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)
I tend these days to go about my business, my routine, in fits and starts and with such swoop and such swerve just to get out of the way of humanity all the while hungry for anything that might resemble social inter action. It’s such a pickle of a problem, this conflicting push and pull towards and away from engagement, that if I find myself think ing on it as I pinball my way through people getting from wherever I was to wherever I am going, I become so overwhelmed by the imposs ibility of it all that sometimes my dizzying dance will come to a sudden standstill. And in that frozen state this dilemma will swell within me until I be come so saturated with this conflict— this push and pull I feel with those with whom I perform this daily topsy-turvy choreography— that it dominates, it takes me over, filling me with such vertigo that it is all I can do to remain standing in that wobbly state, my two feet glued to the ground, the world blurrily swirling around about me. Eventually, I find com fort in the awareness that I have been here before, and that soon again, I’ll somehow be able to lift a foot and take a step in hopes to move again towards whatever my next destination will be. And that direction, ever forward, just up ahead, is the only direction that exists, is the very one that got me here in the first place, despite all of the twisting and turn ing and veering. And then I’m off again, dancing erratically, as I always do, with you and you and you and . . . .
there are no more words. this is the bunk what happens, ya hear? when the slishity-slosh has disruptured your ear. there ain’t no more god damned words left, muh dear. wah-wawa woogie maloogie, mah dear. au revoir, au revoir, midnight’s anon. and sputnik’s an adjective, zozo’s a gown. the cause of this mess is such a sensationless hokissy pokissy coo coo kachoo. a typical word’s worth a fortune, you know? a typical fortune’s atypical person and persons like word herds have over pop pop—that’s overpop popladed reverdeetop— stimladed zoopa di zeemu lacra an ab ra skidabra alacra da abra scab kidabra— i mean stutter stutter o verdapopple atay. stinko beano end o’ pinko weigh up on toppa duh brinkitty brink.
He clung to the bum of his very own son because that’s how long his arms hung. This was their first en counter in months— the occasion none but to check in on the son of a— but given how long his arms hung, almost at once he felt the small gun that rested up on his son’s left bun. It was then that Ben noticed— Benjamin, the son with the gun upon which his pop had his palm overlayed— the warming bulge of the pistol being so steadily pressed into his butt that he gleaned that his pop, so stunned by Ben’s gun, was no doubt about to come right undone, and this rev elation, of course, was no fun, so that now pop’s dear Benjamin was horribly bummed. This sad little scene, such a bun dle of blun ders, had all played out in a run of just over a minute at right about quarter to one when Ben’s poor pop had arrived in surp rise. But the sad vignette turned all but tragic would stay frozen for several minutes more on account of the dorm’s loudspeakers (which were overly loud) at right when the man was plumb coming undone blared none other than Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun. So, in light of that spirit (and forgive me the pun), this fun little father-son story is done.
All I felt was fall in love. —Anselm Berrigan (on being in the apartment of Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian, from various notes on Kevin’s passing in Harriet)
“I’m not naked,” says this poem directly into a smallish crowd of mostly youthful human beings who think to a person that they know what
love is. It was, of course, a distant and dreamy time when the sex of the lyric was always sexy. “Diiiig,” proclaims the piece, who knows bet
ter than to stand under the naked sun
w/their shirt off on such an unremarkable Saturday afternoon. All of the humans roll their eyeballs up until the insides of
their heads bleed, for they are the last hep cats who can really soak up a trend (relish!).
