WALKING ON THIN ICE

mass ass attack

foto by smith

good news for those with no retirement accounts, no future plans – the future ain’t what it used to be. it’s much smaller, for a many myriad multitude of reasons.

Carbon dioxide is rising at a much faster rate than before in spite of efforts to reverse global warming.

In the 1990s, co2 emissions increased 1.3% per year. Since 2000, the growth rate has been 3.3% per year.

scientists are using the 1.3% rise to predict temperature increases.

so as bad as they say it is, it is minimum 3 times worse. looks to me like the mayans’ prediction of the end of times arriving december 21, 2012 is right on.

we’ve already passed the global warming disaster tipping point where all these symptoms combine to make it speed up due to interactive feedback. the ice sheets in iceland are moving in 90 minutes the distance the scientists said would take 10 years.

the oceans we count on absorbing all this co2 are super-saturated with it already and every month absorb less and less so things get worse even if we don’t make it worse.

and if the ocean’s temperatures rise much more, the massive amount of methane frozen on the ocean bottoms will melt, releasing it all back into our air. if that happens, we’re talking months, not decades before the end of days.

the sky is falling, the sky is falling.

best do what you’ve always wanted to do now, say goodbye to the rest, bend over, spread your cheeks, and await the next “nothing’s wrong everything’s hunky dory message” from your friendly politician or ceo.

and global warming is not our only worry.

scientists are talking of drastically geo-engineering the earth to halt global warming – their schemes include dumping massive amounts of iron into the oceans to promote abnormal plankton growth to suck up the co2… dumping massive amounts of sulfur into our upper atmosphere to bounce heat away from the earth… to put 37,000 small mirrors in orbit around the earth to reflect sunlight away.

best kiss your ass goodbye right now – cuz these are the same folk who brought you bhopal india, chernobyl russia, three mile island america, hiroshima japan, and ronald raygun’s star wars system that still doesn’t work.

it gets worse.

the synthetic biofuels folk are thinking of creating new matter from dna building blocks – and then releasing these untested newnesses into the world to interact with real matter.

then there’s the threat of actual atomic war from the madmen who kidnapped the white house, the threat of dirty atomic bomb suitcases exploded in american cities by the mad men fighting the madmen in the white house, the threat of genetically modified franken foods wiping out the real edible foods, the threat of all the diseases and viruses our government’s experimenting with escaping into the world and creating stephen king land.

we’ve dumped so many antibiotics into our water tables that old fashioned defeated diseases are coming back as superbugs capable of wiping out continents. not to mention the new flesh eating viruses they’ve found, and the bird flu swine flu frog flu blues.

there’s the threat from the huge ever increasing pile of trash toxins we’re dumping into our oceans which combine with the raising sea temperatures to kill our coral, shut down our main ocean currents, alter the acidity of the seas, murder our food fish.

there’s drought, rising sea levels, pollutants causing fewer males to be born (probably a good thing), the increase of serial killers and politicians.

there’s the ever increasing inequity between the rich and the poor which will lead to class war (i hope).

there’s the mysteriously dying disappearing bee population due to cell fones and frankenfoods, so soon there’ll be no food blooming any more, which at least will solve our problem of too many fat americans.

and it’s not just mankind fouling our own nest – we’re hundreds of thousands of years overdue for earth’s cyclic fadeout and realignment of the magnetic field, which tends to wipe out massive amounts of life. we’re hundreds of thousands of years overdue for an asteroid to hit earth and wipe out massive amounts of life.

and all this is just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. there’s more more more i’ve not touched on.

who knows, maybe earth’s library card is way overdue and we’re being recalled to the rack.

whatever, we’re fucked. so the now of your life and the no of your future is reduced to how you’re going to spend your remaining time.

me, i’m spending it with my lady love in strange lands not named the undeniable mistakes of amerika.

may you live in interesting times.

foto by smith

mirror / mask

foto by smith

mirror or mask? shakespeare says be careful what mask you choose to wear, because your disguise is the real you.

watching neil gaiman’s movie “mirrormask” just now made me think of that. i read gaiman’s novel “american gods” and thought it good. read “stardust” and found it competent. didn’t finish “anansi boys” (the sequel to “american gods”). the mirrormask movie is a gentle piece of fairy tale that’s fun but fluff.

what is america’s mask?

in america, in 21 years, from 1983 to 2004,
average wealth of the top 1% of households grew by 78%
while the bottom 40% lost 59 %.

1982, the Forbes list of the 400 richest had 13 billionaires,
2006 has 482 billionaires vying for those 400 slots.

