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"One,Two,Three,Four,Five,and Six," said Seven to Zero Before Disappearing Over the Cliffs


by Darryl Price



“I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.”

Anne Frank



 
I know. It's not quite the fun little
story you had wanted to be hearing from
me so soon after the last sorrowful one took your breath away. But look here now how out of more snow nothing more than frozen rain you see
other people are eating their bashful clumpy
ice cream scoops without making the same little annoying mistakes
about doing so in public as the rest of us. But a spoon is so very
vast upon the surface, my dear, so full of tiny
upside down faces clicked onto mute mode and outside the dripping
and dancing trees like smeary pastel landscape paintings...
oh and oh and oh the sudden looping into the
 
air of large letter writing, appearing courtesy of 
those fuzzy little airplanes our friends the greedy hungry 
sparrows, or so a bowl is deeply
snoring in its circle of dreams and
then boom boom booming in its clearly awakening
state.You must tell me again please,why
must you always have to hear only the loud
crunching noises of the traffic of bodies
racing around the room like toy drivers
in toy cars? If I could I'd certainly 
 
oh so slowly pass through that frosty front
window pane like a comic book ghost right now,
all thin and wispy and slyly almost
invisibly smiling and maybe rattle a tree
branch on the way out or two
just for some twiggy slingshot-type fun to be had. Oh 
boy. That's the stuff! That's the what that goes falling
out of people if you ask me.
It makes them look like they are perfectly
sick all of the time. Like they've begun
 
to rot on the one sad side.
Hey now I do personally know some very cool 
older-than-me people who are amazingly beautiful still
all the way around.But these sad
snuffed-out candles of flesh and bone-- I
can't stand to look at their lost
joyless faces--staring up at the world
as if they might remember something golden
in a moment of instant, hot cream reverie if you'll
just give them one thin minute more to ponder out the meaning's lost down a dark, dark hole meaning. 
 
There are still things I wish I could
say out loud to you but the
world keeps getting in the way, blocking
the sunlight like a giant hand descending from
out of the clouds. And here we
go again. Maybe the old gods just like
that little bit of buzz of chaos every now
and then just to keep the boredom from
sapping whatever energy they do have left in their lightning bolts. To
amuse themselves.You remember that? Being alone let's say 
 
and playing with the mere facts of your existence? Our own
Grand One seems to have given up altogether
on the amazing trampoline act for something more
remote and a little less fatigue-like in the britches. No one knows where
he is at the moment. Oh yes. I remember.
They, the same "they" that like to live in beauty and they
are not exactly friendly about it. How does this happen to anyone
exactly? Because we might want to avoid getting caught up in
the same fate. They've got a lot
of goddamned gall,dressing like remote, exotic birds on a jewel-encrusted limb.That's what ought to
 
keep you up at night.I know
the realities of death's crumbling knock like
a piece of paper being drilled with
a jackhammer are everywhere you look like
blackened and oily mushrooms on a soaked
forest floor, like bird stuff on the window's
jutting out lip just inches outside the most sincere conversation
the furnace is making within the quaking walls of home.
I get it. Doesn't matter. Inside. Outside.
The shit makes its own statement. But that's
 
just one meaning of the darling moment.
A bird is not just the thing
it shits. There is a remarkable spark
of life in its eye, blinking at
you constantly, trying to understand and enjoy
you just the way you are. 
 
Darryl Price 2010



Big Escape(draft version)

Oh nothing's wrong. Everything
walks its own immanent brand
of magic through each new day's
front doors. But that doesn't mean

a heart isn't sliced down the
middle by some remembered
sunset. We're all clothes inside
the washing machine. And still

you see people acting like
sharks, just like animals with
poisonous barbs for fingers
looking for something to spear

just for the hell of it. They
take the most beautiful thing
they can find and break it. So,
no, nothing's wrong. Amid all

this idiot carnage I
have you pretending to have
all the time in the world to
find and give love. You think that

those stars don't ever lie, but
of course they are becoming
the bells that will toll your sleep.
There you go again turning

me out, living a life while
I'm breaking down in my strides
becoming nothing more than
a vanishing cloud of dreams.

Darryl Price



Wisdom is a choice you make to
 
not be the asshole in any given situation. I am
still that child. Three reasons. I believe in love in
 
spite of the pain and horror of the howling tormented
souls all around us right now. I still think they
 
should be treated with kindness at every turn in the
road. Their violence should be met with pity for their
 
awful sadness, but with courage to resist their best recruitment
offerings.One should not let others die because of being
 
afraid to engage the enemy with respect.This doesn't mean
you don't fight. It simply means you have chosen to
 
believe what's worth fighting for is being the good instead
of going the nice.Nice can be nuts.I like to
 
make fun. Bet you didn't see that one coming. But
it's the truth. I only listen to music because it's
 
fun for instance.I collect things. I go for walks.
I watch it rain. I listen to cars at night.
 
Whatever. I leave you this letter. Watch for your light. 
Wait to behold your wondrous animal mythologies turning like keys.
 
Darryl Price          



THERE ISN'T ANY SENSE
 
to this so let's make some.
I want you to go home
happy. I also want
this rope of words to haul
 
you up to a secret
tree house in the clouds. The
paper itself can be
both river and boat.Our
purpose is the one thing
 
they won't get. They see it
as only a silly-assed floating
frisbee. We know better than them.
It's the toy that never
dies. Each generation gets to
 
pick it up and put it
down again. But all
the players get to catch
and throw.That's another
layer we add to it all by ourselves. 
 
Darryl Price

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