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A Year and a Day Then


by Darryl Price


Removing the deeply embedded jack-blade from
my naked side, like any slicked-up
splinter, was just a bit jarring on the first 
bite, on first try, I must admit. I freely
do so now to your frozen-
over faces. You made your pointed choices more
to the point, so to speak. 
It very suddenly opened wide a hidden 

window inside me, through which blew
a blast of shockingly cold air.
Then just as suddenly the rest
of me began to flap like
loose and angry curtains against the
intrusion,blaming the walls,the ceiling,
the floor,the chairs,anything and
everything, and the ragged skinned room

was fast becoming quite alive again
with shadows and light. I always
wonder, after you've visited me, if
I'll bleed out this time for
good. But that's not the most
interesting thought that goes through my
head. Oh no. Mostly I like to think
about your ghostly face grinning against the newly

washed picnic blankets, with your dull
little blank board of a haircut and then floating slightly 
on top of that greasy fat ground
beneath while we take turns rowing
through the curious clouds that surround
us from every dangling direction.What
shore shall we choose for us today?
What shore is there? I choose

you to be my shore you
said and my mind cracked straight
down the middle and ran with
a smooth and creamy happiness, all the
way to your wanting lips like
a schoolboy to his mum after
a frightening day of  bullies and
wickedly canned baked beans. It was a

victory that only angels could ever see
or taste or smell. Ah then
you were perfectly happy to be
my one and only passenger. I didn't know
or care about the secret plotting
things girls talk about with each
other. Boys never do. All I
cared about was that your palm

and mine were pressed firmly together
and they wouldn't, couldn't find us
to cut us apart ,and we
kept on sailing away together for
another year and a day. But
this is telling the same old story backwards, my dear one,
for I am surely never getting
up once more to invite you

to partake in viewing the universe
from our own sandy island,not
even to stagger a silly little drunken
dance your stoic way. I'm afraid that
time is well over and absolutely done. It's not that
I am all out of love
for the girl with the crookedly
drawn smile, believe me; it's only that all the

once used so well, certain words have no more pulse
to them now than a vanilla stick
from a long ago ice cream dream
truck;look, those drooping brown flower heads stuck carelessly inside
an empty green beer bottle like the
brittle bones of a caught running
deer from a long ago meadow just
might end up somehow scattered aground, for absolutely no good reason at all, but to say I miss you. 





Our Time is Falling into the Timeless Pouring Sands

 

 

of microscopic plops a million of them going crazy for each other's membranes

hoping to reach each other lake instantly bursting out of nowhere flower leaves,like bags of 

impossible spinning hands with flags. Bridges.Just add water, or tears.

We tried not to slide too far away from

each other. I know you tried. I tried to

try.I don't hold this whole gravity thing too long against you.Well maybe

we should have been typing ourselves a secret coded tunnel like in those wartime letters like they

 

always suggested at peaceful summertime school meetings?It's been going on that

way for thousands of years. Right? What's another lifetime or

so among such first as friends going to be? They fall into holes in clumps.

That's what I don't like about them. I don't want to

be part of a clump. But I do want

to somehow survive to be going somewhere alone with only the likes of say only

you. Yeah I know. Not very poetic. Still I

believe in you as someone worth loving to pieces even right this very now,even

 

as far away as these sand dunes have carried me and my over active mind to night.

That's a mirage I can't seem to live so well without any more. Well actually

I have no real choice in the matter. So much of my own 

will to live is tied to that one awesome dream of loveliness you made happen to me.

I mean look there are still stars upon stars everywhere to be had for the asking.

Lots of them looking through telescopes at each other all the day and every other night long.

So many that you can't possibly believe that a true love like ours

 

ever ends. Not tonight anyway.There's still the same

old moon to party on with. It carries its heavy black torch without any such antiquated

delay.Okay so yes another hot day is surely coming back to us

along with its hoards of scorching pink tongues to lick

away at the awful lonely lives we lead. I don't care.Ashes

to ashes I say, because I find you to be a good

enough reason to let at least the thought of some happiness flow through all my most wretched

thoughts of continuing to learn to drive this life no matter where it leads me to in the somewhat bitter end of it all.

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