Our Handsome Whales

 

are speaking clear enough, through their open and

bleeding wounds, for you to at least try and understand. Waving their

massive arms like living lighthouses, bobbing in and

out of the floundering waves, they are splashing

 

out an urgent, intelligent S.O.S. and it doesn't

have anything to do with managing sharks. Their ancient

and eternally beautiful songs are full of courage

and sadness for more than their own kind.

 

Slaughtered dolphins are filling the sky coves with

their own dying prayers for mercy for their

scared young ones, but the brutal men are dumber

than their sea cousins and cannot think of

 

anything else to do with their heavy clubs.

Money demands a new sacrifice be made every

hour. The coral reefs have had enough of

eating nothing but plastic garbage, out of an

 

incredibly dirty bowl, and are turning harder and

whiter than cavestone. Is it any wonder the

lovely little starfish have all lost their legs and

do nothing but roll between the empty rocks

 

like lumpy bits of soggy leftover dust and

dull debris? The poets sweep upon the shore

between playing their shanty songs to the ears

of stars, like Christ all alone in the

 

innocent hanging gardens, and a blind man looking

for a divine glimpse of something like a

friendly crack of light in this endless night of earth.

It's no one else's net. Pull in and

 

think. We are the ones who control the

final harvest. We've all the weapons of mass

destruction. Our hearts are big enough to

do the right thing and still manage all the gold.

Bonus poems:

Photograph by Darryl Price

 

Well here we were at the next new beginning of

Casually looking back over our tired shoulders and I don't

Mind telling you I don't feel the exact same urgent

Need to have the window rolled down so much on my side now.

 

This time to remember how it looks to have everything

Coloring the sky before us again. The one broken thing

I've always wondered about is why you took off in

That waiting red car with the blacked out mirrors when

 

All you had to do was ask for your own

Dreaming stars at the night desk. I guess it's really true what

They say, nothing really matters. We get the perfect journey we're

On and nobody can change the common sense of that particular

 punch in the stomach.

What's written on the passing pavement is coming off our

Pressing feet in sticky scribbles. These lifelines sometimes get tangled up

With other folk's thirsty searching roots, and another younger story

Emerges and demands all our best time and top-most energies.

 

In the meantime, good friends, we waved goodbye to are

Left standing still on shrinking away hills, their waving fingers seeming

Many speeding miles away. So why does it even matter

To me? I'm just trying to make something less sad

 

Out of it all before I lose my way completely  

In the years ahead. The shadows will cover up everything. They'll

Cover us unless I give it a little help, but

That doesn't mean anyone needs to be forgiven. Be you

 

And I'll be me. I'm still having fun with or

Without much grace to go on, but I'm goofing like Greta Garbo. Let's

Go for a spin I should have said in a

Much louder voice, maybe this thought will return me to your smile. 

O Come On, Listen

by Darryl Price