My thoughts flicker at light speed, create mangled images that come and go so quickly that I can’t quite make out what’s depicted in the horrors of each, jangling my nerves so that my stomach does somersaults. Soon I will soar into the unknown at what might as well be the
which sounds exotic, doesn’t it? I’m on pins & needles w/ excitement at the moment about going somewhere I’ve never been before: the lower hemisphere of this planet. I haven’t left the San Francisco Bay Area in, it’ll be ten solid years in a few short months. I haven’t been in an airplane in nearly 15. Flying scares me into a terror. At some point I dispensed with that fear, turned 40 in Paris, and flew all over the place in a mere 3-year period. This has be come too confessional; I feel so old and embarrassed and small. And my mind is stirring so that I can’t focus on a thing. It’ll be a wonder if I make it on
to the airplane this afternoon.
ll this humiliation is to say that by the time I get back, in some 17 days, I hope to be rid of the anxiety that dwells within all of these thoughts, to have perhaps recaptured a bit of my youthful adventurous gung-ho, ending the standstill of the last 10 or so years and moving into the giddiest period ever. And may it last and last, never stop, even. Well, that may be a bit too much. But I do hope this trip helps me look at the past 10 years without thinking it was all less than living, even and especially if by comparison to what comes next diminishes it,
They said don’t be so truthful they said be yourself they said shut up and let me go they said the future is dim. I can’t see a thing on the horizon: north, south
east and west. Age, inevitably. This isn’t about me. They said eat your whole plate people are starving they said take out the garbage they said make your bed
they said something about flipping a coin onto the regulation wool blanket. Boy Scouts pitch tents before the snow comes down. Boys like chocolate, too.
There’s an old tree that juts from the peak of the bluff. One might climb it to escape the bullies who pack gravel into their snowballs, stretch comfortably
upon its limbs, take in all there is to see, which is more than a kid might’ve ever seen, a colossal vista dusted not-so- slightly in powdered sugar, sure, one
might, as the land brightens and the snow switches to sleet that clings like an adolescent to the tree that juts from the peak of some obscure childhood monolith.
I wrote this at the top of my drafts document for this month, which is a page or place that I reserve for titles that randomly land between my ears
with at least some conviction or have a look, a feel or a sound to which I am attracted. There never seem to be a dearth of these sexy juxta
positions. Or quotes I come across in hopes of the perfect upcoming epigram. Sometimes I just grab a title or a quote and without an ounce of forethought
go from there. In that way, it’s just another parameter, a way to hone from the top of the process. Occ asionally, I’ve been doing that
thing that most of my more seasoned compatriots always would relay (in tortured manners) their own versions, where I keep glimpsing one of those
titles or quotes, and for weeks there’s this thing that sort of grows, like a planted seed or a new explosion on the horizon or a tumor or a sleek
blueprint by the latest poet-architect sensation. I rarely build that slowly, but when I do, well, I cannot say that these that seem to rise in that manner,
to work their ways toward a possible existence, are any better than those composed like this one, in which I’ve grabbed the title and just immediately
run with it. Also, because pickles came up in conversation just earlier today with the person who sits at the center of my universe. That was so close
enough to pure serendipity that the urge simply could not be resisted.
bent into knots by this day. each word i type limited by my own rules, a game which now has me carrying an extra burden as i’m here hyperventilating—
when there are so many disappointments and things requiring a goodly amount of pugilism—and there’s less and less room for me to move around in my own home—can barely move...to know there’ll be tomorrow. when things once relied upon require a daring leap of faith—
What angel do you carry hidden in your cheek —Jack Spicer
some say it was his heathen tongue that was his undoing. no, it was not. a week before his great fall he fired all seventy-seven of the comedians, the maudlin entertainers who’d written up to then every single sentence that he’d ever spoken in public. he did not utter one word after that.
jetsetters—do they still exist? at almost exactly 15 years ago, i could say i was one. i turned 40 in paris and kept going for
about 3 years, finishing it all off with a nice cruise atop the baltic, docking in cities like
tallinn, stockholm, helsinki, amsterdam, and even saint petersburg. imagine that! me. on a
boat. to russia. after a decade and a half, everything seems to have changed. a lot of that is personal, my own journey. needless to say, it’s been filled with twists, turns and sweeping sudden unexpected tragic (depending on how you might define that word) life events. and now, not having been outside of my fair city for almost a decade, luck hints at a new international trip in my future. i’m particularly keen on seeing south america. how about next week?
to be duped by another poet. i’m really not in the mood. so i do it again, open the book that has landed upon my lap. play with its warmed innards, tickling the cream-colored paper just a bit. ennui is momentary. love is eternal. or at least as infinite as i’ll ever be.
finally, now that i have a little bit of free time to myself. what to do? why, fill you all in on all of the goings-on. hey, everyone. del, here. if there are no
drastic events between now and then, in what amounts to an estimation of days (like a week to two weeks from now would be my departure), i’ll begin my first international trip in a decade and a half. still, so as not to jinx anything, mum’s the word on the details for now. stay tuned and keep those fingers crossed.
how am i supposed to put up with this? i choose entertainment. which is right smug of me, isn’t it? so what if i’ve kept myself locked tight inside my miniature hotbox for what seems like
centuries? i’ve retaken the personality test dozens of times by now, and each time i do, i’m still way up the vector: a real extravert. baloney. i’ve sat here so long that the box has melted onto me. i’m one with this box.
aquarius is the sign of my one queer true love. it’s true. unlike my current environment: alone. alone. alone. but it’s starting to feel real, this life that is maybe almost so soon here. i mean in the way that it has been real now for, uh, FIVE YEARS. man! it’s getting so close to a story impossible to jinx.
