Darryl Price

About Me

"By writing a poem, poets could break through the slippery, nothingy surface of the life they were enclosed in, to the passionate reality that beat beneath it."--Paul Murray

"Don't trust hate, even for a good cause."--Darryl Price

"Wake up and ache for your life."--Natalie Diaz

By Their Fruit by Darryl Price

If you're
not creating
hope, you're

creating fear.
One thought
is love.

AI Biography: Darryl Price is a poet whose work resonates with the authenticity of personal experience and the universality of human emotion. His poetry often explores themes of identity, existence, and the intricacies of life’s journey. Price’s eloquent expression and poignant imagery invite readers to reflect on their own paths and the world around them. With a body of work that spans decades, he has made a significant impact on the literary scene, particularly in Columbus, where he is known for his locally published, limited edition collections1. Price’s voice in poetry is a testament to the power of words to connect, inspire, and endure.[I don't trust robots, they don't smile and can't fart around, so I wouldn't trust any of the above. dp]

Learn more Ebay.com 2 fictionaut.com 3 fictionaut.com 4 fictionaut.com
5
fictionaut.com

"Poetry never MEANS something. It evokes.
Fine. What's it EVOKE?
If I could describe it, it wouldn't be poetry."--Gregg Hurwitz

"We will plant songs where there were curses."--Joy Harjo

"I'm just trying to feel, to
understand. Either you lied,
or I did, and I didn't." from Parts Unknown by Darryl Price

"Love is so simple/to quote a phrase./You've known it all the time./I'm learning it these days."--Bob Dylan

"Only/love adds the right amount/of everything to/everything else."--Darryl Price

"Healing yourself is a revolutionary act. Healing yourself is the ultimate act of resistance."--Helen Knott

"They will batter you relentlessly--because they are unkind, afraid and dangerous. They will cause you to doubt yourself over and over again. You must remind yourself of yourself. You know what you believe in. You know what feels just right. You don't need anyone to point it out to you. And if you get the chance to escape their bullying ways, make sure to free the other prisoners as well.'--Darryl Price

"use
an open mind before you go in all the way and remember to always love where you are, every living thing you encounter for its own shining soul. And where souls touch is the trembling truth being born again. Each form brings delight to the Sun.

But the darkness would rather crush you. You, however, cannot be crushed forever because nothing is extinguished; only hidden. It's okay to laugh. It's okay to dance.
It's okay to sing, to make music that others might consider noise. It's ok to not make sense. Ok to drum your fingers on the rocks. To dream. To imagine. To be a poem. To turn into a bird or a cloud. To wear a cloak of many stars. To return to yourself at last. Der dust,
dust, dust, dust, dust, dust, dust."--from Actual Reality by Darryl Price

Nothing but Sky

by Darryl Price

People tell me poetry is political and perhaps it is, under the umbrella that everything everywhere is political. But I don't purposely try to make it so. I'm more interested in poetry being authentic and by that I mean never boring, but belonging to itself. When I'm engaged in writing poems I am making art or trying to; I'm "drawing" with words. I'm trying to capture a feeling with words as colors and shapes and the sounds of words as jumping off points. I use certain words to do this for me because I like working with words as an artistic medium, to express myself with. I like making my own sentences with words. And making lines of thought like dreams with words. And as you can tell, sometimes I'm not sure how best to express that, but it's almost always fun to try, even though it can be frustrating at times. W.H.Auden said a poem is never finished, only abandoned. I don't know if that's true or not, but I get where he's coming from. Poems are tricky to complete and may appear as whole and done. They always seem to have a little more to say just beyond the horizon of the last finished line. But, like I said, it's fun to try to make some real sense of it all. What I mean is, sometimes there are no words for exactly what you are feeling, so you kind of talk around your true feelings, to create the deepest feeling of the feeling. This can be beautiful and magical. It can be an ancient mystical language only the heart can understand. But, unless you are careful, you will end up talking about nothing but sky instead. So you've got to be honest, even in invention, even in taking linguistic chances. It will do you no good to lie to the reader. You will be exposed as an underhanded culprit. Unless you own up to the fact that poetry cannot be completely tamed by your mind. It is a wild spirit. But approachable. Dangerous, yes, but has certain hidden healing qualities in its graceful presence that can be used for calling forth good omens. That's up to the poet. And the reader. Meaning: be thankful. Meaning: be humble. Meaning: be brave. To master poetry is to master yourself and ,from what I've seen and been told, that takes a lifetime. But it can be worth it. Because you learn how to give the gift you have been given. Which is yours alone to give. Which no one else can give but you. Which is your destiny. It's what makes you who you are when you are not only the poet but the poem. When you are yourself. Not a copyist. Not a pretender. But a creator. Darryl P.

