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)
we ate a bunch of silly lizards with no gizzards, arms akimbo. meaning ours and note those of the greenish fiends. some say that they’re tasteless, but not us. while they ain’t no bobbin’ apples, that’s for sure, we found a dash of cinnamon with a smidge of fresh turmeric helped ‘em go down mighty swell, those stinkers’ smelly scales, their wriggly tails and those bugged-out hyper-frantic skittering eyes and all.
i cat fight 2 boys today. the missy is astounded. we took a bunch 4 our tumblers, us fumblers, us bumblers, but weren’t a fray. a 6 drive only til cum next bleak. r fodder on the mend 2 demon. ‘do missy,’ he zests in 2u, ‘go thistle at duh zee i glasses shore. administer adjudication.’ cat c unless we arbored. r lenses fried. bat vin r i’ve the hay gouda’s knew. flip sun sockets wheeze seize. socks fallen. gnome oh sleaze on the seas. we’s a lie!
Think of me again (declaratively, long-handed pun perhaps intended?). Do you think me modestly, or perhaps even exceedingly (don’t stretch it, you idiot, he thinks, addressing himself, I have to believe) intelligent? If so, would that be inherent? Do I approach genius or am I just an over-achiever. I mean, if you think I am at all intellectual? Only, if you’d be so kind as to indulge the over-indulgent, please don’t answer any of those questions, as I don’t want my personal beliefs on such matters to be sullied in any way.
If you think of me at all (a loaded question, a perhaps concerning if not entirely to telling a question, especially given the subject at hand; as if), do you think me cocky? Do you assume or believe or think that it is quite probable that I am generally smug individual? Even though I’ve had a solid set of recent years that have humbled me like no other, this is something I am worried about this cool and early morning before going to work at the first job I’ve had in over fourteen months, fourteen months in which I have had more job interviews (times three? times four or more?) than I have had during any fourteen month period of my life. It has also been the period in my life that I have faced the most significant health struggle, a surgery to remove cancer that essentially kept me down for no less than three of those months, and out for the job hunt count during that time, so to speak. And this lovely little parcel of employ ment will have lasted, by the time I finish my contract a week from today, a total of seven full days of work. But this question of smugness keeps creeping up on me, has me worried. It keeps drifting into my consciousness. And I’m not sure exactly how this notion relates to the thoughts that then keep seeping into the mire, like the worrisome threats of living under the never-very-subtle- anymore movement toward being the shroud of auto cracy (which feels more like being shoved in that dire ction). Or the fact that it has also come to my attention only in the past few years that my driven attempts at being real, being honest, and being transparent (while also utilizing toying with that drive as a sort of see-what-I-mean game, which, of course, never helps the cause, is more likely to deter it, and this information I have also gleaned, but am never quite certain what to do with – is it because I chose comedy over didacticism or is just a symptom of the general un-reality of reality, of living in a world where truth and untruth co-exist more or less as equals, and this in a world where equality always seems feasible but yet remains wholly out of reach?), that my earnest and primal goal is to be seen and known somehow as me, but yet I am shown over time in aggregate and overwhelmingly to be vastly misunderstood. Or am I misunderstood. Am I, in general, a cocky, condescending human being? What others can know about you and about me can often differ wildly with what we think of our selves, correct? So. Just the notion that I might give the impression that I believe myself to be better, at some higher level, than you, or than anyone else, given what have seemed honest reactions to my approach, over the years, by people with whom I’ve spent enough time that I think I might know just a little bit, and would certainly know at least a little bit about me, gives me pause, and has for a while, as I climb myself out of the difficult times that, for reasons both (at least imaginatively? logically?) known and unknown to me, I have been through this past significant stretch of time, of which I’m always seemingly (worried about, acting upon, fighting the power that seems intent to counteract my) trying to claw my way out of these days, well, these people, those individuals who at one point I might have thought, given all the effort to reveal, knew a significant bit about who I was, about who I am (only, how different are those two? again, I don’t think I can begin to know.) would so con sistently have such glaringly farfetched, from these eyes, notions of who I was. I continue to work to re concile that, and to understand not-so- much who I was, but who I am, existing always intentionally, or wanting and trying to be, at any rate, so very much in the present. So these thoughts, these meanderings, to me, seem of some relevance, and there seems good reason for me to be here mulling over such seemingly disparate and potentially irreconcilable things this morning, this cool morning, a couple of hours before I will (hopefully?) head on over to another fine day of actual (as in paid, as if that is the only real) work.
