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This Thing


by Darryl Price


I'm sure someone somewhere must have
felt something like it before. I
mean I've never been able to
have this kind of deep longing as

if you might want to forget everything
you know. I always 
figured that funny stuff only
happened to folks in a foreign

film. Not to some guy walking down
the road looking for nothing and
no one. What's the point? But to feel
like you are unable to breathe

without sputtering a bunch of
squeaky bouquets of utter contemptible
nonsense! I want no 
part of it. Can't you possibly

read someone else's letters and
toss mine kindly back in the sun? 
Someone I'm sure out there would be
more than glad to have that picture

in his head of you sitting on
a porch swing cooling your feet in
the pool of the summer winds like
a  full sailed boat on its magic 

way to a perfect dusk. Not me.
I want to continue getting
as far away from you as humanly
possible. But here we

are stuck in the brambles on all
sides. Me with my pockets full of
words like seashells. You with your mouth
full of irregular purpose. 



Bonus poem:



Pleasures

The sun, or whatever it is,
is falling closer. I don't think
that it's going away any
time soon. But here I am a man

still seeking your face on every
leaf. Like a forest of elegant
bulbs that makes its way better;
doesn't make it blow away. I

don't believe in being forbidden
to laugh or to cry. That's my
problem. There's plenty I don't understand,
but it doesn't stop me

from feeling everything on and
on until the end. The sun, or
whatever is shining, seems to
be debating what makes a dream

and what is awakening, but
my question is for you--will you
still be love's message to us when
tomorrow is the only day

left on earth? The sunshine, or the
inevitable squinting sky,
shifts its own pleasures like a
sleeping lion sometimes, but I

and I must allow for the shadows
of our workhorse atoms to
move mountains and swing the maid back
onto her silver saddle before

listing over into another
starry despair. We've a
purpose after all in the grand
clash of the majestic kitchens.

 
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