Review of "The Tiger Who Jumped Over the Moon" by Darryl Price: At times whimsical, at times serious, always dynamic, Daryl Price's poetry demands attention in the most positive sense. In these pages, a rhythmic plea takes shape and moves us forward. Price makes a heartfelt pact with his reader: We'll meet somewhere in the bookstore of the / one mind and heart. He is at once urgent and grateful -- for words, and for the earth we share. A wonderful collection for our times.

-Michelle Elvy, editor, author of the everrumble

"You are not lost. Lost is a lie you tell yourself because you've convinced yourself the thrill is gone. It cannot be gone just because it is smashed. Or run over. Or drowned, Or bitten in two. It cannot be gone because you feel stupid. It is only ever gone because you don't love
it enough anymore to see that it still in fact is."--Darryl Price

“It has been my pleasure over the past five years to become acquainted with many poems and also some fiction by the writer Darryl Price. When Darryl presents a poem or a short fiction, it comes from a place in him that is clear and true. This is a writer who works without guile. Every facet, word, line comes straight from his pure heart. I don’t say this lightly. Many writers calculate their audience and proceed from there. Darryl would be unable to write that way, because he embodies the spirit of the true artist. I have never read any work of his that shirks from the truth of the moment, which he is presenting on the page. There is always clarity, too, so the reader is drawn into the work rather than looking at it from a distance or behind a screen. The immediacy is crystal clear. Because if it weren’t an immediate act of writing, Darryl wouldn’t be writing it. He lays it out as if he were creating a garden from scratch: the clearing, the digging, the seeding. Darryl Price is one of the best writers working today.” – Susan Tepper, author of dear Petrov; The Merrill Diaries, and From the Umberplatzen

“In the poetry of Darryl Price I have been treated to the lyricism of an existential alchemist. With an urban sensibility honed by the realities of our all too common violent experience of devolution, the Poet sings forth an infusion of our humanity lost and found. Again and again the perilous aspects of human existence are revealed with a highly developed and skillful authenticity and vulnerability, restoring those who make this pilgrimage with him, to a place of renewed perseverance and resolve to be what is sensed and remembered in our best nature as human. Examining with recondite grit and laser precision, the Poet exposes the underpinnings of 21st century Humanity and the emotional terrain we collectively and individually traverse.It is in the truth and beauty, by the very nature of what is revealed and communicated I feel the most profound gratitude for this body of work and author/poet. For within this breathtaking vista of exploration exists sanctuary and tenderness and hope.” – Rebekah Riley

Poetry is about feelings and that's why sometimes it can sound strange. How do you write a feeling? If you're a poet you paint the feeling using words as your medium. This can sometimes turn out quite beautiful, other times it can make you feel dizzy-like you don't know which way is up. That's the danger and the reward of going mining for feelings. Poetry began as a song humans sang to make themselves feel less lonely in the universe. But there are as many ways to sing as there are stars in the sky. Everyone must find their own voice. But being one of the universal languages, music connects us to all life everywhere. Poetry gives us a boat in which to sail across the universe within and without ourselves. There for it can be used to heal or destroy--depending on who is controlling the vibration going out-a good loving soul or one with bad intent. Like all magical things, poetry is nothing to be played with carelessly. Dp

They will batter you relentlessly--because they are unkind, afraid and dangerous. They will cause you to doubt yourself over and over again. You must remind yourself of yourself. You know what you believe in. You know what feels just right. You don't need anyone to point it out to you. And if you get the chance to escape their bullying ways, make sure to free the other prisoners as well. From my poem, You Can Push Things: "Love is always going to be all, even when all else is floating to the burning ground."--Darryl Price

"They want you to falter. They want you to sit alone and be frightened in the dark. They want you to shut up and do your job. They want you to want more. But you are here and I am here and here we are. I find that incredibly beautiful. It is not life threatening--it is a great relief to me. To know that all this also means you and me. Maybe we're not going to find any answers in our turned out pockets, not today anyway--because something feels good, and we smile at the incredible mystery of it all. But I like seeing your face among the other incredible things that are happening to me right now. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."--Darryl Price

"The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life."--Ursula Le Guin

"Any person who loves another person,
wherever in the world, is with us in this room--
even though there are battlefields."