Bette Davis looked into the eyes of Robert Wise and forgot her lines, but just for a mo ment. She’d already failed to mention most of the nom inees. He must have been a bit freaked out by all of this absurd upstaging, but yet he began to plow into his little no thing of a speech, but only for a mo ment, for after just a few short words, Ms. Davis would int er upt him to say a few words about Newman, for whom Wise was accepting the Oscar, but mostly to regale our dear Mister Wise, for she was clearly a fan, with accolades for his acc omplishments, which, with late Bette Davis aplomb, she noted, included two academy awards himself. So that by the time Wise was awkwardly able to accept the Oscar on Paul’s behalf, he was surely quite flus tered. But his eyes cert ainly gave none of that away. It brushed off the awkwardness of the late Bette Davis as she is who she is, along with the fact that now the academy award for best actor in a leading role was all but forgotten, just like that part in The Color of Money, even though its recipient remains most assuredly burned into the memories and hearts of a vast and aging accumulation of those of us who’d never grace the silver screen (and no small number of those who have).
I shall have water and seaweed, hunger says to thirst. When I was born I was very thirsty. This I’ve been told. Oh, when I was three I was given a treasure and told to build bold buildings out of it, these blocks, these alphabet blocks. I had a dad was an over achiever, or so he projected so focused on me. And so every day I would play with these letters made words, made wallops of blocks until architecturally gargantuan, whopping mounds with infinite mouthed alphabetical sounds. I know that all this was not playing for dad, a father who’d just barely earned his own high school diploma had me (and at three) most every morning snagging the Southwest Time Record just for the crossword (and often I’d rip out the funnies as well). Years later he’d tell me he had not one earthly idea what to do with a son who would take to his bed all day long of a weekend, my nose nearly closed inside of a book for hour upon hour as if nearly half blind. But what was I saying to start with of thirst? It’s not that I forgot, I assure you, it’s just, well, I was thinking how that single word had become so lascivious, so trendy, so off- kilter from how I had use it, and in this way can often be found these days tucked into smarty- pants sentences all cute-like by folks whose ages times three would perhaps approach mine. “I guess she was thirsty,” they’d say and at first I’d get all crinkled and flummoxed. “Oh, Grandpa! It just means she wanted some action.” Now action’s a word that, too, has a few different meanings, but the action the youngsters were speaking of was something that was quite familiar to me, and a word I had used in that context on many an occasion. But thirst? Well, quite never, not once until right about today or so thanks to giddily listening to these young folks chitter and chatter. That’s all I was thinking up at the beginning of this skinny bit of silliness. So of course my mind wandered a bit but just barely off track lost for a while as I often am within and around the great wonder of of words and how they’ve been such sheer joy for me much more often than not ever since I was a wee kid of three. They say that our languages are now evolving but faster and faster, perhaps in an effort to keep up with the times. With this I am fine. And while I might be out of the loops with most of the lot of this exponential evolution, I don’t mind catching as much as I can, before it’s too late and I’ve lasted until I’ve no longer a mind, or else I’m quite simply flat out of time. Read to me some new words but forget not the old ones. Youth is lovely company to put it quite simply, and makes living seem longer and ageless for those you might deem out of touch, sometimes.
Have I told you lately that I am a hermit? What did you think, that I am an extrovert? I am, as it turns out. Or was. No, actually, still am. I take the Myers-Briggs test just for fun on occasion, ever since I found out twenty-some years ago that, rather than the stand- offish introvert I’d believe I was for so many years, that I was a over three-quarters of the way across the vector on the other side. I’ve said it before, but dis covering this utterly altered my existence. Just as an example, it became clear to me that my weirdness in unfamiliar social situations was due to anxiety, but yet I needed the proximity to other people that comes from these events, and that me being a wallflower at clubs, but yet so consistently going back to them, even if I was by myself and did not talk to a soul the entire night gave me just the zip I’d need. I like to relate it to a vampire’s need for blood. But about being a hermit, well, there are immense drawbacks for a person who gets his energy from being around human bodies. An example is loud and clear in these lines, as I’ve discussed this dilemma a number of times. I’ve become the old man who just repeats the same few stories over and over again. I’ve run out of new things to talk about, as I’m stuck in my room most days twenty-four/ seven. Not to mention the distinct lack of focus and mojo from getting the, well, the nourishment necessary to keep those like me up- tempo and focused. It’s not that I don’t stay busy in my little coffin-sized hotbox most days. I do. But it’s not the kind of busy that one writes home about. So, with apologies, I’ll try to do better. Perhaps thinking this way, of how it affects what I take more seriously than almost any thing, these maudlin lines that are sent out to you on a regular basis, will give me just the gusto I need to get back out into the world again. So, here’s to that. If nothing else. And so I remain yours, the only person in this room. I’m staring at the door. It remains closed. I’m getting drowsy. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll find myself opening remain yours, the only person in this room. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll twist that knob and venture out. Somewhere. Yeah.
