October 2007
real demons
Prospect, Cleveland (photo by Lady)
REAL DEMONS
I would like to know why it is necessary for the see-i-a to:
- put hoods on people when they take them away
- diaper people and shackle them to the floors of planes
- keep people in solitary confinement long enough to make them crazy
- h2o-board prisoners
#3 & 4 seem like definite torture to me. #1 & 2 could be rationalized as not causing permanent damage (tho I wouldn’t be one to rationalize this).
People have died during “interrogation.” Methinks that would only happen if the interrogation crossed the line into torture.
Does power know that it is evil? What do the soldiers or agents think when they hood and shackle and diaper a person? Do they feel remorse? Do they sleep at night?
Many of these detainees are simply people who had enemies from their home countries and are pointed out because of personal vendettas. I’ve read reports that people are captured in Pakistan and put in containers and sent to secret camps for reward money from the US. Some of these prisoners die en route.
If you believe you are fighting evil and that you are good, why would you torture? Isn’t torture indicative of your own evil? How is this rationalized as a good thing? (The ‘ticking bomb’ scenario is a disingenuous explanation.)
I really want to know the inside of these guys’ minds. Do their acts of exploitation bother them? Does this even hit the radar of their consciousnesses, or are they conscious?
I don’t like to demonize, but it’s difficult for me to see the power class and its enablers (both the GOP and the DLC) as something other than demons.
Ontario and Prospect, Cleveland (photo by Lady)
cheap f/x
my art installation collaborator friend from the 1980s and 90s moved back to the area. we helped wife & he move into their new home today. big big truck of stuff.
carried stuff up ramp, down ramp, up stairs second floor, down stairs first floor, down stairs basement, up stairs first floor, up, on, down, off - on and on anon like an ever recycling sisyphus working rock and hill.
i am weary but happy. it is good to help good people. i will sleep well tonight.
here’s what can be done with a camera while walking back and forth in a basement below a window made up of 9 glass block with red flowers growing green, building, and blue sky sunshine on the other side. . .
fotos by smith
the SMITH primer
It’s hard to be a person on this planet. One of the biggest problems is that the people you love are the ones who have conceptions of who you are.
One of the biggest things Smith has taught me is that I can only be me. I can try to be completely agreeable to everyone around, but it still won’t eliminate all friction.
Smith is the Anti-hero, Anti-PC. It’s odd, because normally such folk lie right rather than left.
When we shacked up, Smith told me he’s gonna say what he’s gonna say, and I might not like it. For example, he might think a girl’s purty, so he’ll say it. And if I try to control him, tell him to not say such things, he’ll start clamming up around me, and we won’t have fluid communication.
Most people filter what they say so as to not offend. But for someone who’s trying to be honest and creatively fertile with their writing, someone who’s trying to uncork expressiveness, gloves come off.
There are drawbacks to this philosophy but there’s also a remarkable freedom.
leaving’s as good as dying
foto by smith
i saw myself today on a wall up above the cash register in a book store (foto above).
the portrait to the left is Daniel Thompson, 1935 - 2004, poet laureate of cuyahoga county.
to the right is Jack Micheline, 1929 - 1998, one of the last of the beat poets.
i’m hung between the two, an early 1990s portrait.
all three drawn by Tim Herron.
just below Micheline is another Daniel Thompson by another artist.
i knew both poets.
i was one of Thompson’s many friends and many publishers for 20 years. now that Daniel’s dead, they’re starting to fashion a market to his memory, so they can sell him like they sell the other cleveland poetry saint - da levy.
my relationship to Micheline was somewhat different - he tried to move in with mom and me in 1994 and we wouldn’t let him.
anyway, i’m on the wall, and i didn’t even have to die.
tim gave me the drawing in 1993. i collaged american flag frags on it, along with a Mike Hammer book, broken mirror shard, X-Ray specs in a bag, american flag pin on a card, and a religious pamplet. when we left the country, i gave it back to him and he added the 3rd eye mandala and star shine.
