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Upon A Time


by Darryl Price


What we did was walk in on an amazing starfish

convention, everyone lazing about, softly frozen against the timeless drooling currents like strange

 

looking wind socks washing up and down with the sun. I am empty, hear me roar in blubbery

bluster and a fake English accent. We thought to our waking

 

selves, boy, they don't even realize how strangely beautiful their own amazing

arms are, waving, spinning about the coral encrusted waves like floating, lopsided 

 

lighthouses. It's a crying shame because all they have to really

do is bump around the room really, but that's so hard to

 

do when you're always staring up only at the same fish stinky

sky night after night, fearful of the larger shadows to come into the ever changing picture, but I

 

say keep this in mind—you've been here a long, long

time already among those giant shadows,star boys, and you're still

 

there now. Do the mathematical dance on the head of

a pin, my funny frond endowed elbow friends of the

 

sand castle coves built just below the waiting storm, lord knows you've got enough fingers to

plug a few holes in all the floating garbage this  

 

world has to offer. Join together. Some of them might

even have lifted a lumpy leg or two out of sheer desperation,

 

frustration or just plain old lazy time to keep, and of course lust, but most just

flattened their tummies and refused to look around even into

 

their favorite patch of clear sky where their eyes wandered like

highly balancing flashlights on wavering bamboo stilts. We are fixed,

 

they cried over and over. Don't make so much loud 

fun of our mighty, mighty flying gods, lest they smite

 

you and us. What they could have seen at any given moment

is each other, real people behind the distorted balloon tubes that strangled them,

 

glistening in the new day breezes like something out of

the best dreams ever had by anybody anywhere. Instead they sacrificed

 

themselves to the cliffs of indifference like so many spats

of bird-shit. I called to the others, let's get out

 

of here, c'mon then. This place's bringing the whole universe down. I 

don't want to be even a small part of it. We put

 

our best overflowing hats on and danced around the corpses

until we were well out of town and on our merry

 

way once more alone. That night we smoked around the campfire

and gave verse to the scene we'd left so far far behind us, sad but with some glee for having survived.




Bonus poem:


Nothing I Say Is Going


by Darryl Price



 

to stop you from reloading your guns and aiming them at your

poor unawares neighbor. Bullets to you are an extra set of sharpened teeth.

 I want you to know not everyone who hurts believes in hatred

as the best way to go about this life. If you get

anything by stealing, it actually doesn't belong to you alone. And never

will. I know you're okay as rain with that. That saddens everything there is

 

with an indifferent stench of cold cruelty. We all intrude upon each other's

lives without even knowing it sometimes. Some of us try to be

quiet and kindly watch where we are stepping. Others can't quite contain

a merriment of spirit in their hearts. To those we say thank

you, thank you for the noises of laughter and music and the

very real charm of the communal fountain of youth. Nothing I say

 

now is going to get you to stop murdering all self aware

creatures for your own black pleasures. You're immune to the storms of

tears you've caused for centuries, you've slowly turned to stone, standing in

the hollow histories of your hijacked moralities like wild dogs with foaming

mouths full of flesh. Nothing I say is going to ring in

your ears with a new note for common goodwill because you've made

 

up your minds to continue the warped war horn beeping forever. You're good little

soldiers, one and all. You'll build every railroad track no matter where

it leads. You'll deliver every enemy to their grisly fate no matter

how much they cry and scream for mercy. You'll shove God Himself

into the unforgiving hell of the ovens if that's what you are

told to do because only blood matters. Nothing I say is going

 

to reverse your indoctrination into the legion of hate where you are

bullied out of love, beaten out of respect, and tortured by so

many whipped-up nightmares, but I say to you here that you are

not just their forgotten puppet. You are not so far gone that

you cannot remember how it feels to matter. Connect the dots. See

the many faces of the big picture. Be the hero. You were

 

meant to think. Let yourself feel everything everywhere inside again. You will

not lose focus. You will gain perspective. This is an invitation, not

a warning, not a finger, not a bomb. It is only words

until you take it up and see for yourself where it is

to be planted. That's all we're asking. Nothing more. It's a song,

that's all. We'd very much like you to sing along with us.


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