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The Goodbye Meets the Hello at the Station


by Darryl Price


"You come to nature with all your theories, and she knocks them out flat."--Renoir

"Dreaming is free."--Blondie

"I can't vouch for my ability to avoid dullness..the odd position in which poets find themselves explains their often-sentimental identification with the disempowered(with whom they identify by virtue of experiencing themselves as outside..)"--Robert Archambeau

This one is for Charlotte

I could right now so much gather up all the proper words said throughout time and
even up to this exact moment and place them all
 
banded together into your one small upturned hand like a sweet little
baby bird and still not have the prescribed feelings I
 
want to say to you about your path today. You've pressed yourself on through me like
a full-body current and my life once glowing with the
 
extraordinary ability to see how to live off just one lonely shaded dream awakens to new possibility
because of your small presence, now as dark as a thirsty rose
 
petal no longer a part of its original stem. In comparison they ache my thoughts like a pair of silly legs. When
I see you laughing about in a crowded room I find you are the
 
music the music listens to when it wants to be
inspired to continue to break new ground. And when you
 
look into my eyes at last I swear I am
only able to praise every questionable atom in the whole universe
 
with another one: "How can anything so perfectly attuned to
the moment where all possibilities flourish in infinite rolling fields
 
of calm move among us and not be felled by our lying,
our ignorance, our greed, our vanity, our own stubborn inability
 
to live on as gracefully?" A part of me wishes you would
just knock me off now. Your life living out its fully found and beautiful arc
 
will do the job just fine eventually, I'm sure. But you have
actually managed to make me care more about you being
 
okay in this world than anything else in this room of gloom and doom right now.And
so my dear. We come to the here of the always now. You are leaving me forever because
 
you are gone already in courageous spirit beyond this old day's many recycled
stories and the new life can't start without you.May
 
I always be the first one to welcome you there and
never waver in my duty to embrace your many wonderful freedoms as my own personal best dream come to life. 
 
Darryl Price   041510


To the Little Brown Faun Skipping Around the Old Wooden Park Bench at Sunset On a Friday Afternoon in The Late To Summer Sprinkling Rain
 
Big deal, okay so I see you too. I feel it.I feel you there. That inevitable sad
stop at the station that's always coming in for your last punched ticket.It's the non- transferable loneliness of

the unfathomable punched ticket's jaw's stepping off point that's always bugged me like some
kind of kamikaze gnat.But I think hey you know what
maybe old Mister

Charlie Chaplin had it just about right about the personal power of
just smiling anyway because it feels so good when you do.I assume you might agree if you're alive right about
say now,next to this sentence perhaps?Because

that's what we like to do.We live right up into the
face of it, front seat roller coaster riders.You bet your bottom dollar we do.Your ghosts will
have to speak

up for themselves later on I'm afraid if that's what they want from their afterlife. Much later on if you don't mind.Oh yeah.Unless they're
already attached to the spark and go just like another freaking wire to
the ticking clock of doom

or the tightly knotted puppet strings already choking our independence daily--only invisible-- I suppose somewhat like you are forever being, and not so much like me.How is that fair? So
it would seem every day I'm walking into a disappearance of my
own making.I hesitate

to say it's all of my own making-- through and through-- because there still
seem to be a lot more energies at work and play than
just me on

this poor old forsaken and taken for granted body of mine.The mind the
brain the wind the sun the moon and the stars the hand
the leg the

smell the taste the touch the blah blah blah blah.
The living world has seen it all before somewhere else anyhow. How beauty goes
on but we, 

we must stop being beautiful. For how long I don't know.
I've heard all the big and very (very,indeed) small minded ideas.The fabulous
lies. The golden

dreams. The feathery hopes.The eternal licking you in the
nether regions lakes of ferocious fire. The blissful and splashing about covered in roses naked

gardens. The celestial sex with angels. None of them makes
any real sense to me that I'm all that comfortable with.I'm
just a man. 

