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)
She died the most beautiful death, even more descriptive than this pair of greens that clash with one another. The poetry of Grey Gardens is all I would ever need just dying. And then Fort Chaffee burned like a soul covered in ash under this green on green tablecloth. January 10th it’s official: I am now a key that will unlock a heavy door. So I try to broadcast this. One day I woke up and wanted to sleep with him. Turn the lights off and make it the worst one ever.
The news is boring. I can’t see the island any more. The mood: peaceful and humorless, with a desire to not express my feelings. Peeing it out of your system. Be coming a contortionist just to stretch it out. Crawling out of your skin to find a window with a view. Sending flowers. It is raining.
Apparently, there is a salmonella epidemic. A cat walks into a kitchen, thinking about food. A scarf and a cap hang on a lover’s doorknob. First, find out what he does when he’s alone. We rented pizza and ordered a barbershop. The boss is away. When this happens, I feel around in my pockets for dollar bills. Change is less easy the older I get. Moving to a new location is psychically debilitating (it’s the dishevelment). The obvious is often understated. I like Indian food. I slept on the couch, a bit uncomfortably, but mostly because I had a cold. His poems matured exceedingly well. It’s nice to forget you’re a grown-up. Folks who care often find it unsettling when their adult friends act like children (or, worse yet, teenagers). More and more of my own friends are convinced the government is watching their every move. Most are more than a little upset about this and quite paranoid to boot. Me, I’m nonchalant.
But all I do is bitch and what I mean is I love you. —Frank O’Hara
It seems I forgot how to mean something. Let’s go camping. Let’s be silly but not juvenile. Let’s noodle under the elms and watch Hitchcock’s latest. But wait.
No?
Four years of Wednesdays. That’s what he thinks of me. It was all one red herring after another. Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And how.
Some days there’s these amazing...
I’m sure he’s not got much up in the old attic, but I love to watch him stagger around. (See how he grimaces with ecstasy?)
My palm-reader says a trendy restaurant will be gone soon.
Beware of still waters & overly obedient children —Lewis Warsh
Under the influence. The wind is blowing like an ocean. Trust me when I say I’ve been up all night. I wonder what Monday will bring. I guess I can take a nap in the parking lot.
Then I walked over to check out their room at the St. Francis Hotel. All we did was go up and down the elevator. That was pretty much yesterday. Still somewhat exhilerated by the breakthrough.
The birds are singing for me. The new television is like a black hole. I will take a shower in 20 minutes. So what? I am losing to the dawn, its doves and trolleys.
I don’t remember any childhood confidence. I do remember exhileration. Joy in getting lost. Being “teacher’s pet.” I didn’t rebel until a senior in high school. The rest of my life I erase
every rule I ever learned. All the while feeding all the spectators I can muster my brilliant act of conformity. Me, an honest Gemini, whichever mask is the true one.
Partial list of proper names in Anachronizms (thus far)
Bing Crosby Bob (a role I played in Toledo) Almodovar Jack (Spicer) Mr. Atomic (made up name, I think) David Lynch Charlotte (made-up name) Winsome (made-up name) Miss Universe Paul Hoover Amy Lowell Ezra (Pound) Ross’s (no idea) montgomery clift Maggie (an old landlady) Fonzie (but as an adjective) Delusional (pretending it’s the full spelling of my own name) Loretta (probably reference to Lynn – wrote an ‘autobiographical play’ about her) Partridge Family Norman Mailer Cameron Diaz Dad (only counting if I use as a proper noun) Barber Joe (made-up name, I think) Rednose (as in Rudolph) Princess Diana Guston (a dog named – made up, after Philip) Julie Delpy Charles Bukowski Renee Zellweger Willard Scott Charo Cinderella (referring to a Cinderella story) Buddha Josh Dahlen (as in Beverly and "oh my Dahlen") Archie and Jughead Death (serves Vodka with Red Bull) Kevin (I think Killian) Aaron (I think Shurin) LILY TOMLIN Suzy (Saul) Wallace and Gromit David Hockney
Another happy thing that comes with wisdom is reliving the moments of pleasure and allowing harsh times to dissipate, holding no resentment. Assuredly, I have most always been this way, and cannot understand the concept of revenge. Perhaps this is something of me (innate, certainly not genetic), rather than a gift from years and experience. A boy just told me he loved me on a dancefloor. My father would have been sixty today. Of this I wrote “I am now the better him.” Today (when he would be sixty-five), I say with confidence, “I am now me.” We should have spent the night in each other’s arms. Note to Bill: You’ll love that in one of the last poems I wrote, I tried to use the word “blather” – however, I looked it up in my small dictionary and it wasn’t there. So I changed it to “bleat”. My family calling is shepherding. Dark purple clouds in the west. Otto is at work in the kitchen (at his laptop). I am cognizant of a vector of love (life), purposeful in its haphazardness, from there to there to here. This is the best day of my life.
