On a Black and White Photography Tour of the Moon with a Sweetheart of a Ghost hanging on My Arm

 

Suppose you could bend your whole body backwards 

like she did, you know, like a taunt powerful 

bow and arrow kit, and push the rest 

of your truest self forward into his 

concentrating face, just like Georgia O'Keeffe 

in nineteen-nineteen, push it all over 

inside only for his general 

direction to feel? No. My gaze would certainly 

be more than just the official 

poetic curiosity at work, 

posing the ultimate question of man's 

authority, stopping at yet another 

wondrous natural landscape, to be 

professionally framed in the matter-

of-fact context of a newly crystallized 

awareness of beauty-- cloud-shaped or 

no. And yet she loved this strangely silent 

little man, what she saw in him, more than 

the artist's urges, to so quickly uncover 

what he desired her to be. When 

Picasso turned his young muses into 

a stained glass cartoon of sexualized 

beauty shots, collapsing even the brutish 

sun's rays into a junk pile of entangled 

Christmas lights at their bare feet, did

he, in his wildest imagination, 

even notice the tears shed for his own 

lost, humane sympathies? When Cynthia

Lennon missed that transcendental train to 

the new meditation camp on a near

future farm, (without fear and or hatred 

in her poor heart, God bless her, because no 

one was watching out for her, not specifically,) 

did the antique glass orb in

her falling breath tinkle into tiny 

sharp pieces as it fell out of her mind's 

glazing eye, smashing onto its own black 

and white crumpled paper street, like so much 

already brown stained pavement or go unnoticed 

as a broken trail of sad trash?  

Listen, in nineteen-nineteen, Georgia was 

in the perfectly beautiful nude all 

right, but she was the one setting up the

historical shot, youthful, secure, possible, 

primitive, weather or no weather 

outside. So let me pose the question

to you again, are you willing to watch

the killing waves, knowing that your poet 

is even now preparing to sail towards 

you with all desire for you, that shipwrecked

or not, he will crawl on hands and knees

to bury his face in yours this evening?  

The moon will have something to say about 

it all, as she always does. But, Georgia,

you simply got to me. You'd probably 

want to give him all the credit. He doesn't 

deserve it. You're the one who entered 

his frame and filled it up with light and landscape.

And made the impossible possible.

After all this time, you spoke to me, too.

Bonus poems:

Poem for The Outside by Darryl Price

 

Lately I've been using a heavily

opened upside down book for a new shell called

home, unwilling to entertain even

the very nice idea that maybe

I should go swimming out there once in awhile. I'd rather

look out from my own back pages, thank you, just

surrounded by a tight swirl of folding

around free floating words. I've still got a

pretty good view of enticing pretty

 

seaweed dancing in the changing daylight, because

of that I'm aware of the strong sway of

the latest currents. But those huge angry

dark shadows, still here after thousands of

jagged years, that sometimes speed by at such

incredible speeds and depths really make

me want to add a few more volumes to

my already collapsing roof until

I'm looking like my own strange standing up

 

coral, not looking for any trouble

really, just being my floating part in

the swirling about universe. What would

happen if we all lowered our weapons

at exactly the same moment in time? Lately we've

all got so much dried blood on our hands. Lately

we've all got too much permanent sadness inside  

of our still hurting heads. It's as if every

window to the healing truth is fastened

 

together with thick mucky blue paint and

will not budge open. We see the outside

possibilities, but no one's going

to break the safety glass first. So here we

are again. Lately I've been reading the

found notes from my own crying mind, like a

mad scientist, like a folk singer, to

find the quiet answer to so much gathered stuff,

restless sleep invading my sun lover's dreams of soaking up a good life. dp

Flowers On the Table

 

I've got to find my own way to shake it off, that's what they keep telling me,

but, really, I don't know what it is. All the ways seem made for someone else's dance

party system.  That's the only thing I can write here down for sure. The rest is only

me pretending to be taking a serious nap, but it feels pretty empty, searching somewhere on the

inside of looking at my closed eyelids for what we lost when we were just beginning. And you still stand there on

 

the other side of my radio demanding some kind of perfect payment from my least awakened thought.

I know it. You know it. But I'm still flabbergasted at the distance to the sun and

back every day just to maybe find a poem among the poison mushrooms growing by the side

of the road to make you smile again. I thought this was supposed to make you feel

like crowing like you can never get enough, but, look, it makes me feel so tired, all

 

this trying to be something, I mean, whatever happened to loving the moment, instead of waiting for the right time to arrive?

It gets lonely. It all seems like a hideous crime that no one wants to say out

loud has happened. I can't stand having to play a game just to get you to share what's in

your head with what's in my heart. There's your poem, at least for now. My suggestion is

to use it to get into your dreams this very night. Oh, what have we done? Oh. Oh.Oh.

     

 

Happy(an early draft)

by Darryl Price