[x]

circusInside the cage, the door secured by a lock he didn't have a key for, the man played Russian Roulette with tigers. He'd first ride one, and then another. Each time he survived, he'd ride another. He had to, you see, for the cage was full of tigers, no clear ground to step down. And away. It's just the way things are.

singularityIt was a country with no exit sign.
Nobody wanted one.

I ask you a question>
What sort of place is that?
And another>
Where can I find it?

SPICE        Quickly, before they fade,

      abandoning their ship of pages

      Gather the words together and

       mix them with seeds of spice

       Preserve their fragrance in

         windswept fields waving

        Hands and fingers dangling

        Grazing the buds of verse

overcast - with pale thoughtI breathed out clouds
hoping they would rise
and write great things in sky
But heat of breathing billions
vaporised all sense and beauty
The sky became a mere grey haze

green roseThe green rose glories in the forest
hidden from all but the subtle eye
Winding about the trees
Guarding them with supple thorns
Its simple five blade flower
makes a pentacle of magic
a ferocious quiet protection
for the beings in the wood

I walk freely there

One dayOne day, physicists found dark light, light with negative energy. Well, I thought, that really does explain a lot. Those days where all things are bright and beautiful and yet it all looks dim and I feel numb. Like the day after my father died the night before and all the lakes were sparkling in a gentle breeze with the Florida winter palm trees swaying and the city brilliant under sun in clear sky. All those bright clean cars were dimly visible as I drove my mother back to her half-empty home.

Rushmore ReduxI had wanted to help with Ziolkowski's art
I had wanted to honor Crazy Horse
They only wanted dynamite experts
And heavy equipment operators

His maquette points to the Black Hills
An impolite usage of an index finger
Crazy Horse cannot protest,
But his great grand children can

Standing Bear went off the reservation
No council meetings or powwow
A surprise attack on the Black Hills
Rushmore redux of a Red Man

Custer's corpse with pierced ear drums
Still doesn't hear
Andrew Myrick said "Let them eat grass!"
His dead mouth stuffed with it

The crime, on going
American natives still feel steel
Conquistadores shed their armor for

I Am Not A ShrinkThere is a dryness about you
A desiccated crackling and rustle
Your mind quiet heat lightning
Surfacing thoughts burst into flame

Your body vibrates and lurches
Seething with imagined assaults
A fortress repelling all compassion
Unwanted and unnecessary

What surgical strike hit home?
Or was it little drops of water
until you could take no more
of this mad world?

I so wish help was forthcoming, but
the same mean world made us all
Survival alone, a poor substitute for living
Life is so much more than not being dead

sparsestark hard beauty
windblown
few things move
few things grow
pipes skirl their wildness in the air
above mountains and water
in the moments of a life without fire
when I can feel clearly
I am born and borne aloft
and truly fly

Lancelot Price 2012 February 06

La DerechistaI witness your methods
Your stunning audacious swagger
Wondering at what point in time
Lucifer will exact payment

Are you even alive now?
It would seem not
The sun shines and your skin sizzles
Your lurching gait gives you away

The dead are not concerned with living things
Mother Earth is just something to build castles on
A place to weave tales and sow fear
To defile for profit and hornswoggle the dim witted

You say this is not the place to talk of such things
I beg pardon and beseech
The time for pleasantries and demureness is past
To remain deferential a sinful lie

Come then the living and breathing
The healthy in mind

GRAYI envy the certitude of the delusional

The vacuum packed, hermetically sealed mind of the zealot

I envy the uninterrupted sleep of the self-righteous

Those blind lovers of the black and white

Where only man is alive

The simplest of explanations

For the most complex of questions

Cock sure of their truths and convictions

I live in a more likely world of

smudged borders and gray debate

A dearth of certitude

Pan and Loki abide and even the rocks live

I prefer the delicious semi-chaos of life as it is

bluesMy blues have got no rhyme
My blues do not have any rhythm
And they damn' sure don't have a key of any kind
None
And sometimes they get real polysyllabic 'cause that's just the way I roll every once in a while
Yep
Blues don't have just one colour, just one frequency, Kenneth.
There's a whole wide spread of Angstrom units available
right down into the red heat and fire that burnt up who you were back in that one time when you were Somebody but you just aren't anymore
and back up high into that purple with gold and diamonds hidden in green trees in the forest when you were happy
And by yourself
And when you were together on that edg

