I told the stars my pain, but they blinked in disbelief
As if the sky could not conceive a suffering so far beneath
Still their presence offerd a quiet relief

I found myself admiring the sky.
Birds of paradise start to fly.
Lost and found in your way of living,
Sparkling waters and past reliving.

Your lips are the pinch of the sun.
Wrap me with ice — lost sacrifice.
Essence of destiny:
The woman who delights in ecstasy.

It felt like death, waiting for another death —
Transcending from death to death;
A moment of silence…
Condemn me to death!

Tears that crackle,
Lights that leave crumbles,
Paved on a deserted path —
A blizzard of thoughts.

We are in a clock; numbers don’t exist.
We begin to recognize the world we dwell in:
The damaged nature, relentless fear,
Life’s breathless sins.

The fog that brings disease,
Cloudburst, and blood of injustice —
Bird of survival with water wings.
Revive me. Love me a little.

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.

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.

I can't help it
I try to stop myself

But I offer my heart,
in every conversation,
Every smile,
Every tear.
It can't be helped
It's a restless bird,
Jumpy and twitchy,
An anxious little creature
And when it comes back
I staunch the bleeding
Suture the wound
I bandage it up.

It presents itself in a silver platter
For passersby to gawk on
To trample and maul,
To spit and to cut
Then I take it back
and dust it up.

It just never gives up
It tells me
"This, this could be it
You need to be brave."
And I watch it
This old senile creature
In my young
Unmarred body
This old wretched thing
Who offers itself
So recklessly.

If I were to leave tomorrow,
would you ever remember me?
would you visit my grave -
Is that how you'd remember me?
Or would you turn me
into a poem of yours,
and keep me alive through you?