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)
the heart’s last stranglehold of realism capsizes mid-tunnel at one hundred thirty-one into a dip mid-cusp what chutzpah we concentrate on eating very slowly
but it isn’t just a blind reaction from coming down with an earache-of-the-dramatically-suspect nor an i’ll-save-you-tonight-at-the-railroad-crossing -- it’s more like the same lesson learnt as the last time
then a panic-shorn this-isn’t-your-poetic-reality crosses the tracks into bedlam and hollers all “ciao bella” “ciao bello” that’s when our circus employment gets nullified
i do know that the other dead mime had two cats wearing seat belts who also wanted in the business
the bird of love is in the form of much of a heart. this shape [informs] stands up to the sands of time [with stands]. i knew this when i dug it up in arkansas: a lost blue purse of a bird upon a rock full of scant thunder; the shape of a grub but as large as a potato, it would swallow tinder, climb some wings to create another emperor. a man laughs as he catches a frisbee.
the bird of love forms much of his art. it doesn’t wear any earthworms when it flies into bed. someone is always waiting for it there. i think the name of the bird is ketterling. when it flies its wings are spoiled by the sounds of waves from i reckon a shallow body. the bird flies behind the sunshine and over the telephone
pole. the bird of love chalks it up to heart. it hops jagged rock like a cormorant, thinking about peeling an ion, discovering the essence of a hot world. i love catching it on the blue towel. i dig and i dig and the sky seems to crack. the name of the bird is kettlepiper and it always stays in such great shape.
spilt roses armsful of sparrows fine shimmery hairdo redwing bleachy 4th of July type sky fat firstgrade penciltip treetop red mapleleaf bumblebee these are things I see in the sunshine shadow of a bluegum bottlecap fortywindow birdspeak (this would be the point where my mind wanders backwoods) ... automatic birdspeak blackwing circle with a pale yellow butterfly redbird really going to town in the big city
oh but I could do it what beautiful environs whew we click I mean we kissed tipsy on Thursday night and next to the little café or walk through Golden Gate saying e.g. that my agnostic new banana Reno. . .a star sent me sleepy. . .a good run last to hit the ground right here late last night after putting stanzas into scars swearing left swearing right
just comings and goings, vignettes firetruck sirens wailing regarding my time fading away like all else completely avoiding activity or windows and just can’t walk around or try to write darker, darken makes me feel guilty
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
regarding my time with firetruck sirens wailing how they fade away like all else activity out windows makes me feel guilty but i just don’t let it watching tv, closed curtains white beard, glasses completely avoiding dark, darker, darken
the fog has burnt most of the tiles off the ceiling like styrofoam they hold in some of the noise big boats out the window look like islands on the blue bay the whiteboards need to be erased i’m having trouble with stuff but i won’t write a poem about it i took a nap on the couch in the office and this i do on occasion
it’s mostly all good the breeze on the parking meter that says “take off your jacket” sept- ember
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a woman’s standing next to a “let us copy” sign her blouse’s pattern zigzags over her breasts while nearby a confused pigeon stumbles around and around concreted azaleas
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alleyway skyline over Nob Hill what windows there are mirror blue over a yellow bicycle and a lady with a Chico’s bag picking up a can
***
a tall green businessman spits onto the sidewalk next to National American Bank “STOP”
I said I was thirsty. It arrived in a tall glass and it was very good stuff that I wound up dancing with and kissing. Its hands were soft and it had long thin arms with tiny alien tattoos. We got slick with sweat and had a bit of fun together.
What makes elves in your cereal do we know? Were our selves in there and how will you? Might you kindly pass along to me the most appropriate numbers? Remember reading to me in the private car in the train across Europe with spaghetti on your head: will you please now describe your emotions? How faraway is farfalle? Is fusilli, rotini, angel’s hairs? Can you tell me what that blur is? Is it a little bitty star? What’s the difference between imagination and fantasy?
to be forgiven in the air the whole seizure bequeathed of new silhouettes now dirty o dark breathless rhyme some night blue sounds wrench pop into blood the happy Charles the wind in our heads
across the blinded avenue in the filthy daylight roar of our latest deadly scourge was a sexual blank-blank it let in the feelings of spring (our spring re- flexes giddily sprung) but you’d never soothe the legendary dark
December days nor
their out-wooded elfs
lessen it be performed a wild and mythical secret
o beautiful furry solace against a drenchéd boulevard the colors of the hairy roses near the sea’s bailiwick
of love the change of the sky what plunks o don’t even try to get it all in
We snuck stealthily through a decade and a half of such magnitude. Now that I have you (or I’ve had you over), I’m spilling with blue youth like a frenzy of eyes the glowingest blue.
This, of course, is the decade when the tablet of what I tell you without yelling is not the pill that I’ve become. Which is the man I never wanted to be (I’m so sorry). This is as close to the gravitas
of inner thought (we only use 1% of its potential) and what will happen to me over a decade and a half from now (here I am). Never was there such a frenzy in your eyes but when they glowed grey or with
those little glowing star-shaped specks. I never wanted to be predictable. But the hills from which I’ve come had just enough radioactivity to drive me to sixty years old. We should all fear gravity.
You’ll love that there are many decades in which 40% of everything is all about what’s going on and 19% is all about deciding what to put in the history books. The trucks barking next to the simmering
summer swimming pool are not exactly what was supposed to happen. Any sense of WOW! of OMG! of My 60 year old eyes! is what the doctor asks of the antiquated plums (a blue glow) to assess what’s right and what’s true.
