Nodding Off in the Paper Airplane Assembly Line

by Darryl Price

The world's anxious fire breathing mob

still wants in, but they don't know what

in the smoke they are looking for.

They aren't really thinking in that

intellectual direction.

All these wonderful, friendly books

you see do not hold the answer

or they would be one big fat book,

or perhaps the magic would be

like one very thin overlooked

little lost card, fallen like a

squeezed leaf to the floor. They simply


fill the happy river bed like

an incredible array of

colorful to dull pebbles to

give the rain someplace else to walk

or run. And now I am at the

other frayed end of my own cu-ration

of the invention of

my poetry and they want to

crack me open, too, as if the

swollen nut inside will give them

any sort of free range wisdom

to taste, feel, smell or see. Well, you


know perhaps, the wisdom that some

things are best left alone in the

forest after all. Nothing in

this beautiful, violent world

is left unsaid, but a lot is

left unheard. That's all there is to

it. The tree fell whether you like

it or not. The moon takes her bath

in front of total strangers now

as she always has before. The

familiar voice you're hearing

is your own. It is inside your


head like a bare naked bulb just

swinging from an exposed wire. It

has lied to you and you have lied

to it, but somewhere along the

jumping line you could've decided

to agree upon something strange,

that's the time you went off dancing

into the unknown with some new

curiosity and courage

to see what you could find. If you

were lucky you got to see more

than the outlaw stars shooting their


shiny guns across your head. But

my guess is you had to defend

yourself more than once against the

selling snakes at your feet. It can

be done, but each time you make a

final decision like that the

whole solar system shifts and turns

to look at you. Some people can

easily handle attention

all right I guess, but most of us

feel uncomfortable after

a while and try to control the


sun's burning ways. They deflect, or

hide, or camouflage. Some even

become someone else in the sad

process. But that's a bitter way

to spend your days,  all alone and

afraid to know yourself. Better

to walk with your own skeleton

in hand. Better to say your name

to the sky without adding a

fish head to the last consonant

in jest, or all seriousness.

Best to give all your songs a home.

Bonus poem:



Here's your pretend song. Now please put that warm

rock back on my cold head and press down. I

don't want to know how pretty the sun can

ever be again. I'll always oh yes

remember it as something that once shone


like a firework on your face and made you

suddenly sparkle like a best dressed crest

as green eyed shadowed look of summer's new

day water. It somehow chose you, I know

it suited you, you gladly accepted


the extended one of a kind offer,

and I was there to bear witness to the

most wonderful crash between flesh and fun

I guess. But this is the kind of stuff that

tortures people to death. So if you'll just


sort of move along. I don't want to take

my chances in the seaweed and the wind.

I don't believe in climbing on top of

the world any more. Flags are for soft fools.

Dreams are floating death traps. Away I sail.