i’ve no idea how it got up on Mac’s Backs book store wall. it wasn’t there when lady and i left town 15 months ago.
foto by smith
temple of the echo
foto by smith
four social events in past 48 hours. i functioned well at each. enjoyed all four.
and i’ve still not bitten the hands of any of our hosts or guests.
lady says i’m getting better at being civil. she trimmed my wild beard to neatness, immerses me in social situations. she knows she cannot tame my beast, yet proceeds as if that’s exactly what she’s going to do. i act polite to lead her on. i figure her failures will keep her trying for years.
i’ve found the secret difference that makes social engagements work or not for me - if you’re with folk who can discourse, it becomes enjoyable due to verbal give and take, song and dance, thought and repartee. it’s the polite chit chat folks who do me in, turn me into some sort of psycho pre-zombie stochastic simulation. i need brain bounce to pounce.
dull smith fun smith sheep bleep fine mind.
In The Temple Of The Echo
In the Temple of the Echo
In the moment of the mind
In the error of the airwaves
In the arrows of the kind
Lies a hurting healing
Taking pleasure to the tried
From forgotten shadows
On the ladders of the blind
Oh take me to your leader
To the maker of this slime
And at their feet I’ll wallow
Worshiping the awful
Waste their shallow taste
Brings life’s kine
Sheep sadly settled
Grazing government gray
Cheap sadly saddled
Approved payments pay
In first born chattel
Less than cattle
TV mentals
Televise mime
Breaking elemental
Rights of mine
Mind to mind
Hey in there . . .
Anybody home?
foto by smith
fee fie foe fool
foto by smith
49 days left to leaving.
28 of those already have social, poetic, art slots scheduled.
think i’ll get a deaf mute sign, sport black glasses & white cane for these engagements.
two to do today - a poetry workshop lady used to attend in her pre-smith daze, and dinner with a poet/artist couple.
two more tomorrow with a visit from a long unseen lifetime friend, and dinner with a poet couple.
monday is helping lifetime friend move into ohio house.
ad infitium.
heeeeelllllllllllllllllppp
i’m practicing new excuses like “i’m sorry, but i’m experiencing social coma and cannot possibly respond to what you just said.”
~ ~ ~
2 of today’s two-day done.
ok, i admit it - i enjoyed myself at both of today’s socializations. good food, good people. lady is pleased i didn’t bite anyone. asked her if i performed well. she called me amazing man. told her i was slyer than she thought.
no faux fool pseudo smith me.
foto by smith
How I wanna go
At Barking Spyder, Cleveland (photo by Lady)
“It’s probably gonna get pretty environmentally bad. So, we probably have a couple years left on Earth. How do you want to go?”
I know how I’m gonna die. You’re gonna walk me to death. I’m just going to wear away, trying to keep up with you. I’ll keep getting smaller and smaller as I wear away. Pretty soon you’ll be looking down on me. Eventually you’ll just put wheels on the bottom of my feet and tie a string around my neck and pull me along.
“I could suck you to death.”
Maybe you are. You’re looking younger, I’m getting older, yet we’re on the same journey. You look alien, you know. You’re the bastard offspring of Spock and an errant elf.
Yes, I’d like to go painlessly, or during a climax. I’d go BOOM. Wake up on the Other Side, think I’m in the same place, feeling good.
“The tingle of the Afterlife.”
At my funeral, when you cremate me, I want a bale of marijuana burned with me. I want the smoke floated inside the church, so everybody gets stoned.
And after, at the wake, you can put little piles of my ashes on the sideboard with little straws, to snort. And before you burn me, you’re gonna remove a good section of my back skin and cure it, tan it, and you’re gonna bind my final book of poetry in it. Cripples will crawl from thousands of miles away, to kiss my poetry and be cured.
