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Chalk (Sunflowers) on a Sidewalk


by Darryl Price



 

Okay, so it's not exactly the lost art of sweeping anything away .

For the sad fact that no one searing

Love endures just for us. Brown, folded

Petals, yellows buttered over petals, I do not

 

Wait to see if the floating moon

Can at least brush all my empty thoughts aside

With her cancerous scarves in some

Kind of secret friendship wave. Painting and making


Sunflowers, I do not mentally

Bang my head against the wall.

That's all I can say. I don't have

Anything in mind to ask of

 

You, ever, don't feel physically  

Confined to the real world you inhabit, react alarmingly

To the cruel passage of cuckoo o'clock time and its engraved spaces. I

Do seem to fall into the deep

 

Blue sea of the sky again and

Again, like a relentless flying

Fish. Paintings as sunflowers, feelings of

No cold, nothing but pure echoes aimed to all my dreams. 





Bonus poem:




What I Would Like to Say to You(final version)

Is this the place, where I finally
end up frozen dead in my tracks, found walking alone & with a stick
and a dog,sporting
a cat hat, alone on the tip
top of a hill, no longer

concerned with the wind's
icy fingers scratching down my neck? I'm here
and yet I'm also at home everywhere in this God forsaken place.
I prefer the big rocks, you know, and
the soft and green and thick
moss of mid to late summertime, the

great fluidity of
that enormously beautiful animal we love to see and hear 
and call the water,
soaking up the sun, the
burning maidens splash dancing all over
with little white clouds tied

around their fabulous bellies. Ah, who
would ever want this vision to 
end, brothers,without starting
to weep uncontrollably?Yet there it
is all perfectly wrapped up
in an otherwise grey

chunk of missing road laid out here long before me. An end. The end. Every step
or misstep I  have taken now leading me
around in circles of sorrow and grief has
finally dropped me off the grid's fingertips without you at my hand or elbow today.
Whatever rain there was a moment ago now
has pulled itself back out of

the mist shot like a reversed arrow into the past. Perhaps these
angels they love to talk about so much 
are only made out of the
things you cannot ever truly see for yourself.
Nobody's coming, not
for me, not even buzzards,

no wolves or snakes unless
they're already here
and I'm just what's left with
a few bones thrown in for
good measure. Did I make
this poem up or did

it make me up into its own private touring bus this morning?Oh well then perhaps
one more cup of cola will do the trick
for the long night ahead of us. This letter was
never in my pocket
to begin with and shall
not be mailed out to you today.

Darryl Price  072706-060110

 

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