D.L. Lang: California Poets Part 8, Two Poems
January 8th, 2025
California Poets: Part VIII
D.L. Lang
Two Poems
Self-Acceptance
When all the feelings society suppressed within you
finally erupt with acceptance and infinite passion,
you shall awaken to yourself, awe bubbling over,
giving yourself the freedom to love what you love,
to enjoy endless pleasures of life without shame,
to indulge in the fiery energy of being fully alive,
shunning the restrictions of rules you did not write
that keep others imprisoned by inauthentic limitations.
It is like a volcano that overtakes the entirety of your soul,
and you cannot reverse time—you must submit fully
to the idea that this life is yours to live how you wish,
and that you can choose to diverge from the norm,
confidently pursuing what makes you erupt with bliss,
and no one has the power to overturn your freedom
for once you have tasted it, there is no going back.
How Can I Teach You to Follow a Dream?
I can only point towards the road,
perhaps, hidden behind tall trees,
but I cannot make you walk it,
nor keep you from straying.
This road is not paved with gold.
Its foundation is only cooperation.
While necessary for survival,
gold itself is not the path.
This pathway is illuminated by spotlights,
but this illumination is incomplete,
hiding the dark spaces in between
where distraction whispers, “relent.”
I can only show you the doorways,
but it is up to you to pass through them.
No matter how many seeds of opportunity I plant,
it is your choice whether or not you blossom.
For you can choose to not water them,
and let the dust gently blow out the candle
that held that last spark until forgotten
like a childhood memory laid to rest.
Interview
February 7th, 2025
California Poets Interview Series:
D.L. Lang, Vallejo Poet Laureate, Emerita
interviewed by David Garyan
DG: When did you first start writing poetry and how have your influences changed?
DL: I was around 11 years old when I started writing poetry outside of school assignments. Then I got into the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Monkees when I was 12, and by 13 I was regularly writing poetry. I wanted to be a songwriter, but you can’t sing and play a violin at the same time. I had many writing partners in my childhood who did not stick with the craft. I keep going to honor them, especially my childhood best friend, Nat, who passed away in 2009. She was super gifted in music and writing, and although teachers had dropped hints that I should be a writer since I was at least 8, she is the one who influenced me to write outside of English class. I allow myself to be influenced by other artists, especially when I find some commonality, and they are too numerous to even list. It’s mainly musicians both ones that I have had the privilege of knowing personally and those whose stars shine so bright that I will never meet them. I will get very heavily into a band or non-fiction subject matter, chase after novelty and new experiences, and then what I learn brings depth to my poetry.
DG: Do you remember your first poem?
DL: The first poem that I remember writing, I wrote in about 1994. I was very heavily into the Beach Boys, and a poem called “Surf Clown” came to me in the middle of a swimming pool. I was playing in the pool with an older boy, and we were using the floatation devices in the pool as surf boards. So I memorized the poem as a sort of rap while swimming, and wrote it down later. I remember turning it in in English class and my teacher writing “Brian Wilson would be proud” on my paper. I used to read these gargantuan music biographies for the assigned book reports and talk about the Beatles with my English teacher, so she gave me the biggest compliment by saying that.
DG: What’s the most recent poem you’ve written?
DL: This is embarrassing, but I don’t put dates on my poems, so I’m not sure the exact last poem. I’ve been writing a lot about love, politics, and for therapeutic purposes in recent months.
DG: If you were to put your first and last poem together, how would you feel about them being side by side?
DL: I think I’ve evolved nicely from imagining surfers to writing really deep, meaningful material, but I honor both styles of writing—the fun side and the serious one. They’re both needed in life.
DG: You served as Vallejo Poet Laureate from 2017-2019. How did this service to your community influence your writing and to what extent does the environment in general shape it?
DL: As a poet laureate you have to be the voice of the people and have empathy towards everyone. Regardless of personal differences, you are there to serve everybody, including those you disagree with. Even though fame is a side effect of the press coverage, it is not about your ego or being a star, but about sparking the flame in other poets, and in regular people who still don’t realize that they are poets. Vallejo has the honor of being one of the most diverse cities in the country if not the world, and I feel privileged to live in a community where I get to be friends and colleagues with people of every race, religion, age, ability, and sexuality. I tried to be mindful of representation when I was poet laureate, and tried to bring people together using poetry as a tool to do that. The first poem that I had to write after being named was against Nazis due to the events in Charlottesville. I ran around the Bay Area as a kind of poetry ambassador and always tried to include poets from surrounding communities to bring us all closer to one another in a time where many wish to divide us. I have had the honor of mentoring Vallejo’s current poets laureate, Kathleen Herrmann and Jacalyn Eyvonne, and they are killing it.
DG: What are your favorite places in the Bay Area—both literary and non-literary?