And that is just how she felt, while at the same time feeling generally sad about her trip to the tropics. Glen would have none of this. “Your dress was divine, and you have nothing to do with the heat.” Which had her thinking about her father, who’d say, despite the fact that he’d grown up in Minneapolis and was a Southern trans plant, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!” Kitchens are universally warm, when in use, thought Charlie, to himself, as he lay alone in his bed, a bed in which he’d been lying alone most every night now for some two decades. He’d been thinking of Geraldine and Glen and their fateful evening. And he was parched. He’d gone through this over and over in his head in the past six years. The anniversary of the tragic event was coming up the next day, which he knew, he could never seem to un-know. And the event was something, impending anniversary or no, that he’d dwelt upon, had used way too much of his headspace mulling over, ever since. Mainly, he wondered about the reference to the South. The hot kitchen quote, he knew, was widely attrib uted to Pres ident Harry S. Truman from way back in 1942, when he was still a state senator in, of all places, Idaho. He’d never once been to Idaho (though a sweet lady with whom he’d had the pleasure of taking out to the movies a few times back in his early 20s had moved to Coeur d’Alene, although she’d done this without letting him know until she was there, in a rather spare letter that had a commemorative stamp emblazoned with the portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson, sometime when Charlie was, well, in his early 20s), but he’d always had the distinct impression that it was not a place known for its heat. Kitchens, however, were, he supposed, potentially, when in some use, rather universally warm, at the very least. He wondered if these assumptions of his were in any way unduly biased and decided that, in the grand scheme of things, it really didn’t matter. But that was Charlie for you. Always dismissing any thoughts that required further layers of contemplation or that, when stuck in his head for a moment seemed to come to a fork or split or wall that indicated that to think further on the subject would require a tad more complexity than he was willing to give it. And so his thoughts went back to the actual tragedy, that moment on that fateful night that had no inherent complexity, was as straightforward as such things go, was just a one-lane road that he could putter upon with whatever speed he desired as long as he wanted, meeting no traffic whatsoever, hardly even a curve in the road, with the horizon lit in some way or another by a rising or falling sun, or a bold and heavy moon that he generally could not see but that would be impossible not to be in some small way continually aware of, or else by rows of streetlamps which he’d pass at an always steady rate, which, when he had the passenger window next to which there’d never once be a passenger) open even the slightest bit, he’d hear a steady whump! (pause) whump! (pause) whump! each time he passed one, while his shadow, and this was something he didn’t really consciously notice, would move quickly from the dashboard in front of him to the back seat, and consistently, and with ever- increasing speeds, move nearer to him until whump! back it was at the dashboard again. Then...
All is not lost. We are not all ghosts, even as the world burns. I hurt or heard something I did not explode or experience. I meant this, but that was a minute ago. Now I sit parched upon a scorched blunder. Under what used to be trees or stars. Aw, heck, I lost my invitation to the party. I wipe my bleary eyes and hunch into a crooked scrunch to ponder over theories, remembering first the bust of the boom. How high we rode each arc until how fun we fell like rollercoasters.
I replanted your tree in a stranger’s yard. I can’t say if this was after the hurricane or before the earthquake. Who cares? I’m happy. That would about sum it up were it not for the lack of time to do all of the things that must be done by deadline, which is either immediate or impossible. Ask me how I’m doing. All is in peril if not lost. Wait. It’s ice cream time. I don’t dawdle on my way to the next- door store and back. Peanut butter cup. Yum. Oh, I have such a headache for love. I’m not ill, if you will, I’m just having a bit of gas. Feels like a heart attack must surely feel. Who feels? What’s the deal? This is not sad, definitely not. The last Ice Age says “Drive, drive you slow-poke!” The echoes of which reach me through time at light speed after light years. Oh, I feels.
i can’t shut off the teevee. well, it’s not a teevee, it’s a laptop. steven yuen in convers ation with pedro pascal. you’re probably thinking, that is, if you think, that of course i can’t leave my teevee, can’t divert myself away from this wonderful duo in conversation with each other in order to write
this poem. surprise!
there was a commercial,
of course, just like old school teevee. but the conversation is only a third completed, which means that i keep hitting alt-tab to look back at it, and there’s yuen, frozen, in that scene in beef in which he’s at church, eyes closed, and something pretty rad transpires. a thing to which many of us can totally relate, but that most of us who relate, in some way, can’t possibly relate
to this pivotal moment that we
are seeing on the screen. on
my laptop. i’m having a night. it’s late. getting close to 4am.
