Four Poems from STEERING WITH YOUR KNEES

for those of us who refuse to fall without a smile

V.B. Price

LOYALTY TO OLD TROWELS, AND HOES, AND SHOVELS —
you know their meaning, you have stemmed in them
the flow of departing and forgetting,
made them as real as you are
in the field of yourself, as much a part of you
as your good habits are.
Carry your file while you’re weeding.
Everything needs its own kind of love.

ALLOWING,
you are
what’s next,
free
as greeting
a welcoming
beloved
full body.
This is so
with the universe
of fire and death and animals
with unique personal ways
shrieking in the jaws
of their fate.
Allowing is more
than accepting.
It’s giving yourself
to your life, with no
taking back,
as it comes to you.
Its more than not
minding pain.
It’s allowing
which is to chance
what attention is
to mind.

THE HORRORS THAT COULD BEFALL US:
the pranksters bucket of cold piss
poised to spill from the top of the door
when we open it with unsuspecting habit
They are all in there, like eyeballs and goiters
in the bouillabaisse — microbes, asteroids,
Hitler, stroke, the guilt of your life revealed,
guilt that is no more who you are
than the grapefruit-sized tumor
on the top of your spine. All you can do
is check each door for a bucket,
and maybe wear a bucket on your head
and carry a plunger for a sword, in case
it’s your mind that’s the toilet.

ON JOB’S PLANET,
the atmosphere is in layers
of euphoria, torment, exquisite
boredom — the stratigraphy of paradox
builds like Babble in the sky.
Some live whole lives
in layers of homey dilapidation,
some in layers of domestic acid. Some
are satisfied with a good cup of coffee,
others can’t wait to die.
Is there any common fate
where comradery rests?
Life, not its scathing,
is the common ground, isn’t it?
And thanks-never-ending
the only rescue?

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From V.B. Price’s selected poems from 2008 to 2020 entitled, “Polishing the Mountain,” forthcoming from Casa Urraca Press in Abiquiu, New Mexico.