Like a Pop Song This Is the Head of a Sunflower

I find this beautiful and emotional with great dense imagery and music that carries it from stanza to stanza. the title is perfectly understated for the poem's essential message which is anything but understated.

This is fantastic, D.P. i think it's my all-time favorite of your poems, all the images are so strong and specific, the language quite beautiful.

I can never find the right vocabulary for expressing my appreciation and understanding of a poem, whereas I can be pretty exact about the equally difficult-to-define appeal of a short story to me,but I'm with Kathy here. This poem is grand. It is expansive, inclusive, its gesture is an almost psychedelic opening out, its tracing of patterns of growth and light is exhilarating, its love of life in forms promiscuous and contagious.

Great piece of writing, DP. Those closing lines:

as any dream lingering on the edge of sanity
as well as the boy who forgot to go
home and grow up as well as the girl
who fingered her hair and smiled at the boy
as well as vanished years that tumbled into rainbows"

...have such a settled ease. Wonderful sound when read aloud. "Rainbows" is a perfect word to end the piece. Strong imagery throughout. I like this a great deal.

wonderfully cataclysmic. since i'm also 'lingering at the edge of sanity' at the end of term, i'll have to give this another read, but it made me tumble already and i'm clinging to the 'tiny spastic hope' that you hold out to us. you're a virtuoso, d.p.

Indeed, I think Susan, Kathy, James, Sam, and Finnegan have it right here: Grand/Expansive/Wonderfully cataclysmic.
There's a depth of feeling, of possibility that's remarkable. Beautiful.

no point in adding to what has already been said--for me, it works.

This is the best of your poems I've read, D.P.

Every image, building and building throughout, was like biting into a favorite fruit and then the following sensation of how completely that single bite can nourish the body or, in this case, the mind and the throbbing core of a soul. I hear my own heartbeat in these words, man. Just wonderful.

Wow, very accomplished and beautiful. Well done.

Though the structure wasn't as much to my liking (felt kinda like a pop song), I felt there were some great, poignant images here, mostly the folded map and most of the last stanza.

This is the head of a sunflower like a pop song.

Love the sense of interconnection and expansiveness underneath the beautiful imagery and language. Very nice work.

you changed the title, didn't you? it's good that way.

Yeah because of John Woodington's comment above. I figured that's the universe giving me a free one.Who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Thanks for noticing, Finn.

"Like a folded map I've kept for all these years." Love this line and image.For me this is the heart of the piece, it folds in and unfolds from here...and yes, psychedelic.Thanks, D.P.

Thank YOU.

A grand way to write about spring and nature without making them precious.

Good stuff, D.P., I'd love to hear someone (who knows how) read this at a recital. The "as well" device bumped once or twice in that it called attention to itself (to me) but in recital it would be magic. Thanks for some fine poetry.

Thanks Derek. The truth is I was just trying to write something interesting. I only used the device because it happened naturally as I was coming up with ideas for this piece.I appreciate your time.

ooooohh, I really loved this, D.P., the lights, spin, and beautiful noise of it all.

Gotta say that I feel honored that you changed the title because of me. Finally I am a gift horse.

John, your gift made the poem even better. I mean it. Thank you.

As one to you applies unconventional line breaks to poetry, as well, I have great appreciation for what is constructed here.

"the moment the feeling flag slaps its stitches against
the pantlegs of the day begging for an icecream" - I loved this syncopated line. Divine.

Amazing. Thank you

D.P., my reading of your beautiful piece is online at http://bit.ly/9LSRqs - this was a hard one of many takes. also a friendcast at http://bit.ly/6EWBfW - enjoy!

Finn, your reading of the piece is perfect, my friend, and so beautifully done. Thank you so very much. I love it. Maybe we should post it on Fictionaut as a freebie? At any rate I am honored by your efforts. Great job, perfectly rendered with wit, talent and passion. DP

Beautiful. I am at a loss for words- this speaks volumes to me, as someone who has written poetry but just started exploring the different aspects of figurative language. The images are vivid and concrete and I loved the lyrical movement of this poem. Musical and inspiring. I don't know you or many people on this site but I'm trying to comment more. This piece just fucking blew me away. Well done.

exquisite

"What I want my poem to do is to light up and spin around and make a beautiful noise." You did it, D.P. this is marvelous and i'm in love with the title and all of this.

