Weird Miracles(Exciting New Offer)
by Darryl Price
The Eleven Best of Darryl Price, as chosen by Brian W.,dishwasher, music aficionado, tattoo historian,and poetry lover(off the grid but not off the griddle):
1. What I Find
2. The Envelope and the Stamp
3. Like a Pop song This is the Head of a Sunflower
4. The Moon Rose Up On Its Tin Foil Bed
5. I Want This To Be
6. After
7. In Memory of Lily Burk
8. Two Tigers Were Dancing
9. Sometimes I Forget
10. No One Will Ever Give You This Poem
11. The Smelly Rug Adventure
12. Bonus: Darryl's choice
What I find
is every word is a small step taken
away from you that arcs back to me like
a mamba's mouth. I'm not going around
in place so much as running in circles.
You can see my devilry here. You are
the truth here and that makes me the lie. You're
new morning. I'm much, much more sleep. You're birds.
I'm bats. You awaken while I cry in
my sleepwalking state. Every single word.
No matter what I write. You're laughter. I'm
floorboards. I want to be all of the stars
for once. You've already got that covered.
Then I'll take the white wafting flowers that
blow down by the lake like summer's curtains.
No, you'll have every petal, every drop
of lake, even the differing winds. Well
then I place this poem high on branches
of pine among a hundred branches of
pine. But no. Clouds are your closed eyelashes.
I know that when you open them again
I'll fall away into a nothingness.
Your skin's what I'll breathe if I breathe at all.
The Envelope and the Stamp
I have no more beautiful words
to send out. See my feathers do
not so much hide me now as give
me away; I tend to feel far
from home. Forgive me this. The
end jumped by me quicker than an
orange flower cricket on its way
to new morning's bountiful
first opening strains. My words left
without making their swooshing sounds,
with the top four strings of my
control. Two to go. Some other
poet's pen must have seemed a more
suitable branch to shake blossoms
up and down on with the sweet breath
of my angel's dreams.It's all just
a matter of physics, both real
and imaginary, used to
build a quick wet animal out
of nature's constantly changing
ballet. Oh every now and then
I might still find that puddle to
watch my sorry face in and
that perhaps the rose pasted sky
behind does seem to indicate
there's really something else to sing
about, but my own mind can't grasp
the intricacies like before
when you listened and wanted more.
And so, the keys, this letter box.
Like a Pop Song This Is the Head of a Sunflower
This is the head of a sunflower as well
as the butt of a beetle as well as
the membrane with its busy veins of traffic between
sky and cloud as well as the upsidedown skeleton
of a raindrop as well as the groove twisting
in a line around your sweet kissable thumb as
well as the balding white spot scuffed atop the
toe of your mowed down old moose slippers as
well as the polished slick talons on the eagle
somewhere pumped up from the kill as well as
the moment the feeling flag slaps its stitches against
the pantlegs of the day begging for an icecream
as well as a tired old poet making a
sad grunting noise through his chin as he types
with one finger as well as the colorless mass
of cocoons blowing away on any given spring day
and turning into flowers tying on their new bonnets
as well as you still crammed into my heart
like a folded map I've kept for all these
years or a message I've never been able to
code out or like some pyramid on the horizon
I just can't seem to ignore anymore even though
I want to as well as the milkyway flying
through outerspace like a swirling rush of water all
lit up from within from its own blushing crush
on life as well as this unwieldy ball of
sentences as well as this fishing line cast into
the unknowable electric currents of now and never and
maybe forever eh as well as a tiny spastic
hope clinging to a fast falling building as well
as any dream lingering on the edge of sanity
as well as the boy who forgot to go
home and grow up as well as the girl
who fingered her hair and smiled at the boy
as well as vanished years that tumbled into rainbows
012610
The moon rose up on its tinfoil bed
and floated along with
us like it was attached
with a string. I thought that
meant we had a boat in
case of emergencies
but she said it was sad
to see it following
in our wake like a cork.
I still think it looked every
bit the stylish silver-
capped swimmer doing
the backhanded tango.
There was no noticeable
splash,ever, but it
did come apart in several
glowing pieces
whenever it hit the
tallest trees, only to
pull itself back into
an almost perfect circle,
albeit a mostly
wobbly one, instantly,
upon clearing
the branches. By midnight
we were the ones dangling
beneath magnetized toes
and being borne along
like a couple of hair
pins. I had to laugh. Your
scarf was covered in dust.
071310
you save the world
someone else is going
to have to do
it all over again.
