it seems an odd time in life, illogical, trying to claw my way out of my head into healthier than i’ve been in years, perhaps decades, even as two weeks, maybe three since mom’s funeral. i try to be celebratory, after all it’s my health, i list in my head all of the issues from the past twenty-five years (surgery, bad knee, etc., but recovery). i go on long walks in the city several times a week, first time in years. but i’m destitute. this week my weekly meals box didn’t arrive on monday as it does every monday during each of the four or five 12-week cycles i’ve been getting them. tiny meal slurps, i call them. but i don’t go hungry. not yet, anyway. and yet have lost 75 pounds or so in the past year. it’s astounding to feel this good. to send out applications and resumes every day because i’m not having to deal with whatever crisis of the moment that is too all-consuming (three days since i should have gotten my box of meals, though). sufferin’ stagnation! my health. having a mother for 59 years, then one day, not having one. d ad’s been gone for 25 already. and gary for ten years. but me, healthiest i’ve been in years, yet unable to live what i still call normal life.
whatever this is has long since
become normal. has become life. i can hear voices out the window of my apartment, just on the other side of my desk, but
cannot make out what any
are saying. it is just me here.
in this dull but singular, and
now healthier, existence. i wonder what i can scrounge up for lunch. i keep a list, there are always items to check off, a lot of items go, most days this is so, but the list barely grows, barely shrinks.
can we just get rid of this life okay it’s gone this life of an artist thing but wanting to be rich did you see what i did when i said rich was a risk? he went all out with risqué is kaye okay? no she gone like whistle gone like the wind like a windy whistle. got something to wet your wist (gone west) it is a deadly thing this dehydration don’t you play with me. you’re having a conversation with your dead voice voices like a wet whistle on a dry wind do you know whether there is a term for that or weather term a deep and mournful dry wind becomes wet. oh moisture. oh moisture thinks the mouth when how come you can never go hungry go thirsty how come you can never go hungry in the desert because because of the sand because of the sand which is there. the sandwiches is there. see how easy it is to examine the sand to spend your life looking for a water mole to spend your ever day your life searching for a water molecule clinging to a grain of sand like sands because now that is something now you know why you needn’t go thirsty thirst kills and who laughs? how come you can never go hungry in the desert? because you foolish mirage you are thirsting to death.
you was always hot to the touch i thought maybe this is just a scary planet but all the fear was so sincere. can’t you just say it melted? not this year
but when it snowed and we were so slow and cold don’t move. when the ice came from the sky and we got frozen for each other oh those were the days we couldn’t move. those were the when you was alarm warm. three alarm? five
more days of froze is all. can we just have another day? what does it matter hot or cold when you are an arctic ocean when i am just an arctic arsonist i don’t care
where is there? i don’t care hot or cold if you could make me froze if you could frost the lock of swaying outright hair if you were there i wouldn’t care.
i was so hot to the touch that you would cool and soothe with just one finger of your thumb or fist i was so cold that were you there and i’m just in my
get me there. if i was so cold just in my underwear and you were there would be no glacial oh if you were here no move me i was just so froze and me a glacier in my
underwear but you are there. if you come back i would put on all my clothes. none of our sweat would evaporate until we drowning. in drowning on fire. maybe i care.
this how you taught it this is the time you taught me so time and again and again with a fist with your firsts you said don’t say the words don’t say it’s the fist that takes out the piss an education of the limpest wrist you sissy fuck it’s in the wrist it’s in the wrist it’s with a fist that hits and hits and hits and hits and hits
all smug wound up so con so smug up when saying all of this. know it all is what you thought and i was right i did. because a word doesn’t matter when there is tongue so hard word word just. just try and make that sound the only thing giving it a real making any purpose was that tongue that human son it burns with human intent. a word reclines on a sofa like a bunch of them built into the sky. a shez lounge. the pretend a furniture. a word cannot pretense without a tongue a human and when you confidence winds you confident wound up like some kind of toy wooden toy (sold ya) when you so smug so buns up cocky you make with that tongue a click that clicks kind of like a gun the click is not the pistol the click is the human finger that makes the click the dick the pistol ha ha ha in its neutrality is what goes off.
