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The Cat Pulls No Sudden Punches


by Darryl Price


 

 

and springs its ready-made claws into

action and takes a soppy chance

that things will probably go its

feline way today.  But you, my friend, must

you always throw the testing switch

to high voltage on me? Yeah I

get that the history teachers don't

 

want me to talk with their students again about their corporate methods,

but they have never been smart enough

to learn from us what now is. That's bothered

me a ton in the past. I'm

pretty sure they still don't get it.

The we as we are now part. They think their

aged kind of knowledge is the

supreme skeleton key, but let

 

them try fitting that stale and polished old

ship into their bottled up sadness

without collapsing the fragile universes around them.

I don't want to sound morbid.

I enjoy life. I've learned to live

with the pain.  It simply comes like it 

belongs here so who am I

to judge it as unwelcomed or otherwise univited?

 

Pain is one petal. One pissing

cloud. One star. One shoe without

the other. One beamed signal from

out in deepest outer space. For those of you

smart enough to know your elbows

from your college degrees I give

you this one simple list. One love.  One soul. One

light. One tragic ballad hanging by a thread. One yang to anchor your chain.

 

One multipurpose building on the verge of collapse.  One acceptable

transference. One handwritten history for the hidden pages of magic books.

One call back. One available

backseat for a fearless driver. One careless whisper.

One four letter word. One priceless forgiveness.

One summer night. One rat. One

carefully buried deep finger. One

lost ball. One will to make it. One living flesh and blood.




Bonus poem:


Feathers On The Things We love


by Darryl Price


I wanted a windowframe between me and the world more

than I wanted your love next to me. Little did

I know that there was a listening presence big enough

to lift a finger in that direction. This is not

a new sad story of some sort. There are no

such things anymore. I suppose the ending will be nothing

more than a subtle shift of light on a wooden floor,

softly fading out of place with nothing left to reveal than the silent hour.

 

No time to fold between cool sheets of shadows. So there's where

life begins its invisible journey up to the disappeared lands, right

where you're standing. Nothing is built to last, but oh

didn't we create an interesting dance though, one that brought

stars to the fore fronts? They simply reflected us out

into the stratosphere like blowing streams of pure burning hills.

Let's not pretend. We were open, revealed, generous, and kind

to all others. We were the medicine that the people

 

so desperately longed for. We provided proof. They took us

apart, and we let them. The only reason for this

vision now is not what you might think, it's to 

smile at you again. I stood still before your ocean

and felt at home. I entered your forest and belonged

to branches, the leaves, the many winding paths, as if

they were made out of my own arms and legs, sprouting faithfully

all around me. That's miracle enough to track these words down and remember them.   



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