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Fool of Me


by Darryl Price



This no man's island I'm perched high above isn't always so beautiful to the casual beholder of newly printed maps. 
Oh don't go and get your clouds all wrong. Puffed or thin, everything
I say I believe in is a real feeling, until the music dies away let's say, or else eventually 
has new brushes tucked down among its deepest darkest soil of soils ready
to celebrate any and all the changes of our many more lives to come.It's how it famously works. I can't change that. Wars can't erase the
small miracles to come, not for too much of a silent distance anyways. 
Never going to happen. Seems to me we're meant to be 

these constantly confronted endless consumers with the latest possibilities of our own thoughts  
flying off all around us, and hugely rolling fields of the wildest
flowers imaginable growing as far as the eye can see. Oceans of
ancient, timeless staves like air show angels blasting away over our heads
or millions of silky, steadily rising jellyfish-- the deeper you may go the higher you may rise. Go on--take a good long look.
But my mind tonight is sad, sad and lonely. No one else can
begin to find the place I'm in either. So I get it. The black point's still too
far away for anyone to see its pretty little pointy head. I'm helpless to the

miles myself but I still feel
like dancing on the road like an idiot sometimes just for you. You figure it out. Your
touch was what did it to me.
I understand you might suddenly come upon a forgotten bed of broken stones and that really scares you. Others went before you, now they're gone. Remember. You're the lucky ones here right now who are able to navigate the new world on your own original terms. That's why it seems that this must be the first ever material moonlight ever successfully traversed through time, part of you knows it simply isn't, can't be. Someone else must have felt

something inside so big once that it simply carried them away into the rest of their lives forever. That flood is coming at us too as surely as we're alive now. Don't wait to discover if your exit wings work. All they wished for then was so they could  right then and there kiss without running out of any more precious time.More power to them, and to us as well one might say.Don't know what I was thinking once you gave me your softness like that. It knocked me out to feel such beautiful closeness in a person's hand. I never wanted to let go of that simple truth then, and that moment's liberation, hesitation, caused a generated spark to leap up my arm hairs and into my brain like a fourth dimensional waterfall. Some days later I find myself still

standing on those dampened banks, unable to forget what I saw expanding from inside that suddenly illuminated living submarine's window chambers.Now here I am, sit typing my way toward another dead hour without you by my side. Something shadowy on these walls stacks my efforts neatly into square cardboard boxes of the imagination. There it goes again fading off for so long like a train as night walks by as the curtains insist on reminding me of just how alone I am and remain as ever standing in silent, unloving, uncaring witness. Some say it's a gift to be alone. Others have lost their treasured voices for good I'm told. I've got mine gathered in a bitter glass bottom that must be holding all the calcified pain inside there too. Here

is only a numb town given over to splashing winds and roaming bands of spitting rain.This isn't anything new. I've swept myself coming back this way many times before. With so many tears cried upon this old love song you'd think the world would have been completely washed away by now. Yet here it sits. Can you imagine such a thing? How many words believe what people cannot? Why must a heart lead me astray again? What's the point? You are.Well that's the news from the mysterious lost islands of now and then. There's been no more strange changes in the weather. The rain slaps its long wet hair against the window and begs me to join her outside in wailing sorrow. But that wouldn't be loving you as much as I want to. That wouldn't

be giving you the chance to go on looking for your perfect happiness elsewhere in the big bad wilderness of this rotten life like any pretty beast must. It wouldn't be giving you this poem. This I can and will do for you, my love, for the rest of my own miracle days.





Bonus poems:



The Kitty Cat Made the Stiff Little Nose in the Air Bushes Wiggle

 

like that groan inducing old rubber pencil

trick in the wide-eyed wrinkled hands

 

of another fake magician or parent.  Or is it

the purest of silliest delights, a  

fully realized grand tour of pretense with

me as your guide or the gathered mossy expertise

that turns the obvious one-man joke into

something more incredulous once again? Presto! I've still

 

got your nose. See? Nothing works. Everything

is a lie. Or it all

simply becomes killingly boring, what you're willing to

invest in through your given over eyes

 

to its cartoon character for the sake

of one tiny moment's humane hesitation

before the inevitable storm and fall of

what's real and actually hurts. That's where

we'll meet I'm so sure of it now.

And where does this nuclear incident

 

of laughter fit into the quick palm

of timeless Beauty on her natural

order of all things dull and dusty ?

(Everything else acted Perfectly Normal. Let's

 

get that straight right now,mister.) That's the

sticky thing about accepting this job.

You don't necessarily get to choose what

form and shape of the next

messenger. And that's just the very first

part of the all consuming process

 

as you suck through the door. After

that you're left with your hands on 

your knees, of course. Now what to

do with all that left over

 

painted landscape paper? Hey it's your play Shakespeare

after all.  So where do you keep

the  poor sewn onto strings puppets after

they do your evil bidding anyway?

Can you blame us for wanting to break open that chest and 

steal them away? Please. I've got a straight pin. Allow me. I'll be your thief tonight.












Love Letter from the Last Elephant(an early draft version)

We all hear the stories
coming right up out of
the dust. We see the same
sky, the same stars. We've met

our own deaths forever.
We know what's happening.
Because of this some of
us will come willingly

to have chains put around
our feet. Some others must
never be anything
but free. This way they can

still lead with their hearts.We
cannot save us. You could
not save yours either as
he was bleached and became

a ghost. There is little
time for this conversation
before the planet
can no longer pronounce

our names correctly. Then
there will be no one to
call us home again by
trumpet or full foot stomp.

It may sound funny to
you but we have tasted
the rain, flowers, grass;
it tastes right, we believe.


 





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