by Darryl Price
Tired, so tired of it all, but oh we'll always go on, won't we, still carrying on about the love the love the love we shared, only again and again. Ooh the oozing life blood is slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly now going to shit I say, practically thawing and slipping and
sliding like a faraway saw into my fizzing ear canals right here and drizzling like chocolate wax into my world weary and worried eyes-- you can feel it carrying on inside your crazy disappearing shoe steps yourself if you listen, and
that means something is shaking it up all over the known weary world under the pretty sweaty covers tonight, shake it up, baby,
like there's no tomorrow, anywhere in sight, somewhere though maybe, not right now in the act of these typing fingers. Oh, yeah I know. Don't worry. I'll emerge eventually, probably
we all will until there's simply nothing left to crawl
out from under. Even that sounds way too fatalistic for the likes of me and my brain drain
to swallow down whole.I don't want to be in like with
a perfect goddess on somebody's holy fur-lined wall.That only leads
to jealousy and envy and false notions of granted immortality.
Someone will pull the trigger again and you'll all go down to
the river to rinse. I want to know right now,
whatever happened to our beautiful young friend named John , where'd he head off to this time? Where the heck's he gotten himself off to at this
very late moment in the roving night time's criminal visiting hour? And I don't mean heaven or hell either. What
really happened to him? If love is just the physical
sensation then what's the use of dreaming? I know how
dumb that sounds. But what is this thing that's got
us all tangled up in its dick wad drama like
some kind of bowling ball made out of wire after crazy wrapped wire
after crazy wire wire wire wire?We're tightly packed in like centuries
of farming.We only grow what we are taught to
expect might grow and find as we wind our way on down the oncoming hill slide of the
next ride home. We fight but we don't ever get out
into the bright lights like our little begging insect hearts want us
to. We make due with every mistake we can think of and still
go nowhere new together like kings and queens of the
one and only earthly paradise should.There are great green moments in the viewing I guess.
There are real persons too who do lift their sunken heads and
say go ahead and take a good long look, it won't kill you. Go
ahead and dance around if you feel like it. Go
ahead and act crazier than shit if you must. You
just might get the attention of the next great big nothing. Sooner
or later we all rock and roll back over and go sound to sleep.
The blankets are a good enough reason to go to world
war III.But first let us feast our hoarded hopes on our fabulously laid out sweetly golden slumbers
another few hundred years or so. Whatever this is it can wait to happen to us some other time. And
if it won't then we'll tear the whole damned thing down
with our bare fingers, until what is left is only the
awful bloody stench of the last silences left on earth and then we'll start it up all over again like nothing ever happened in the first place. That's the scenario they
love to write into their awful droll movie scripts. But whenever I think
of your perfectly smooth foot curled up to the newest hour against my frozen leg I
know there's every good reason to get up and start
to heat whatever I can in the belly of the
nearest hatch-ling day. Of course they laugh their asses off and
say that's a good one,Darryl, you always could make us
laugh, but seriously you need to get out and get yourself
a real job.All I need to do is look
in no particular direction and jump, jump right in. I'll do
it, John. Me and my girl. Just like two gifts from the most ancient of gods themselves might, if they weren't so busy winking at each other with real and delirious fancies of delight.
Bonus poems: looking at a rosebud
I Don't Know
how many more
times I can
see her without
falling in love.
There is nothing
here you could not expect anyone looking at it not
to see coming. Cold skinny trees
with their once proud leaves
only a wind polished buried memory
away from pure nakedness. Wish I could go
out into the street like that myself and
just blow away.
Maybe I will. I could you know. Anyone can.
Don't know. It's so hard to muster
anything more than a string of paper
skeletons these days. When I think of
all my few minutes I've got
left to go, there's no better gift
I can think of that you haven't
already rejected right out of
hand. I can't
help it. The
lonesome poems still
jump out of my frayed pockets like
loose change through a hole, but I no longer care
what they might add up to
some day down the line. I say let them spill and
roll. Let them eventually sink through
the ground like rotten old rubber toys.
Say you think it
feels cold in here? Oh yeah I almost
forgot you're standing
on the other
safe and sound end
of these obviously pretentious letters I've mine.
You've made it to the
hillside without me. That's cool.You're cool.We're good.Good as gold.
Darryl, this is pretty raw, but I like it.
"If love is just the physical
sensation then what's the use of dreaming? I know how
dumb that sounds. ..."
"...dickwad drama..."
Yeah, raw.
Fave
Enjoyed this piece. "We only grow what we are taught to / expect..." An itneresting work, DP. I like it.
the dickwad drama goes on, brotha--
as do you.
and john--smiles
i love how you follow a thought and don't let go. or a feeling. or both. love the ending, too, the last stanza: brilliant.
"I want to know right now
where John Lennon went."
There's a colloquial quality in a Darryl Price poem that I love and can't get enough of.
I love these, Darryl.
"Go ahead and dance around if you feel like it. Go
ahead and act crazier than shit if you must."
"The blankets are a good enough reason to go to
war."
"I Don't Know
how many more
times I can
see her without
falling in love."
Fave!
"I don't want to be in love with a perfect goddess... "
Love your search for the real. *
"I don't want to be in love with a perfect goddess... "
Love your search for the real. *
I’ve always admired your ability to make these poetic statements.
You make us care.
So did John.
(So does John.)
*
Mercy, man, the stuff is always strong with you, but (and I'm not even a poet and notice this) the line breaks in this move it. Too many to really note, but let me just say that there's not a one out of place and not one that doesn't pull me along from one stanza to the next.
And, oh, "Me and my girl. Just like two gifts." Good lord. Good lord, those two sentences.