This Is What Happens to the World in 10 Seconds

1. Everyone disappears.

2. Stars map themselves.

3. The moon fills her bathtub over and over. You can't watch it for too long or you go mad, shouting, "Just get in, get in!"

4. The ghosts of certain broken poets stand under apple trees and lean their hands on the ragged bark like they are plugging in their guitars and building a railway. Why don't you know what this means down the road for all of us?

5. You can actually count the grains of sand if you can get far enough away, but this still won't tell you the secret name of immortality. If you say that living name alone you will explode forever. Hearts are broken by the sun.

6. The world will not listen.

7. I've decided to continue to paint your memory. Like a moment before the end of summer's daylight, it seems the right thing to do. That's where the most beautiful colors mix themselves onto the earth's neck and shoulders like swirling angels.

8. Please. Don't cry. I love you. I'm not dying anymore. It's just the sad song's words coming out to look for mates in the high grasses. A light to match a light. A billion lights to match a billion more. Come through the flames, my love.

9. The signaled noise we make is more beautiful than any instrument ever made or played. Don't forget.Choose. Don't forget. Don't ever forget. Oh please. Ah. Yes.

10. By the river of us we are realized and let go of again and again . The moon told us so. She will retell our story for all time.

Bonus:

There Are Words Lying Unused in the Grass(a draft)

For my mother

that can never be played with by anyone's

shaking tongue again. I can't help these things

regain their real life prominence in the cut

to the bone sad-eyed world. It's not up

to me. There is a fleeting shadow I

thought I recognized out of the corner of

my stranded eye, but if it was only

you then I suppose this is only me.

We were able to clasp our lives together

once for a windy moment like wings on an

eagle. In spite of the pain of that

connection's burlap rub against the exposed skin of

my throat I might not regret this one

abandoned patch of lost summer's light because I'd already

fallen through that fire into another life. Now

life's rain song has turned time into yet

another arrangement of  many long miles to go,

I will carry you home with me. That  

much goes without saying now. I'll lift you

to  their arms up in the waiting sky.

By Darryl Price    Monday, June 24, 2013