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Our Top Hats Blow Off While Yours Gets Tipped


by Darryl Price



 

Our world is a prism floating through its own rainbow smeared shadows in a desperate

attempt to get caught. Our lives are in the carpets, the planks, the winds. Whatever

has heard us, has not believed in us enough to rescue us from our own

mythological nightmares. But that's just one story being told, one bell being struck into strange being,

the rest is a cacophony of zinging meanings looking for an abrupt answer. Even the answer

is not really the final truth. All this singing is just the latest wail and moan

of the loveless. They want to be touched in such a way as to know

they are alive. Nothing else will matter. Their fingers are searching for the right and only fingers.

 

You know that. But a hand cannot give what it does not hold. Poets have

long ago made this clear in relation to the moon and her lust for the

handsome sun. He will warm her but he will never love her. And this is

her sorrow. It is her curse and her trial. She will burn at the stake

and the sun will not be the wiser. We will all go to war and

life will never be the same. If we are loved at all it will be

because we have failed. Someone has greeted us without ever wanting us to be explained.

The prism has made us its fragile creatures of dancing light. That's our true purpose.

 

To speak the unspoken. To live the words of our moment in utter abandonment to

the sacred tongue of the unknowable universe. Like fauns. Like asteroids. Like lotus flowers. Like

pebbles in a brook. We are meant to sustain the whole sky's hunger for something

more pleasing than rain.  It's an ancient play among ancient gods. Our bones are being

tossed upon the mountains of time like tumbling dice. The Rolling Stones must have caught

a whiff of some pretty strong smoking summits in their swirling time to have revealed

that small wisdom. But the gleam in our eye is bigger than all that nonsense.

Eventually taking in the whole scheme of things and creating rabbits out of empty top hats.







Bonus poem:




The Professor Goes a Little Bonkers at the Chalkboard


by Darryl Price



 

Each second what do you want to be? How

do you get there? If you could give a

listened to message to the whole world what are

you going to say? I open my stupid mouth

and more poetry comes grinding out, even hello looks

like a spewed bunch of on the ground stirred-up

wildflowers. Well, they die. They eventually stink. So you've

got to wave them in a fresh way the

 

first time around and every time after that, and

then let them float away before anyone notices they're

already gone—just like good little angels. It does

no good to lament fallen, empty love. It will

return someplace else in a matter of minutes, even

if you make yourself a beautiful red splatter on  

the green reality of the street where you live.

The only faithfulness in love is the gullible youngster

willing to disbelieve all things in favor of only

 

the one thing. It's easy to see why this

matters. No one else will shoulder that much weight

and still manage a sincere smile. I'm in love

with you. That's what they say, and they mean

it. But nothing can be frozen every day. It

has got to move forward. Any movement causes dancing which causes

change which creates the air we breathe. No one

will hear anything we say here today because they

think only in negative terms. All the dot connectors are

 

more afraid of you than you are of them.

Love's free, pure or love is a lie, that's

all. Love never dies. People do that. So what

we've got to do is invent the moment before

it's over with and done, because then all you've

got for your trouble is a goddamn collection of empty shells in an

ugly bathroom basket collecting dust-mites. Still we mustn't despair.

We're here together today and we are making a charge

against the enemy with what little courage we can muster.


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