--Kenneth Patchen

"Emily Dickinson is my hero because she was a joker, because she would never explain, because as a poet she confronted pain, dread and death, and because she was capable of speaking of those matters with both levity and seriousness. "--Helen Oyeyemi

"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves."--Thomas Merton

" ..kisses are a far better fate/than wisdom."--E.E.Cummings

"The opposite of fear is not courage but compassion."--Peter J. Gomes

"When people tell me that they love animals and then harm or kill them I tell them I'm glad they don't love me."--Marc Bekoff

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophies. Our own brains, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.'--Dalai Lama

"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them."--Rainer Maria Rilke

"If we have no concern for others, we are monsters."--Beatrice
Wood

"To be men not destroyers."--Ezra Pound

"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all."--John Lennon

"Cultural bridges are built through literature and the arts. Those are universal. It is only through the arts that we will ever understand one another.'--Reza Aslan

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

"Poetry is the supreme fiction."--Wallace Stevens

"We ask for any wrong we've done/The years ahead forgive us
We ask for any good we've done/That all of it outlive us"--Paddy McAloon

On Writing/a blog by Darryl Price

The line lives where it lives. If you’re any kind of art appreciator at all you’ll get down on your delicate knees and sniff the torn grass between your fingers for tell-tale signs of recent passage. You go where the line goes in its freedom or you don’t get to witness the fascinating moment arising in its own sweet time, which only makes you a secondary hand lab assistant at best, an impostor, no matter how much you protest to the contrary. It all depends on what you want out of this writing life. It’s not about making more money than God. It’s not about collecting rewards. It’s not about shooting up the thrilling white noise of applause. It’s about not being boring. It’s about being authentic to the core. All those things are only shadows meant to keep you on a proper leash. If you consume too many shadows you will become a walking ghost among the living. Writing should be flesh and bone. It should breathe the same eternal alive air as the rest of us.

The only thing that makes you a real writer in the end is the writing you do. It’s not your best intentions on display that put you over. It’s certainly not your years studying what’s gone on before in the historical context of the field. Learning to imitate is exactly what it sounds like. It’s not about being published over and over again either. It’s not a rich guy contest to see who can build the biggest, most impressive resume on the planet. It’s all about the words you choose to lay down by yourself. The miles of sentences, the paths of your paragraphs, and the poetic original ideas you come up with that sparkle your star to the heavens. And by all accounts that takes a true lifetime to even begin to achieve. So if you think you don’t have the time for that kind of whole body commitment to the fight then you might as well put your blank potential notebooks away right now and think about doing something else. Writing is no fairy tale. It might come easy for some, but for most of us the miracle comes a lot harder, as in hard work harder.

You don’t get this just because you want it really, really badly. You aren’t something just because you say to us that you are. A painter paints, a writer writes, but it’s just like breathing. You don’t do it to impress somebody. Nobody cares. It comes naturally. You do it to stay alive. Because if you don’t write you’re dead or might as well be. You’re the one who has to care the most about what you are doing as a writer. You’re the one who believes in the stuff you create when the others have abandoned you to petty stuffy criticism, who knows that each new word written matters no matter what they say in their influential snobbish circles about your aims and motives. Writing takes a lot of unique courage and you have to find that individual courage all by yourself on a daily basis or fail trying. It’s not for cowards. It’s for dreamers. I can say that, I can write that because I believe in it and my words absolutely believe in it, too. dp

I’m a writer on purpose. That's all the truth I want you to know about me. I think any poetry done with the right frame of mind in mind, the right spirit of creative singing, is kind of like saying the magic words. I believe in it that much. I hope you'll take some time to find out exactly what is meant by that simple of a statement. My motto: don't complicate the message; love is still the best way out of hell. The world is always forming and reforming itself into, onto, and around whatever words we choose to manifest in or out of our silly little heads in our daily verbal lives, minute by minute ..I just think maybe the conscious decision/ action taken of some creative, interesting writing might, perhaps, help with the architecture, if you will. I sometimes will send out free poems to all those who have commented on my work--kindly or otherwise--as a small thank you, for taking the time. Believe me it's very much appreciated by me. And from a poet's perspective this is the highest form of praise and thanks I can think of to give back to anyone/those who cared enough to visit while I'm still around. Even when I'm sad I guess you could say poetry is my own version of a serious ghost dance set against the killing machine of modern life.

