Millennial

Joseph Franklin
1 min readNov 4, 2022

I know nothing of before, I have one memory of toddlerhood, a little yellow plastic chair, a second story window. A field shaped by a tar chip road. All I can do now, is recognize beauty. I don’t have money. I find great transcendence in leaving zero trace. When I die, I hope they lose my stone and mix up the dates. No. But I think of oblivion, and only live by the grace of words, people, the cat in the alley. I am so entirely terrified by periods between poems. I dream about vows of silence. I pray for a trickling trout stream. Each life is recorded in time space, you know, or not, I wish, but it’s gotta mean something. Right? If I were rich, I’d kill myself. I never want power. I want the river by the old coal rail bridge. The stories recorded there smell like iron and mud. I can smell iron and mud. I feel the air like a buzzing film reel. I think of my nieces, nephews, looking through an archive of everything I put on the net. Go to the water, drink deeply. The scientists never say why only how.

Joseph Franklin

Poet; Quadriplegic; Rust Belt; Zen; Zazen; Pop Culture;