nothing new for me, but
i do hate this night owl tendency, which i proclaim genetic. i hate it and i love it. in that sleep is a waste of time sort of way, and knowing that in the particular quiet of night there are things that can get done in ways that cannot get done at any other time.
there’s not enough time in the day. the odds are so terribly stacked against me. nobody told me this was going to be the case. in fact, i lived my life for nearly 50 years before any of this would be true. which isn’t true. the odds were already stacked. there never were enough hours in the day. is this really all i have to complain about? of course not. infestations of roaches are not so fun. try an infestation of roaches for over a year, with no way to do any thing about it. homelessness is no fun, either. so little fun that i’d never take it over what i have or have not at the moment. let’s say you have a very specific budget that doesn’t even cover everything. and you don’t have a line item for unexpected expenses. the beauty of the world, of my environment (the one i place myself into if i can do so, even during the worst of times) is so incredibly breathtakingly gorgeous. this cannot be helped. i’ve got a while to get at something here. and i do. but why bother you with such trivialities? i mean, i can always continue, but don’t encourage it. at least that’s what my therapist basically suggests of my general approach. but don’t mind me, i am just beginning to warm up. come to think of it, my therapist often says this about me, as well. who’s to say, really, what goes on in the minds of therapists.
There ain’t a night I don’t look beyond these walls with cataract Eyes, and pull in the stars. —Pariah (from A.B.O. Comix Presents “ignite the stars:” A Queer Prisoner’s Poetry Anthology Vol. 1)
what i imagine first is being stunned (stung) by their impenetrability. and if, say, it’s just me, the utter isolation,
my emotions tearing out of my body. if, however, i were caged with another chump, i’m immediate ly taking off on some adventure, a buddy
movie beyond the wildest. my dad loved clint eastwood. i saw escape from alcatraz maybe a half a dozen times as a kid. but by the time shawshank came around, i was bored. what never got me to stop
wondering, though, was that cash went there to do folsom prison blues. then i got stuck on that freedom notion. for life.
It certainly is significant. Yes, it’s quite remarkable, given history. The last decade of it, at any rate. And this has been going on how long now? Oh, I’d say about six months. These are, indeed, exciting times. Bravo! Oh, of course. And thank you very much!
I’m no fan of sad stories. I’d say that inspirational is more what I’m seeking when I turn on the teevee
or pick up a book or settle in for an evening out with, say, a slightly windy friend
(and I can say this, of course, nights, it’s been quite a significant number of years since I’ve had such a pleasure).
It’s not that I don’t have a heart. I’d say that my general tendency to avoid heartbreaking
stories that seem at their very center to be but about that, the breaking of the heart, because, and
you can rest assured, that I have seen a fair share of heartbreak myself. I mean, haven’t we all?
These things in actual life cannot be utterly avoided. I’d take it a step further, to be honest, and suggest that
these stories exist out of truth and necessity, that because such things in reality are so unavoidable, perhaps they are a sort of preparation
or assistance, a means by which we might open our minds and our ears to such inevitabilities. Whatever the case, my tendency is toward
not adding to the wealth of these tear-jerking narratives. However, as sometimes is the case, I did, and recently, find myself the
sole receptor of one such story during a virtual conversation with someone to who I’d willingly listen to a million such stories.
Because that is just how much I love and appreciate this particular person. And thusly, I found myself caught up in the
gut-wrenching true tale of a once- stray dog named Dulce. And after I’d listened to this horrific tale, which I’ll not recount here because,
well, it’s really just too horrible and, as I mentioned earlier, it does not seem my calling to do so. I much prefer to relay such things
that offer at least a morsel of hope, or give such gifts that, within, have at the very least a granule or a little seed of inspiration. And so,
instead, I’ll briefly tell you the story of how I lost a cat who’d been my companion for well over a decade. Her name is
(or, perhaps, more aptly, was, although, for better or worse, I’ve no true way of knowing for certain whether it’s “is” or “was”
that is more appropriate) Coco, which is short for Coco the Loco. And she turned (or would have?) sixteen years old this past, let’s
see, it would be February. She and I had just been evicted from the home we’d shared for a decade, give or take. It was our third night
without a home. The first of those nights I had slept in a very fitful state in the park just down the hill from my old apartment, a
fairly famous park in a fairly well-known city, that stays quite busy during the day, but at night, although sleeping in it is simply
not allowed, it is cold and barren and lonely. The second night without a home, we had spent in a bit of a dreamlike state in
a homeless shelter, wherein, when I awoke, I found most of my shelter-mates gathered joyously around my tote bag, a bag from
which Coco’s tiny head had popped, becoming visible to my compatriots, sometime before I had awoke. But back to night number three without
a home: it’s cold and windy in the city, and I’m sleeping aslant, my head at the higher end on the slope of the hill upon which, about a block and half up,
existed our home of a decade or so. I’d made sure Coco was comfy and snug in my tote bag, which was rather large, and because of the
wind, I had placed between me and the curb of the sidewalk upon which I had finally fallen asleep. When I awoke shortly before dawn,
that bag was gone. In its place were two unopened plastic bottles of water. As I was puzzling over where I was and what might have
happened, I remembered, as if it were a bad dream of some sort, that there had at one point been a trio of people who walked up or
down the hill, passing us by. This would not have been unusual, as we were, after all, spending the night on a sloping city sidewalk.
