PDF

Two poems in the same mode.


by Darryl Price


 (1.) On a Black and White Photography Tour of the Moon with a Sweetheart of a Ghost hanging on My Arm

by Darryl Price
 

Suppose you could bend your whole body backwards 

like she did, you know, like a taunt powerful 

bow and arrow kit, and push the rest 

of your truest self forward into his 

concentrating face, just like Georgia O'Keeffe 

in nineteen-nineteen, push it all over 

inside only for his general 

direction to feel? No. My gaze would certainly 

be more than just the official 

poetic curiosity at work, 


posing the ultimate question of man's 

authority, stopping at yet another 

wondrous natural landscape, to be 

professionally framed in the matter-

of-fact context of a newly crystallized 

awareness of beauty-- cloud-shaped or 

no. And yet she loved this strangely silent 

little man, what she saw in him, more than 

the artist's urges, to so quickly uncover 

what he desired her to be. When 


Picasso turned his young muses into 

a stained glass cartoon of sexualized 

beauty shots, collapsing even the brutish 

sun's rays into a junk pile of entangled 

Christmas lights at their bare feet, did

he, in his wildest imagination, 

even notice the tears shed for his own 

lost, humane sympathies? When Cynthia

Lennon missed that transcendental train to 

the new meditation camp on a near


future farm, (without fear and or hatred 

in her poor heart, God bless her, because no 

one was watching out for her, not specifically,) 

did the antique glass orb in

her falling breath tinkle into tiny 

sharp pieces as it fell out of her mind's 

glazing eye, smashing onto its own black 

and white crumpled paper street, like so much 

already brown stained pavement or go unnoticed 

as a broken trail of sad trash?  


Listen, in nineteen-nineteen, Georgia was 

in the perfectly beautiful nude all 

right, but she was the one setting up the

historical shot, youthful, secure, possible, 

primitive, weather or no weather 

outside. So let me pose the question

to you again, are you willing to watch

the killing waves, knowing that your poet 

is even now preparing to sail towards 

you with all desire for you, that shipwrecked


or not, he will crawl on hands and knees

to bury his face in yours this evening?  

The moon will have something to say about 

it all, as she always does. But, Georgia,

you simply got to me. You'd probably 

want to give him all the credit. He doesn't 

deserve it. You're the one who entered 

his frame and filled it up with light and landscape.

And made the impossible possible.

After all this time, you spoke to me, too.


Author's Note

I was standing in the art section of my favorite bookstore flipping through a bunch of art books when I happened upon this amazing, stunning photograph of Georgia as a young woman in the Southwest. The look on her face was completely relaxed, assured and powerful, feminine and brave. I was trying to imagine being in her presence in those days. Then I picked up a book on Picasso and it showed photographs of him with his various girlfriends, all of who looked very self-possessed, but the paintings he made of them showed them as chewing on things and falling apart into different sharp angular pieces. It all seemed unfair. Not to take anything away from these great artists. Picasso is the master of painting. I know it. You know it. But my heart went out to these individual women who sometimes drowned in the wake of these great, talented men, these great souls of artistic expression. I thought maybe it was my duty as a poet to show them from a different kind of perspective. In any case, it's my gift to them, though a bit late in coming to matter, for their real live presences in the continuing story of the spirit of true creativity.




(2.) Old Beat-Up Trunk (containing a brief History of some Forgotten Paintings)


by Darryl Price


 

The world can still be viewed as a honey 

drop of sparkling rain, but not all washed up 

tears can be revealed as such. The stories 

swirling inside are constantly shifting 

their own gears, searching for the lost highway, 

and sometimes actually finding it. There 

is plenty of love going on, and a 

constant one all around us, I'm told, but 

those eternal shining angels can get 

very bored with all that, and put down their 


heavy feathers and grow long horns just for  

the sheer hell of it. People do get caught 

in the middle of these petty holy 

wars over nothing but newly told lies. 

In the meantime all you can do is, well, 

whatever you want, hoping that something 

someday matters to somebody, in the 

bitter or peaceful end. In our youngest 

times we made plenty of interesting 

rhymes and growled right back at the thunder with

 

our own pretty versions of a beautiful 

noise. If it baffled the many, we 

still really believed in doing it. This 

is more than a trunk full of old paintings, 

my friend, it is a map to the constant 

present tense where all the best opportunities 

for living an authentic life

are constantly being restored and refurbished. 

Look at our cool hats! We wore them 

to make each other happy. Look at our


goofy round shoes! We wore them to get you

to grin, not exactly smile with teeth. This 

whole Earth thing was meant to celebrate with

you in spite of the nefarious gangs 

of political thieves terrorizing 

the groovy flower scene with their infantile 

tantrums of hate and money. Of course 

we knew they would criticize us no matter 

what we did, or wrote, or sang, or painted 

across their skies. Sometimes a perfect

 

world is more of an imperfect try at 

simply bringing something new to the table, 

something wild and unpopular, something 

deemed impossible, something that just 

feels good if you let it, something more fun 

than functional. We fit all together 

then. Then we decided we didn't. Someone's 

got that missing piece in their hands right 

about now. I'm not saying it's you, but 

it very well could be. That's up to you.





Endcap