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 Thirstiest of Spluttering During that All but Interminable, Awkward Wrangling of a Cork Toward Its Eagerly Anticipated Release: the Solace and Assurance of that Hoped-for and Hopefully Hopeful Pop
I’m not an alcoholic, with apologies. And I’m first and foremost a comic, which is too bad, for obvious reasons, so why apologize? Proselytizing is also a bit of a WHY? But this is what I do, a series of ext
ended romps, which I certainly find entertaining and enlightening (resolution: turn outward, not inward, I mean, enough already!) which are intermittently shocked out of their fervor and meaninglessness into spurts of what?
Hurt feelings? Chips on shoulders? Haughty pissiness? That glaze downward at the (always) hopefully imagined lowest common denominator? Wisdom springs from experi ence, I suppose. And what have I done? Actively? I do this.
And I l,,,ove it. Watch me. Or don’t. It is not just for me. Is it? Only you can prove me right. But who am I kidding? [Shrug]
The path to no bitterness is more bitterness. No kidding. It is a lot more. It is confrontation. It is feeling it, and feeling it deeply and profoundly. If you don’t understand why, then ask. Don’t ask the cowards who left you with it.
They are unavailable. But if you must approach a source, ask directly. Why? How? Couldn’t we have? So that you may receive the answer firmly and know truth, so that you will really get it. This unavailability. This lack, which can be
called cowardice. Or whatever. You choose what to call it. If asking the source isn’t an option, ask someone else. Keep asking. Go to the brink. But keep asking. Until the fog lifts just enough. Then clasp this treasure, never let it go, and move
away from the bitterness to better-ness. I hope these words are not worthless and that we find what we might then call closure.
Swimming to the Shore I’ve Stood Upon and That I Will Reach Again
I’ve never tried so hard to get someplace in my entire life. Never tried for so long to get to one place, a place I’ve already been, a place I spent so many wonderful seasons, prancing in the sand, watching the waves letting the sun do a bit too much damage to my outer body, never tried so hard to get back there, never, ever. Tried so hard.
I know that my work ethic is a bit unconventional, but I gave 85% (more or less) to the one job that paid the rent, the one I’ve had for most of my life. I built this “CAREER” and worked very hard on it. I even, with no financial
support, put myself through six years of undergraduate and graduate education just to be comfortable, financially, in my own unconventional way, utilizing that career.
Secondly, I have another career to which I have also given at least 85%, if
not more. And this other career, to my mind, defines me more than anything
else has, and it is one toward which I have never been financially motivated.
It is a career that is essentially non-monetary for me (I’ll tell you the story
about the choice I made that one time I was at the Vatican, if you ask me). There is no outside financing of it whatsoever. And as far as I’m concerned, it has burdened me with no cost during its (thus far) run of a quarter of a century.
Two careers that have gone places, good places, great places. I would maintain
that I have a strong work ethic. One that I no doubt inherited from my people.
So what could go wrong? you might ask. Or, at least I certainly do.
But if an answer to that question exists, it is predominantly irrelevant. There is
a primary relevance, though, regarding these two paths that I have made mine:
I am still here.
I’ve never worked so hard to get from here to there, to get out of where I
found myself. Toward this effort, I have given 100%. It has been over 8 years. I lost my partner of over a decade by not envisioning that he’d disappear (and
worse) at year eleven. I lost every friend I had in proximity and most who were
not. This fact, it turns out, has by far been the worst of all of the misfortunes that
I have encountered in my entire life. I lost my home. The home that, with effort
and help, was made mine and ours, with an open door, with comfort. I could put
more energy into attempting to logically explain why, but it is, literally, an
impossibility to do so. And, as just noted, it is irrelevant. But also, I’ve spent a
decade trying to become reemployed in a long-term fashion, the old-fashioned
way, perhaps unconventional today, but in the process have learned, very slowly
and very methodically, about trauma and invisible or unrecognized disability along
theway, so as to remove obstacles and reach my goals, unraveling that which is
unknown, that which is invisible, and that which is unrecognized, in ways that
seem to give me the confidence that I have made progress. But this progress
has been excruciatingly slow. Each week, I think about how much better I feel
than I did the year before. I have no idea when I’ll reach it, my solid ground,
nor when I’ll feel like I’m back at par, back at my game, incessantly improving
it, as had always been the case, but I do know that I am already so much better
(this is a thing that swimming non-stop helps to enable), and reaching that shore
has been the perpetual motivation and the veritable substance of all that is me.
