Missing Letter

It's so far to get to where we aren't in

the way of someone's destructive progress.

I'm only walking in my own gardens

now, but the big blue house is like an emptied

out envelope. I guess that makes this the

missing letter. I don't know your heart's new

address, but I once knew your youthful mind.

That's enough, isn't it? Seems I'm always

talking in my own head, but the echoes

are all silent, sleeping bats. They don't want

to know, they never do. So I sit down,

lost between the floating sunbeams, inside the

current state of reflection, disappear

to a faded place where we might have had

our own enchanted moment together

once. It's another lovely path full of

thick unknowable trees, full of distant

sparkling clouds, but no familiar high

voices inviting one to maybe want

to hold hands just for the fun of it. There's

no fun there, just a darkening glass full

of imagined watered down coke and clear

alcohol. I'll step back out and show you

it's only me. Just as I thought. Birds are

still the only good enough companions

for that kind of an awful answer. You're

the poet man here, so empty out your

best busy lines turn on the hidden cool

waterfalls before we all get bored and

run back to our cars and show us the rare

magic rainbows you promised, or get out

of the way, we're trying to build a new

highway through here, nothing you can say will

ever stop us from inventing our own

country's language on top of yours. Some

little attention spans are already

very short, very small and getting much

smaller like the sun melting into a

black knot of broken tree branches and sad

lumpy shapes on the slumped over ground. Won't

you give us a song then? Listen. The songs

are all around us, they don't have long to

survive. And you have only to listen.

That's the thing I found. If you want to see

for yourself, then volunteer to be missed.  dp 

Bonus poems:

Nine Steps by Darryl Price

Hey look, the river's still in your head.

Like a King Cobra, the sky's in your

Heart like a mourning moon. And I am

Waiting, waiting for you to refuse

Their forgiveness. They live for firing

Squads. They want everything to be owned

By someone who already owns more

Than enough of everything. I can't

Help you with your fear of love, bobbing

The river like a hopeless leaf. Haul

It in. Days are hanging in the trees.

Fires are in between the snows if you

Know where to look for yourself. There are

Some interesting voices walking

Through the winds looking to find a way

To carry or drag you home. It's your

Choice or it isn't. Hey wait, this is

Not my idea of a fun time,

Hiding like a high court judge among

All the heavy signs. Oh, look, something

Wicked this way comes again. Some of

Us won't pretend we don't need you to

Stand. Hey look, that thing falling from the

Sky looks like some kind of man, but, no,

That's no ball of hummingbirds. It's a

Blackened cloud of hatching hatreds. We

Need to put our best dreams together.

A Universal Meaning of Stars by Darryl Price

The sorrow you brought me is almost at an end,

but it doesn't make me feel any less. No, I

wasn't that surprised by your cunning. It felt like

being pushed overboard into a harsh wind and

sadly, being forced to watch the lights of a last

hopelessly receding ship steam away while you tried to stay

afloat in something dark, mysterious and cold.

I don't know how I survived your anger. I don't

know if I've actually survived. You tell me. The sorrow you

carelessly brought me was a strange gift to receive, one I wasn't

expecting. I'd heard of such falling down things of

course, hateful awful flags deliberately set

with hideous scars on them, hidden under such

innocent mattresses like little flattened angry bombs

meant to disturb you in your private moments of sleep. Did this

war bring you to a gleeful dawning of petty

revenge in your black animal heart? The sorrow

you brought me forced me to my knees, to give up the

friendly ghost of my own childhood sweet heart for a

new born one. I didn't know the new one all that well

and probably never will. It's hard to even

decipher the new beats into anything quite

resembling a universal meaning of stars

like once before, but I'm still trying. The sorrow you brought

me poisoned me almost immediately. I

somehow just couldn't bear to see you freezing in

your crumbling hole of scattered clothes, surrounded by

so many blood-stained scarves, so I took you inside,

hoping to see you flowering again. But the

mad sorrow you brought me was a lightning quick strike to the back of my neck.

It began to rain in my head almost daily.

Now the good earth alone has done me its kindest

favor and returned your rotten tooth marks to the

furnace-like soil where all stories are absolved of

their bad endings. The unfolding is done as we

stumble on toward different shores like first fish on opposite shores.       dp