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Darryl, The Biography


by Darryl Price


"I was born very far from where I'm supposed to be. And so I'm on my way home."--Bob Dylan


 

I don't owe you anything. If I'm a recluse

what does it have to do with you? I

have the right to be poor. Some things cannot

be explained away by letters that are true but

 

not the whole truth. That's simply politics, bitter and mad.

You are not me. I don't care what the

ancient animals thought. They did the best they could

to come up with an explanation for their stars.  

 

Doesn't mean they didn't know anger or lust or

sacrifice. It only means they came and went. We

are coming and going, too. You think you know

the truth whenever you hear it, but nothing changes

 

more often into something else. A little piece here

and a little piece there and suddenly you think

you know where all the gold is buried. It's

an illusion, a shared joke. You'll get your fair warm

 

dumpling in the end. That's not being cynical. Looking

back it does no good to blame anybody for

anything. You never mention the mountain of poems, the amount of

songs I've written or the importance of reinventing yourself.

 

Art is self realization, it takes a lifetime. They

say we're lost. We've lost some goodness in the

form of important players, but more will come, there's

always more. In the meantime try to remember who

 

you really are when the TV's off. You used

to like to hold hands. You loved walking barefoot

on the wave kissed shores. You smiled among trees, young and old.

Nothing's changed. Everything changes. Experiment & explore. With peace and love. Your poet.







Bonus poems:




They Don't Get to Say Everything


by Darryl Price


The world hasn't ended. Your part in it is still on going. The going on world hasn't winked out. Every possibility is still out there. In there out there it doesn't matter where you are. The here and now claims you for its only tribe. They only want someone to tell them they are wrong. Well. They are very wrong. They want war to come and kill them.

It's a suicide in a gummy side show tent. Love can't be coerced. Like gravity it works every time that conditions are present. Right left it doesn't matter where you stand when peace is blooming. The center holds you tight to itself like a granulated belt strap. You can use it to get stronger than you are. You can use it to navigate a star made of rooms. 

You can use it to climb up whole mountains. You can use it to fill in a
hole of your own making. You can be digested or expelled from its hungry grasp, depending
on your preference to live or die. Either way you have a say. It's not love if it
has to tell you to move. It's not love if you leave in the middle of the 

ocean. It's not love if you decide to feed the tigers your favorite moon in order to 
make a quick getaway. The world isn't quite working. The weeds are only trying to make
it to Nirvana. You can't blame them. Yet the collective mob want to blame everything on God. It's
not God if you don't recognize your own deepest feeling. You don't need angels to tell you

if you are thirsty. The world hasn't ended. Your part in it is as unique as a 
snowflake butterfly riding on a hummingbird's fuzzy back. So for them to say God is dead
because they have more guns than anyone else aimed at the back of your head is a lie.
It's a lie to believe that new people have nothing new to offer. They always have themselves.

And that's the song of this poem. I'm inventing it right now. It doesn't have to look
like all the other poems. It doesn't have to work the same way twice. It doesn't
have to end like this. You could give it an altogether different name and place. The world's alive. 
Your part in it is yours to claim. You can see poets do it all the time.





I'm Tired


in more ways than just my body. My

feelings are all tired, too. Like

a tall drink at the hotel bar, my

mind is many miles away.  I

 

wish I could see the ocean again one

more time. Maybe we were wrong

to spend so much of our lives dreaming.

Now we are nearly gone into

 

the history books. But the ocean remains, sadder

than blue to me, while I'm

drifting in my room like a balloon without

a sky. I'm walking out of

 

time and I know how much that hurts,

but I  made a never-ending promise

to always be your sad-eyed poet until the

end. I wouldn't say it if

 

I didn't mean it. But I'm very tired

of some things right now. It all

seems like a very long day to me

here. I could use much sleep.

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