the checkbook, a 21st century relic, slides itself under the front door, stands up, and walks down the driveway to the sidewalk, where it escapes behind the hedgerow
never to be seen again by the people who occupied the fine establishment that had just been exited by an inanimate object, despite the warrant they put out for its apprehension, and a reward that could’ve moved one into an altogether separate class (if one were in the ever-expanding colloid known as “lower” – and it is true that “middle” had been inching ever toward this strata as both the bottom and the middle had experienced what had become known as a “squared” or sometimes “cubed” gravity field at such levels as compared with, say, gravity most anyone alive might remember just months back; and yet somehow the gap between what the original first and second layers that were essentially collapsing into one another and the meringue, the veritable icing, that level known as “upper” was expanding in what might as well have been explained in “layman’s terms” as “by the galaxy,” or “by a vacuum that is steadily expanding in a way one might call galactical exponentia.” and with the planet become one gigantic lower- middle class sinkhole and the upper crust rising like a thin-lipped, crisp Olympus, words had, as it turned out, become less and less effective. which is to say, words had become less necessary. language had begun to not exactly wither, but a more effective description would be to say that language, words them selves, had begun to sort of bottom out. there were many sounds that were emitted in expression, from the rumbling moans rising from the planet’s sinkholes, to the airy, thin- lipped and high-pitched, not-so-sonorous yodels that were whimpered from Olympus. expressions were viable at this time, and were used, although it was often difficult to ascer tain to what effect. but soon words, or what firstly were attempts at emitting complete sentences, as had been done with such regularity in the old days, began in seeming earnest, the gods and goddesses, as well as the sunken souls below, would, before a literal and recognizable word or twobe awkwardly mouthed, these attempts would soon simply disintegrate into a
low-pitched sound that seemed as if it were coming
from the bottom of the perpetrator’s bowels, or from some faraway and yet now nonexistent farm animal like a crieoowwwww. or a cliarawawawwwwwwawww. or a dirigidirigiduhooozzzah. an aooooooozzzzaaaahh. an ooooooozzzzowww. until it was just the silence that slowwwed and that sleeeeelewwwed the mahhhs. the mazzzes. the mohouzzzeethewwws.
What stands out as eccentricity or worse from my own perspective gets lots for lack of practice. For lack of interaction. As wisdom sprouts from within like these gnarly hairs that grow out of my ears, or like the kinky eyebrows that grow at three times the rate of the rest, and seem to multiply exponentially each year (first there was one, then there were three, then nine . . .). . . . I know exponential like I used to know potential, which, if one is not a late bloomer, say, once that motor’s running, decreases exponentially with each year it’s utilized (utilize it well, my love, but do not rush, you must never rush your
potential, because that plateau will be
there, I swear it will, or it’ll be a goal
until you’re gonzo at least. But, oh such joy in my heart as I tell you this, but practical joy – once the plateau is reached, where do you go from there? Oh, there is plenty of there there, do not get me wrong, it’s just that the fun’s in the incline, so steep that with every step, no matter the weather or no matter how thick the surrounding brush or how bloody you’ve become from the brambles you’ve fought each fine step to escape, at the end of the day, it’s clear that you’ve progressed, you’ve risen up, you’re higher than you’ve ever been before! So pace yourself. Because no matter how slow you go, you’re still heading up, and each and every night as you stretch yourself out in the most comfortable position, upright as it almost always is, and you rest your head upon a rock (another tidbit of advice: it’s always better if it’s covered with moss on one side or the other) – no matter how many steps you’ve marched toward the inevitable top – you have progressed, you can, with a splendid if not slightly dizzy sense of satisfaction, know that your altitude is at some point greater than it was when you caught shut-eye the night previous. So. Keep that focus on the notion of the plateau, keep that goal close to your heart like, say, nirvana. But there’s no need turning your venture into a race. Take your time. Enjoy your surroundings, what comes at you, and who you are today as com pared with who you were yesterday. Because once you make it there, you’ve made it. Then what? Slowly the sense of sat isfaction from the progress that you made every single day dissipates. And there’s only one way to find that feeling again, my love. And once you’re that lost, you’ve not an ounce of patience or perspect ive left. And to the north, or to the south, to the east, or to the west, in almost any dire ction, at the edge of nearly the en tire circumfer ence of that plateau, you will find that the cliffs are sheer. And while you’ll be ever so tempted, and what with the slosh of your brain and the sway ing wattle you once called muscle that’ll make up that body of yours because you’ve been resting on your laurels without a real goal at which you might aim, nothing at all from which you might orient yourself and find that motivation that comes with certainty. If you get there, find purpose, one way or another, inevitably, you’re going to go down. You’ll dream vaguely if you can’t secure within you what I’m telling you right now that you want down as a means to get back up, but your recollection and your sense about how to go about such a thing will be indescribably vague,