But I felt that I could recall this trio of younger people who made such noise when they passed it was as if they were dressed to the nines.
That memory, from a dream or reality, included the timbre of their three voices, two men, it seemed, and one woman. I
will never be certain whether or not this partial memory even occurred, of course, but I sensed from the voices and the swiftness with which they were
walking, that there was some urgency, perhaps even some conflict. Did they stop right around where I lay sleeping for a bit? If so, it was not for long,
before they were off, and with a quickening pace. Shortly after that, there had come the sound of the screeching of wheels. Then, silence.
I honestly have no real idea if any thing like what I felt that I had recalled had actually occurred, but one thing was certain: the tote bag,
along with all that I had kept from our home of many years, along with my companion, the cat I called Coco, were gone. And ever since that fateful
night when we parted ways, I’ve imagined dozens of mostly hopeful, if not fantastical, but each and all completely fictionalized paths down
or up which Coco may have taken from that moment to this one. And that’s my story, really. The story of how Coco the Loco and I parted ways.
And while it’s sad, and could indeed be tragic, if only we knew what truly happened to her, my story of Coco will remain hopeful. And so, it is
in her honor and memory, as well as for the memory of Dulce the dog, whose seemingly tragic story, as told to me, was surely and
hopefully not the only thing about her, that I tell this story now. I want to think that Dulce lived at least a reasonably satisfying
life? As for Coco, I can attest that she was a bit neurotic, but, to my mind, as far as cats go, she had at least a decade that
was interspersed with a plentiful amount of giddiness alongside heaping dollops of greater-than- thou contentment. Just in case
my point here needs, with any more clarity, to be made, these lines tonight go out with much love and respect to Dulce the dog, gone
too soon, and to Coco the Loco, who, whether she knows it (or knew it) or not, is and was a cat, and a loved and lovely one, at that.
Well, here we are. So much has happened. It’s hard to believe. But we got here. We’ve lived this. And we got through it all together. Or that was by all means the hope. And isn’t it dope,
all the drama, our various and individual bouts with tragedy, these being, of course, the darkest of times, but also those moments during which we found ourselves filled with joy, the times we’d either
curl over, nearly onto the floor, with laughter, gasp chokingly in a sudden state of disbelief, of shock, our fists hurling with rage or with disgust or, intermingling with all of these various and momentary
feelings, the intermittent sensation of teardrops, rolling either singly down our otherwise dry and determined faces or, much less often, quite rarely, but more potent than any of the rest of what we’d been through,
the times when our bodies would be hit as if head-on with uncontrol lable and gut-wrenching sobs, the rivulets soaking our chins and our lips and our cheeks nearly into erasure, our lives nearly drained or drowned? But, afterwards, that
inevitable wave of relief from the rush and from the exhaustion of everything that had come before it. And after that, there’d be a hush that might last days, or even weeks, as we’d grieve, reflect upon what had just happened, how we got to this point. And, slowly,
the energy would build and we’d pick ourselves up, one by one, each of us focusing more strongly than ever upon our journey, our minds detailing the litany of our trajectory, and on how best we might get to what happens next. And toward that,
we’d either plan strategically, with the most ideal goals in mind, or, just as determinedly, and with concentrated and elongated inhalations and exhalations, how we might simply be present, be alert to this
very moment, and how each of them might enlighten us, show us how best to mend, how we’ve grown, where best to move, and toward which horizon we are most compelled. Our most
profound hope, that primal thing with which we are left, is that it is there that we will see each other again. And we say this to each other: “See you there next time.” Yes. And, fingers crossed, soon.
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