i just want to get there and to fuck it up and know i cannot get there anymore and cocky never ever was you was. thought you were but now we’re not
nor never can be. age is just when you’re gone a fucking unreachable faux finish it cannot even be achieved nor done and you taught me there and once once and
always gone always gone to fuck it up and know to no i wasn’t ever there and know i cannot ever i was such a cock i never knew and going on and on the tragedy of never being there and now cannot
(you fuck and have a baby thinking it might could grow up like you never did nor could and only knowing this now that the baby isn’t gone but you are where i thought i was) not dead (wherever i thought i was is not and never nor ever can be where you were) i am just and always be a bad baby that. can’t get up. can’t hurt just comes how come this can’t hurt?
i already know how to feel. it tock me so long to get here and now i must wait for everyone else to figure it out on their own on their own tick. this is not resilience
fuck and you you taught me how to even understand which is no small part it’s pro bably the biggest baby. oh and growing up being a baby growing up when for fifty-nine
years you or i were the biggest child the eldest baby for fifty-nine years always got to be best because first (breast because diapers) and then bam no
baby no more. no baby no more because i cannot cry nor ever could. in this extra line is where i fix myself enough
to double in size. i knew i was an artist but i just thought i was. i thought i made heart but then
you taught me how. just in time to realize to realize how come i can’t feel just time. i mean maturity
when you was saying just the words what you mean amazing was lost. oh come on with me listen what you when you was saying just the words. what you meant is always lost (in fours in say it ones and twos a
one and a two) when i say oh when i say anything it is just a word with a nose to the sky thinking it is funny (of course it is me talking about demons being equal me saying every single word is neutral that neutrality only goes)
bang when given individuality when made human all words being created neutral right
it is 2:00am on monday morning and i am reading poems that tell blunt, tragic tales that are vaguely disguised as poetry by a woman* who wrote these words some
where in the american west, surely, but whatever her proximity to the ocean they were initially scrawled or drafted in the years around when i was born, shortly before i came,
perhaps shortly after. i keep thinking of the stage, of
theatre, and of hearing (almost an auditory hallucination)
broad, mostly non-specific thuds, blunt noises made with
amorphous blocks, fat limbs of wood at center stage, the sound
moves out upon a sea of uninhabited theatre seats, wooden
row after row of them. and these noises seem to be from a woman onstage banging these two boards for this silent ocean. with gnarled
arms she bangs an unwieldy stub of birch onto a thick and another hunk,
irregularly cut, lying flat upon the concrete stage floor, the collision sounds do not carry far, even given the echo-riddled acoustics
of the empty rows of surely uncomfortable, also wooden chairs. darker, though. these chairs are smooth and polished. they sit individually
and altogether, rowed, with much more intent than the two hunks of
birch this woman is banging about on the concrete stage that juts a bit out toward the empty chairs, a stage that is, but for the woman and
the two slabs of wood (before each thud she chants a sort of warning,
like “a child drowns” and, later, “a sudden empty place/ where something was,” then suddenly she is almost keening, words,
a letter filled with “many misspelled words” which grows into furniture: a couch, a large bookshelf (each quickly vanish).
worst of all, with finality, she warns: “you are not coming.” and the thudding stops, the echoes disperse into silence, the woman leaves
the stage. i am still here, thinking of death and silence. until i
have unsettling dreams of pre-existence, emotions. it is the end
of a very long day that has been interrupted occasionally by blunt
banging as if from a mock belfry. the thud of a once-known clang. echo thud ripples out into a soon-silent void. who was the child who
drowned? who wrote the letter filled with words spelled incorrectly.
i’m disconnected. in this space. but comfortable. my eyes move
drowsily across each surrounding wall papered with what must be
the detritus of me. there is nothing beyond these walls. once there
was a web, a glistening network that stretched out beyond it.
those wooden blocks. each wall a blockade. altogether they
make the confines of a comfortable box in which i sit peacefully,
aware that i am slowly forgetting. no remorse for whatever is or
was beyond this box. my legs are crossed upon soft cushiony linens.