once you have gone about the bus
iness of falling back down. But you need to trust me on this one. I assure you that if you’ve lived without a reason for existence for just a moment too long your senses are going to bug out and the last thing you’ll know is falling. So. Listen very carefully, my dear, at this question, which I ask that you keep near your heart through the entirety of your journey, so that you may conjure it up at any time, most specifically after you’ve reached that plateau and you’ve lost all sense of reason, of motivation, of goal, of perspective: if you’ve spent what seems an eternity gleefully climbing your way up in this world, and then one day you find that you have arrived at your destination, would it not be mind-bendingly senseless to then drop yourself, say, feet-first, off one of those sheer cliffs, only to have just enough time to realize as you soar to your inevitable death, that you’ve just gone about erasing every single effort, every single moment you’ve given to getting there in the first place? So don’t lose that spirit. Nor the wisdom that will come at such a great and satisfying cost. Unless, my love, you have a penchant for the absurd. Then, I suppose, all bets are off. But either way, my suggestion to you is that you do not let that notion get lost. Keep what I’ve said held tight. It seems such a simple thing, but hold on for dear life. Onward and upward, my love. You’ve ahead of you a lifetime journey of such risk, to be sure, but with each passing day you’ll know a bliss surp assing anything you’d ever felt until then, day in, and day out. Breathe in every ounce of it as it grows within you and as you grow through it. [They hug goodbye, and the young man is up and then forever away,
‘you can say that again!’ only, i’d much rather you not, i respond to myself, standing here in the fog that’s more like a rock with no roll. and aloud, but not very, because i’d rather maintain this feeling of being submerged, of complete immersion. until, at least, i’ve persuaded myself of a little diversion. is it that i’ve grown bored, gotten restless? or is just me being, per usual, feckless? and before i can know it, i’ve swum myself out of the colloidal gunk and all the way back to the sun. oh, my! and oh, me and my sensitive skin! can’t you look at the muck that i got myself into!? only then i remember of whom that i ask. i was always this reckless, between you and me. and genetics being genetics, i can’t help but think, are made up of gene and louise in my case (garl and mabel, to be more precise, i should say. to clarify things just a little bit more, those two were my grand parents. and they had but just one vice: they each disavowed their given first names. only i knew them as papaw and granny louise, you see?). can we rest, if you please? my brain feels so damned, so digested. can we rest while i dream—and with all i have left—how to kill this disease and arise from this state of bereft as if finally uncocooned and then fired like a cannon right up and into the magnificent blue. oh, boo-hoo, if they could only just see what i have become!
my appearance on the tonight show has been canceled, you, riding in the passenger seat with the wind blowing through your hair. but we aren’t even moving, the keys, still in my hand (my hands aren’t even shaking, will you look at that). but we had emerged from the desert, somehow, the wind blowing through your hair, before the legions of zombies, so very grateful just to have arrived alive. look! there it is! the new bay bridge in the distance! but the traffic’s backed up all the way to sacramento. which is fine, just you and me, i mean, the only ones that are even barely moving, given that once in the city, we’ll find it, too, overrun with the walking dead, staring blankly into us, or we know better, right through us. ‘oh, well,’ you say, somehow relieved, and having lived to tell it. all of those dead pedestrians who never minded us in the first place.
they’re nowhere near as wonderful as you are. in fact, they’re exactly the opposite, almost to a t. that’s the thing about most people. not really, of course. humanity, in reality, is so much more mundane. okay, perhaps that isn’t true, either. because mathematic ally speaking, i supp ose i might need to actually get to know a few (more) of them first, you know? in or der to make such a grand and bleak assessment.
