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Meet Your Happy-Go-Lucky Poet


by Darryl Price


"Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow."--Bob Dylan

They're writing poems, but not for me. Guess 
I'll write one for my own. For nobody that 
I know now. It's a pretty lonely world 
for someone who sings, not you, not with the 
easier life you know. You're Saturday 
night. Hey, I don't know what day I am, but 
it's probably a working day. Yeah I'm 
between breathing something and something else.
 
All the good things we do are just for a 
quick moment, like being shut in my own 
room, inside of a dream. All the bad things 
seem to linger and rot. It's not that fair, 
but nothing is or maybe everything 
is and we just don't like being put all 
together here in the draining pool. It 
makes me want to shout, too. That's what we're thrown
 
up against: a long sad mirror and an 
even shorter set of butterfly-shaped 
memories. One is an always changing 
fleeting thing, the other's a ravenous 
monster of fire, feeding on the ripest 
stars in the cloud packed sky.  I don't want to 
play, the world is a heart-breaking place, with 
the universal spinning top, that's what 

lovers do. I am no longer a fool 
gambling everything on tenderness and 
a little affection. They're writing their 
poems, must have pissed someone off, 
same people, just different people that 
seem to live inside those grandest wishes 
available to humankind. Writing 
poems. I don't know what I'm doing here
 
with you. I don't belong to them, but it 
still hurts. You deserve better than me as 
your passing poet. I told you this was 
not going to last. But I would love a 
love like you. But I'm sick of empty arms.
But they're writing poems, just not my kind.
But I've got nothing to say. But I'm still
falling apart. But I hope there is more.  



Bonus poems:



How to Wear a Paper Mache Salmon on Your Head

by Darryl Price


I meant to do 
something, like anything 
at all, but I 
ended up doing squat. 
I could sing 
up a storm when I wanted

to. You could say 
I couldn't help myself
because waters were 
cascading down a
a rainbow colored hill 
of pearl handled

dreaming rocks and 
I joined on in like a
madly in love salmon, 
happy to just
be alive, swimming hard 
against the odds.



A Million and One Ways

by Darryl Price


The problem is there's always so much more 
to see when you open up your sleepy 
eyes to the night now withdrawn. And any 
one thing you pick out first becomes only 
another sad illusion whenever 

you consider the rest of the lost and 
banished crowds pushed out to the margins like 
so much squashed grass. Oh it's good to scan the 
universal parking lot every now 
and then with your own deepest feeling I 

believe. You'll learn a lot about the at 
best slippery nature of a truly 
mysterious light. I reported on 
what I saw with my own alone freedoms 
because I wanted to share whatever 

I got out of it with you. It seemed like 
the right thing. I don't regret any of 
it. I'd do it all again. It's just that 
shared love has a million ways to become 
a worn and vanishing photograph of 

a dream that didn't come true. Why say more 
about the sorrow that accompanies 
our brief earthly lives without each other? 
Because whatever they say, it matters
to me to tell you I'll always love you.    


My Sister by Darryl Price

My sister died today. I used to
lie on her couch late at night
and watch detective show reruns until I
fell asleep. Sometimes I would turn off
the TV and listen to police sirens.
In the morning birds would be singing..

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