 2019
Keith Frantz Mar 2019
May I come lay with you
in your morning hours?
Come kiss your neck,
hold your waist...
Breathe in your hair
and wake your silent soul?
Drink daybreak
with you
through your veiled windows?
Come read your books
and stir your flower blossom tea?
May I taste your sweet waking lips
and gaze into your loving eyes…
May I come make your heart sing?
Can we talk and laugh,
writhe and love...
then lay silently
in solvent contentment
and open joy?
Please
O please
let me come dance for you!
I can be there in mere moments.
May I come...?
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