about now is when i generally slip off and into eccentricity which is tricky because already there i try not to mope as i sweep and i mop away these various insecurities
Listen, Hon, I’m not trying to add any more agony to the min iature version of hell you’ve been incubating in that head of yours these days and nights, but if you’re going to be up all night again wrestling with your demons, could you at least have the decency to give me a heads-up, say, by around noontime?! Or any time prior to the wrestling match, really, because, as a gentle re minder, you and I have a lot going on at the moment, so there’s more than just your mind games that need gotten to, and fast. I do and would and most hopefully will so very much appreciate it.
Who’s actually running up what hill? The world seems off-kilter with a Kate Bush song at number one and parades of t-shirts with a leaf motif. I won’t ask if I’m the only one who feels this way. Who feels anybody (any more?) – or I mean the way Deanna Troi feels. I don’t even feel like asking her, to be honest. Being honest is like fighting the power (these days?). Who wants to fight the power just to tell the truth? Seriously, though, who are you, running up that hill, and where’d you find such power to reach such a speed? And what are you here to tell us (What are you here to tell me? Why are you here?)? I mean that in the most earnest way feas ible, at this juncture. Which is where we are now – gosh, I’m sorry I keep doing that – it’s where I am at this moment. Fighting the power. And for what? Bzzz!? Hi. I started to say I don’t care anymore about who you are now. About any thoughts but my own. But I took a test on how not to care and I failed. Miserably. So who are you? No, don’t tell me. In this dream, that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? I suppose it would be. But one can dream, as they say. And that I most assuredly do.
This is what I do. This is what I love to do. I do this because I love doing it. I am unequivocally drawn to doing exactly this. Why do I need a reminder? Do I need to remind my self or do I need to remind you? Who are you? Forget who you are, this is about me. Oh, no. This is exactly what I do. People may wonder (which people, I wonder – probably no body) why I would need to re mind myself that this is what I do. But please also note that I’ve added that I love what I do. Don’t I? I think I do. And that I’m—I believe the word that I used was unequivocally— compelled to doing it, this thing that I do. How, then, might that make this reminder feel (neglected)? The bigger question probably is, “Why should you care?” About what I do or that I do it. And regarding whether or not I’m in love with this thing I do. Do you care? Because, if you do, maybe you could tell me why, and then I’d know. That you care. And why you do. And not only would
that surely give me some solace,
but it also just might help me
answer the question about
whether or not I care. And then, I could, if I wanted to, go about the business of finding out why I care. If, indeed, I actually do.
Right? Plus, and
this is just an
opinion here,
but I believe
that it’s nice to
know some things,
and that it’s good
to know a little
bit about
yourself,
as well. But
this started out
as a reminder of
something, did it
not? But of what, exactly? Did I forget? Maybe it’s to remind me, simply, that this is what I do. And that I love what I do. But do I? I’m pretty sure that I do. However,
now that I’ve spent
so much time and
expended this
bit of energy
rambling on
about it, it seems the more mysterious question to me is: What, exactly, do I do? What ever it is, I must surely love doing it. A lot! Wouldn’t you say? Oh, but why would you!?
