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Beauty Comes Trailing After Us

by Darryl Price

like a tear stained child because she doesn't want to

be left all alone any more. We can't help but

shun its winds of fire, but we're never the same

as before once we decide to offer it a squeezed

in place at the table of an already overcrowded heart. Plodding

along as we often do there's always been a brief happy

moment when the knowing smile escapes us like a sudden

beam in a mile of angry clouds. This means we are

fooling no one and no one's fooling us. Maybe we

should all just admit that the new junk doesn't make us

any happier than the old junk did. Maybe it's okay to

admit that maybe we like someone for no real good reason

at all. Maybe it's that kind of time. Maybe we're already gone, the

lingering is only a smeared spirit we get to feel. Maybe I've got nothing

left to say to you that you'll ever want to hear

said out loud. I'm still thinking sun here. I still

can watch it snow and not think that the awful

killing machines have somehow stopped moving. They are switched on by cold deathly

people. It's someone's poorly made choice every single time. Give me

those hands now. Give me your lost buffalo ghost dances again and again. All you've

got in your pockets and don't look back to gain perspective. Maybe the fact that things

deepen if you let them means there is an opening

in the sorrowful night for lovers in this world after

all. Give us another try. Call out without remorse. Demand that we play to the end.

Shine on us on purpose. Shine on your own path. We'll receive

the news somehow of your amazing spirit still being inside the borders of

our town. They don't understand that it is inside them everywhere.

That it's inside the snow, the sun, a certain understanding.

They want it to be over there, outside, but of

course it is written in the stars, warm and wistful.

November 08, 2012 Darryl Price

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Author's Note

I've never believed happiness is a choice, but what about those poor souls born into poverty or war or illness or some other brutality through no fault of their own,still I believe in hope because it makes perfect sense even in the darkest hour on earth. Sometimes one can't help circumstance, but one can try to make something out of nothing. Things can and do shift around. The best kinds of things I've found,in spite of the circumstances,for keeping the spirit alive and going are the universals,music,art,humor,let's call it fun,literature,film,friendship,nature...love,appreciation,kindness,generosity and forgiveness.

from a letter to a friend:...yeah one of my pet peeves is that we always seem to have to justify our love to the world over and over. I mean poets have already been trying to do this for centuries. And of course it becomes a balancing act--because any time you answer them correctly the next question has already been loaded in the barrel--they want to shoot you off,just so they can deny the existence of your feeling. How in the world this helps anything I don't know. So I continue to try to put it into words,words that matter,words that may matter,to tell others it's okay to be who you are. We spend so much time justifying ourselves we miss out on the fact of ourselves. Time spins regardless. dp

This work will appear in its original form in A Baker's Dozen in their December 2012 issue thanks to Michelle & John.w