mint field at the Crosby Mint Farm, St Johns, Michigan - foto by Smith

Troubadour 21, a Detroit on-line poetry / art / fotos / short story site, has added five of my poems and one of my true short stories.

For the Smith menu, click on troubadour21.com/author/smith/
Or for individual efforts, try
Grease Your Grill
Alone This Train
Now Zen
White Boy Blues
Bye Buy
My First Armed Robbery

A couple of weeks ago, Lady and I rode up with the hosts of the monthly poetry venue Lix and Kix (John Burroughs aka Jesus Crisis and Diane Borsenik) to St. Johns, Michigan (just north of Lansing) to read poetry at the Save The Crosby Mint Farm benefit–they’re the oldest continuously running mint farm in America and are being foreclosed due to $330,000 of debt.

After the benefit, on the way back to Cleveland, we stopped by the Beat Cafe in Detroit to read as special guest readers. William Burkholder and Carlton Smith III of the Beat Cafe readings are also editors of Troubadour 21 (it usually makes it more easy to get published when you actually meet the publishers in the flesh before submitting–although in London I got in the first two issues of The Delinquet before meeting the editors; then after I’d met them, they rejected me for issue #3). The Beat Cafe has a most excellent and vigorous poetry scene.

We’d gotten up at 5 in the morning, left at 7, and got back to Cleveland at 3 the next morning. Miles and miles and hours and hours to read 1 poem at the Mint Farm and 5 poems at the Beat Cafe. Poets are crazy - they’ll travel hundreds of miles and then pay someone else just to read one poem. In many events, like the Mint Farm and the Hessler Street Fair, poets are filler, not so much respected as just used to soften the spaces between the music and other events. Poets don’t get no respect. But at least in my case I got the girl, because my poetry and art are what lead Lady to me.

For a list of all the writers and artists available on Troubadour 21, click troubadour21.com/troubadours/

mint farm bandstand, mint barn, mint farmer - fotos by Smith

Krakow Poland Elvis - foto by smith

Wow, Elvis Presley was 74 yesterday. Wonder if he’s still flipping burgers in a backwoods Michigan fast food place as I read he was a couple years ago.

My second sexual encounter was with an older woman–she was 33, I was 17. She was the president of the Elvis Presley fan club in Spokane Washington. While home on my first leave after Boot Camp, on a radio quiz I won a full-sized stand-up cardboard cutout of Elvis in his Flaming Star shooter pose. She called me up and said how much she wanted it. She had the sexiest telephone voice I’d ever heard, so I took it over to her house, put it inside her screen door facing in, rang her buzzer and disappeared. She phoned me to come back over for sex. I went. I’d lost my virginity to a 15 year old three days before. Quite a week.

Elvis has been dead 32 years, yet has a new Xmas album out with brand new duets with 11 female country singers: Martina McBride, Carrie Underwood, Le Ann Rimes, Wynonna Judd, Sara Evans, Amy Grant, Gretchen Wilson, Anne Murray, Olivia Newton John, and Karen Fairchild & Kimberly Schlapman of Little Big Town. Not bad for an overweight dead guy, though I imagine the worms have slimmed him down somewhat by now. Bet the worms got really stoned too eating that drugged flesh.

I won’t be getting or listening to the album.

Elvis has also done posthumous duets with Celine Dion and his daughter Lisa Marie. Back when he was alive, he sang with Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Ann Margret. The Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash cuts are cool and the Ann Margret dynamite, but I pass on the rest.

from the internet:
“It is estimated that Elvis Presley has sold over one billion record units worldwide, more than anyone in record industry history. He’s had 149 songs appear on Billboard’s Hot 100 Pop Chart in America. 114 were in the top forty, 40 were in the top ten, and 18 went to number one. His number one singles spent 80 weeks at number one. He also had over 90 charted albums with ten of them reaching number one. These figures are only for the pop charts, and only in America. He was also a leading artist in the American country, R&B, and gospel fields, and his chart success in other countries was substantial.” - www.elvis.com/elvisology/elvis_overview.asp

Here’s the Elvis song that flipped me from a 12 year old good boy to just waiting to go bad:

King Creole
(words & music by Jerry Leiber - Mike Stoller, 1958)

There’s a man in New Orleans who plays rock and roll
He’s a guitar man with a great big soul
He lays down a beat like a ton of coal
He goes by the name of King Creole

When the King starts to do it it’s as good as done
He holds his guitar like a tommy gun
He starts to growl from way down in his throat
He bends a string and that’s all she wrote

Well, he sings a song about a crawdad hole
He sings a song about a jelly roll
He sings a song about pork and greens
He sings some blues about New Orleans

Well, he plays something evil then he plays something sweet
No matter how he plays you got to get up on your feet
When he gets the rockin’ fever baby, heaven sakes
He don’t stop playin’ till his guitar breaks

You know he’s gone, gone, gone
Jumpin’ like a catfish on a pole
You know he’s gone, gone, gone
Hip shaking King Creole

This was my first song epiphany. Second was (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones, #3’s Desolation Row by Bob Dylan, and #4 was Heroin by Velvet Underground.

postcard Elvis - collage & foto by smith

map shown to folks who were asked if they
could find America on it - foto from internet article

[ NOTE - I missed that the article I based this blog on was supposed to be satire. But even so, my points are still valid. ]

When citizens of the United States of America were asked to find America on the map above, 37% could not do it. The red splotches all around the USA are their guesses as to where America is.

One person when asked what the blue land mass represented, replied “Iraq.”

Another answered, “I live in the U.S.A., so why would I need to know where America is? Or the United States for that matter? As long as there’s still room on that map for all three of those countries, I’m sure everyone will keep getting along just fine.”

When asked our country’s capital, they guessed #1 - Minneapolis-St. Paul, #2 - Mount Rushmore, #3 America City, #4 Whitewater, and #5 Washington, D.C.

31% said America was “the best state of all the Unites States,” while 22% thought America was “a place to definitely explore when I finally get my passport.”

If you think I’m lying, check out http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-shehori/poll-37-of-americans-unab_b_150933.html

This helps explain how Americans let Cheney & Bush steal the Presidential election twice, eviscerate the constitution, invade two foreign countries, murder more than a million Iraqis, kill over 4,000 Americans, spy on Americans, kidnap Americans, and steal billions and billions of dollars for their KBR/Halliburton masters: citizens of the United States of America simply didn’t realize the America doing those evil deeds was their own country.

Our host in Croatia said he liked Americans, but they had two failings: they didn’t know geography, and they didn’t know history.

That’s why 24% of Americans still think Bush is doing a good job. How do folk this plumb dumb get up every day, dress themselves, eat, go to work, and raise families? How do people this stupid not only survive but actually prosper in today’s complex world? What ever happened to Darwin’s survival of the fittest?

ps - there’s another problem involved here - AMERICA refers to North America (which includes Canada, the USA, Mexico), Central America (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama), and South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela and 3 territories: Galapagos Islands, Falkland Islands, French Guinea), so those polled above who chose Canada and Mexico were partially correct. The pollsters who chose such a regionally bigoted question in the first place are showing their own stupidity.

a carnival ride - foto by smith