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

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

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