DL: I love the Haight and North Beach because the 60s are my favorite musical period, and the Beats were mind-expanding to read when I was young as far as not self-censoring in art. Due to Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti’s battles, we all have more rights to self-expression. I love Revolution Books and City Lights. I love the Starry Plough because of Irish heritage. I love Alibi Bookshop because of how much they support local writers, I love the Benicia Waterfront due to its connection with Jack London. I love Mare Island because of the role that place served in fighting fascism. I love the Vallejo Waterfront because the seagulls and pigeons greet me like one of their own. I love the natural beauty of West Marin and all of its forests and beaches. I love Fairfax because it’s just a big hippie town. I love the Townhouse Cocktail Lounge because I get to hear musicians Erin Bakke, Rich Adams, and Don Bassey play a lot of my favorite songs and get turned onto more music through them.
DG: Along with poetry, you’ve also been active in film and television. Tell us a bit about these is there a connection between the screen and the pages of poetry?
DL: When I was 18 I was promoting a musician named Greg “Grey” Perkins who was my French teacher. A guy named Tim (my now husband) reached out and said he wanted to do a TV show featuring the band. We made that TV show on June 28, 2001 which lead to my volunteering at a public station called PEGASYS in Enid, Oklahoma. Greg allowed me to hang out in the recording studio with him and I made a television series about the process of making the album Rock & Pop. Greg is releasing three songs based on my poems, “Headline Antidote,” “Musty Books,” and “Life of Dreams” on his next album. He collaborates with my high school classmates Steve Harwood and Jason Harbour who are absolutely gifted. He is one of three musicians who have ever turned my poetry into song—the other two are Jon Carrube and Fred Ross-Perry. So the connection between my filmmaking and my poetry is music.
DG: Performance is a big part of your repertoire. When did you first get into that and, since then, have you written mostly with performance in mind, or is there always another primary aim?
DL: On December 6, 2014 my synagogue held a talent show of sorts for congregants which featured Rick Lupert and Dan Nichols as the emcees as well as congregational musicians Fred Ross-Perry, Amy Friedricks, Mike Spinrad, and Ed Zimmermann. I have all of them to thank for my entire career as a performer. Without their encouragement back when no one else cared, none of this would have been possible. I recently got a tattoo to mark ten years since that occasion. I don’t write with the intention that I will perform everything, but I do write as if no one else is going to read it, and then I challenge myself to perform it anyways as a form of self-acceptance and out of curiosity to see how others will receive it. I was an extremely shy person who didn’t open up to anyone, and performing has forced me to become an open book. Literally.
DG: In addition to the aforementioned activities, you’ve also championed different political causes, such as women’s rights. These next four years will demand seemingly greater collaboration between activists. How do you see the future?
DL: I see us all coming together across all boundaries in order to save one another by whatever means we must use to do so. The enemy is not each other. It is those in power who wish to destroy our lives for their profit. No matter our individual political labels, we have to find common ground to defeat hatred, corruption, and greed. We are all in this together. Everyone sees me as white woman, but I am actually an immigrant, part Choctaw, Jewish, queer on several fronts, and a few kinds of disabled as well, so we have to find solidarity or we will not survive this. I have been an activist poet ever since I was a child. I used to get in trouble for writing anti-war poetry because I lived in a military town, and I come from a military family with a long line of service to this country dating back to the Revolution. When I became poet laureate, I was being celebrated for the very things that I used to be punished for, so it is very liberating to stand up for yourself and others. I have had the honor of writing poetry for organizations that on the surface may have a lot of ideological differences and labels, but in the end they all seek social justice and a better world which is something I can get behind and gives my poetry purpose beyond self-expression. The Revolutionary Poets Brigade and the Woody Guthrie Poets are my favorite two groups of activist poets who are not afraid to stand up for what is right, and I’m honored to be a part of both groups.
DG: What are you reading or working on these days?
DL: I am putting together an anthology called A Decade of Poetic Unity which features work by the five Vallejo Poets Laureate, Dr. Genea Brice, Jeremy Snyder, Kathleen Herrmann, Jacalyn Eyvonne, and myself. I just completed an anthology called Poetry Is Dead II by Hercules Publishing which is a Deadhead anthology. I’m organizing readings for both.
Author Bio:
D.L. Lang is an internationally published poet whose work appears in over 70 anthologies worldwide. Her poems have also appeared in California Quarterly, Maintenant, and Suisun Valley Review. She has also written articles for People’s World and People’s Tribune. She has been recognized in proclamations from the California State Senate, California Arts Council, and Vallejo City Council for her service as Vallejo, California’s Poet Laureate (2017-2019). She is a member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, a Woody Guthrie Poet, and a co-founder of Vallejo Poetry Society. Lang has performed hundreds of times at literary events, political demonstrations, art galleries, county fairs and festivals. She has published 17 poetry collections, including her most recent book of protest poetry, Fighting the Solar System. She can be found online at poetryebook.com
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