...don't think I'd read your great author's note before...

Very uplifting. A great swoopy ride.

This is completely wonderful.

What a beautiful poem, Darryl. I love the device of "as well as" connecting so much poetic vision together. I love the romanticism of the piece too. It makes a pleasant ache. Ah, to be loved like that, one surmises, would be grand. xo, H

a couple of observations about your poems, D.P.: to me the voice is the most compelling element, always present, and like a friend who can by turns act the clown and be serious, knows where to find the beauty and truth and is there to tell you what you need most to hear to keep hopeful in a not so hopeful world. And I always read your notes to poems, in their own way they are as amazing as the poems, and I wish I had a book of them to open and read at random.

DP, as always you deliver.

I love Morgan's comment the most and wish I had it in me to write something so perfect about the way you write and this poem in particular.

This is my favorite of your poems thus far. Such energy and momentum. I loved the string of "as well as" and what a closing stanza. Congratulations.

original, moving and well constructed. It really builds. And a terrific use of the "as well as" device.

Wow... beautiful! I love "as well as you still crammed into my heart like a folded map I've kept for all these years".

devices often come after the fact as well as facts often come after devices - here I'm sure it help to run off thess topsy-turvey images of a boy who forgot to go home or grow up from the hand of one who did but doesn't forget.

Loved it, will check out more as well as more again

Not wanting to be redundant, but like many others have said, the imagery is...well, mindblowing! This is the first poem of yours that I have read, but I know now that I am in for a real treat. Some mind candy,if you will.

I am not a poet, but reading yours, I wish I were.

You're a magician, Darryl. I started reading SUNFLOWER, then I heard someone reading out loud. It was me. This stopped my voice: ". . . a tired old poet making a sad grunting noise through his chin as he types with one finger . . ." A heartfelt "thank you" from all old coots, like me, who are forced to type with one finger. Like Linda Kay, I wish a were a poet. Absolutely gorgeous transfer of thoughts to words.

Yes, yes. The ebullience of this piece is so infectious, and the rush of images provide wonderful surprises right up to the end. I especially loved encountering "your mowed down old moose slippers"--that description felt just perfect to me.

Good poem! Do you know the work of Stephen-Paul Martin? Some of his stories work in the same way your poem does. Try Not Quite Fiction, The Gothic Twilight, Fear and Philosophy, or The Possibility of Music by him.

"as well as you still crammed into my heart
like a folded map I've kept for all these
years or a message I've never been able to

code out or like some pyramid on the horizon
I just can't seem to ignore anymore even though
I want to as well as the milkyway flying
through outerspace like a swirling rush of water all
lit up from within from its own blushing crush

on life"

Very cool. Very cool.

Darryl, I think you've actually become one of those few writers who can palpably change my state of mind (for the better) with each word and sentence. Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman - Price. High praise!

This poem's got a lot of headlong energy and movement to it. Rhythm and alliteration - check.

My favorite line: "like some pyramid on the horizon
I just can't seem to ignore anymore"

A really bad poetry teacher at UCLA once said to me "image is everything". He did not believe in the narrative, the haiku, the limerick. Reading this, I may have to agree with him. Each image a painting. And Mr. Flawnt's reading of it is lovely.

Well this is the first piece of writing of yours I’ve read and I’m already a huge fan. This poem speaks. One of my favorites ever, I think. Your author’s note and comments above really resonate as well. Must check out more of your work soon!

'What I want my poem to do is to light up and spin around and make a beautiful noise.' - it does! it does! & the title is to die for. Bravo x

as well as the milkyway/ flying
through outerspace like a swirling rush of water

The whole poem has such a lovely rhythm to it, Darryl.

I don't stop much at poems, but this one stopped me and held me. Some fine lines. "The girl who fingered her hair and smiled at the boy."

Darryl, you have forced me to admit my continuing love for my ex-husband. Pretty powerful.

Dig it! Lyrical. Visual. Animated. Establishes a nice syncopation with the first line and rides the groove through to the final beat. Bravo!

Goddamn. I said GODDAMN this is good.

This is quite a beautiful piece of work. I love the expansiveness of it and the lush language... :)

Beautiful dense imagery about love and the passage of time.

Darryl, I just love the imagery in this poem, running over and past each other like the flow of a waterfall. FAV