over two decades in the making.
a timeshifting autobiographical poetry collage w/photography.
a diaristic, nearly "daily writing" (ad)venture.
new pieces are posted most days..
**new and in progress** --
recordings of each poem are being added.
these are read by the author & posted to each poem's page.
--Del Ray Cross (contact delraycross at gmail)
If I could just but bitch for just a moment, maybe two, my love life, my financial well-being and my mortality might have a thing or two to say to you. But where would I begin? And what, pray tell, could I say that hasn’t been said so many times before? So I retreat and say that for starters, most nights I sleep. I do. These days, at least. This tiny radar blip that used to beep and beep and beep. And when I reach as far as I can reach I count ten fingers (and that while squinting). This extroverted hermit keeps his own company, unless by luck of placement, like, say, at work, a place I try to go from day to day, a few people pass me along the way. Some say hello, some even stop to shoot the breeze for a mere minute or two. And those moments take precedent over most others save for those in which I’m gabbing for hours with my most beloved, who lives well below the equator. So our intimacy is of the more 21st century type. But most of this you know already. Or probably not. Either way, for whatever reason, I do like to share with you that which I most treasure, alongside that which causes me the most distress. But I digress. I always do. In this one-sided conversation that goes from me to you.
Cool wind blows in open window, I am happy being alone. —John Wieners
But this contentment gives way to desperation only three stanzas later:
Won’t you come and see me again, please?
Given the source, what else might you expect: torn heart, tempting death, love spilling everywhere, mangled, almost lifeless body on the parquetry. How
does this compare to this October day, during a San Francisco summer’s hottest week of the year, in a one-room home
that’s never once experienced a cool breeze, either coming or going, through it’s one window? Six years now of toiling with
whatever trickery that might exist when it comes to ventilation. As exhausted as the burning mouth of a tailpipe, all attempts to move tepid air as it sullenly
refuses to stir. Unless this lint-grayed once- white Woozoo fan blows directly upon my overripe, mostly unclothed person and the
double-fan that sole window’s pane closes upon in as airtight a configuration as is possible clings for a moment to a bit of a breeze stirring in the courtyard behind it
and the door is splayed wide open to expose the lower depths of the city’s riff-raff crammed into similar rooms in tepid states spewing their infernal-
eternal nonsense all hours of the day and, especially, the night (as I do)— only then this classless occupant might but barely feel the movement of a
few breaths of warm air crawl, say, upon and mostly over the tops of his shoulders, or through the glistening hair that covers his forearms. Happy
being alone would be a nice epilogue, sure, would it not? Would it ever! But no. I still, however, can’t shake my mind’s aim toward tomorrow with a tinge of
what, I suppose, might best be called optimism. So, in camaraderie with a man whose shaking hand I once proudly clasped— there is always that. As of yet, at least.
Now there’s a phrase that might give you the heebie-jeebies, should you consider it for a moment or two, depending, of course, on your mental
acuity. Those last two words, though, might uplift, given their meaning in relation to the original phrase’s final word, one which I often use, aiming
for comical, when I say “Del is short for Delusional.” But am I just shooting for comical when saying that? Or is there a part of me I feel might be,
irrevocably or not, incapacitated? There’s a pun in that question, for sure. How might one really feel about stumbling around with one’s head in the clouds? As
my hopefully lucid thoughts move further in that general direction, it seems clear to me that I, myself, would much rather be delusional than decapitated.
Today I’d love to adjust to your reality. Mine is just no good. What a turn-off of a complaint. I wonder if I could exist inside anyone else’s reality, a
notion that hurts my brain. Thusly my process of waking up goes. Until I find my attitude adjusted and mostly positive, forward-leaning. Was that
mere fantasy? “Hope is a muscle,” I keep hearing someone saying, someone famous. I can’t remember at the moment who keeps saying it,
but I’ll remember it eventually. Most likely. I know what she means every time she says it. But now I just wonder, hoping I’ll remember.