In Memory of Lily Burk
I don't know what they want. Anything you give them will never do. Most fear pain because they cause it. Hate happens over and
over. As if they have two nostrils but no real experience of air. This is beyond sad belief. The apple hits the ground no matter how
many times you drop it. They've failed to connect this in their brains and so are heartless like zombies who want but cannot produce life. Instead
they attack a young girl on an errand for her mother and force her to die like a butterfly pinned to the dirty wheel of sensation.
And for what? To get close to the moon? To lay their heads upon the liar's tongue? Apples tremble on tiny stems. Oh Love get here first.
Sometimes I Forget
how strange your world is. I'm not so worried
about following their rules. I'm much more
interested in being real. I've never believed
in their definitions of beauty. Yet I've already
seen many miraculous things on just
about every surface. I figure it's some kind of minute
mojo being more cosmic patterns upon another wall
somewhere. It's all made out of the same stuff.
But even that's not the whole truth. In
order to get there we'd have to go everywhere
at once. And yet we dance! I don't have to
give you this poem any more than you have to
read it. The sun will burn out when the sun
will burn out. Until then you have to
continue to climb out of yourself
into the open air so to speak. The story simply
unfolds around you a million times a second like
a pretty difficult puzzle but is it for fun or can it be?
And still we kill each other. That's
the really sad part. We don't even
know any other way. Oh sure there are many here
among us who refuse the fight but they end up dying any way. There's a point to all these words but
you're crazy if you think it's up to me to tell
you what they mean. I'm not that voice but I hear
it too. It's coming out of every rock, every drop
of rain,every flower, every particle of air, every
stitch of clothing, every cell of skin, every bead upon our
silly heads. We take it all way too seriously. Nothing's ever
going to stop the gate from closing in on us but we could
have a picnic among the rising stones and later
count as many stars as there are souls of beings.
No One Will Ever Give You This Poem
and say did you know it was written just for
you? But I will. No one will walk up to
you on the busy street some day and say he loved
you so. But I'm telling you now.What good
would a pyramid be or a hanging
garden or a starry night without your
delightful creases capturing the ripening songs
in their own wondrous folds? I want to be
where you are. Not to travel not to stand
before a charming place nor to be present
where you are not but always exactly where you are.
What good would it do flying in a car
or on the back of a horse or sleeping
under an arousal of spread leaves if
there was not your arm to touch your hair to
sift next to mine your face to press up against?
I get it now. That song. Nothing Compares.
How'd I even come up to this edge of focused notions?
A little bit more and I'll be buzzing
to pieces flying like a moment then I'll be
becoming your poet from a completely different
angle and you'll still be living in
the same world as my love. Somebody please
find her and give her her poem. Do this
for me.She is the only good reason I want to
believe in this world. Anyone can view
this story for its truth. I was once with her and without
her. There was no other way I could function. I know she
deserves only real truth. Crack open this heart then
eat what's left together. But that's for later.
Right now I just want you to know that
these feelings exist in our time. May I
never utter a false dream again but
always keep her name where I am going.
(Case of) the Smelly Rug Adventure
I didn't know what to do, really, but I had to do something. After all there was no one left to be the real bona fide hero to this story, except for me, the guy who wasn't any kind of a hero at all. I mean I could hardly move an inch, rolled up inside of a smelly rug as I was, much less come up with a decent plan to save the whole world from some crazy total destruction thing. And it looked like we were all going to run out of time before I did so anyway, so I did the only thing I could think of, I deliberately fell over on the hard concrete floor and rolled myself across the dirt and filth and crashed into the legs of the dark thing like a human Lincoln log. In my mind I pictured a bowling ball blasting through a squadron of stiff pins. This did not work out the way I thought it was going to, as a matter of fact the dark thing only stepped on my chest a couple of more times with its hobnail feet and then rolled me back into the opposite direction, with very little effort I might add. But then something miraculous did happen. All that rolling around loosened things up quite a bit inside my little finger puzzle of a prison and soon I was crawling out one end like a slick spurt of toothpaste. I found I wasn't tired either. I felt happy to be alive, although still quite terrified out of my ever loving mind for being in the situation in the first place. But my friends only had me to help them now and nobody else. The evil thing didn't even bother to look my way again. I was piffle. It just hunched its decrepit bulging shoulders around its big old blinking red buttons and funny mad levers and waited for the grand hideous moment to arrive. It was breathing heavily, which gave me a Scooby-Doo moment of my own. Why would a monster sound like a man watching porn? That's when I decided the dark thing was probably just an idiot of some sort who wanted revenge on the whole stinking universe for making him feel unimportant. I felt just as unimportant most of the time, except when Cindy Connors kissed me suddenly during a game of Hide and Seek one summer when I was twelve, but this was no time for philosophical musings on my part. Picturing this thing as a stupid man gave me a bit of needed courage, not much mind you, but a tiny bit, enough I guess, because right then and there I decided my friends were not going to die, ever, because of me and neither was anyone else. I knew I wasn't stronger than the man thing, but I figured I could probably take out a goofy looking machine, and I didn't have much time left in which to do it. I should have yelled something manly and heroic like “Geronimo” but instead I might have yelled “Cindy Connors” and smashed my now flattened out rug like a limp garbage can lid down over his creepy little head with all my might. To my grandest delight he veered right into his own ridiculous doomsday machine and pressed things he probably wasn't supposed to. Everything started to smoke and catch on fire. It happened so fast. At first I just stood there in utter amazement. He was flailing around like a conjoined octopus, trying to recalculate his settings I guess, when the buzzer I'm guessing went off somewhere on the inside of its gears and the whole thing loudly exploded up through the roof of the basement like a rocket taking off. Only this rocket didn't go anywhere. It just sat there pretending to take off. That's when I noticed the dark one as he shall forever after be known face down on the floor with actual smoke wisps rising off his shoulders like little grey worms. For a second I thought I should try to unmask him just like in the movies, but what if it wasn't a mask? Then I heard someone moaning and I knew what else I had to do.