Alien Lady At Barking Spyder, Cleveland (photo by Lady)
fine print
assemblage by smith
smith & lady k
our policy is no truth too true to do
human is as human does
humans bleed, humans love
foto by smith
blood moons
foto by smith
human punctuation
i realize this is info normally beyond our pale, but the past 26 months i’ve been charting my wife’s monthly menstruum - length of period with days between. i do this even though lady is the least affected woman i’ve ever seen by her menses. i’ve had previous companions who went from ms jekyl to monstrous hyde with no warning in between. lady merely becomes more vulnerable, a little unsure of herself and others during moon blood. i keep an eye out, try to be even more understanding. it’s the little things that help - sometimes it’s doing the dishes, sometimes counting blood moons
lady k’s periodic chart
days between periods
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
20 days = 3
21 days = 5
22 days = 3
23 days = 8
24 days = 5
25 days = 2
and period duration
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
3 days – 11 cycles
4 days – 10 cycles
5 days – 5 cycles
why such a range of durations, and days between? one would think it’d be cut and dried - one woman, one duration, one break between.
statistically every 23 days she starts expending 3.5 days of blood. her nipples hurt the week before, so she suffers one way or another 2 weeks out of every 4. it’s a hell of inconvenience when one wears the leaking oozing body of woman.
brings to mind the subject line from yesterday’s spam email - un”Happy moments with my girl ooze.”
foto by smith
from flow to flee
foto by smith
can’t sleep, so sit in stuffed chair in dark, by open window, listening to rain fall in the night. the rain hits the trees, roof, grass, bushes, flowers, garden with different rhythms, beats, tones. a soothing, cleansing tune. water sounds heal, calm, take one on mental trips around the mind. i can believe in the possibility of inner peace when i listen to water. water we were, again will be.
we’ve had special sounds each place we’ve been. frequently around the world it has been the day long crow of roosters, a sound i associate with innocence and freedom from being raised on a farm in the pacific northwest of the u.s.of.a. here in our love shack out back we have the mournful wail of trains. i used to lie in the dark in mullan idaho as a youth and yearn to be with the wailing trains down in the valley below going anywhere but where i was. trains have always suggested better, other, maybe even somewhere i’d fit in for once.
been in america 3 weeks now - 3 weeks of poetry and art events and socializing with people. out of those 21 days, i’ve had 2 days with no social events. i’m a person who finds 12 people events a year 11 too many. but i’m doing it, putting up with it, enduring it for lady - this is her time, and she still believes in the healing inspirational power of people. she has an innocence i’ve lost along the way. i hope for good, expect bad, and am rarely disappointed.
i must admit people do inspire, fill one’s creative data banks with new ideas, new thoughts, new poems, new art. but people take so much time, and are so totally frigging alien other to my brain. they suck psychic energy from me in my inept attempts to socially interface with them. i feel their need and it eats me.
5-7 weeks before we leave the country again. we find we’ve a joyous anticipation for mexico - or below. right now we’re heading for oaxaca, the lower part of mexico in the mountains near guatamala and belize. we’re heading for lands of magic names, ancient civilizations.
on the obverse side of civilized, i received a spam email with the subject line “Happy moments with my girl ooze.” wow - that’s zen porn. endless possibilities flutter through my mind. so many juices and sluices to ooze.
but, what makes human scum think they’ve the right to flood my e-mail box with their faux flesh sluts and small penises, drug offers and false stock options? probably the same sort of bottom feeding gene pool slime thinking cheney and bush engage in as they murder one million plus iraqis. the bible says those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword, so how come those two are still unperished? what’s the time limit on just retribution? how come the rich always take and are never took, the powerful do and are never done unto? the bible always seems a bit vague on that part. justice is as justice does, but justice never seems to operate on any just time line.
this is smith from the tarnished dark underside of the mirror trying to report the distortions through the distortions. i wonder, do we ever ever ever get to see cleanly, clearly, crisply? do we ever find peace, or truth?
such slings and arrows, mostly slung by ourselves at ourselves.
foto by smith