All of this is to say that I have no idea how long it will take to reach that familiar
firmament. The ground I still remember so vividly, wobbly as it sometimes was beneath my feet. No idea at all. And I don’t or won’t allow myself the option that I’ll never reach that shore again. It is inevitable. it will happen. It is the willing it to happen that propels me in this way, and every ounce of me believes that all of the movements I make get me closer to that once familiar surface
that I have taken such comfort in, that allowed my legs to rise against the
omnipresent and surreal and wounding force of gravity, to lengthen and
strengthen and stay standing. I suppose I took that stance for granted.
Familiar land at times feels so very close that I can almost touch it, that I
can but breathe it in. Yet it has not been reached. At other times, it feels as
far away, or further away than it has ever been. It has not been reached. I have
yet to find it again. But I will. And I will never stop swimming until I get there.
And when I do, I will stop swimming long enough to catch my breath, and will find my footing, however long that takes, and rise at whatever speed at which I am capable, which will assuredly be the swiftest possible, on my behalf, so that I may stand. So that I may stand. And I will stand. And in one way or the other I will remain standing. Why would it be any other way? In the realm of my peace and my comfort and my continued growth and those two careers and so much more that is in store, some of which is going to be the absolute highlights of joy and peace and contentment and adventure and growth and engagement I will have experienced. This is fact. This is a fact that depends on nobody but me, and I am the only person who has to know it.
All these things I will do until I am there. And then, what I do can also be for you.
Prayer of Submission, Humility, Motivation, Evolution and Fact.
we don’t talk about the gushing that takes place during. and we always fail to send off that quickly- stitched-from-template-post-inter
view heartfelt gratitude. don’t mind the man behind the curtain (wearing a suit and a bow-tie made out of said curtain). he thanks nobody. should
we carry on by carrying this into the absolutely generic as we walk like pall bearers out the door? sure, then. make doctor’s appointment. do that thing you
do for the (ew, let’s not name the actual) bank. and mail back all the T-Mobile junk.
the cashew team informs we should name our phones like newborns (gerta? godwin?). will the people back such saddled solutions? they all. i’ve had a peter mag since the year 2000.
i told my doctor. his name is bill. he gave me the name of a patient (bill’s a rule-breaking gloat) who won the pulitzer for esophageal gar goyles. gargles? in this way, said throat poet
gagged out ballads, haiku, pantoums, google ditties and a few sestinas. i scan my inverted horizon for 22 years, furrowed. then i bake over 1,000 pies with no conventional oven. it goes w/o
saying that there are no we love you’s in this hot box. not even a get up. i mop. i sweep. & i’m gone.
More Practice Typing Lists from My Own Handwriting.
ELEMENT. Skateboard & Clothes. HP black and tricolor cartridges. Call state income tax people. Cry. Conflict resolution. Walk payroll to benefits office. Repairs elevators & curates leopard-based installations.
Restack cards to make them prettier. Stock shelf with torture anthologies. Dishwasher stress pods. Wash berries. Eat the ones no one else does. Dispose of.
Eradicate all proof of existence (mine? the berries’?). Redial hardship number (1,000,000 times, if necessary). Send Mom sandbox. Relay expiration dates (does anyone check these but me?). Call Melissa from
The dictator, a diabetic, crashed airplane noses, which is low from cloud cover, points downward toward a hearth at an onlooker, the velocity of which could be described as
freefall. Loan money for phone. Money for phone. Loan. Tell Michael I don’t want to be on holiday anymore. Contact lenses un der eyelids squinting skyward at the falling
airplane. Cut it out. Call legal regarding hosing. Try to chat pretty. Urgent stuff. Call agent. Clean outside of proctor. Dive nose into butter. Swear (swerve?). Scrub
and clean outside of fridge. Dispose of rot ten meat on printer. Clean crash. New view.
Humankind got you down? Well, you’ve been wrong before. Here’s a thought: when rising from bed of a morning, or happening upon a friend or acquaintance, or greeting
your partner or lover, your child or a parent, say, as you’re quickly going your separate ways at the top of a day – or when first you see either of them at the bottom of one – don’t
begin by rattling on about how you’d solve all the world’s problems. A simple hello, a tip of the hat, a peck on the cheek or even a “how do you do,” will suffice, as a general rule of thumb.
With Much Love & High Hopes, All of Your Chummiest Dumdums
The years were not easy on his words. Yet he’d often been told that he display ed his ache-driven heart most proudly and prominently upon his work-bedrag
gled sleeves. He vanished from the scene shortly after he’d won the most prestigious trophy for his bleak portrayal as lead in the praised adaptation of A Wolf in Sheep’s
Clothing, a mostly forgotten flick with which once every other semester but one (and the same) film studies professor most sternly indoctrinated his doting but dimwitted star
gazing rookies of Introduction to Cinema (mostly known to the students as Flix 101).
