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How To Make Your Own Falling Star, or Dreamland Begins at Sunset, So Be a Dear and Pass It On, Will Ya?


by Darryl Price



The world moves its roving glass eye
around in front of you like a
dog trying to flip over a frisbee,
as if trying to show you how 

the loveliness of all things here and yet
there, from an anything goes, different,

always shifting, perspective restores a single vision
to the dreamer of dreams. I can
appreciate that. Everything wants to get noticed.
Still some things ever need to be
 
magnified by the poets and scientists who
live deeply in our sleepy heads. And some things
need to simply be placed gently into the
ear canal of a shoreline surfing Cypraea

maculifera and offered up with a little silent bow,
humility to the latest sun child to show his curly face, the magnificent wind's beard, or

the baking day's bread at morning's fresh handsome bang bang like a quiet fool's last minute 
manna from heaven-- you don't get to 
eat the stuff, but just watch it explode, little by
little, into shadows and light, shadows and 

light, shadow, then light. But the only
true focus here comes into being for
me when you, who are surely the
placard of this poem's campaign for peace, lay your curved

and carving pink lips along a simple undulating
coral line around your wonderfully spaced smooth

columellar teeth and speak my name, like a little knock on a forbidden door. The words come
out like secret butterflies from a well
hidden wishing hole. It's a striking and
somewhat unsettling phenomenon to say the least.
 
I didn't invent any of this you
know. You're your own invention in that
body's sense. Someone else could have taken that same
mouth for instance and used it as

a slide rule. I don't know. But
you've managed a peculiar, impossible instrument, capable

of laughing and singing at the same
time, like a bird whistle. I've noticed
this turns and creates the edges of
certain tree-growth boundaries, within just about any
 
kind of weather to come around, to the fore, to
also contend with for one's anxiously awaiting attention span--
with the extreme noise level exactness of a new pencil
sharpener. How am I not to take

notice of such incredibly wonderful things? You make things
new to my burned out eyes. You

boost sub woofers nailed behind the lit
fixed points hanging there against the clouds
into thinking they should just let it all
hang out and shine like the devil. 
 
Darryl Price   051010



Bonus poems:

This Is A Familiar Finger Thrusting 
 
between the bars of a faraway life.
This then is like a thought or miniature
note simply floating through each and every
wall. I can do that only because I have the nerve--
 
there is no other way to get these words
to say their business to you. Don't worry.
They are housebroken for the most part and come with their own
complete sentences. All you have to do 
is let them swim nude in your pages. They'll only
 
last as long as you are awakened and yet still dreaming.
In the morning you might notice a
bush outside your window has suddenly
blossomed over night with an extra set
of purple flowers meant for the lucky ones inside.
 
Darryl Price  051210


Just An Observation
 
I'm on my way. But that
doesn't quite mean what you think
it does. It means I can't
stop myself from the pull
of the waves anymore
with their many mouths full
 
of arms instead of teeth.
They'll reach me walking eventually
and I'll go dancing
into a hole in
the ocean. And little
by splashing little I'll have to
 
become nothing more than
the book of watery
paper my sweetest poems
were written on so long ago for only
you. Until then I go
through every climb watching
 
for the kinds of living
signs that there is something
more to be said by me
that only exists on
the mathematical planes of  
faith along with some impossible late night
 
luck. One can't
help but be willing to
believe that an end is
only a beginning
again for at least someone
somewhere.After all
 
nothing stops happening
to everything that is. 
That's where the land begins
and the trees take over.
Still the sky waits in a
jealous huff to release
 
the vicious winds upon
you should you even dare to enter
the castle grounds at
any unusual time.You're free of
course to go around. Around
your feelings. Around
 
your dreams. Around your desires.
Around your own beautiful
packages.Around having any kind of
new fun in place of the old. The smoldering fires filled with stars
struggling to keep on flaring in spite of the cold periodically catch fire
from within and without-- 
 
like coals in a circle
of smoldering blackly curling 
ash.But look at it this
way, we got as far as
this one poem together.That's as
good as any modern day miracle to me.
 
Darryl Price  051410


I Could So Easily Throw Back All The Bullshit
 
being tossed on me like water off a tiger's whisker
to their retirement pastures for one second more of
your uprising face like the sun and moon's lips combined. 
I'd put my whole head inside their angry cape's glaring red
mouth like an open door to breaking for freedom for
all my best enemies to run for swords outstretched my love before choosing any
raid of beautiful flowers for the tops of my own simple
dreams if it meant that above all the glorified
 
muscular din I could hear your one original voice
signing my name off to the clouds.That's what it comes down to for me.
The very softness of your soul sound has turned
me into a silent listener's listener.I want to
be just left alone now with the headphones of life firmly forever in place. I
have made my choice. They might not like it,
because it ends the afternoon's frothy entertainments, because it
spells the departure from the party train at last,
but I swear I am ready to pick up every last one of
 
your suitcases and carry them all like a good
little monkey to wherever you are going-- even if
that means from place to place.I have removed
the nails from around my shoes. I have fallen
through the open airplane's sucking door. I have heard the
glistening rocket's engines blasting off their own last fuel cells
to the cemetery of the lost forever past.There's
nothing left of me.Here is all that amazing glory for
the taking while there with you is a new
 
life filled to the brim with giving it all as you go through. A thing
they absolutely abhor I can tell you. How thoughtless. How truly dull.How
boring.But let the frauds continue their gambling games without
me.Until I saw you I had no idea
I was just the house martin taking a bath in a concrete bowl in front of the whole watching world. I thought I
was brave in my tiny birdbath of a way
for puffing out my feathers to the slightest provided 
shadow.But your presence showed me another reason to
want to use my wings. And not just to
 
fly home again.I had no idea that I was made
to be with me.I know it sounds funny. I'm
willing to be the fool. But I am no
longer lost and looking.I recognize us as the land to
which I  have always truly belonged. Thus I wave my
flag. I sign my name. I dare to leave
the group. That is the beginning of my final breath to you all.
That I sailed around the unknown world to get to you.
That tomorrow is still on the horizon's warming plate, ready to be eaten.
 
Darryl Price    042710    
 


You Made the Mistake
 
of being somewhere
you are tonight. Wait.
That thought is gone. In
its place is a song.
I just don't care if
it's old or brand new
as long as it's true.
 
We'll make our own beauty
out of the fact
of our being or
not. You can't plan for
these rare things. You may
get stars that only
bloom once in a hundred
 
years, or you may
get a sulking child-
like sky that doesn't
approve of your happiness.
We'll have to
make do with the light
in each other's eyes.Okay?
 
Darryl Price  0512210 

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