Ross Sings Cheree & the Animated Dark

By Ross John Farrar

A native of the Bay Area, Ross J. Farrar is an internationally renowned singer, songwriter, and lyricist for the post-punk band, Ceremony. In his debut book of poetry, Farrar conjures a narrative voice that evokes Alan Vega of the band Suicide and other New York school artists as he contemplates life outside of music. Farrar’s poems glide between hazy evocations of being young on the West Coast, working at an adult bookstore, and drinking with friends, alongside layers of darker experiences: visiting the graves of friends and loved ones, leaving Cheree, the 2016 election. He mulls over the lost landmarks of his youth in San Francisco and a relationship both heart-wrenching and ultimately failing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646050543

Book preview

PART I:

All my friends in the bad part of town—they’re undone.

—Anna Domino

1989

The song went, Everything the world is doing to me.

Part of you wanted to turn away. How could a world do anything?

Sometimes it feels like the world is sharpening its knife, but

only humans can cut.

The wind turns snow into ice in flight & stings when hits. God,

it hurts. I’d walk home early in March, red welts from weather

that sang Cheree, Cheree.

There was hurricane Jerry & Don & Sara & Kyle, etc.

The earth quakes. After Loma Prieta, my father took me out

to the beach.

As we drove, I swear I could hear the crowns of homes cracking—

—people out in the street like 4th of July.

There was smoke, but no fire & the road to Bodega Bay, empty,

nothing broken out on the beach, no fallen, shattered glass.

The human world wrecked behind me & just ahead

waves like an usher pulling us in.

The Rotten Sun

Standing near my grandfather Jack

when he took his last breath, everyone cried

on Dutton Avenue. It was the Rotten Sun

that took him. I asked

my grandmother if I could have his pearl face,

Seiko watch. She freed if from his dead wrist &

dropped it in my palm like new car keys, then I

never wore the thing.

So many years later, Dennis got skin cancer too.

My father called him Layback & he was

our best family friend who always smiled.

Poor Denny shriveled up like a salted slug.

The Planet Moon, unlike the sun, never hurt anyone.

But if deprived of the sun, we become saturnine

& I never went on any of those whaling trips

Dennis planned—

he was overlord of the whales then. Dennis,

you were best when in the sun & I wish you back.

Jack, you were so very handsome.

Youth in Decline

Welcome to the accursed place. The accursed woman

sleeps with the accursed man & they make

the accursed child

& I knew a few of them, may’ve been one myself.

Willy Pennington where are you? Those dawning years

felt so unclean, hiding under the bleachers or near the train

tracks—no need in sight.

The unredeemable past, it stays there suspended

in time like a tree or a cabin or a bridge

trapped in a plastic snow globe.

The drift is love, yet so hard to catch. I find Cheree

late asleep, high after midnight, well after &

this response: We don’t want much else

once we’ve learned what we’re, that we’re

ugly & always in a row. But the ugly way

can sometimes be the only way—everlasting.

This is the power of youth. In the streets you scream

& your spirit—you don’t know—how it scares

whoever’s watching & some go running.

But when I was young, I’d had enough.

Growing

At age twelve, I carried around a copy of the Desiderata

in my little velcro wallet & would read aloud when sad.

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember

what peace there may be in