From a letter to a friend: "I'm ever writing directly to everyone and anyone. The circumstances come from real life but I mend them together to represent a part of the journey we are all on--our own trail of tears. We are forced to march through life to our own deaths. I just happen to think it's silly not to recognize the person or persons next to us as having to deal with the same problems--how to do this with some grace and composure. We have each other whether we want each other's company or not, and because of this fact, I believe we might as well talk. There is so much comfort to be found in another human voice. All day long we are surrounded by the voices of living things that are not human. Their path is their path. Again what we have is each other. What pisses me off is that we often have those who want to pick out and choose their fellow human beings. Impossible, unkind and snobbish. Also while I'm against doomsday wailing, I see there's still plenty of inspiring beauty to go around on a daily basis. Life is meant to be lived and that means sharing the air. Snobs and bullies can go eff themselves. My poems are here for you. They are free. They are not for sale. dp"
Personally, I like to think that any kind of self-expression is just good for the soul, is a wonderful chance to make a real difference in the world. All it takes "to fan the flames of your inner poet" is to give yourself the permission to be that creative in that unique kind of way. Just remember there is no one like you in the whole amazing universe, it's a fact, not a cliché --and that's the ace up your sleeve as a writer. All the original experiences, the heartaches, the laughter, the surprises, the MYSTERIES of your life are the touchstones for your own authentic way of feeling out your writing. Always tell the truth in your own deepest feeling voice, but find a way to deliver it to others in many beautiful strokes of the individual pen. dp

Poetry/ a blog by Darryl Price

Poetry should always be something you invent, not something you learn how to copy. Poetry is something you define inside the independent action of just doing it, not something that is defined by the poetic doings of a string of others, no matter how well-meaning or serious or intellectual or philosophical they are about it, because it is a free choice you make in the process of your being creative with words, with sounds and meanings, with feelings and neuroses if you like, whatever moves you to express yourself. It is not a narrow state of being or mind, nor is it a completely solid thing like mud, heavy and ponderous, but it should be infinitely fluid like the morning sky, mysterious like the ocean, full of its own stars and planets, like a deep breath taken on purpose. Poetry is a partnership with your own deepest feelings. It’s not a silly chess game with the reader, it’s a gift that only happens when you are honest enough to let it speak on its own behalf. Poetry is a certain kind of music, the kind that asks you to listen, and when you do, rewards you with an incredible sound only you can hear and act upon, because it is alive within you. Poetry lets you see, magnifies the truth and beauty of the poetry in everything around you. But it can’t do it alone. It needs you. Your thoughts, your emotions, your dreams, your smiles, your tears, your desires, your words.

Just because someone has written a wonderful book about the meaning of poetry does not mean that you have to stop thinking about or looking for the meaning for yourself. Just because someone has earned a learned degree or written another bestselling book or won another prestigious award for their kind of poetry does not mean that they can speak for you. Just because you like someone’s poetry doesn’t mean you owe them anything. It’s more than okay to disagree with anyone’s thoughts about the true nature of poetry—even those who have been judged masters—because real, true poetry is not something that is dead and gone, but something with the very real possibility of being right here right now at all times and in all places. Everyone has the inalienable right to make their own poetry out of their own heads. It is not just for the academically rich and never was. That’s just a damned lie dreamed up by some nasty people a long time ago to control the world. All these people with their many hard and fast rules for poetry are just trying to fix the game and own it and keep it away from those they despise for being different. Poetry rules are usually for those with cruel and petty minds. No house rules are for those with pretty enough minds who just might express themselves in surprising and interesting ways if given half the chance. So first of all poetry has to be set free by the poets in all of us. Otherwise it isn’t poetry at all, but just some new monstrous gilded imitation hanging on a brightly painted wall.

Finally poetry is like love, you can’t contain it, but if you are lucky you can only try to find a graceful way to be in its presence without making a complete and utter fool of yourself. And like love, it won’t be smothered or it will simply disappear from view like it never happened and become something else, something less desirable and more sinister. It’s a direct question of striking the right balance between self-expression and art. Poetry shines a proper light, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be misused by the enemy to blind or redirect an incoming good energy, so that brings me to my last point. Poetry is a responsibility. It’s not for the faint of heart. It asks a lot, even of those it need not. It wants your full attention, your full devotion, but it promises you nothing in return but the sensation of the moment. You must take it on faith—faith that someone else out there can or will relate to its form and function, faith that you are doing the job of outlining it in your own words quite well, faith that you are not boring the shit out of the very leaves on the very trees, faith that you can get the body on the slab to get up and walk, maybe even to dance. dp

