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)
November is a pretty safe month. Overload of the art films I used to watch – voluminous! Well, these days it’s the beginning of the – I should give it a name – something unswimmable – words that
are debatably not words are words. I could call this 6-7 week period The Titan, after the submersible that imploded last year. Nicknames are stupid (something Julie on A Man on the Inside says, or I’m paraphrasing –
I’ve watched several episodes this afternoon). Wait a minute. What I mean is I’ve this habit of randomly suggesting who will get Oscar nods (yet the flicks I watch these days are so few). Like an arthouse auteur,
he thinks, he’s in his head again. From 2005-2010, the scores of art films watched from my own couch.
It’s Thanksgiving, early afternoon, thus far spent by myself (and that will be the day, I’m sure). Would you find it morbid that, rereading poems I wrote about my father’s death and the family
correspondences to the funeral made me feel warm inside, tickled me, made me feel grateful to have experienced it, a rare set of sublime moments with blood relatives? Clips on the internet led me to turn
on Jim Gaffigan’s new comedy special. I had it going while I tried to dry out the pond in the middle of my apartment made from defrosting my refrigerator. Doing my buckets of laundry, cleaning up, heading out in a few
before the darkness takes over, feeling awake (a rarity these days) and happy (also a rarity). Anticipating. Ready.
How Far Away from the Real World is the Real Real World?
I found myself between a browser and a search engine a CV and a resume —Stephanie young
I found myself between poetry and paid work. A job ends, the writing begins. A funny thing happens. Suddenly, I’ve no time to do anything but write, work
on this project, think about editing the magazine again. Aren’t sonnets supposed to be universal in some big way? Maybe that’s all art. That was a reigning tenet
when I was in school, not studying poetry, studying Chemistry for medical school, then suddenly I gave the sciences a break for the arts. And did I ever break for the
arts! Haven’t I always? Sonnets are also so short as to keep things mysterious, but...
How Mysterious Is Too Mysterious? (need I say it, but: To Be Continued...)
cheerleader extraordinaire, objective observer and (i could say non-partisan if for no other obvious reason but that she was) mom’s younger sister’s bestie back in the day, maybe to the end—i all but lost my connection to my aunt years ago because she got too political for comfort. one has to draw lines to remain healthy and reasonable. but brenda, she was all compassion, all encouragement. that is who she was to me these past few years, at any rate. brenda, mother of greg, with whom i graduated from high school, we were neighbors growing up, they lived just up the hill over the pasture from us for my entire childhood existence, so we shared birthday party moments, tornado warnings in storm cellars at my aunt’s, babysitting moments, garage sales. brenda passed this week, maybe just a day or two ago. the last word i got was a reaction to me posting it had been a bad week—this was just about a week ago. by bad week i was just talking about the election, being worked a bit too much, being condescended toward a few times and then having to apologize for it. her response, usually nothing but charm and positivity: “ditto.” she’d just gotten home from the hospital. she always had a way to turn mountains of turmoil into veritable clouds of glitter dust. what silly things
we call problems. now we’ve lost a beacon. the lifeline through to my aunt grows dimmer. and what pride i’ve left remains further in check. electricity, in general, is less intense. i’m grateful to have known you, and for that warmth. how i might possibly keep that fire flickering for however much longer...
Imagine it’s a dozen years ago. And you were given an assignment that you are just now completing. Such as this sonnet, if you can call it that without
any triangulations, the prequel to Credit Limit. So far so good, won’t be much of it to worry about. I dropped that horrid company years ago. But were they better times? Is AT&T any
better? No and resoundingly, yes. I’m not sure
what was accomplished. Another day, another few dollars further into debt. We pick our fights, with fraud at every turn (the spam!). But do as the gurus:
tune ‘em in, turn ‘em off often, averages a win-win.
Oh, and don't forget to pay your bill in decent time.
Here’s a little morning monologue I’m feeling out, starting to get my self back as I wake up. Start to get yourself back. This is what I hear this when I turn on the teevee to watch a new episode, this time of The Bear. Television, I was saying to someone not long ago, is my friend. I should visit more often. It’s been a while. I just came out of a pretty deep sleep and think that watching an episode will surely wake me up for real. My stomach is a bit uneasy. Nothing like it was over the overly nauseous holidays last
year, but the dominos in my
head start tipping. You know,
these words don’t have to
heal anything, anyone,
me. But maybe today
they need to do something. Today. Today, they need to be infused with hope. I need hope. On the show, as I’m typing, the cast are going on about teamwork. But are we really in this thing together? Sorry, I had to ask. And indeed, I’m awake now. It’s working. And I am very alone. That permeates. It really does this Sunday morning, just as it did last night as I was falling asleep, all day having thought maybe I’ll go dancing tonight. I fell asleep around the time I’d have gotten in line at the club. There would’ve been others there. Dancing and whatnot. This past week, this job, not to go into any of that, but the being alone thing, which is all I’ll get at today, here, with this, that being alone can truly permeate. It can be a demon, too. Horrible. Horrifying. But today, this weekend, this past week and all of its ups and downs, I’m definitely not saying it’s okay, this not having any others present, with whom I might soar, whether up or down or just gliding over it all together, is peaceful. It’s calm. All of this isn’t really who I am, who I think I am, how I usually feel, who I’m meant to be— or that’s how it seems to me— but this personal trip feels pretty good, like an accomp lishment, the serenity of it on a Sunday, with a bit of a warmth lighting it, that to morrow will surely evolve, into motivation, to go, to go for it, to run, to get what’s needed done. That’s all I want to convey, even if, as is the case today, I think, more than at most any other time, to nobody but myself.
There’s no need to cry, he tells himself over and over and over as he eats his evening cereal, a man tra in tempo with his clen ching teeth against the sogged cornbread, his mouth otherwise awash with buttermilk, the tall spoon dinging the tall glass still half full as he stirs and he stirs, his anxiety growing more overbearing with each clink. he sits alone in his kitchen, the lights dimmed almost to darkness. He keeps reaching his hand to the chair at his right but there’s no one there. Oh, what an adventure you’re going to have! he thinks he hears his dead wife say as the tears roll on, salting the stew of buttermilk and cornbread as he stirs and with an urgency takes the tears back in by way of the long spoon, not missing one single drip of milk or bread in the dark.
I swear to you I don’t think I can do it. Not this time. This place that’s been mine from the beginning of time. My time, I mean, and over this substantial life, year over year I’ve been spoiled with the luxury of seeing things move in a progressive way from fine to better to great. But that was up to a certain date of several years back when suddenly two steps back stopped meaning three steps forward. Add a bit of a tragic sucker punch and the ground disapp earing beneath my feet to the equation and the excruciatingly slow tor tured slogging toward reaching some semb lance of where I once was and never quite getting close, well, when such a familiar menace hovers over us it seems this time I might should take things into my hands in such a way as to escape that menace. Even if it means say ing goodbye to the only place I’ve known, the one I’ve for so long called home. So, I’ll know in the morning if I’ll need to be going. And if I do, I’ll be on my merry way to some where. Wherever that is, I mayn’t have time to really make a new home there, but if you’d like you can join me and I do promise we’ll become to ourselves what we were to this place and this place was to us.
