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If. You. Speak.


by Darryl Price



 

It doesn't matter to me if you speak

on behalf of some naked truths or not.

Air can still trip you up to your shaved shins

into some nice wet cement and dirty

up all that youthful progress in the process. Nothing can save

 

us from dawn.  What you can do is accept the

latest goop you are given and jump out

of the mushy hole you find yourself wading in

and go skipping back to new beginnings--

for a brief lark's way, eh? Clean yourself off and

 

continue the next journey inward. What

you'll find is there are many different

meadows within the meadow. The one at

dusk is not the one you met this morning.

That one's gone like a head in the window.

 

Things have happened since then that have changed things. But the

center remains your best home base. The trick is to

realize it can still be found inside the

different spots like a touchstone or a

portal. You're free to enter the dragon's

 

breath, of course, no matter what they tell you

in school, but remember you might get out

again in a different country, that's

all. And on top of that your own swirling

bee hive of atoms is constructing you

 

always toward your own utter final

disappearance up the ladder of stars--

like a fire on the lips of a lighthouse.

Again this is nothing to get frightened

about—it's only the most natural

 

order of things. Just get on the bus and

go to the top if you want. It's a big universe.

You'll end up somewhere. In the meantime please

listen for the music that is most alive in the world and dance yourself silly if you

must. And you must. You really,  really must.




Bonus poem:



Rain Dance

 

Every chance we got we jumped

on the ocean's back and sailed

to the new world holding on to a tiger's whiskers, like

dreamers often do. We fought

 

occasional sea monsters

out of an accrued boredom and

false bravado, sometimes in the natural form of a

giant running wave, sometimes

 

like smoking serpents made out

of a million tree leaves stuck

together with cloud. Even the sticky sunlight on the

churning wind's spinning arms can simply

 

turn into a gaping mouth  

of burning teeth-- if you are

keeping innocence by the score. Once we entered the new

found shore's borderline looking

 

like gold thieves in the night we

threw all our noblest aspirations

at the local fauna like all boys do. This caused

a tremendous tidal wave.




Theater


by Darryl Price



 

There is nothing left to say. Won't it last?

I'm daydreaming again with my green-eyed

head snoozing on my tilted toward a

godforsaken boredom hand anyway. 

I'm one of the last peasants joining the

harboring crowd from where I'm standing. I

don't remember how I got pushed up on

this particular wooden stage. Or, hey,

 

maybe that was me that just got off to

the far off rumble of something coming

at us. What would you do with the answers

if you found them? I would want to feel like 

I was being let in on something that

makes me stumble and fall to my knees, but,

like she said, I don't want it to hurt us

so much. Haven't we all had enough of

 

that kind of dying darkly vacant love?

That's impossible to know I guess. Is

my time almost well done here? Is that the

final answer then? You get to say what 

you can't begin to articulate and

then it's too damn late to reconsider

all your bravest options—because once you're

up there you're just bound to mutter something

 

stupid that gets magnified and exposed.

The one thing you can do is walk away

singing like a ghost. And if you've got a

little original move on tap you 

might as well let that rip up the cardboard

scenery as you exit the once fresh

greener grass, show them who they're dancing with

all along. Drop the anger. Don't look back.   



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