Because you matter, and you really do matter, no matter what they tend to scare you with in school or with on TV, poetry is there to remind us that in any case there are some other kinds of choices in every situation to always be thought of first or made second or played with third. It's okay to think for yourself. Keep on feeling on. There is a timeless beauty even though there is sometimes the great weight of truly awful sadness. There is always more hope on the horizon. Sometimes, if we are lucky, a certain poem will appear to light the path a little at a time or just offer us a new or different glimpse of the grace we need to get us to the point where we are doing the most or best living possible. It often stops to offer us a friendly dance or two--just so that you may never forget to laugh again or to be silly enough again or that you were made for more than just mere suffering along the way again. There is always more love than hate. We can't give up that fight forever, that would be a waste, even if we might need a little rest once in a great while from the struggle to remember who we are at our very best places.

My own rising bread of optimism, often pointed out to me by critics, bullies and snobs, in the artistry of making an original idea out of my own poetry in the world is just my way of singing out loud at the darkness and being close to the real true meaning of life's inner and outer journeys in a friendly human body way. It's there because I think it is right to be there, to my mind at least. It belongs in any deep discussion about the human condition. The meandering of all kinds of crazy ideas and images in my poems is simply to show that there are as many entrances and exits to the fact that we are witnessing of our own being here as there are beings. All things are inevitable to conclude. But as long as we are here we are capable of certain creative actions and poetry is a beautiful action taken by an individual that may or may not mean so much to someone else in the end. So why do it? Indeed. For me because it can be done with so much more fun, more freedom amidst great and careful thinking. It can offer free food for the poor and hungry spirits among and within us. It doesn't always do this--but it already has done it so many, many times before throughout our time and history on the planet and can continue to make a good bit of difference in all our lives with our individual help. It can flood the weary world full of loosely thrown about words or it can fill a single cup for a thirsty fellow traveler with a quenching kind of shared light, like freedom as a living thought. You choose. I mean it. It involves your freedom of expression. No one is holding a gun to your head. The dragon is asleep but it sees through its fiery dreams. Will you dare to disturb such slumber and ride such a hard to define beast out of its only cave to who knows where in the eternal stretch of the universal sky? Many have died emotionally just trying to get close enough to snatch the mapped domain, out from under its bored attention span. The dragon does not care one way or the other, if you succeed, if you will see truth. It knows if you have mastery of any kind, be it courage or blind naivete and will be humbled only by your trust in its wildest nature. You may tame it somewhat by your acquired literary and linguistic skills but you will never, ever ,completely own it as a household pet. That's for sure. It gives as it gets. That's a wide, wild and dangerous mirror to hold up to yourself. It has only to breathe once with bad purpose and you my friend are nothing more than burning toast. Again will you dare to do this impossible task for the rest of us? It awaits your own deepest answers but time marches on. Diet kindly.

All of my life I have fought against the many tired and boring and privileged and pompous definitions for making one's own poetry out of one's own unique experiences, of this particular life, because they have become for me at least far too restrictive and predictable and too confining and much, much too elitist. There is actually such a thing as poetry snobs, believe me, unfortunately. But I know that poetry in some form or another is always there for everybody everywhere and is not meant to be an exclusive club for smart idiots. And I'm out to show its path to that very freedom of thought/expression. It's an ancient and timeless human invention that helps us to give voice to all of our collective dreams and hopes and fears and loves and whatnots. A skeleton key then to unlocking the promise within the vast human spirit itself. It's a fine tool for making fun art and art at its very finest has always fed the imagination which in turn feeds the doing of anything that gets done. It can be misused, true, by haters of every stripe, but what can't?, for sure, but its purpose is not to be so often abused, or mistreated in this way. But to be one more highly interesting and open way for the truth and beauty of the human spirit to rise and be heard and shared, to be respected and cared for deeply, clearly, for all, and for all time, known and felt and sung about throughout this land we call (the) earth, our truest home of homes.