*words in quotes are from Kathleen Fraser’s poems in “What I Want”
mom died last saturday. i was never brooding or suicidal – nor was i a bad boy. really. bad, brooding and suicidal
were rather characteristics i wanted, could have been my
coming of age sexuality. as in i wanted in me those traits. or at least to find and then hold tightly onto someone
who had them, impossible as it would have been for me to take either on, to be kevin bacon in
footloose. as i got older i became a fantastic dancer. so i got to be that. what eventually made me sexy was the dancing. but no brooding, no bad boy. most often when i dance what radiates from me is whimsy. and gratitude.
my appeal, when it exists, is that of a good, happy guy who dances with intermingling grace and awkwardness, gliding in and around the other dancing figures in a clunky-stealthy fashion, from the far end of the dancefloor, all the way to the dj booth, and
back. my optimism dims, but never that much. i want to live
forever. i can sometimes pretend i’m a bad guy, i can adjust my face in ways that might suggest a yellow flag, that i perhaps might best
be approached with caution. i’ve come of age, the last in a long line,
am wistful every once in a while, albeit rarely, between when the
club closes and when the sun comes up. and when the sun shows
up, my world is filled with joy, if with a lessening clarity. eyesight
dissipates with age. i adjust my glasses and walk home
as daybreak hits, enjoying just this once the solitude, walk up the stairs of my apartment building, unlock my door and close it behind me again against the brightly lit city that i so love.
hot pink, it says right over here, often appears thematically in contemporary and regional productions of the musical, guys & dolls,
particularly in the costumes for miss adelaide and the hot box girls. it does note that while the original 1950 production had its own color palette, newer renditions ever since tend to amp up the flashy nightclub aesthetic when the
gals are on. when the knuckleheads nathan detroit and sky masterson are up, however, there is
often a generally muted earthtone schematic in play.
red carpet moments are especially fun for me. whenever i, del ray cross, play a
character at the cinema that becomes a particularly red hot hit, i just put on my dapper entertainment face, strike a half a dozen of my most fantastic and terrifically talented poses, then disappear like a demented recluse, until the next big premiere.
origin of that pop culture phrase every one of us prepubuscent nippers would use whenever we’d encounter
some sort of obstacle that had dramatically blocked an important entrance to wherever we wanted to be? for example, a door that has just slammed shut at our face and bolted, perhaps just for spite? no worries. all us pipsqueaks had to do, with a voice aimed as if with magic toward that door, slowly chant-sing: O P E N S E S A M E! that entry would be cleared of the locked door or drawbridge post haste,
what will our subject be today? shall i delve into a real issue, something which in reality, here on earth, is the primary source of my high blood pressure, for example? or will i disavow the bonier, thornier subjects again today, an effort to nix the nightmares i get from reality’s daily grind. design an eloquent
escape hatch – for words come much easier when they’re primarily diversionary.
done that (been there) is what i say of this new teenaged trend. but how fun it’d be to rake and shovel in such a garden, digging up the puzzle pieces from the rows of fruits and vegetables to construct who i am. i’d tend my section of
red radishes, snip lots of long, silky, slightly-curled okra – as if these were all the parts of myself i would then show off to you. aren’t we almost always cultivating ourselves in this play-pretending- deceptive way? face first, yet with a mask we’re always editing, developing
as we grasp it before our face, to invariably shield and tease and create and
say how drawn i am to the color yellow? how do yellow hues rank for you? are they up among those that you are most drawn into or toward? yellow. the color of some melons, of the sun, a color that represents brightness, or electricity. yellow often seems to truly rev me up, to energize me, and yet, at the same time, to
soothe, to quell any growing
uneasiness or anxiety that i might have over what comes next. often the color of beachcombers’ swaying locks, of the beach beneath the spindrift, it’s the golden glint in
hazel-colored eyes, which my dad often had (hazel was his mother’s first name, too).
