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Rising

by Darryl Price

The coin, so little, the watch chain, the youth, the fading

softening speech, each hand and finger, the panic modeled on your own eyes,

the ashtray, certain stumps along the way, the long distance, the odd feather, the

jazz rope gone, the radiant shadow, the spine in gold letters,

the arches, the circumstances, the broke off mirrors, held up to crumbling

stones, bracing us together like shields and swords, the collective grasses, being brutally torn away, the

nouns, the aesthetics, the city limits, the next year and the one after that, the

correct use of the young money's predicament, the bomb's electic ticking voice

deafening the haunting of the obvious relevance, of this objectively written wizard song, for

only you , these boys, the light from those lamps, the bonkers

world, the baseball cap, the old pine tree, the flapping

din, by contrast then, the most maddening thing, the apartment's darkening torch, soon to be

warm to the touch, the red bricks, the chill outside, the window's diffusion, the paint-smell of last summer, the screen

door's swearing at God, the slam in the face, the fireside ceramic animals, that strange smell, that

endless appetite, beneath, biting the inside of my mouth, the

small lie, if you insist, the puzzled exaltation of rising.

note. Just because others have done their best to define poetry, you don't have to believe in them. You can undefine it--anytime you want. Set it free.

Bonus poems:

Bat Cave Gift Shop

by Darryl Price

Alice and I went into the bat cave,

but we didn't see any bats. Trees don't

come rooting around in there. Water comes.

Because water goes wherever it wants.

When it wants. I wanted so much to hold

Alice's hand. Know I should've wanted

more. It was probably expected. I

felt alone, apart from reality.

She was my reality. The guide told

us to put on our sweatshirts and to watch

out where we were going. Things could get kind

of slippery real fast. Alice stamped her

feet twice and grabbed my hand and squeezed. I felt

right then I should do everything I could

to protect her from everything in that

strange cave world. It made me dizzy. It made

me sick. It made me bats. And still no bats

rotated down from the ceiling to get

stuck in her auburn hair. Just let them try

I thought. We moved into room after room

of stuffy invisible damp curtains,

but our hands stayed in one room together.

That was perfect. I felt so happy I

just wanted to stay there forever with

Alice, hidden away in the pale dark

from all the ordinary things of this

mad world, like all the watching and waiting

anxious bats somewhere above us. Make no

sudden moves. We began to breathe more fresh

tasting air, to climb, to see more lightbulbs.

And then we were led back into the gift

shop where I bought Alice a red tee shirt

that showed a bunch of black bats flooding out

a cave entrance at dusk, disappearing

over her one shoulder. It looked better

on her than me and went quite well with her

clear blue eyes. Ice cream with chocolate bat

sprinkles. Alice smiling but showing no

teeth. Car lights on. At last a chance to kiss.

An Alice kiss. Ice cream kiss. The best kind.

As Long As These Words

Are here I won't stop them from coming,

But if I'm already

Gone from your heart,then

At least let them serve

For paper lanterns somewhere in the future

That once I thankfully strung there.

Silence like snowflakes

Hits the ground, covers

Up many things. Roads

Have taken us nowhere.

Yours was the one

I chose to wander through

The most, always hoping

To find you, and

Instead wound up lost,

Alone somewhere in

The middle of my starving life. You can't ever

Change this but I will

Remember your name came

Like rain, sadly singing to itself this one last Autumn song, like a set of

Tranquility arms set

Around my mind, like

Sudden bells, like endless

Bright weeds on a

Summer's worn trail, and when

Another dawn has

Disappeared into

Another line of

Cars, fat grunting trucks, I'll throw

A handful of pulverized

Dreams atop the story's

Submerged lips and bow

Once more to the notion

Of one star in

A hundred billion.

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Author's Note

This was first published in its original form by Gemma White for sacred/profane issue 1.

This neat little poem thing was written as part of a much larger series of poetic utterances as word paintings that I called NO POETRY (after I had read the submission guidelines to a new literary magazine) that no one seemed to care much for at the time of its cuckoo birth, but I felt it deserved another shot all on its own two rubbery feet. I'm happy it came to me like this. I stand by its final creation.Then and now.
Does anybody else realize how absurdly asinine a thing it is to say NO POETRY? Really? That's like saying no beauty, no chaos, no new thought, no dancing, no fooling around,let's see those hands,no freedom thinking, no deeper meanings, no exploring in the dark, no coloring outside the prescribed lines, step where we tell you to step,no noise, noise, no poise, certainly no grace from within your own spinning top,nothing on your own time mister or in your own hand,dear god,no stopping to rest, no choices except those we choose for you, no new students allowed in the classroom, no room period, no strumming, no humming, no skinny dipping, no players from another planet allowed, and please, let me say it just one more time, what a perfectly boring ass, it's like saying no sex, no fooling around with this sacred thing we all worship for our jobs,(this is serious business missy and for only the most serious minded of students who are all in agreement to be just like us forever--members of our one and only exclusive little writer's club only), no blacks no reds no yellows no whites without the bulbs included(It's nonsense I tell you! Why? Because all great writing throughout the history of this great planet is poetry, that's why? Ever read James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, D.H.Lawrence? Harold Pinter? Virginia Woolf? Faulkner?) It reminds me of the rich kid with ownership to all the baseball bases--you either do what he says or you won't be allowed to play with his swell stuff. Well you know what I say to these incredible bores, you are all snobs of the very highest order(congratulations!Another award..) and I say let's have even more poetry from everybody, all the poetry we can get, and from everywhere on earth we can get it! And let's forget about even labeling it as such. Poetry can be anything you want it to be. You're the inventors. Go make something you can believe in again.Others have given it their stamp,so far so good, so far, but to quote a famous movie, "their hearts were no bigger than yours."