by Darryl Price
The world's anxious fire breathing mob
still wants in, but they don't know what
in the smoke they are looking for.
They aren't really thinking in that
intellectual direction.
All these wonderful, friendly books
you see do not hold the answer
or they would be one big fat book,
or perhaps the magic would be
like one very thin overlooked
little lost card, floating like a
squeezed leaf to the floor. They simply
fill the happy river bed like
an incredible array of
colorful to dull pebbles to
give the rain someplace else to walk
or run. And now I am at the
other frayed end of my own cu-ration
of the invention of
my poetry and they want to
crack me open, too, as if the
swollen nut inside will give them
any sort of free range wisdom
to taste, feel, smell or see. Well, you
know perhaps, the wisdom that some
things are best left alone in the
forest after all. Nothing in
this beautiful, violent world
is left unsaid, but a lot is
left unheard. That's all there is to
it. The tree fell whether you like
it or not. The moon takes her bath
in front of total strangers now
as she always has before. The
familiar voice you're hearing
is your own. It is inside your
head like a bare naked bulb just
swinging from an exposed wire. It
has lied to you and you have lied
to it, but somewhere along the
jumping line you could've decided
to agree upon something strange,
that's the time you went off dancing
into the unknown with some new
curiosity and courage
to see what you could find. If you
were lucky you got to see more
than the outlaw stars shooting their
shiny guns across your head. But
my guess is you had to defend
yourself more than once against the
selling snakes at your feet. It can
be done, but each time you make a
final decision like that the
whole solar system shifts and turns
to look at you. Some people can
easily handle attention
all right I guess, but most of us
feel uncomfortable after
a while and try to control the
sun's burning ways. They deflect, or
hide, or camouflage. Some even
become someone else in the sad
process. But that's a bitter way
to spend your days, all alone and
afraid to know yourself. Better
to walk with your own skeleton
in hand. Better to say your name
to the sky without adding a
fish head to the last consonant
in jest, or all seriousness.
Best to give all your songs a home.
Bonus poem:
Flags
Here's your pretend song. Now please put that warm
rock back on my cold head and press down. I
don't want to know how pretty the sun can
ever be again. I'll always oh yes
remember it as something that once shone
like a firework on your face and made you
suddenly sparkle like a best dressed crest
as green eyed shadowed look of summer's new
day water. It somehow chose you, I know
it suited you, you gladly accepted
the extended one of a kind offer,
and I was there to bear witness to the
most wonderful crash between flesh and fun
I guess. But this is the kind of stuff that
tortures people to death. So if you'll just
sort of move along. I don't want to take
my chances in the seaweed and the wind.
I don't believe in climbing on top of
the world any more. Flags are for soft fools.
Dreams are floating death traps. Away I sail.
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The mob is always willing to let you into their knot of a party, but it's hard to get out again and be yourself once you're in. You still get to choose. That's what I'm here to tell you. It may or may not be easy, depending on your circumstances, but it's not impossible unless you have no imagination left.
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"Best to give all your songs away."
What the enemy would have us believe. And we do.
"most of us / feel uncomfortable after / a while and try to control the / sun's burning ways. They deflect, or / hide, or camouflage. Some even / become someone else in the sad / process."
Earlier today, I wrote a whole poem trying to capture what you did a couple of lines.*
Good works, DP. I like.
Greatness *