WALKING ON THIN ICE

dead elvis graffiti - foto by smith

this is another “clean out my pocket notebook notes” blog. the Poetry Thieves of Barcelona taught me not to let my notes linger too long because some pickpocket can come along and filch them. i wish i could have seen the pickpockets’ faces when they saw they stole my poetry notebook from my right rear pocket instead of my wallet.

i told Lady “in this world, everything is maybe baby except you. there ain’t no maybe between me and my Lady.” she told me i was a smooth talker. got a kiss out of it, so maybe she’s right.

art in spanish is arte, pronounced ar-tay. Lady was talking of putting dead rotting things in her art and then selling it as Odor Arte. or perhaps we could sell the name to some Gucci perfume manufacturer - perhaps with a “Looking good, smelling bad” tag-line. wearing bad odors would get you more personal room on elevators and street crowds. it’s all about more personal space.

learning Spanish, my brain keeps playing word games. “i have” is “tengo” which sounds like tango, so when shop keepers tell me “no tengo” because they don’t have something, my brain starts singing the “No Tengo Tango Blues.” of course all this internal bi-language word play has an audience of exactly one - me.

before watching American Splendor, i’d been in 6 places where movies were shot. the church where Meryl Streep got married in The Deer Hunter is in my home neighborhood of Tremont . . the store where she worked is next to the church, and their wedding reception was shot a couple blocks away in Lemko Hall, where i’ve read poetry and shown art. what’s amazing to me is when they leave the reception in Tremont, they walk out onto the streets of Pittsburg - it’s a shock to see them come out onto what should be a flat street in Cleveland and start walking down a hill in another city.

during our travels, we watched a movie being shot in Leeds, England, and we saw two scenes for another movie being shot in Essaouira, Morocco.

but American Splendor takes my in-film scene count way up because I’ve been in practically every scene shown in the film. their shot of Meryl Streep’s church (which was in both American Splendor and The Deer Hunter) was taken from the balcony of one of my artist friend’s studio. there’s a bit of magic in watching screen magic and seeing scenes of your life’s set.

i’m searching for The Lost Blog. think it ran off with The Lost Chord. but then i’m from Allen Ginsburg’s Lost Generation, still awaiting the Last Word, lost Lord, lust absurd, luck lore, lick lure, swift swore, or munch more.

may he/sh/it who lives by the sword be lost by the sword.

political graffiti - foto by smith