A trendy restaurant will be gone very soon. When they are drawn, plumb the orange eyes whose walls sizzle like a beefsteak. Then kiss ’em at square one on the half-lips of this snapshot. Which can’t be read because it’s a feeling of my pants and soles, bar none. I say it has to be the whole enchilada; a pepper of at least enough fire that keeps me comfy; not one that gets my fists clenched about. Of what is ourselves? Our selves that won’t smoke like when being hard- pressed into a stony girder. Here is myself. I sat this down before I started but the smack of a fist on my nostrum was the doozy what burned me. When yourself catches me in a groundhog headroll while breathing over the audience
perfect personality. deep love. thinks to oneself. not always able. wants sensitive secrets. easily good. supreme special. loves to dress up. able to recover. difficult. soft. funny fussy. hyper fuckin’. golden unpredictable. polite nevermind. emotions. hardly provoked. there is a way. shows emotions. executive daydreamer. has a lot. brilliant. ordinary. brave. choosy. terrific. romantic. high. unique. always.
don’t drive the rental all the way to arkansas if you have yet to read the fine print
morning and the friggin’ hybrid’s busted. i left the blesséd head for some hummingbird. the sugared feeders less reddish in the morningness. i swings next to them. nobody flies away. sweltered porch with a little fruit in the distance. a little peaches tree and the birds loves it. this lesson’s almost over. driving over the river and into the state. how to know if yours is the first prius ever to arrive in fort smith. the tiny blooms or the big red feeders. the bloomer’s busted. the bloomin’ bloomers. busted.
we’ve an heirloom to sleep on. it wobbles whether we sleep or not. unable to breathe, i left my lover for a sudafed in the wal-mart super-center. once inside, i was swingin’ near the big red bird-feeders with a little red sudafed, dry as an oklahoma interstate.
i have to show my license to the pharmacist ’cuz people sometimes make drugs with it. blesséd druggist. back in the bedroom: an impressive old woven rug with a burnished headboard. out the bedroom window: a blesséd warbler. she bleeped herself and wobbled like a robin.
big red sudafed of the warbling druggist. now we’ve got a bloomin’ air. an air for sneezin’. an air for lovin’. a hard red air. a wild red hair.
the farmer was a soothsayer. all night, some days, she’d tell me my future. as much as she could tell me until i’d blink no more. until she’d tuck me into the extra-tall, extra-perfect bed. the farmer’s kitchen sink was running next to the farmer’s crockpot. she’s never one to run out of macaroni, the farmer. in my dreams, late those very same nights, i’d tell her future. and it was not marooned like mine.
love is not moored. so whose soul lies in ruins, dives several layers through texas? not the farmer’s. the soul of the graying (which is the color of the filtered sky). which is not the color of the farmer’s future. which is the future of hams and of (generally) pig futures. which is very bright, is always up up
up and up and up. i told my love, the farmer’s fink, that he was fanning souls from layers deep. from beneath the desert saguaro. because he was always employed by the power of the great escape. the fantasy (imagine that, a fantasy!) of the great escape was his muse. he was a believer in the prophesies of the farmer, of marooned and of morose. it’s not so simple, i said. do i look marooned? i asked, teasing. the tease is the joker’s steppingstone.
and when i go? every mile another blowout. futures glimmer next to the macaroni. my soul drives ice through an entirety of texas. and was this skeptic my future love, my plate of bacon on the mesa? i told the farmer of a future that was alabama. she said wrong dir- ection. pork harbors several layers of soul. and kisses over the crockpot from our farmer. the graying temples where we worship our driving loveaches, whittling them into loves or erasures. it rains macaroni, a spectacle, which, like any pestilence, ruins the macaroni.
once on the open road, i remember so much luck. i keep count as i pass each patrol car in texas. in new mexico. in arizona. in cali- fornia. even in california, where i am coasting past truck drivers and their service stations. i relax as i coast all the way to ocean beach.
we pass a bumper sticker for a third time. no jesus. no peace. more blue clouds from over the grand canyon. they float onto the heads behind our ears. i am staying awake and i loves it (e.g., it’s hot). a big cop pulls us over and stuff comes out of his mouth but we don’t. we don’t understand a word. a word
like reciprocity. and duplicity. and pulls. and us. (reciprocity duplicity pulls us over) and
when we get to california (california). when we get to california all of the eucalyptus trees are bent as if in [worship]. we develop like film and fly through the baptist billboard in the castro that reads our actions are the interpretes of our thoughts.
my father floats gently over the city. flames engulf a eucalyptus. after we saw the flag braving the foggy sun we took two happy pills. flutters throughout the night of awkwardness. of clouds moving over the city flying with my father.
we pull over for a cameo. only twenty dollars a canyon. a red rockslip. pre-storm and innumerable languages. twenty red lovebirds in the thunderstorm grab for a camera. couple of snapshots one in a million. shirtless europeans in america pull over. forty winks or forty wonders. wet wonders. twenty gazillion rocks scarred by all the snaps. each blushes at all the languishes. only a dollar a minute. rocks got your tongue. roadies rocks. chasing thunder through the desert. we pull over. rocks got what. rocks got your tongues and rocks got your dollars. tongues and dollars. hard ache that red rock. forty wet blowouts chasing sagebrush.
it’s a lovely drive over texas with 2 hearts. which could be fantasy but isn’t? all the derricks are doing well. that said, the texas cop that electrocutes our hearts knows nothing about our fog. it’s human nature. we are as alive as the downpour the rainfall in dallas after all of the oklahoma cops. this could be a fantasy but i remember my refrigerator has a pint of spoiling milk and a nib of the fire that
ate some of our floor. there is no way to see the future.
but i accept this current of tenderness that we make public. is it meant for me? at home we live differently with another heart and a piece of red glass that didn’t get broken in the move. you rejoice: we’ve returned to spend some of our time inside the blue flowers. i remember also how giddy we were when we caught up with our own individual hearts again someplace north of los angeles.