A Few Notes on the Videos (meanderings that are far too incomplete)
There’s a vastly more significant chance that one will find its way into a stranger’s algorithm if the recording is less than a minute long. It’s an additional way for me
to showcase work of which I’m quite proud, with which I’ve been playing and messing around for over two decades now. During
which, especially due to circumstances
mostly beyond my control, this socially awk ward extrovert has collapsed into a hermit for over a decade now. It’s been a way to wave violently in all directions, attempting to get my
voice to those of you it reaches, saying vehemently, “I am here.” Using two points in my own life, working in chronological order, it’s a way for me to tell my story personally, to explain who I am, and offer
some fun, some humor, some wisdom (he humbly writes), some fiction based on these two points in time, and this helps me grow, is something, again, of which I’m quite proud,
and I can see the results, can point to them. It is a bunch of stuff I can point to and say “I did this” and “This is me” and “I make mistakes” and “Aren’t I clever?” It’s me,
me, me. Unabashedly. But I try to say some thing. And more than anything, it’s a method of
engagement (and while part hasn’t worked so well
quite yet, I continue to work hard on that goal, too).
Simply cannot fathom what would make these, the most essential rules of thumb, need to ever be broadcast in the first place. Even if saying such things were
ever necessary, and were written into a general book of rules, say in stone, when people were relative newcomers to the scene, I mean. But just think,
and we, supposedly evolved creatures, that is if evolution turns men into monsters, and perhaps that’s all we ever were, here I am, by no means the brightest bulb on the
planet, certainly nobody of any authority, saying it here: Stop all the meanness! There isn’t one of us better than any other. We all have not-so-great days. But how do
you solve a problem like murder? Incessant death by the hands of others. And look, we’ve evolved in such ways that we needn’t even use our hands. It’s the most depressing
and disgusting thing, and don’t get me started, there are plenty of such, but murder? Stop it! Do I really need an argument in defense of such logic? I think my demand is clear enough. What
a world it would be if you’d just heed my word and do as I say. I’m not looking to win a debate, just appeal to logic, to common sense. Or are those just myths? The times might say so. The
Times might reiterate. But I disagree. Inflict no intentional pain. End foul play. Play nice. And don’t kill anybody. Can you hear? Am I clear? I’ll trust that you’ll abide. Or I suppose I won’t.
Just give me a holler if you’ve the urge to step over and into the dark side. (There, I tried.)
I’m that guy who always wants to preface these things by mentioning that this isn’t a cry for help. But don’t most of us cry on some sort of regular basis? I can’t begin to tell you just how much I am loving the new season of ___________. Or that new show, what’s it called, _______? I watch stand-up comedy specials quite often and laugh so
hard that I cry. (I imagine one cannot generally tell the difference between when I am meandering or when in my mind I’m weaving my way to some logical point.) But last night I watched _______________, and it wasn’t funny at all. In fact, I found it harsh. Everyone has a different harsh barometer, right? Do you ever think about what that device might tell you about a person? I do.
Let’s say you are a member of one of
the generations that won’t allow you to publicly (and/or I do more than wonder,
privately) pigeonhole but that barometer,
working as it does to build a forecast—can
most of us agree on this?—will provide
hints. In dangerous times, a hint might be all you need, could be all you get. I’ve no idea why I dwell on such things because I’d never use it to run like hell, to do the Darwinian thing. Although there are things that make me jump. And when I do it’s hard to narrate what is going on in my head, or else it’s scaredy-
cat easy. There is no life flashing
before my eyes, something I save
for more private or quiet times, like
this one, but instead I do think this
is it!, and I’ve had many such
fight or flight moments. These seem to usually involve one of the following: very loud noises, physical instability such as the movement of the floor or ground beneath me or a faint-headed dizziness, or the sensation that I’m having a heart-attack, am all but critically certain of it. By the way, every time
“Who didn’t order a gluten-free bagel?” The chimp who’d eaten four of them pretended he couldn’t speak English. It was late-summer Tucson, exactly
as you’d imagine it. The sky was overly-blue, and no one was shivering about it. Our little girl’s tiny claws had hooked themselves into a banana, each
dad pointing at the other with a full-on “His fault!” face. Meanwhile on the Mississippi, the Patron Saint of Gambling’s smoker’s cough dwindles, only slightly
interrupting the whir and ka-ching of the long row of slot machines that patrol the river.