"Darryl's poetry has been known to fill one's head with a collage of images that won't quit. He can grab simple, common subjects and transform them into a "wake-up" that makes the reader thankful for not missing the light. His lines soak up the imagination and squeeze everything clean and sharp. D.P. has a distinct voice that I believe everyone should hear."--from a review in Small Press Review

"Darryl writes with the energy of the young poet. His images dart like flashes from a light show into the reader's consciousness--images concerned with fire, air, water, and earth, the four elements of early Greek philosophers. But these are not formula poems that tediously explore the basis of chemistry. D.P.'s work vibrates. All of us are among the brushstrokes on a scintillating canvas of stars, flowers, and waves. The view is sharp and well-defined."--from a review in The Green Fuse by
Stella Worley

Darryl Price has published dozens of limited edition chapbooks, and his poems have appeared in many journals. He is the author of The Tiger Who Jumped Over the Moon(Truth Serum Press/Australia/2022) and The Ferocious Silence(the Other Press/NYC).

http://blog.fictionaut.com/2011/08/22/monday-chat-with-darryl-price/

• https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/darryl-price/the-tiger-who-jumped-over-the-moon/paperback/product-q7jnqp.html

• https://bit.ly/TigerMoonpb

http://fuddyduddyfan.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/darryl-price-a-poet/

Holding Your Light by Darryl Price(Pudding House)ISBN:1-58998-262-2

http://bentcountry.blogspot.com/2012/04/occupation-that-wont-let-go-of-me.html

The Ferocious Silence by Darryl Price(Unknown Press)ISBN:9780996352680

The Tiger Who Jumped Over the Moon by Darryl Price(Truth Serum Press/ Australia)ISBN#: 978-1-922427-46-5

Why do you write?

Short Answer: Freedom of Speech. Long answer: Truth, Beauty and Goodwill of sorts. Creativity and expression of the human spirit, friendship in the name of and for the honor of the unique human spirit. That certainly would be the simplest way to put it but nothing's ever that simple, is it? There's also a belief that the world becomes what we say it is--that we are always co-creating the world every time we speak it out loud. And because of this single simple belief poetry has the power to change things, I think, for the better, for the wiser, for the kinder. It's at least worth a try. There's more than enough of the hateful kinds of words to go around and destroy the world seventeen times over. I'm interested in spreading a few in the other, more sane direction,if I can. We don't know all of what will become of our poetic deeds so there's a kind of blind faith at play here. Still I do what I can to name what beauty I can see,if I know of any on my path, where and when I see it, to create my own original works of art out of my very limited vocabulary, and to share them honestly with all of you. All of which brings us back to the beginning. Life is short or life is long. In any case it won't last. While I'm here I'd very much like to give off something like a light or leave a hand print on the cave wall to simply say, yes, another person was here, just like you, full of dreams, full of hopes, and fears, and every other type of emotion,
(human) earthling, and still found it somewhat important to say, hello, and also goodbye. I appreciate your time. Say a poem for peace. dp

From a letter to a friend: "I'm ever writing directly to everyone and anyone. The circumstances come from real life but I meld them together to represent a part of the journey we are all on--our own trail of tears. We are forced to march through life to our own deaths. I just happen to think it's silly not to recognize the person or persons next to us as having to deal with the same problems--how to do this with some grace and composure. We have each other whether we want each other's company or not, and because of this fact, I believe we might as well talk. There is so much comfort to be found in another human voice. All day long we are surrounded by the voices of living things that are not human. Their path is their path. Again what we have is each other. What pisses me off is that we often have those who want to pick out and choose their fellow human beings. Impossible, unkind and snobbish. Also while I'm against doomsday wailing, I see there's still plenty of inspiring beauty to go around on a daily basis. Life is meant to be lived and that means sharing the air. Snobs and bullies can go eff themselves. My poems are here for all of you. They are free. They are not for sale.dp"

Any favorite authors? Books?

Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
The Journal of Albion Moonlight by Kenneth Patchen
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Don Quixote by Cervantes
The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
Abel's Island by William Steig
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man by James Joyce Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling The Captain's Verses by Pablo Neruda Animal Farm by George Orwell The Centaur by John Updike Larry Marder's Beanworld Landscape and Silence by Harold Pinter Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner The Lost Pilot by James Tate
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkien A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Sum-forty tales from the afterlives-David Eagleman
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Revenge of the Lawn by Richard Brautigan
E.A. Poe
Cool Richard Nash quote someone just sent me:"We are what we read, we are what we write, and we organize ourselves around and connect with one another through what we read and write."


Musical interests:

Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, Elvis Costello, Prefab Sprout, The Smiths, Everything But the Girl, XTC, Pixies, Squeeze, Patti Smith, George Harrison, Bob Dylan

..My Own Personal Philosophy; have more fun!
SUPPORT OUR TULIPS! It seems to me that the necessary fundamental complement to any so-called good life would have to include an immediate and lifelong reverence for and daily interaction with some form of nature("A seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."--Thoreau),be it sky, sea or land, and the cultivation of every ongoing compassionate idea for its preservation....save the Earth!