best not to get too ahead of ourselves. these are real conversations going on in my head in every which direction, so that they are multiple and they are overlapping and it’s quite hard if not
outright impossible to figure out which pieces go with each other. in
fact, this turns the sum of these conversations, no doubt, into the riddle of my very existence, or at least this is how i’ve somewhat and surely all to self-importantly begun to characterize all this hurly-burly chatter. if this barrage of sound were coming from literal human bodies then
a reasonable question would be how are they getting any air. then i remember it’s in my head this is happening, so if, as i’ve said, this chatter holds the riddle of me then maybe the solution is call an ambulance i need to be resuscitated!
settle down, kiddies! squealed the voice of no youth, the so-called leader amongst a motley crew of cowards standing on tippie-toes in earnest just for a glimpse of the clown, the so-called rowdy ringleader of around a dozen, probably more like thirteen, insufficient throwbacks to a clockwork orange anarchic fashion from the looks of ’em, but to a person, if one might suggest such—sure, they’d just hoodwinked the hordes—but each of them in the deepest were nervously bristling if not quivering with no grasp, no idea of reality, no clue of the path, the gut-wrenching future, this man-boy cult had just unknowingly borne.
calm down, missy! our father was already getting worked up. remember, after all, that he was who he was and was not who he wasn’t.
men! calliope always resisted. two women to a man and about fourteen men to a monster. if you could call them men. unleash zee monster nummer unz! a clown sprung from the cannon. and that monster was no emmett kelly. but even at such speed, such heights, the world around us was brought all the way down, if not further, than the ground beneath us.
lousy words!” could be made out, emitted—more like spit out dry—from a rather feral and taut-wired (or spit-swept, and not just at the corners) mouth. here lie the mouths of poetry. this wasn’t spoken but did seem emcee’d directly into the, the editors don’t think rotten the most appropriate descriptor,
but as mouths go.... oodles of awful, the non-emcee emcee’d into the dog ears of our hero: tethered with countless red paper hearts, that joyless saint bernard. and tucked like a russian doll into the water-blasted miniature
barrel under its goozle, trapped like a canned tuna, st. v. hisself.
but, your honor ... — ( our eyes meet. ) who’s the understudy in this situation, newbie? nope. dumb- ass binary. do you think that’d even relatively be us, be you and me?
what’s your favorite cocktail? and make it the best story you ever told. nah. let’s instead have the essentials only. yeah, man, ... – we really need to do this more often. we need more stories. more, more, more! give me one, will ya?
wax lips, i dunno, dick lacy, dicks van dyke & patton,
marilu henner, uh, memory expert?! sassafrass (from an actual tree), hot lips houlihan, romper room, oompa loompas, outtasite! dynomite! and mustaches à la the 1970’s
floodwaters are on the rise! enough to make us start to worry alongside the russian river here in northern california. - look as an empty house crawls down a lonely hill, drowns in said flood tide, which, in turn
carries that home away. lucky for the home, its human inhabitants, or owners, were away at another ball game. very lucky indeed. everyone else (humans, homes, sprawling clover) crawls a little further up the riverbank. true story.
shalom. are we on the air? let’s talk about love. let’s move our asses on the dancefloor after 4am o’clock all the way to at least noon or maybe the next nine pm.
pink is the first color that zooms into my head upon feasting my eyes on this chip. i’m zoning as the kids these days don’t say anymore. a pink, actually, that zigs (or zags) with purple to form an even more zippy fuchsia. zoinks! awake now, i think this quite the color. onward.
today was tough. it seems of late that each day gets tougher than the next. in actuality, however, this month, if things go as planned,
let’s just say that i’ll get to experience events more positively significant than any i have in a very long time. decades, maybe? and i’m not exaggerating in the least. so, dear diary, with fingers crossed and mind clean and focused, let’s do this!
our paint chip named “octopus” is a cute shade of dark lavender, it appears to me. a purple that makes me both smile and slightly salivate. over the years my taste changes, but more than any other color purple has been my favorite color (sometimes it’s yellow, green, red or orange). i’m up with excitement in a bit of a jump and manage (with too much regularity) to slam against the shelf directly next to tHe bed in my tiny apartment. a magenta
brUise appears on My knee a few short minutes thereAfter. maybe it’s a
momeNt to appreciate havIng AMere 2 legs rather than 8.
wasn’t gonna say it, but i did. lesser actions have caused me greater dilemmas. but we all know i’m a
human dumdum. is that understated or am i? trick question, chump. what do i know, though? look at me, sitting here most every night, spilling buckets full of words. or else i’m listening to them. semi-content. or reading them aloud in near darkness (i.e., w/o my glasses) reed moor pottery! yep. (but only if you wanna)
here is a little story i woke up this morning wanting to tell you, my love. there was this kid, you see, who fell out of a tree. - actually there are three stories i woke up needing to relay to you, dear. the first one is, please know, i’m - here. the second one, about that kid falling from a peach tree nestled amongst three apple trees. that little boy climbed right back up, never broke any bones, even to this day. finally, there’s the story about our future.
how bad can this get? is not at all the kind of question to which we want to be waking up every day, reeling, pondering with frantic anxiety, dread and, all too often, the very depths of despair, newly established with enraging multiplicity. so i learn, or try to, like the ever- swelling multitudes, inhabitants of this earth, past and present, have done, the ones who remain, who are able to maintain, to take things in stride with a dignified fight. no retreat nor flight. remaining prone, yet living our best
