Status Report 194
I’m a man of bad bone
decent heart
good love
lousy lover
strange ways
lots of luck
I walk my road
seek abode
carry load
try not to let Fortune’s kiss
turn me toad
– Smith, 3.19.2016
Status Report 193
Ten years married
to the sweetest prize
I ever tried to lose
I wanted to be alone
in my twentieth year of celibacy
and she was way too young
My unwelcome mat
said GO AWAY in large letters
as she knocked my door
Finally gave in
knowing it couldn’t last
tried the ride
Ten years later
no one doing it better
we still walk as one
In what is but beginning
– Smith, 3.18.2016
We were married by a witch in the afternoon 10 years ago, and that evening hosted a group poetry reading at the benefit auction for the 25th Street Book Store at the punkish Inside Outside Gallery in the end of the building, then afterward invited the poets and artists and audience up to our studio for a wedding celebration party.
Status Report 192
We go into the would
to gather word
to share around the fire.
– Smith, 3.16.2016
Conversation with Wife 24
“Got a coupon here for hummus.”
Why don’t you hummus a tune, dear.
“And one for diced tomatoes.”
I don’t like to gamble with diced tomatoes,
too hard to roll a 7.
“You should write that down.”
“Mr. Smith, are you a wave or a particle?”
Depends who’s askin’.
“Today is Pi Day, 3.14.”
That’s only partial pi, where’s the rest?
“Pi never repeats, does it?”
Goes on forever, piece of pi for everyone.
“The endless circle.”
You know why there’s no beatnik pi?
“No.”
Cuz pi are squared.
I’m tired of the coolness in here.
“Are you cool?”
I’m so cool I could counteract global warming.
“Are you hot?”
I’m so hot, I can cancel my own cool.
“Ewww, wet nose,” she says as we kiss.
Sorry, leaky nose, snot anything to worry about.
“You should wipe that down.”
– Smith, 3.15.2016
I’d seen the movie but hadn’t read the book so I started To Kill A Mockingbird with my normal fear it wouldn’t live up to its rep, but the first half was exceptional. Then Harper Lee died and there was too much news analysis so I set it aside. Started in again and got 65 pages from the end when I left it in a hospital waiting room. Didn’t feel too bad because figured I had the essence of the story and could always finish it in a library someday, but next day went back and it was where I’d left it. Finished it yesterday and I was wrong – those last 65 pages are extremely important. What a great character the young girl Scout is. She can be my sister anytime. Totally impressed with the book. Now have to ponder whether to read her earlier alternate version published later.
~ ~ ~
On Reading To Kill A Mockingbird
Glad for the goodness
Sad for the badness
Why we be this way?
– Smith, 3.14.2016
Conversation with Wife 23
Is that crying cat part of what’s playing?
“Yes, it’s music for pets, pet music.”
How do you pet music, with your ears?
“Huh?”
“Well you pet pets with your hands
so do you pet music with your ears?
“Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
Guess I still got it if I can make you groan.
“Can’t you ever be serious?”
I am serious, Dog Star Sirius.
“Do you need money?”
No, I got 20.
“Here’s another.”
Thanks, now I’ve 20-20 vision.
How do you feel?
“I’m all sniffly and sneezely.”
Ahh, one of the seven dresser drawers.
“I love the mindful meditation bell
I got from Thich Nhat Hanh.”
In the mountains, Mom used to check my head
for would Thichs when I came in from playing.
“That’s a horrible pun.”
Not as bad as the one about Thich Nhat Hanh
being the opening act for Was (Not Was).
– Smith, 3.13.2016
“I used to take my girlfriends down into the fog by the Spokane River to neck,” Smith told me in our morning mid-conversation.
“Necking was something, huh,” I answered. “Especially in the teens.”
“Or nippling,” he said. “Everything from the nipple up… or cunting, I used to go cunting.”
“Ew…”
“It’s not my fault that words are drippy, nasty little things,” he said.
“Or sometimes like Koto music,” said I in reproach.
Sun Shining Thru Translucent Clouds by Kevin Eberhardt
Sun Shining Thru Translucent Clouds
Round yellow, round yellow
come out and warm a fellow
Unsmudged sun smearing cloud
adrift in shifting sky
over land embossed by green
mixed with when and why
O great ball of gas and fire
your warmth and light ease my ire
We embrace thy heat
thy light replete
relive your ritual try
of dragging night by the bye
O Great Disc of ocher round
we soar with you over ground
You sprout new shoots of small green leaves
from water, wood and bark
in its shade we take our ease
and listen to the lark
Why don’t you fall warm gold skyball
with no feet how can you be so tall?
– Smith, 3.11.2016
fissure
Status Report 190
At 9 p.m.
after wife’s been abed an hour
her closed computer turns itself on
boots its sleeping self up
and every 15 minutes chimes once
followed by deep slow low
bong … echo … pause …
bong … echo … pause …
bong … echo … silence …
then 14.5 minutes of quiet and we do it again
her computer closed and supposedly off
me sitting stoned in the dim light night
anticipating calm of next gong
riding its echo
thinking of the 8-fold path
and folded bath towels
of honey out of reach
of living happy life in unhappy world
of lending light instead of feeding dark
of one-hand slaps
head-knock laughs
and giving before ask
gonnnggggggg…gonnnggggggg…gonnnggggggg
– Smith, 3.10.2016
between a rock and a soft place
Since I’m now 70, I can relate a bit more to this Charles Bukowski poem I published in Artcrimes #11 – Eat at Eternities, April 1991, guest edited by poet/artist Ben Gulyas.
~ ~ ~
somebody else
a hangover at 70
seems somewhat worse,
of course,
than one at
35,
but considering
most other things
I feel about the
same,
my strengths, my
ideals, my
confusions
remain
similar.
it is only when
say
I am walking
along
and I see my
reflection
in a
plate glass
window
that I wonder,
who is
that?
that thing
there.
that old fart.
disgusting.
– Charles Bukowski, 1991
I don’t have to compare my hangovers because I quit drinking in 1991, 25 years ago, and I don’t see “that thing” in the mirror because I’m not as ugly as he was . . . few men are.
I’m not rich like him, not famous at all, but I may well be healthier and happier than he ever was, at least according to the excellent documentary Bukowski: Born into This, 2003, directed by John Dullaghan (it has an imdb.com user rating of 7.9 out of 10).
I do have some old man ugly skin . . . 8 weeks throat cancer radiation 10 years ago seriously ravaged my neck scrotal, and 15 months of Mexican sun while living in Oaxaca damaged my arm skin.
Amusing story – guest editor Ben Gulyas in 1991 wrote asking Bukowski for poems, who sent a nice letter back with doodles on it and enclosed a dozen poems. Ben wrote back saying the poems lacked his usual fire, did he have any others? Bukowski never answered. So we published half what he’d sent in Artcrimes, and the other half in the Jim Lang/Gulyas Split Whiskey poetry paper.
~ ~ ~
Status Report 189
70 years on my head
and I’m still awaiting white hair
to make me look like a poet
Mirrors don’t show
the shards of 8 different decades
embedded in my mind
Fertilizing cultural clime
for climb
from 1946 to 2016
25,567 days of then
with each brief daily now
joining them
Quick new now just born appears
to get me through affaired arrears
and tangled tide
I’m still unknown
neither rich nor well off
50 years after my first rejection letter
But art and poems and friends and fotos
pile in amiable disarray
in my backspray
And body rage eases
as it ages
in pain
So happier in head
due wife and cat
and life
And grass
– Smith, 3.9.2016
