underground<br />books.org
Like us on twitter facebook
  • UB
    • Roadside Assistance
    • 2013 NYC Poetry Festival
    • kiteFULLofWHISKEY
    • hotel romania
    • WHY we are different from pretend Genius
    • European Edition
    • The Unlikely Blond
    • [UND] >
      • INDIA
      • UBHomeVideo
      • WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO BE A POET
  • POETS
    • Dylan Krieger
  • BOOKS
  • THE KITCHEN POET
  • SUBMIT
  • UB TRUTH
  • #JRPD
  • UBSHOP
  • UBTV
  • PS: Your Poem A Week w/ Philippe Shils

Shlomo Franklin - 4 poems

7/3/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
1. On a Manchester day in May

The barking gods humped the lunatic skies of Manchester in May
I sat solving riddles underneath the canopy and you were on the balcony all smirking and smoking
with mischievous dreams and hopeless romantic memories of the past that never was and a future that wouldn't ever come.
I knew it and you knew I knew too.
All choked up with sobbing and reading newspapers and candlelit vigils with pacifism.
Then you were different.
It was like you were born to change and be changed.
You had it in your heart.
All the blueprints and transcripts and text book ideologies.
All of it burned a big blue hole within you.
It didn't break you.
It became you.
In a good way.
On a Manchester day in May
***
2.Fuck you Philadelphia


Fuck you Philadelphia

With your martini restaurants and not one place to buy coffee past noon

Fuck you Philadelphia

with your construction worker corner delis and signs that say you sell coffee but there isn't any coffee there either

Fuck you Philadelphia

With your eulogy women and unexpected rainfalls

Fuck you Philadelphia

Always ATM machine coffee shops and concert posters with no music

Fuck you Philadelphia

Bikes chained to missing cat sings missing back wheels missing heart and soul

Fuck you Philadelphia

With your American ways liberty bell blues Betty Davis grave and outdated religious ceremonies

Fuck you Philadelphia

You're alright
I won't miss you​

***
3. A Storyteller’s Nightmare
 
Tank tops and storytellers of wasted sex and sixteen hour nights
Billboards for bulletproof stockings
Exploring the everlasting effect of last night's parade

All things adventure and addiction leading you to your defiant destination
Locking yourself up in prison cells with handcuffs on queen size beds in Bethlehem worshiping God and yourself in the mirror across the room

Women in place of you and you in place of men instead of deadly dreams you have lifelike nightmares
Leading you to places that don't exist and people that don't want you
You hit a brick wall and it hits you back
Acting surprised as if to turn your back on freedom and let yourself be swept away by the love of night and the hate of the days you used to waste

All wasted sex in beds you never slept in and rooms you'd rather avoid
People that make you cringe
Like burned bridges over dry riverbeds and skeletons of the bones of her mother all dressed in white sheets and beatnik kerosene Kerouac crack pipes
Blaming everyone else for your own good day moonlight and anonymous animosity

All you and no one else

Selfish fragile faith in the ever changing sky and the always turning wheel of time

with life, love, liberty, and the pursuit of morning

***
4. Little Italy, Toronto
 

Part I

I recall thee in empty seat in Brooklyn off ocean parkway on summer day hot as hell with heat waves and rain clouds off in distant past lives
all lined up like aunts across the sunny sidewalk a block away from your mother’s home
with hilarious film scores and seven sea shanties from a seventies flick you saw on your nineteenth birthday

With me

In the back row of the theater
Hand jobs and shitty popcorn
I renounced my love like an asshole only interested in your reply and ignoring the empty words coming out of my full of shit mouth with Wednesday window visions of downstairs neighbor playtime and childhood fears of frivolous factory girl fun
so fucking afraid of being lonely feeling like the only fully born human among half sleeping slumber party parental figures

Creatures baying

In animal farm form

I still miss you on Sunday evenings like Adam missed Eve
every damn week I don't skip a beat with far away looks into history books
and French films form Canadian cinemas that closed down before the end of the twentieth century.

Before your father died.



Part II (the less meaningful part)

It's not me or you who's the real sinner but it's the bigger picture of pretense and pity that's got me beat

I'm sorry

I was sorry then and I'm still sorry now

Here I am acting like you're the guilty one just so I can sleep at night
You're as innocent as I used to be
I'm a little devil and you joked about it

There is indeed truth within the towering walls of every stupid joke

Goodbye

I've got to go and be me now
God knows I'd be someone else if those cards were still on the table
At least today I'd be someone other than me
I bet that someone else wouldn't be so fucking sad and sincere so here I am with roadmaps that always seem to lead me back to you no matter which way I turn
There you are
Heart in hand
Secrets in soft fingerprints and familiar palm
Tangerine tongue
With bubblegum back and forth kisses
Your mouth to mine and the other way back around

Now

Ring on middle finger and distant smile on sweet sad face
There go your eyes again
No longer sparkling
All wild and wedding-like Lillian late night talks in your walking closet
photographs and my postcards in your box hidden away behind your polka dot shirt I used to love with you in it all breasts and beautiful and my brain being broken by the vision of you

Goodnight now

Goodnight then from Little Italy, Toronto

Goodnight again and again and...
Again!!!!
 





​
Art Courtesy : Zac Booth
Email 
info@enzeecreative.com (www.enzeecreative.com)







1 Comment
Alextre
7/9/2016 12:55:51 pm

In an ever-changing flow of course, my hands tremble as I read Shlomo Franklin's words. Unafraid of acceptance, the poetry speaks and it speaks loudly with quiet undertones hanging in the balance of abridged beauty and unabashed truth. Incredible works.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    The Kitchen Poet is now Tumbling.  

    UB INSTAGRAM

    submit: go  here. enter text in box.
    Read the original 9 KITCHEN Issues
    Picture
    #1
    Picture
    #2
    Picture
    #3
    Picture
    #4
    Picture
    #5
    Picture
    #6
    Picture
    #7
    Picture
    #8
    Picture
    #9

      Join Our Free Raffle for a Kitchen Poet Cookbook!

    SIGN UP & WIN!
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.