puzzling inpuzzling in
-------------

I am caught by tawdry beauty
wondering how this unnatural thing could be
these distortions done with full intention
tattoos on beautiful once pure skin
these warm bodies seen in dusty yellow light
breaking all my standards
my sense of right
the scents and warmth and dampness
cling to me
i fight to leave
yet do not have the strength to go
enclosed in music like a dancing carnival of mirrors
The heat the heat
the fever touch
i'm forced by inner want to stay
desire has gelled the walls that once were air

slowerI see the heat of streetlights in your eyes
there is sulfur involved
snowflakes swirl in lumination orange and blue
you in your long black coat
hiding your military dress of antique brass buttons and navy blue in all its darkness
Remember that limousine we rode in
do you
It was only hours ago

I remember the year when we met under the sky
and the only light was the sun
too bright for competition and yet you were brighter
and for those moments so was I
We never sat down in limos then
when we could run or lie together
Our bodies were faster than thought
We made so much and said so little

only hours ag

whosomewhere in the country
there's a crater and machines
and deadness
somewhere someone
made it happen

somewhere in the country
there's a tiny white transistor
it starts to hum so sweetly
glorious music flys and sings
someone somewhere
made it happen

who do we kill?

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no moreI was all passion once
Then I learned to think

Damn it!

speakand on that final day
I grew so tall
my head surpassed the highest cloud
and I could speak to galaxies

so distant are they
eons of our histories would pass
before they heard
our first and smallest story

our reach is long
but slow

tinyA tiny aeroplane flutterhums through the liberty of the sky.
Quiet sky of autumn or of spring.
Nothing is more lonely or more beautiful.
I am there, looking out on random forms.
Among them.
Of them.

it ridesAlong a dusty street, a gun came riding
at the side of a man who had nothing to say
His face was sun-weathered
despite a hat's shade
Rachmaninoff rhapsody
played in his head
though it wasn't yet written
and Paganini was dead

In the street also
was a man with a star
that he wore on his vest
as a sign of his dark
Of the world that he worked for
the wrong side of a lark

In the glass-fronted saloon
at the side of the street
was a player piano
that ate all the songs
while the men at the bar
sang right along
of the joys of bought whiskey
watered artfully down

the only right was copy
and the band played on

soldierssoldiers in the street
marching loosely in the snow
Why are there always soldiers?

I know that ants have soldiers, too
Ants are not logical things.

traditionalA market stall in old Moscow

The boy displays the frozen fish
for a camera in the dawn of movies
He smiles
for some reason I do not know

He will always be a fish monger

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interregnum

by *LancelotPrice, May 13, 2012, 7:30:44 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

There was an earthquake here once.
Then twice. And then again.
And several more times.
And each time ended
Life came again
building hidden layers on
what had not sunk in the sea

At last, though maybe not
the deep break moved on east
the hole was sealed
the island left in peace
a large high ring
not quite complete
surrounding the abyss of calm cool water
that was all that was left of mountain

It was here we began

to  build a home again

to make music and beauty

Even if explosions come again, we had our time

Lancelot Price 2012 May 13

interregnumby *LancelotPrice

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2012-2013 *LancelotPrice

...

~EmmaSloane May 23, 2012 Writer

More loveliness from you, Lance. This is surely one of my favorites of yours.

Reply

*LancelotPrice May 23, 2012

Thanks, Emma, I much appreciate your liking.

Reply

`vespera May 22, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

"to build a home again" I think you have an extra space here

I really like how you formatted this.

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*LancelotPrice May 22, 2012

Thank you.

It's a lovely little space; I think I'll give him more work in the future to keep him happy. He gets a bit bored at times and frequently asks for something new to do.

Reply

~JStavridis May 19, 2012 Professional Filmographer

Sometimes when I read something so beautiful I wonder if hope is really wisdom stripped of all that is cynical.

Reply

*LancelotPrice May 19, 2012

Thank you, Jake. Wisdom includes the cynical, knows it well, yet realises before the end of consciousness comes, that the entirety of life is beautiful. The fullness of it, the multiplicity, is far above any of the emptiness of nothing. It is worth everything.

Reply

~JStavridis May 20, 2012 Professional Filmographer

Beautifully said, Lance.

Reply

*LancelotPrice May 20, 2012

Reply

*megsmad May 13, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

i like the peace in this

faved

Reply

*LancelotPrice May 13, 2012

Thank you. It's nice to be able to look at things this way.

Thanks for the faves on this one and the previous, rather more angry

, view from a higher place.

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