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Is That a Floating Postcard over There in your Shirt Pocket, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?


by Darryl Price


We came wind-milling together ,up and over the blue and yellow stone bluffs, like a couple of empty yet racing nowhere fast plastic grocery bags, catching onto everything and anything in our way, and desperately trying to get free again, in any tiny bit of wind that blew, by going in our direction. We kept our heads down,

nonetheless. The only thing I wanted to be seeing was the blue sheets of ocean below, and the white bedtime caps of the sailboats, I mean, besides the insides of her bikini again. She caught me looking, and in spite of the danger we were in, she let out a little snide laugh that skidded across the rocky plains between us and hit me straight between the

eyes. I loved how clean and crooked her teeth looked just then. Then it was all back to business, as usual. We needed to get down there, way down there, and fast, without being seen by anyone with say a gun or a knife. The damned curious circling gulls were already hang-gliding our way, like fully gassed up zeroes ready to suicide themselves for any

small crust of bread. They'd probably figured out we'd be good for something tasty, left carelessly behind. I started to throw a rock at them, but her hand held my arm in a vice-like grip. She didn't speak, but shook her head back and forth. I was instantly in an intense slo-mo trance of my own making, when a little rivulet of the clearest water I've ever

seen zigzagged down her chest and magnified her skin cells, and I dropped the rock at once to the sand below. We waited in utter silence, until the birds short attention spans were suddenly drawn away by a bunch of screaming and laughing voices, running by in the opposite direction, smelling of picnic food and suntan oil and soiled diapers. We

saw our new chance then and we took to it, like any properly made of bamboo and paper kites, to a picture perfect clearly blue sky. Looking more like big spiders now, I must admit ,than friendly bathers, we scrambled over and down the cliff's jutting chin and dropped to the land below with two crispy sounding sandy sounding crunches. She was up on her

muscular haunches immediately, while I staggered and held my legs and pumped my burning feet up and down in some kind of stupid dance that meant okay, yes I'm alive but that did really hurt, and this sand is like a bucket of hot coals, if you really must know all the forgone and concluding reasons why. She pointed to the tiniest boat. Our boat. Our way out

there in the distance kind of sailing alone boat. I was very much thinking about not liking sharks very much right then, when she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into the water like a short piece of rope. That's when I heard the first shots ring out, and saw the water pop up all around us, like something starting to bubble and cook on a stove, and saw them

coming, on furious riding machines, straight towards us. It's funny how everything will turn into raw emotion when everything's just about to end. There was a lot of clouds and then the sound of the whole world being submerged and then gulls, more motors smelling of oil, and distant shouting, and strong hands pressing me onto something wet but floating. Her face said it all before I finally passed out.





Screwing Up the Natural Order of Things/  or Trying

by Darryl Price



" Deserve your dream."--Octavio Paz


to get the dream that fits 

inside of my head lifted-up out of my eyes again. 

They act like they've never even


heard of this thing called love. 

They have no need for longer 

haired visionaries. For those of you not 


familiar with the terms we're talking about your freedom to grow as you see fit, to 

think something alone and not commercialized. Why lie 

about it now? They're only going 


to march into your living rooms 

with their armored bank vaults on their backs and 

take everything you own for no


good reason, just like a tornado 

of swirling kitchen knives. Just trying to clean 

the cowards out of my head 


so I can sort of rest in peace later-on. They love their parade of 

brightly colored patchwork quilts like a hideous 

child with a one of a 


kind toy. It's mine, mine mine! And you can't have it. We love their misused 

flag, too, of course, but like a shepherd loves his sandles. 

Like a friend beams a friend up into his heart light. 


Like a kid loves the rocky outdoors  

just the way it is. Yeah 

there are always going to be 


bulletholes in the world.We create the lump sum, make the difference 

between sinking in the dark waters 

and the sailing into the setting sun.




Bonus stuff:


Wish I Had A Little Something


by Darryl Price



 

that would all of a sudden open

up on you like a lost rolling 

derby hat full of springing, gangling, wild-eyed

ghosts. I like the idea of things once

unseen floating out of those that are

left waiting to disappear forever in a

 

big burst of where'd that come

from excitement, don't you? Tells the very

real story of all good worthy tales.

Still I wouldn't want it to be

all tricky fanning lights in your eyes

and creepy crawling shadows on your backs

with no heartfelt giggles. I think we've

 

earned the right to sink back in

our paid for chairs, sip on a

cool drink. It's just that all the

hippest cartoon-characters in the world aren't going

to save you from a sick mind

warped by sex and TV. Haters hate

the rest of us. Yeah I know

 

TV is an inanimate object, it swims

around and around the world looking for

fools because it can and doesn't think twice

of going anywhere else but where to

bite them all through their wasted lives. We do need to

travel a bit outside of its influence

because if we don't we will shrink and die.

 

Die of boredom, shrink of no close personal

dancing, die of too much time on our

hands, shrink of not ever seeing a different sky

somewhere. I want to go everywhere, deep inside cavernous

flowers and well outside of familiar stars. Walk on clouds--

like spongy lily pads of light-- bounce on sea floors

next to many starfish, glass seahorses. Fly through impossible

 

tree branches, even through solid brick walls if I must. Through sad-eyed

dreams and through miles of books with their rows of neatly trimmed pages, through

sheets of timeless tickling musics and through softly-waking

leaves with moments wet with various winds. Top

down, top up. Poem opens, poems close.

Minds thinking for themselves. Eagerly anticipating ideas.

 

And so forth. But instead as you

can see I've still got the nothings,

so that's about all I'm giving you

here for now. We're almost there anyway. So it's

goodbye to you and hello to me

again. The towering pages close their ambitious gates

with a forlorn clang of fantastic stinging smarts. Ouch.




Bonus poem:



How a Poet Went to the Grocery Store to Get a Can of Tuna and Came Back With a Plum and a Pear by Darryl Price


“I don't need your love. I don't need you to understand. I just need you to listen.”—Perfume Genius


I was caught up in a bloody, territorial poetry war,

flushed out into a prose strewn battlefield, left on my

own to die in the traditional sun or the millennial ranting

rain by everyone I loved. It was cold in my

body like a cup of ice sitting on a clump

of in-between squashed aground grasses. I didn't know which

 

of the overgrown, bombed out houses of literature were warm

to my kind of wounds on the inside. So I

built a fire, slowly, from all the feelings I'd been

able to hide away in the holes in my heart.

I kept it going on, cooling off and blazing up,

until I was able to lift my head, until I

 

started to glow and could see a little bit in

front of me. This is how things happen. It wasn't

some overnight success that worked. It was a sad enough

series of shell shocked scenarios where someone always ends up

floating face down in an alphabetical river of tears. I

should know. I've struggled in those foul, foolish waters for

 

far too long like so many of you. The shoreline

is obviously no better, but at least it's got more

of a possible road to roads than the brown dishwashing

waves ever had. I wasn't beat up over sex, I

was beat up over politics, or I should say over

the fear of a different political dreaming. You can call

 

it free expression. The older generation of young writers turned

on us with a sickening vengeance. Their murderous reviews performed

acts of unspeakable cruelty that played out daily on the

nightly encoded news feeds like rotating ducks with targets painted

on their smiling, puffed out chests. There was only one

thing to do, the same thing there always is, the

 

same thing that has to happen each and every time

you wake up to the horror again and that is

to write, to create something that isn't bought and sold.

In terms of authenticity, some things never change, but all

things do, a mystery that only a creative answer can

solve. In time, you'll learn to swim on your own.

 

 

Darryl Price    10/02/2014


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