“what?” then agnes looked all disturbed at the insistence that there must be something. she got all flus tered with her arms, kind of pointing her elbows down and making them into the shape of a “w” that hopped up and down like a rabbit in front of her smallish but perky- fluidy-floppy breasts, which could be easily made out dancing with the “w” in what most anyone would’ve surely thought mostly quite inspirational ways. and of course she was flustered because there was something. or, more to the point, there was some thing the matter. and she and the other two agnesses (which were all of the agnesses in town at this point in time, it should be recalled) then had had all of the realization they wanted of what they were to these deprived people. “it’s your porchlight, francis,” they said in unison, that is agnes 1, agnes 2 and agnes 3 (who was next-door neighbor to frank and barb; had been since they’d moved into the cul-de-sacced burb back in ’sixty-two. “oh,” said frank, and then, “well, oh. oh.” the agnesses gave him all sorts of looks of entreaty until he added “uh, well, i will have to fix that tomorrow, i will.” tomorrow was saturday, so strictly speaking, even though it was mid-afternoon, and he and barb had already slurped down two bloody marys, it was still a work-day. can’t do work on a workday, thought frank. not at home, anyway. meanwhile, barb walks out all smiles with not one, not two, but five celeried up bloodies, and the agnesses went immediately into a new version of their “w” dance with their arms hopping up and over and about while generally remaining capital “w’s” – only this time the dances each seemed to have a lot less anxiety and a lot more of some
thing else which might as well be described as giddy. mouthy, gossipy, as
always,
but happy.
and frank
wasn’t paying
the least
bit of attention to them. he did,
however, make a mental note to pick up
some bulbs at the hardware
store tomorrow morning and to install the new ones to replace the two that had gone dark. and down went his drink in a gulp, or maybe two. and his eyes never left barb’s bazookas, who were unexpectedly adorned by only just the exact amount of yellow material to just almost and yet only cover his wife’s most prized possession. he even lingered fleetingly on a glib question that was floating around
in his head as he downed the last pulpy bit of his cocktail, “but, gee, francis, what exactly is the prize and what’s the possession here?” but he knew that even she knew that they both played each
part quite well. “blue ribbons,” he blurted, and by then the agnesses, lifting their brows a bit at that seem ingly nonsens ical comment, were enjoying their cocktails, as well.
are trees. With an epigraph by (and inspiration from) Julien Poirier, from the poem “Berkeley Voice Notes,” which is in the nicely named book Out of Print:
On my walk there is a palm tree furred feral and sorta senile
Those are the first two lines of the poem. And it goes on:
Sorta cute and lonely like a desert wallflower
And I then want to tell you what the my sterious next couplet says, and then tell what comes next, the awesome con tinuation of the story that is the poem, or at least it’s a solid narrative thus far, which is a stunning and lovely long singular lined stanza (which, if you’re following was preceded by three couplets), however, didn’t I start by talking about my sisters, my uncles and my cousins, the trees? And why not first thought best thought? That’s the first thing that shot into my head after reading this poem’s first couplet (I’m embarr assed to tell you that this occurred with Seth Myers conducting a Late Night interview in my ear – and, gosh, should I even men tion that Stephen Colbert is in my ear at the mom ent? But Myers was in terviewing Senator Eliz abeth Warren. And, good grief, Colbert is speaking now with Ibrahim X. Kendi, who is saying, in answer to a question Col bert just asked the “historian and leading antiracist scholar, and author of two new books, which are entitled How to Raise an Antiracist and Goodnight Racism,” Kendi is saying this: “...so let’s just talk about slavery. If we teach white kids about slavery, we’re going to teach them that there were white people who enslaved people and there were black people who were enslaved. And we’re also going to teach them that there were white people and black people who challenged and fought against slavery. And so my question back to them [people who take issue with history being taught, as it were] would be ‘Why can’t we allow white children to identify with white abolition ists?’” and ‘Why aren’t they concerned about how black kids feel when they’re not represented in the curriculum?”
So who are we? Who am I? And how can we ever know? I mean, at least those of us who aren’t driven to question things, who aren’t TAUGHT to question every single thing.
So many people can say better what I am
trying to relay to you, but I have to try, as
well. Who am I? Well, for starters, I’m an American who just turned fifty-five years old. This seems like a fact, at least at the moment, that is solid, one that I can wrap my hands and head a round. And so now I am reflecting on what was said back on the other channel just a few minutes ago, when I began writing this poem about the arboreal members of my kith and kin—or, actually, just my arboreal kinfolk; let’s save kith for another time, shall we? For, say, a relevant time and a relevant place. For a related place. That is, a place and time with which there is relation to the one that is happening now. So we might just call it a relative of this time and place.
