Lois Van Guilder (aunt; mother's sister) d, 2002
Jonathan Kuehn (friend) d, 2002
Hal Smith (step-father) d, 2003
Jeannie Babson (38-year friend) d, 2003
Max Webb (friend and associate) d, 2003
Cork Hubbert (30-year friend) d, 2003
Ben Gray (father) d, 2003

 Jeannie

Your Byrds record skips through "Mr. Tambourine Man"
and I remember you again. The air is thick with a loving
sarcasm, a jousting smirk of words.

Nicknames for all. All for nicknames. I see your smooth
features in Bizarro world. Therein if I let down my guard
you reminded me of the seriousness and lack thereof with
a Jeannie-esque slap and tickle.

We dine as your family let me do with you so many times.
As a member. Stephen and I play some gutter basketball
and then retire to discuss our important observations.

Sometimes we plunge boulders into a puddle to overthrow
the floating lid tyrannies of Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and
the mores that peeve us of late. Other times we set up
the armies of doom - aflamed that our honest my turn -
your turn squirt gun blasts shall bring justice to any who
would dare to suggest that our idiocy needs attention.
Beware Annie and Jeannie. especially you Jeannie. I wish
you would challenge us.

A jump forward from 1964.....

Eugene sees me on a one-time date with Rita. I end up
falling asleep talking to my dearest Jeannie instead. That's
good luck and dreamwork. Sadly, it fades as does our grip
on the same timeline barely clinging to 1971.

More years forward. We connect again in 2001. I am
so happy to spend time with you on the telephone. Your
care and bind-free offers open my heart where busy
non-communication has worn me out. We breach the
safety of mere friendship and become confidents of a
time only we possess. Our calls to and from last for a
timeless yet measured period. Treasured by me when
you call. Like a massage and tender tickle on the back
of the neck when you answer. Your heart of gold
pays my ransom - freed, I too-silently discussed my
desires for a relationship with you based on self-affirming adventure
and capriciousness. Sadly my backgroundish appreciation, shy yearning,
and self-defeating assumptions let your oft-times with Jules see me
doubt the validity of my feelings. Your presence gave as now does your
transcendence into candlelight. I have learned the sidewalk crack
between fearless-and foolish. I am late - better than never - to offer
you and those to whom I shared my invisibility - a lust for what seems
more important now: those very dear people with whom we are fortunate to
learn, cry, laugh, and exhibit.
I could see my my delay as loss - condemning my future to the sum of so
many unfulfillments. I could tell myself that I did not "get" enough of
you, that our forever was never. I know
that anyone wanting all of someone "forever" is temporary.
The joy of no absolutes - gifted of your patient ear and insightful
testing of life.... I now know how much it meant to me. I
talk to you as if we can jump the temporary. Now I know
how much you meant to me.

Lost opportunities become paths to the beyond. Your sweet presence in
memory forever. A tear and a smile until I embrace yours with my
own. Until then I have your touch in so many others to explore. So
many human gifts to myself, so little time. That is the kindest of
predicaments. Your endless joke on boredom.

I will miss not being able to cherish the you lost to "what if". Yet any
sour note is lost in the symphony of those touched by you. I guess I
get to love you on both sides of "the lines". I am not alone with so
many that also do in their own unique ways.... How we will create each
other for the future and how we will create the future from each other?
That's an answer that robs one of the question. Your incisive and
delightful laugh balances this - my laughable incite. You are with us
now
and delightfully - forever as we know it. Thanks sweetheart.

A Poem for Jonathan

you join the wind in our hair
fearless care oft missed when near
missing you, we now discover the you we missed
a song that whispered unpretentiously
advice from a wounded heart

Ever carrying songs missed by so many lost in tinsel
Moving echos, offering paths and a friendship - unjudging
Suppressing dark shadows to share as embers' glow
Conditionless care - living humanity lost in headlines and forms

Inflammatory loss, healing embrace
a warning, a message - temporate, temporary

I hear you laughing with compassionate memories
a free guide
Trampled and trampolines - yet steadfast for any life
I have lived or can live greater as from you
now and before
Losing Jonathan lessens as we feel you in our hair

Musical chairs - atonal abyss
we feel loss
social connection impinged, taxed, maimed
sad we never got the chance to fully know you
angry that you were robbed
robbed
   of how much we miss you
   of how much more you deserved
   of how we deerved more of you

christopher elliot gray
04-october-2002

For Max

The best part of "breaking up", as they say, is "making up". Max's sharp tongue, whiz-bang brain, love for his daughter, and love of a non-delusional search for true and accurate assessment of common experience (without mediation's agendii) will smile and sing to me always. His thumping fist (when code failed) at first brought fear to my own heart - and soon, brought smiles and a desire to learn from Max (beyond my relative myopic view). It was always worthwhile. He always delivered with grand performance and strawberries. He was sometiimes out of "the social element" in delivering what we could not see; bless him for the pain he suffered in letting us know.

Admit it: "Max Webb" would have been a "cool" name for a detective. Fittingly, as engineer delving into many aspects of "the software experience", Max was a fearless investigator, as well as into life and its obtuse responses.

My salut and love to you, Maximillan!
My respect, you (and your memory) shall always have.

christopher elliot gray, 2003

Comedy As Serious Stuff
Thoughts of Cork Hubbert:
fellow student, roommate, and lost friend...

The false consciousness of the Seventies
when we first met -
knee-deep
and now seeking comeback.
I recall you found more truth
in the talk engaged with people
waiting in line at a grocery store
and in the process of determining
the number of circles counted
in a slain Rose Festival corn dog.
One-liners
gleaming as Gemstones,
sweatshirts dancing without protection.
You - pushing and pulling at the frown of daily life
to share your discovery
out into the lightheartedness of view.

As Capital now collapses all around us
and retreads its Dukes of Hazards
and Life of Riley horror shows,
I shall myself hear these pains of the plain
attempting to cover up the laughter of my old friend.

Cork, how much I now miss connecting more in the last 20 years
below the glitter'n'tinsel
down where the shadow of an "unending joke" wishes to be understood.

Your brand of political humor and humorous politics is not some smirk
to be lost in Hollywood
or this recurrent antithesis of humanity. No.
Ever it is vision of you pulling down the pants of impossibility.
Reality a joke? Not quite so easily dismissed.

Just ask this creator of truth in smiles
Why DID the politician cross the road?
To kill the "conspiracy nut" on the other side
Of course....

I have known a new unit of measurement
The Carl, the Corky, the Irragon, the Cork
Unified in many names and ways and people
Found in the twinkle of the eye of forever.

christopher elliot gray, 2003

Benjamin
From Father to Son to Father....

And what shall one say about him?
He was a good man?

Funny. Bright. Honory.
Diligent. Undaunting.
Deceased? Everlasting?

But what will I say? What shall I remember?
These pieces, moments so separate.

I am the you I cherish and for which I hope.

Times tables without moron buttons.
Sentence constructing in a world of the ebonic plague.
Poetry without the trite of rhyme.
Literature that doesn't come from the TV Guide.

Justice, truth, honor.
Little things like that.

Talks at bedrest, a guide in Poe and Tennyson.
Wit, or wisdom, or silence, or stubbornness.
Love still. Always.

Eulogy - how do I approach thee?
My father, my friend, my mentor, my enemy.
Better than all the rest.

For me you are always here.
For me until my own eyes close.
I would choose nothing else.

christopher elliot gray, 2003