If life is one big-ass wheel and we are whatever catches
on that wheel and then eventually falls off into the road... I 
don't know. That

sounds to me like just some sort of another medieval
torture device for fools and idiots. What's the point? If life is just wiping your feet
at the doorstep

to some miracle marble mansion in the sky--I'll pass. And
if it's all a test I want to know the scores of
those grading the

papers because somewhere on the horizon it's got to flatten
out into the one hand clapping scenario, right? See what I mean?
Where's that leave

us with our hands full of poems, with our lips
red from kissing, with our pungent necklines sinking breathlessly down below even
the ocean's deepest

hidden crevices to live and continue living large as whales? You know there's got to be something living down
there where it suits them just fine thank you very much.You're
still a bit

of a nowhere man my man.But you don't have to be all
bitter about it. You're at least that free of a person all
the way to

the finish line.You grab up your suitcases then, if you've even got
them packed and ready, and you go go go go go. You've got another train to catch after this one I'm sure. One more after this one. 
 
Darryl Price    041610



There Are Things Here
 
Simple things. I
could name them for you, but
my desire for
linguistic mastery
 
over
them by squeezing
the mystery
through the tube of
 
such mundane aluminum
siding
doesn't thrill
me right now. I'm looking
 
for the stuff no
one pays that close of attention
to anymore,
but even
 
that's just an excuse
not to write
another love
poem. Look they're ready
 
to push me
up against the
wall without even the last
cigarette or a
 
blindfold.So let
me say right here and now that there
is a certain
kind of light swirling
 
around on the top of
my desk being
created by
the ceiling fan I assume
 
while the spongy sun's been washing
itself up soapily up against
the front windows all morning long, hey
that reminds
 
me, quietly
now, of your own particular
shade of green in the pretty eye regions.Uh oh. They're
cocking their hammers
 
in a frightening row after row kind of way.
I fear this may
be our last spitball
since that's all
 
I've got left. Still
I shall aim it in
your general
direction in
 
hopes that the bullets
are just superstitious
enough
to run from such
 
fascinating if futile 
spectacle all on my lost behalf. Oh will you
look at that! They suddenly
are gone home. Hitting
 
their hands down into
nothing in
disgust and leaving
me with yet another
 
carved plant on a caved in wall
in my pants like
our beautiful own beautiful song spinning down
deep into the brain's woven mat like a whirlpool of delightful dizziness to come.
 
Darryl Price  041910


Bonus:Wire on a Bird

 

Jesus the bombs
are still spilling out, all over the place like loosened logs.
Like spring rain they
have not stopped, not

for even one micro-
second, and you, you
want me to wait here
while you sit around
and decide

if my poems
are any good, or just enough?
I can tell you
they are not. They
can never be

good enough. Some
are making twisted
metal sculptures
out of once loved in
bedrooms. Children

with no extra
body fat to leave
behind craft their
dinosaurs out
of spent bullet

casings. Dolls are
missing more than
just arms and legs
and still they hug
their small audiences

to sleep at night.
I just wish with
all my heart that
it would make some
kind of real difference,

all these
scratched off words, this
juicing of the
soul. Instead you'll
go quietly

back to your window,
that cycloptic
bunker, and
pick up your favorite
colors

and paint, while I
dissipate on
the broken road
like a heatwave,
a lost letter.


Darryl   03/31/09


Mammal Teeth
 
Remember the single best feeling you've got to
remember, when everything else is lost to the
pains of selfish cruelty.And call home with that hidden joy, even
if it's only words to begin with that
have already been squeezed dry of their precious laughter for the day. Let there be
 
peace among all the beings everywhere.Use the top
most kindest ones that you've always got sitting at the ready gate, those left riding
along inside with you in the center's center.Trust yourself.May all
beings be happy right now.All. Life can never be
completely erased because it is the meaning of
being and the being of meaning. A little
 
light some water and it will speak to
you again of new hopes for something better, later on, down the green growing road.Something
more generous. Less restrictive.More fun. Less harsh.
Listen to those young words that keep coming and growing and keep
them in your timeless heart of hearts. They
 
are at their truest when you give your
own deepest self to the workings of their best 
soil.It doesn't matter where you are or
what the ground is made of. You are
in it and it is our one love gathered with yours.And so
are you always in our arms.Give us your bounty true. Here's mine.Use it if you need to, at any time, for any purpose you may want on this earth.
 
Darryl Price    042610




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