“The opinion has nothing about the hu man impact of what it means to take away the decision that a woman makes about continuing a pregnancy,” says Sen ator Warren. Most of what would be any semblance of legal justification comes from bizarre 17th Century law, when, “Oh, I’m sorry... a time when aristo crats ran the world, when the only people who had voices were white men and when slavery was a way for people to make money,” she says. What the ruling does, she goes on, is to insert instead the government [my italics...] to come in callously and make the decision instead of the person who is pregnant [...and while I would call this poetry, here, what I am telling you, please allow me to go ahead and metaphorically hit you over the head with a metaphorical baseball bat here and suggest that she’s giving us a poetic hint that what’s really going on here is that some body is getting more than just metaphorically fucked by some other body by way of this governmental insertion. Or let’s be a bit more real, whatever real might mean (more on this in a bit): a whole lot of bodies are about to line up and get fucked by what now is now clearly one seriously fucked-up mostly-male body.] . . . .
Realizing that the trend here is to deprogram or for history NOT to be taught these days, might I, in the process of reeducating myself, regurgitate for you a bit of the no-no that is our collective history? The Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade was made by their predecessors – which we could take the liberty (now there’s a nice, well-intentioned word for you!) of calling them their SCOTAL grandparents – in 1973, when the Court (capital C) ruled that the Constitution (capital C) in the Capital (capital C) of the capitals U, S and A, generally protects the liberty to have an abortion. In other words, for 90 percent of my lifetime, which is the part of it (much of which) I actually remember, this general protection has been the law of the land, a right, which was fought for, and for which many gave their lives—by which I mean gave their adult, awake, human lives (Now is when the quest ion might as well go from “Who am I?” to “Do I even exist?” whether by that last question I mean for all practical purposes or effectually or essentially or seriously [or deadserious], I’m asking you for real here...Do I even exist? which would therefore mean literally or in actualityDO I HAVE EXISTENCE?).
Voices. Poetry. Trees. A poet’s trees. The news. By way of late night talk shows. The new news. Which isn’t good news. Old news. Who am I? Who are we? History. Herstory. Reality. Science. The erasure of each of these things. Sandra Bernhard. Without You I’m Nothing.
I so appreciate your patience with my meanderings. That they might, in some way, say something to you. Because I believe in you. And I often believe in me.
This is what I do. I believed. I wrote. And I imagine these senile, fuzzy, feral-looking, cute, austere, and devastatingly lonely palm trees, thanks to a few nice words written in a book made of paper (which, trees!) make me think of my family on this eve of July 4th here across the bay from Berkeley, in the land in which I’ve lived, now all by myself for over a half a dozen years, and yet amongst my people (and by my people, I also mean the trees, which include, yes, palms and eucalypts, which are no doubt more kith than kin, unless there’s some thing I haven’t been made aware of, with regard to my history, with regard to my heredity, which, as my dad used to say, in language I shall not repeat here, is certainly a possibility), for 22 of my 55 years. Which is 40% of my life at the moment, mathematically. And math, I might add, is generally a science (like all of the rest of the sciences, for that matter) that I can solidly (the root word of which, solid, I notice that I keep using here) get behind. And scientifically speaking we’re all, us human people, slightly related to trees. Being alive and all.
So, what does any of this have to do with anything? Or can’t I just say it’s a summary of what’s on my mind, what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing, of hearsay, of truth, of existence or non-existence. I can say that. But what do I really know? What do any of us really know? Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Let’s get it together, people! Because I believe (in you and me) that we can do better. And for starters, we can do better by questioning everything, by boning up on history, and by figuring out who the heck we are.
But, alas, that’s just what I think. The bigger question seems to me to be “What do you think?” And, bigger still, “What are you going to do about it?” I do most humbly inquire: “WHAT, my kith, my country, my family, ‘tis of thee?”
