Thieves, a Fire, and Some Pretty Nice Ghosts

 

All along scared of the lovesickness finding me.

I'm not proud of sending that sweet choir

on its way without a kind word chopped into

its begging cup. Who cares? I'm scared. The problem

is this house; it's sad.  I notice when

someone floats a shipwreck in front of me. Things like  

gold, scattering flecks of something sparkling rotating around your

eyes as magnificent as newly minted satellites. I don't want

 

to fill in the blanks for lost keys. I've

had enough of that long suffering turning around. All

along scared of falling to the dark side

of this feeling because it's just easier than

admitting to the light of your presence for me. Still

I feel like I'd do anything to keep

you lit-up like that, but that's not my

rightful voice, is it now? All along scared of

 

the lovesickness. I'm not going to show you

my understanding. This map shall remain where it

is buried, inside another useless poem's pocket. Just a

bunch of rattling on words, forcing you to draw

the curtains shut, slamming the door with an insulting stare. I'm still able

to see you, but the rest of me

will fade more and more along the edges. A star belongs

in a star's ocean. I'll try not to

 

disturb you as I wash by. Maybe scared isn't

the way of saying this, but thank you

seems so little to say. Asking for nothing—

there's a deafening explosion in my chest I

can't seem to explain, except to say it

sounds like your name being sung by a choir. Asking for

nothing—I stumble back to my car door

reeling from this trance like driving into first falling

 

snow. Scared of being there, all alone without

your head to hold, to kiss, to connect

me to everything that matters. Not interested in breaking an

already broken heart. Not interested in a world

torn from you. Not interested in a

symphony if I can't hear your teeth talking

in my personal space. Not interested in being a

stranger exiled into the sad wilderness of nowhere

 

near where you are being alive. I'd rather be lost

anywhere close with you as my dearest unknown friend.

I'm now waiting for my heartbeat to slow

down, I can feel my escape through the burning

fire. All along as I said scared of

getting a lovesickness; hey, at least I'm never

going to hand you a lie on a platter. But neither

will I pretend living without you doesn't blind me to the rest of the world. 

Bonus poems:

A Violin Window Begins to Play by Darryl Price

You Were This Close by Darryl Price

I don't know if we'll meet again
in the sea of light. Circumstances
aren't only up to human
beings. After all maybe it's
all drunk circumstance, but that doesn't
answer the blinding question,
it only poses some more. This
is what we know. You are what I
knew surfacing in the sky, a
deeply flying dream on fire. That
doesn't give you anything to
go on. It's a story stuck to
another story's moisture pack
inside a larger jar of sad consuming stories.
You can see this picture from
your bedroom window if you like. You can know
its raw material when your
feet suddenly hit the ground. I held you once
and it didn't feel like the end
of the world to me. That's what you
give off. I'm a different kind
of continuous animal.
My hair is full of birds and wheat
fields and luminous leaves. I can't
deny this. I no longer want
to. I only meant to find the
right words to thank you. And gift you with
this. All else is what'll betray us in the end.

Milk and Cookies by Darryl Price

 

The door to anywhere swings because the

universe is hanging on by a large

loose hinge attached to a butterfly's weeping neck.

That could possibly be your own dead town's cryer

if you wanted to live there, or you could simply  

 

pass through, get something to eat, and maybe bed

down for the night. We could always say no

to their pitiable, imploring songs of cheese--

you know when we had each other's ears to chew. They

only need to still own you for the small

 

battery life left in your star. You don't

get to make sense of it all, even your

wish to be somewhere alone, when alone

is the one thing you can't stand to admit

to hating. After all they sold us all

 

those failing lies a long time ago and

we decided then to believe in our own

innocent attempts at understanding

the art of not fighting, only you went

crawling back to them with a million fake

 

arrows in your chest, saying how sorry

you were to have behaved so badly in

front of their protective gates, and could you

oh, please just have your old plastic crown placed back

on your sorrowful head? You said yes to the

 

milk and cookies of enormous greed. I'm not here saying I blame

you. I just happened to notice when you

were gone, that you stood in a Barber's shaped

garden forevermore after that and didn't move a muscle. That's

the thing that broke my heart, then and now. I

 

once believed you could talk to animals

and make tiny green things grow out of the dirty

ground, even the hard hearts of stones of others. That's my

fault. I was looking past you. Looking for

a friend. That Someone I used to know so well and liked to smell. 

from What Did You Expect?

well, I'm trying. 

Sad moon child, eyelids painted like sea shocked green walls of wave. I see it and it hurts me a lot. I'm not just lost on your face, my dear cousin!Candles throwing melted circles like burning nets made out of nothing but the ghosts of blazing fires around you, whipping up storms all to surround the clammy flickering walls like ghost dancers in stoned out love. No naming the special thing we made between us, but a snotty questioning of its deepest intentions instead. I do get it. We are not always going to be around to play this full thing out for each other, right here as now,but what about in the right now of the now we somehow shared together then? I say we're only lost in the moment's tree bark parking lot because we stubbornly refuse to be found out as truthful servants...