1982, highest paid ceo made $108 million, average full-time worker $34,199
2006, highest paid hedge fund manager made $1.7 billion, highest paid ceo made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861

1982, the 400 richest americans had wealth equal to less than 3% of the Gross Domestic Product.
2006, these 400 have more than 11% of the U.S. GDP

i say we eat the rich, use their bones for dung scrapers.

foto by smith

ding hai

foto by smith

lady’s set-up and hosted City Poetry readings in two cities now – london and cleveland. both magic. both well attended.

car-less, we left for the 3 p.m. reading at 12:30, took 2 buses and 1 rapid train, and still ended up walking last 30 minutes up a hill. cleveland is not a good city for sunday public transportation if you have to transfer uptown.

once there, we sat in a slowly evolving 30-40 person circle in the basement of the oldest used book store in town, and whoever felt most like reading at any specific moment, read a poem – no order, no sign-up. more call and response.

we got back 8 hours after we’d left for the 3 hour reading. once back home, lady said here, lie on me.

i can’t. i hurt too much, too creaky. pretty soon you’ll have to take me out back and shoot me.

i don’t want to do that.

well, you could just stab me a couple times, but shooting’d be quicker. boy you’re cute. big eyes that sparkle with trust and hope and innocence, pixie hair, pretty face. you’d make a perfect contract killer.

why?

no one would suspect you, they’d say “why look at that pretty little thing that – gasp – just stabbed me.”

i lie on her, say we have to get some money so we can get ourselves fixed while fixing skills and electricity still exist. i need teeth in my head, eyes in my eyeballs, a compass in my foreskin.

why a compass?

to know what direction i’m pissing, so we always know where we are.

how would that help?

whenever we’re confused, i’ll take a piss, and my foreskin will show natural north.

~ ~ ~

hidden signets of sin
we’re writing checks on tomorrow’s children
safe harbor criminals within

:sent that response to mad poet friend KE who sent me this poem:

DING HAI

Harboring criminals on
Faceless bits of paper

Confusing the deeds of
Saints with sins of the

Father / holding liable
The ambiance of youth

When the in-between
Years reek of cause

With little affect / the
Future’s left holding

The bag / doing time
In the Year of the Pig

KE

foto by smith

piss purple prose

foto by smith

dropped my pocket poetry notebook into the toilet. reached down into my urine water and plucked it back out. all my words ran purple. so now i’ve finally reached the plateau of purple prose. seems to be metaphoric – folk always tell me my words are full of piss and vinegar anyway. now i’m truth in advertising.

gorgeous sun crisp autumn afternoon blue sky white cloud fluff leaves green and yellow and red falling to ground to crunch underfoot. i don’t fit here, but it is nice to be back. where else but among friends can one have such a perfect opening as lady’s last night. lady has a poem about how friends always see you with old pre-programmed eyes, whereas new people let you be new yous:

“You All have the record of what / I’ve done against which I am compared. But a / new Person is Free to affect speech and ideas. / We expect something New but we have to come back / to the Same Room.”

well, we’re leaving this same room, gonna go find new rooms, new light, new adventures, new faces, new thoughts, same love. we’ve 40 days and nights left here before heading south of the border down mexico way.

we read from our blogs last night at jeff chiplis’s art closing. 40 minutes worth. went very well. good audience. first time we’ve dipped into the blogs. folk seemed to especially enjoy when lady blogs our conversations, which we read back and forth just like we first said them. a lot of good words flowed our way, and after we went to a party where some people knew me in the old days’ daze – one guy said i was their idol back then, that everyone tried to get as high as i, said i was famous. how come i didn’t know?

the neon fotos are from chiplis’s art closing – he finds old neon signs, takes them apart, and reconstructs them into art works. a chiplis show is a pleasure to see, a joyous explosion of shapes and colors buzzing happily at you.

foto by smith

off world

foto by smith

lady k had her 1st one-woman art show last night – titled offworld. a lot of people showed up, she sold 6 pieces (of 23), and a splendid time was had by all. magic night, magic people, magic art, magic lady.

foto by smith

now we have to stop by and read some at a friend’s monthly poetry reading this afternoon, prepare for our reading from our blogs tonight at chiplis’ art show closing, and lady’s hosting of her City Poetry reading tomorrow.

we’ve learned that 4 or more events in one weekend is excessive – 6 in 2 weeks a lot. especially when you toss in daily socializing with a slew of folk.

but then, that’s better than no engagements at all. better to be well liked than ignored.

foto by smith