Like a dandy. But the fog lingers. I finger my invisible drink, imagining I’m testing the temperature of a pool before diving in, or perhaps it is a bit
more like slowly dipping a toe into fresh bathwater. I’m aiming more for funny than raucous (I think?) as I lift a wet finger and clear my throat. “Waiter,
there’s a fly over here that’s come un done.” The poor guy, somebody’s son, does quite well at his attempt to roll with the punches without coming across the
least bit flirtatious. “Too bad, so sad!” I think, pouring out my imaginary drink.
Back then, wanting to live long enough was so easy-peasy; so rosy-dozie. But when it was proclaimed resolutely on today’s teevee that it was the end of an era, and this was furthermore done in a giddy fashion seemed to have the studio audience just as giddy in return, I sure didn’t believe it. I had known an era or two. And they had ended. And I’d been in denial afterwards for years. When the scientists who measured such things committed suicide, we had absolutely no way of knowing what an era even was. Or is. We just knew from our own experiences that it was not a pretty thing, this era ending. So, despite all of the proclamations, those confident announcements, I didn’t believe a word of it. “This era will end with the apocalypse,” I told my pal Farrah, who, despite her name was very 21st Century. “Lighten up, Dude!” she said. It seemed like her favorite thing to say to me. And it was obvious that she was annoyed. She was already on that end of an era bandwagon. I felt a sudden twinge of nostalgia and, truth be told, a rather extreme desire, more than just a resigned readiness, to welcome that apocalypse with the widest grin I could muster, which would be a small representation of my likewise overly outstretched arms, held in such a way that revealed how craven they were for the tightest embrace they’d ever known. “That’s just way too much,” thought a willing yet sorely disappointed Farrah.
Ponderings & Educated Guesses (yet another interlude)
Back then I wanted to live long enough to tell the stories of what I had no way to put into words, because it was also impossible to float somewhere outside
of myself in order to see what people like to call the “big picture” of what is going on, of how sick I’d become. How emotionally—how mentally—ill.
It was a pre-pandemic deterioration the worst of which I can now say occurred before I was literally kicked out on my ass. Kicked to the curb then
wait what turns out to be this extraordinarily long duration and then kicked out into the
elements. The worst had already happened
by the time I got to the second part, being
literally removed from my home, and the
trauma (I would like it to be understood
that I do not take that word lightly) that
would accompany it, until I realized (even
considerably after this less harrowing set of
events began to occur) my memory, that
dried up orange wedge that had always already
made retrospection something so unlike, that
seemed so seductively distinct, that I had taken
to saying I write to remember...and...that’s why I
take photographs, too, had begun to malfunction,
just as it does for those whose memories are normal.
And I had already been weaving these facsimiles
together for a decade, into what has evolved into
this particular project, which, since that time which
I call the worst of it, years before the pandemic,
dozens of months before losing my home of
nearly thirteen years, I’ve spent yet another
near decade building this quilt made of me,
all slapdash, wherein I can dive into at what
ever point, if for no other reason than the
fundamental one of understanding illness
as I never had, of the incredibly long process
of healing, and the physical deterioration of
simply living that can go on in simultaneity.
One comes of age. One experiences tragedy,
one gets sick and (at least in this case) even
tually heals, slowly, is always healing. And at
the same time, one —usually completely un
aware of the pace, much less that ALL OF THIS
is ever happening, it is all so significant, it is always,
yet, indefinitely, meaning, also, infinitely for you,
