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East


by Darryl Price



We went east. It wasn't all that 
easy, but easier than staying 
where we were, unable to 
freely move or give birth to anything 
brand new. We went east in
search of the mysterious faraway 

beginnings of a mythical 
wild west. We went east because
it seemed right and less sad. There 
wasn't any peace, or what you 
would call scientific proof,we 
weren't doing anything extraordinary. 

We were only 
following a strong feeling of 
something hopeful like real love to 
its inevitable beautiful 
conclusion, but it was driving 
us a little mad along 

the way. We forgot to come back 
home for years or maybe home all 
of a sudden just sounded slightly 
different by definition. 
We went on an eastern foray 
into forests unknown. We 

ate strange mushrooms. But we smiled at 
the same changing skies. We listened 
to the same visiting birds, drinking 
up the same on fire flowers.
That's a thing I know. And I think
you know that we saw galaxies

in the eastern clouds from our lonely
planet. East is east. We entered 
an eastern tunnel looking
for a widening light to swallow 
us up and spit us out again,
broken perhaps, but with dreams.



Bonus poems:



Red Meat 

Red as an eye blinking in disbelief.
Red as a mistake you should have
known better than to make. Red as
a moment in a photograph where you
are looking in all the wrong directions. Red

as a gift lost in the sands.
Red as a meeting between a man
and a goddess. Red as a letter
curling into its lamenting dream for the
last time ever before the transformation to pure

ash. Some are living only as blind
fish in a cave of endless commercials. They
eat theirs with a well-done tongue that
sticks itself out begging for more. Some
are fatter than the stars. While others

are teetering on the brink of repulsion,
picking up the slick plastic edges with
two delicate fingertips at a time. After
the dump it becomes more paper meat,
pink but still red,still flying bone.



Holes 

by Darryl Price


We laughed. We made a great quiet sound of 
just us. Bouncing off chosen clouds. Walking 
together. Touching fingers. Smallish and 
delicate hands discovering larger 

calloused guitar playing hands. Backwards and 
forwards. Burning as one flame. Drowning and 
not caring how high the waves got to be 
rolling over us. Now you can't seem to 

even imagine how surprised and sad 
I was to discover that you are so 
completely gone from the you that always
had mattered most to me then on a thin 

red blanket on the grass pebbled ground. I 
did everything I said I would. For you
I thought. For the one of a kind blue light  
in your eyes. Maybe that was my stupid 

boy mistake. I've made many more since. Too 
many holes in my heart. We cried. I still
remember. You said most of the same things 
I was thinking. We cried. I believed you 

because it was you in there.That's all I 
ever needed. The only difference 
between you and me here in this awful 
place so far removed from love is I still 

somehow believe you do know me to be 
only me. That's what I've said all along.
That's why I keep saying it. When I should
be holding my tongue,accepting their thanks.




Down and Up by Darryl Price

We made a pact. It didn't have 
to be spoken. We heard it in
the songs we were singing. This is 
how we spoke to each other's heads.
I went down and you went up.
I came up and you went down.
Neither filling that empty space.  


Drunken Piece of Art by Darryl Price

How can I not call it art if it was made from your coming 
and going image? You wanted me to be the serious 
type at first I know. Your expectations 
over came everything in my world but 
my fears. I wasn't going to be making 
cartoons for your friends to read and laugh at. It seemed the more I 

looked through the leaves the more I saw motion 
in your eyes. I had to paint every singularly revealed 
light, every hidden shadow. I had to follow every line 
off your face, your neck. We never said goodbye. I'll never stop 
losing you. Is art it? You said I should just entertain them, 
but they came to watch me fall into the broken ground barking 

at your feet. I don't know how to be anything but serious 
about wanting to touch every part of you with every 
part of me. I'm not an artist like that. I fumble for the 
hand hot keys as much as the impatient door, spilling my ruined 
paper bag mistakes on the moonlit floor. It might as well be 
a cliff when it comes to wanting to be as real with you. Why 

can't I just say your name to myself? I don't want to be anything.
I just want to be with you. I wish it was only 
the art. You could look and then leave for a very fine dinner 
someplace else less likely to make you cry. I'll have an endless 
imaginary cigarette. Make a brushstroke, a bored 
silhouette. Add a remembered color. Wanting to hold your voice.



Bonus poem:


Stolen Flowers

by Darryl Price


They shouldn't be the ones who define
everything we've got going down with
the hip young goddess of our universe.
They're just not very good at it. 

They always end up pocketing the
poor drunken rooster's only savings
and begging for more. It could all end 
up in a stinking heap right there I 

suppose,without a tail to wag at 
the bottom of the potato chip
bag of human life, but I'm pretty 
sure that won't happen or it would have 

been done and over by now. No it's 
an ongoing war of the heart. They'll 
tell you it's done with brains, but only 
because they want to sell you a new 

used car for the rights to your sweet soul's 
kitchen. And all because you might want 
to own something else you're hiding from 
the rest of us that only the devil's 

man can offer you a deal on 
in this one free lifetime. Is it worth
it? You'd better hope so. All the time
you're thinking how can you be the first

one ever to outsmart death with enough 
buried money and with enough 
good looks on the racks. Look around you. 
See anybody who's done that yet? 

Oh yeah but he still wound up full of
very real bullet holes in his once 
pristine oceans. His coral reefs were 
savagely picked clean by the vultures 

of new corporate hate. It's easy 
to spot them out in the daylight. They
like to smell like rotten chemicals 
that don't belong in the air so much, 

a foul greedy degree; they look like 
cruel and thorny weeds dressed up in somebody 
else's finest stolen flowers.
Same old boss. Love's much younger than that.


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