Francisco Biscoriliza

It wasn't war or warriors that gave birth to Warrior's Manuscript. It was The Metaphorical Shooting Gallery Series. I’m not exactly sure when or where the spark ignited for this series of poems occurred, but when it did, it was a lightning bolt of laughter. To this day, I still go back and reread that first poem and laugh. It was the scammer poem that made me decide to finally publish a book rather than fiddle about with magazines and the like. I needed to share the thought with you. I mean, I’m sure that there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of us who wish this fate on the irritating, evil bastards that are out there scamming people, especially the elderly out of their savings. If you have not yet read one of these poems, I don’t want to give too much away, but to say that in the first poem, Something I Said (or The Metaphorical Scammer Shooting Gallery), a series of scammers get their comeuppances. The idea came to me because I do a lot of work from home and in the process get a lot of unwelcome phone calls, especially in the days leading up to the closing of Social Security enrollment day on December 7th. On one day alone, I fielded 53 calls, would have been more, but I had taken to messing with them in a variety of ways, sometimes leading them on, other times just being pretend drunk or obnoxious. 

Anyway, I translated these evil beings into characters my seeming innocent target of their schemes would encounter on the street and created delightful outcomes for anyone who ever fantasized of those creeps getting what they should get.

In Warrior’s Manuscript there are four Metphorical Shooting Gallery Poems, dealing

with scammers, lawyers, pharmacists and doctors. By the way, if you find the pharmacist poem particularly hilarious, it really happened pretty much the way I describe it in the poem without the ending, of course. In Warrior’s Allegory, I pick up the series with another odd four: politicians, assassins, censors and transgenders. I should point out that not all the subjects receive the same fate. Sometimes the tables are even turned as is with life. 

My time in the Army was short but intense. It may be surprising, considering my rank and current dedication to the military, that I was drafted into the service. In 1965, I took an ill-advised break from my university studies in architecture and was immediately sent a greeting from Uncle Sam with an invitation as to how I could spend the next couple of years. At first, I was terrified, then angry, then determined to be a terrible soldier and finally, after coming to my senses and being told by the military that I had "certain talents" that they were very interested in, a freedom fighter. The result was that 18 months later, after a rather strange, classified trip, I reached the rank of E-5, a relatively unheard rank for a draftee. Oddly, I got along with that. There was the occasional gripe, but for the most part the camaraderie of men in war zones lifts them above petty attitudes. The enlisted men I had shared my time in the trenches with not only accepted the change but looked to me as a conduit to the non-coms. The non-coms were gracious in their acceptance of a grunt rookie sharing their level of rank, God bless them. And officers showed me a surprising amount of respect and even friendship. That experience carried with me a lifetime and coloured my writing forever, hence Warrior's Manuscript.

That is Keith the Mouse who dreams of a greater life than that of his life in the Tall Grass of KeithsWorld and finds it in his adventures in a couple of children's books I wrote and illustrated in the twentieth century: "KeithsWorld" and "Keith Goes to Hollywood". 

Available at all online outlets and traditional bookstores in paperback and e-book:

$18.99 paperback at Amazon and most outlets

$2.99 e-book at Kindle and most outlets

No, it’s not another war story; nothing gets blown up, but some scammers get shot. 

It’s a surprising collection of poetry through the eyes of a Viet Nam era veteran who turns his eyes and words to the thoughts that the men and women who serve our country often think about and a few odd things they would never think about. These poems, many of them brief stories of adventures, many imaginings and laughter and many a call to peace, for it is ultimately the goal of every Warrior to bring peace by defending freedom, are not exclusively military oriented.

Perhaps, if you are reading this as a Warrior, you will be disappointed that there aren’t more military-oriented poems in here, I hope not, I hope my homage to you in the first poem ‘Warrior’ will be enough. There are others that speak to the way our government is treating our soldiers both past and present that I wish everyone in the country could read. And there is the poignant ‘Sonata for War’ that tells of two opposing soldiers who come together to play a beautiful song on an abandoned piano in a war field then separate without a word, perhaps to face each other in battle the next day, that sums up the frustration of war.

Then there is the rest of the book featuring the hilariously satirical ‘Metaphorical Shooting Gallery’ poems, a trip down Route 66, strange little blobs of poetry that seem to leak out of the poets demented brain, poetry poetry, romantic poetry and even a Christmas song called ‘Claptrap Roadshow’.

Will be available at all online outlets and traditional bookstores in paperback and e-book

in October 2025:

$18.99 paperback at Amazon and most outlets

$2.99 e-book at Kindle and most outlets

Warrior’s Allegory is the follow-up to Warrior’s Manuscript… more in the same vein. More of the ‘Metaphorical Shooting Gallery’ series of poems including my favourite ‘Welcome Home’ which again explores my displeasure with the way our soldiers were treated upon their return home and our protagonist’s response to their attitudes… a slight adjustment to the American Dream. This book is better than the first, as it should be. There’s the usual variety of military poetry thoughts and memories and my usual leanings toward finding peace, love poems and adventures. In Manuscript, Route 66 was the ode. Here ‘Jungle’ is an even longer ode that weaves a mysterious tale through an unknown jungle that is fiction as close to the classified truth as I can get to my adventures in the Asian theater without resorting to well… like sarge said, “If I told ya, I’d hafta kill ya.” I also have a nine page poem that can be summed in in one sentence: I think daylight savings time is stupid.

Will be available at all online outlets and traditional bookstores in paperback and e-book

around Christmas 2025:

$18.99 paperback at Amazon and most outlets

$2.99 e-book at Kindle and most outlets

Musica Congelada is a collection of poetry written by Francisco Biscoriliza and illustrated by world famous artist Also Luongo.