All ThingsWritten by Darryl/Chosen by Brian W. for Fictionaut fans
Note:Darryl's personal favorite below,a poem about the plight of elephants:
Love Letter from the Last Elephant(a draft version)
We all hear the stories
coming right up out of
the dust. We see the same
sky, the same stars. We've met
our own deaths forever.
We know what's happening.
Because of this some of
us will come willingly
to have chains put around
our feet. Some others must
never be anything
but free. This way they can
still lead with their hearts.We
cannot save us. You could
not save yours either as
he was bleached and became
a ghost. There is little
time for this conversation
before the planet
can no longer pronounce
our names correctly. Then
there will be no one to
call us home again by
trumpet or full foot stomp.
It may sound funny to
you but we have tasted
the rain, flowers, grass;
it tastes right, we believe.
Bonus:
I wANT THE mIGHTY wORDS
to unlock us. Here's what I think happened. Long ago a group of wicked smelling man apes learned how to trap the souls of wild animals inside of ugly looking holes. This caused eternal weeping among the fairies, many who feared they would be next. And so they were. Victims turned inside out to make them look more frightening to the unbelievers and then nailed to trees by powerful prayers, the monks intent on using them to take over the world. Or, some were simply sentenced to lie silent and undiscovered for ages
under heavy books, by layers upon layers of ancient incantations given over to the monks by certain tortured souls wanting to make any deal for escape from this cruelty of the human world. They were lied to. What do you think happened? They could also heal. What about that? They could also comfort. But that's not all they did. Anyone they didn't like for whatever petty reason was also put into such a device without their knowing it and forced to conform while they went about their daily lives. They invaded
dreams. They still do this today. Okay that's the sad part. Still once upon a time our dearly beloved Beatles made an unheard of, brand new joyful noise right in the middle of the world's square. And it was heard loud and clear, everywhere, like a bell. And it broke off bits and pieces of the spell each time it was being played. Dreams began to move again, freely and became thick forests of untamed discovery. The possibilities started to sprout up out of nothing and fed many a hungry soul and saved them from
vanishing on the spot. People saw true beauty in each other's faces again. They began to date life, not sit around and secretly long for a brief encounter with it. The grinning Beatle miracle kept saying that anything was possible once you decided to put your weapons down a bit more. Fear had been the old tried and true order of the day for centuries. But yeah sadly the bad ones kept on killing women and children in gruesome fashion all over the globe. No sense in pretending otherwise. We lost stars. But the stop the
insane violence call had already been pulled out of the bag by a bunch of cheeky young boys from a place called Liverpool. We at once saw there had to be much more to love than mere conformity and dutiful service all our young lives . We wanted to dance! It's also old magic. Perhaps some of the oldest, but it has no real age. And that's what I want to tell you. Yes they have cheated and used things against you that they have no rightful claim to, but you are not without a set of keys on your person. Poetry's one of them. Dancing is
another. Use them.Free each and every one.
Thanks for coming along. B & D
Outstanding collection. Like them all.
Thank you,Sally. I was beginning to get worried that me and Brian had made a huge mistake with this one. I mean 29 views and not one comment? I can't tell you what it means to have your support.Thanks, again.
DP, supreme work. You and Brian didn't make a mistake, they are all outstanding.
*
Twelve stars! Twelve stars!
"I know that when you open them again
I'll fall away into a nothingness."