...situate myself in a particular now, always with no initial attempt at analyzing that spot or adjusting oneself (that’d be me; myself). only then do i briefly assess how much i like the spot in which i find myself at that moment. then, quickly, without thinking much, i move my body, a bit gently, so that if and when i am next propelled, aimed in the adjusted direction, i might have the best chance at next finding myself in a location that, when i leave it, i’ll have become profoundly better for having just been there.
really easy, this one. especially since, clearly, i so regularly look backwards, scanning over every year of this so - called life that i can recollect, if for the one singular purpose of putting together this lyrical project over the course of the past twenty-two plus years. some may find it hard to resist the incorrect notion that it is an endeavor in which i ( del, who is me) often likely find myself enmeshed within tangled nostalgia.
given the discipline with which i’ve given this years- long project, which we may call by its name, anachronizms, however, when i do and regularly and swiftly scan through my memory logs, stopping long enough to grab a line or two for the present day’s lines and land on a particular snippet, there is little emotion or wistful desire, in most cases. instead, i ...
quicksilver, it says right here, upon doing a swift search online, is a traditional, poetic [yes, it says just that] name for the chemical element, mercury. did you know that i nearly completed a bachelor of arts degree studying the science of chemistry? it’s true, i swear on my left-brained life, such as it is. a primary characteristics of mythological mercury, is his volatility. he’s also known for being shrewd, for his eloquence and his roguery. [the statue below depicts orpheus, not mercury, in stockholm, sweden, 2010]
plumbing the depths of my liquid brain in an attempt at discovering utter perfection might require a
pitchfork. well. remember keats’ endymion, the first line of which famously
reads: “[a] thing of beauty is a joy for ever?” but only if those fork’s tynes are capped with the most delicately soft cottony puffs. elsewise, one wrong move and no more joy.
red. the color of us extant human being’s blood, when damage is done to our self such that any singular
runnel from our inner estuaries crosses over and into a body’s outersphere. i know a few similarly-colored things. like
danger. ginger (the spice, the human—used colloquially, the gilligan’s island bombshell,
eve— surely she of the bible was a bombshell, except—was she a redhead? . . .). i have noticed that there are also many desert mesas and buttes that are crimson-colored.
speaking of television, and this particular author of pretty ridiculous lyrics, what’s our favorite science fiction series? heck, this is easy peasy: star trek (which still floats through space the same age as me).
say, might you remember a certain television show called scarecrow and mrs. king? how about remington steele, in which a dapper pierce brosnan starred with stephanie zimbalist, efrem zimbalist jr’s daughter, for those of us who care to live life overfilled with ridiculous celebrity trivia. perhaps one might ascertain from this acronymic tidbit which of those two television shows the author prefers (and preferred).
well, today i am quite angry at the world, but mostly at google. they do most appropriately represent each and every greedy corporate rat bastard in this megalomaniacal oligarch- eat-oligarch universe, don’t they? let’s have every billionaire after each other for a kill-or-be-killed nanosecond. but then who’d get rid of all the millionaires?
“bet you don’t know what i’ve got up my sleeve.” “bet i do!” “bet you don’t” “try me!” “lots of love for me. and frowny faces for everyone else.” “aw, when are you ever going to grow up, mister man!”
look at me (but don’t, really), over the hill, sated with dinner and the long day, feeling practically
brain-free, or at least unable to get a dim spark of a neural connection in this lazy body of mine. such, i suppose, is the brunt of life for an old nobody like me.
do you seriously dare to unleash the wrath of this near sixty year serial sinner?! the audacity! the
devil itself has exactly nothing on me. i’m vile, i’m terrible, and when i’m angry, there’s nothing that poor, pathetic little you can do once i sic my dragon on you. unlatch the door to the cage, my love!
