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Two Pennies Towards the Proper Procedure of the Pudding, If You Please


by Darryl Price


I always thought I would feel your hand, always,

Lay with you as we flew higher together, laugh with

You in the little spaces left between certain trees, like tiny blue flowers that         only appear suddenly, made secretly

 

Of openly exposed light, always find your shining eyes among

A million more, leaning skywards. There has never been a time

When I wasn't aware of your presence in my

 

Temple of being. This isn't some slowly triumphant dream, nor

A singing desire that flows inside my body, it's just

Something I know without any desperation straining the search

 

For its share of the holy grail. A familiar absence that calls me

By a name I had all but forgotten in

This lifetime and listens as my response like a

 

Consecrated prayer burns brightly throughout the air. Together we make one

Lasting voice calling out of that curse like a blasting of ringing morning

Bluebells. We belong in this Paradise, but we are not

 

In its Paradise now, instead we're stuck in the muddle like

Pennies dropped out of a crumbling stoney spire, we're spent on going   someplace

Else completely from now on. It's easy to see why they fear any

 

Mention of love. Still when I see you smile

Like that I am happy until the very end. That's

The only message this song really contains, but over and

 

Over again. Poems are only sticky moon clouds to them,

Nothing more to believe in than that. We do what we can here.

You remain to me the most beautiful utterance in

 

The world's busy being born vocabulary. I will always 

Listen for your many cities and stars. Until then

you are carved on my walls, gathering all life's roads in your beautiful hand.




Bonus poem:




Blue Chair, Cigarettes, Black Coffee


by Darryl Price



 

Your once shining stage door where you lived went

vanishing into an unexpected

tighter softer watch pocket, the pocket

sailed away with another man's wife. It's

all too true no matter how carefully

we'd wrap it up in yarn and pearls. Oh yeah,

betrayal smells like a fucking fish head

with a lost bell stuffed in its pretty grim

awful lips, feels like an irregular

rough rock pressed into your hand with a slight

 

fingers shake on it, but there's nothing

more to be done. Some are left behind. Some

kisses are lies. Some lies are kisses. It

doesn't make the blasted hole you're in less

deep to crawl out of, or the sky less wide

and empty. When you've been bombed to hell and

back by a sensuous friendship you're bound

to want to spend a few days licking at

only shadows, but it does no good to

lurk behind a black and white world. Your eyes

 

need to adjust, that's all, they'll come back to

know color. At least be a part of it,

a brush of it, a smear, a tear, a stream.

Hey now you get to be a new traveler

as well as a thinner version of your

remaining story. That's more your unique

style any way my beautiful friend. I'm

sorry you got caught by the blues. I wish

we were close enough that I could lift you

out of this hurt forever. You know that.

 

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