Why be suddenly embarrassed that Trent Reznor was my favorite artist for a decade? Yet, have avoided (successfully?) angst-laced twitterings ever since high school—a good decade and a half of poetic retirement between those first few sheafs I’ve hidden away and my later “adult” attempts, during which time my one overwhelming passion was...acting. Splice that and you can get all kinds of ugly. But yet. C’est moi. I could go scarcely a year between stage roles, it was that heavy. And I proclaim this poetic propensity (now eleven years solid) more serious... more passionate than anything previous? It is for me, I state it fact, confidently, even without adequate retrospect or elaboration. I am a poet. Nevertheless, the fear exists that I would drop it clear and walk on to whatever is next. Well. I proclaim poetry my career and yet make a decent enough (relatively speaking) salary as a moderately content office cog. But, I do this for poetry, which, after all, is anywhere and everywhere. I am delusional and this is good. I might add to this melange that cinema has also been no small passion. I recall that during the paltry Two Weeks Notice I laughed all the way through it—a soft spot for Hugh Grant and my cohort, the only excuses I can offer; how he (cohort) covered himself with his rain coat and I slipped my arm underneath and held onto his thumbs and fingers. It was ecstasy for the first time in over ten years (literal, and perhaps figurative, but let the story of pills fall elsewhere). This is how love can come from nowhere, embarrassing love, true and irrational, often up to no good, but also full of passion, pleasure, and inordinate gravity. How it remains a curious joy to parse over, question, and relish for years to come.
High enough, my arms have found their way around your waist, we who generally dance in odd orbits around each other, sequences which minimize proximity, yet now you’ve awkwardly but calmly backed into me. Quick (but time is gloriously slow) my arms work up to clasp your shoulders, elusive dancer. Why, you’d stay, wouldn’t you? Let’s part for a while and imagine spectators, each wanting a part of us (singly or in combination). You, my new friend, practically a stranger.
“You were more mature when you were a child,” my father said often to me after I left home. Well, no wonder. With wisdom comes the realization that maturity is often for the birds. Or at least inhibitions. Perhaps it is a mistake to confuse the two, but my path toward pure hedonism has never been more sure. Just watched Adaptation, an overly ambitious and lovely Spike Jonze flick. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Ah, he’s off to Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things (screenplay co- written by Dave Eggers). Now you know (and why shouldn’t you?). Crab fried rice at Thai Noodle on Geary and Leavenworth (my one and only venture, before I awakened to the superiority of Osha Thai, just across the street). A tiny glimpse of a hard crush (the coat-check boy) and a roll in the proverbial hay with a graphic designer from The Academy of Art (“there’s no sciences!”). After crab legs, the insecure egomaniac (therapy is for fools) changes his mind, gleefully scribbles a conglomerate of words into the sand (almost high tide now), and then goes shopping for a new bed.
This jumble, this collage, while fictitious, is generally and often a combination of actual _____s, meant as a sounding board, a record of existence (most especially while said existence is yet extant), and some therapy, some food for thought, a way to differentiate and to show that I am and I am not, but not just words written in sand. What odd weather. He looks luscious in it with his fresh tattoo of who-knows-what in Sunday comics ink across his back. He’s being sweet again. Interesting the names I have no trouble typing right here, and the ones that are just too elusive. Me. And not me. The shame in both.
I’ve been two years without. And who’s that drooling seductively into a can of Rockstar? I thought so. The curtains are drawn before he can even make it through Commercial Variations. Backstage he flips through his own notes, oh how he flips, finding “the flaming laundries gushed at your approach” and “you munch the crusts of dawn and jerk out of sleep.” Curses, such egalitarian measures have never been less successful, but San Francisco has yet to be invaded by Canada, China, or the Middle East (pity those who carried the Stars and Stripes into the bathhouses, ere well before my own time, but here I stand perhaps mildly corrected). It’s bonus in the bank day. Ah, taxes. The I.R.S. knows me still, and call me while I am watching the newest prequel to Star Wars. Almost simultaneously, a cloistered facsimile for “boyfriend” reads a coat-check poem and colors himself jealous.
Trip over whatever you meant to say to me. Tumble into my arms, so to speak, and I’ll carry you gently to a choice swath of real estate, the deed of which just hopped a plane to Istanbul (where an old flame is later mugged, twice in one day). Fall on me heavily, like a train wreck. And so much time passes. We’ll walk around wounded in the drizzle, hand-in-hand, then go home and sleep through the morning’s meetings. Wait patiently for a masterpiece because you are good like that. Mistake Lucy Lawless for Jewel as your forearms slam deeply into my chest, knocking me into what was supposed to be the End-up, a Saturday retribution, a date with Purple Monkey at the Berkeley BART station, and further into Panda Express, where I meet a guy from Toronto and awaken in a Scottish loft near Lake Merritt (very good; made me cry several tears).
My mother calls it the strainer and I can’t find it. For blackberry jelly she’d fill it first with a cotton cloth, the pure juice drained ever so slowly. It’s anything I’m looking to wring at the moment, particularly flavorful or no. Even a memory or two from Treasure Island, a chat over sashimi, California rolls, and cold unfiltered sake in a box. Even, sure, a movie with Jennifer Lopez, then something passionate (how it ever happens assuredly, electricity distributed equally; perhaps only a myth, nothing to wring there). How this fits with Robert Duncan and a “burger” of salmon fillet is all I have time to guess. Those were desparate days, I have to believe; clocks ticking incessantly, weeks of sunshine giving way to months of fog, and then that hour or two of rain, a heavy downpour. Now it’s fever (nothing tropical) with distant sirens at two in the morning. I wish I were here, so that I could look up to the two wall vases full of dried lavendar and imagine my train about to arrive, full of magical kisses and delicate conundrums.
