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WALKING ON THIN ICE

Neon Repoetry by Chiplis, + reading

May 29, 2015 No Comments

Neon Repoetry by Jeffry Chiplis

Here’s some shots of Jeffry Chiplis’ Neon Repoetry art installation at the 2nd annual Slavic Village Rooms to Let Art Installation. Also shots of the poetry reading he asked us to host, plus a fine bunch of other artists’ installations. It’s a fun viewing, both in person and online.

Rooms to Let is when Slavic Village is going to tear down a house and add the land to the land bank, but before they do they let artists come in and do pretty much anything they want. One artist even cut a hole in the roof.

These two houses were at 3810 E. 71 St, Cleveland, Ohio.

If anyone knows who the ?? artists are, let me know and I’ll update the site.

Click here for Chiplis’ Neon Repoetry 2015
and here for 13 more years of Chiplis found neon/argon sculptures.

I have another 12 guest artists on AgentOfChaos.com available for viewing as well, including Mother Dwarf, Daniel Thompson, Lady K, bree, Jim Lang, Terry Provost, Russell Vidrick . . . agentofchaos.com/guestartists.php.


detail of Neon Repoetry by Jeff Chiplis

Grace

May 17, 2015 No Comments

my mind eye

open poetry reading today Sunday May 17, 2015 at
the Rooms To Let two house art installation 2 pm
3810 E. 71 St., Cleveland, OHIO
hosted by Smith & Lady in the Chiplis Neon Repoetry room
front house, second floor I believe
no sign up, read if and when you feel
courtiuosly leaving room for all
bring you own chair or sit or stand
Nepalese poet Yuyu Sharma will be part of open mic
he’s returning to Nepal after the reading due to the eartrhquakes

Rooms to Let art installation FaceBook page

~ ~ ~

Grace

Thanks for this food

thanks for this wife
friend for rest of life

thanks for good times fed
as well as stress and strife

and the wild life led

wimmin, wind and weather
hell bent for pleasure

as through this grass I slither
hither and dither for good.

– Smith, 5.17.2015

snake fed baptists

May 16, 2015 No Comments

There’s an open poetry reading tomorrow Sunday
at
Rooms To Let
art installation
2 pm
3810 E. 71 St., Cleveland, OHIO
hosted by Smith & Lady in the Chiplis Neon Repoetry room
or elsewhere outside, depending on weather and attendance
no sign up, just read if and when you feel
bring you own chair or sit or stand
Nepalese poet Yuyu Sharma will be part of open mic
Rooms to Let art installation FaceBook page

~ ~ ~

conversation with wife 13

snake fed baptists only go out with them snake-charmin’ wimmins. they don’t go out with no cathlicks. cathlicks and baptists don’t mix. least not snake fed baptists. they’re stern folk. no music, no books. no learning. jes yearning fer something under wrap. them snake-fed baptists do stuff behind yer back. sometimes dance. sometimes sing. that’s how they get through the night. them snake-fed baptists are also real skinny folk. snake don’t fill you out.
there, i said it.

– Smith & Lady, 5.16.2015

~ ~ ~

I get such pleasure from solving the JUMBLE puzzle in the morning paper because it tasks my mind and there’s a thrill when I solve it, and it makes me wonder what satisfaction cheaters like Tom Brady, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire, Jose Canseco, Andy Pettitte, Manny Ramirez, A-Rod, Roger Clemens, Jim Thome, Fox News talking heads, and most every CEO, policeman, and politician there is get from cheating . . . how can one feel accomplishment when one did not accomplish? I know cheating made them rich, but it’s tainted money. How do they sleep at night, how do they look in the mirror each morning, what satisfaction can they derive from folk looking up to their false godness? Especially odd is David Justice’s cheating, considering his last name and all, perhaps we should rename his David Injustice. Seems cheating is a prerequisite skill in sports, politics, policing, religion, and the corporate world.

Life Walk Bird Talk

April 14, 2015 No Comments

Life Walk Bird Talk

News creeping seeping through my glow
telling me what I don’t want to know
but need to to . . . ?

Ugly stuff in need of antidote.

Which is wife, cat, friends, family, life.

And bird walks along Cleveland’s Erie Canal Towpath Trail.

Saw, heard, or was told
chipping sparrow, red-winged blackbird, cormorant,
mocking bird, robin, song sparrow, wood duck,
towhee, flicker, red-bellied woodpecker,
white-throated sparrow,
morning dove,
tree swallow, house sparrow,
new beaver lodge and dam flooding boardwalk,
mallard, cardinal, cowbird, starling, seven swans flying,
crow, kingfisher, rock pigeon sparrow, chickadee,
blue jay, bullfinch, geese, downy woodpecker,
and a ferret river bank running.

My kinda news.

– Smith, 4.14.2015

Smith & Lady Poems March 2015 – Lady’s #31

March 31, 2015 No Comments

 

Away from the melee, away
from the undertow of the appalling,
the maelstrom of the loathsome,
surf the cosmic way rather

Take the bank of your life to
the here now of corporeality, an odyssey
with you and me, the hero’s journey of art,
cameras in our hands, beginners’ eyes
delighting in novelty, so many maiden voyages,
riddles like rooms of zoomorphic fish canoes
oared by crews from shadowy odeums,
neighbors and friends

The fish is not your mother
but embrace the story – maybe she is
your mother, echoes of time, tide lapping us,
sated travelers startling awake like from
the twirling skirt of our lake’s wet tongue

~ Lady

 

Smith & Lady Poems March 2015 – Lady’s #14

March 14, 2015 No Comments

Pi Day

We wring hands begging spring and finally, winter’s
leaving Cleveland, a seasonal glacier carving the roads,
embellishing them with the grit of our driving in the
relinquished like hackies in taxies waltzing round potholes
as prevalent as scaled craters on the moon, o battered
road of rugged emotions–the consolation prize jobs for
people to spackle and pave, gigantic rags of the city
repairing its crust

Soon land’s raw thaw will be absorbed into spring’s
forgiving pillow powering fresh green leaf, flowering
chrysalis seed, budding trees for bees, sprinkling petals
into regal paths for cheerful hops of curious sparrows,
fresh air like ribbons of light, byzantine rites of stain
glass windows, spiral candy dance for everyone from
lusty flushed youth to clean peace aged

~ Lady

Black History Month Poems – #25

February 25, 2015 No Comments

 

Black history in Cleveland
my association of Black with civic
life, adulthood, urbanity–

The mental landing pad of
Public Square, stony-faced quadripartite sphinx,
history in concrete or ticker tape glyphs
from 19th century newspapers

Feeling it out
in the snow of words, some sense of
being in it, the staking claim in work and mire,
pencil and paper, trading figures
and invention

1809
George and Hanna Peake
first African American settlers
arrive with half bushel of sepia silver
like a pail of liquidity, invent
hand mill for grinding corn
ready to exact hi-fidelity
from swamp

Settlers arriving
into almost naked cosmos with
long chains of teaching clothing
minds and hands, relationships
with native people
of the land

~ Lady

 

of winter discontent

November 30, 2014 No Comments

Tomorrow’s December, winter whether. I’m more spring summer fall so will hold warm fotos, flower poems and thoughts of spring rebirth close through the coming months of snow and ice and blow.

Didn’t used to be this way. I was born in cold, raised the same. Wasn’t until we missed the winters of 2007-9 living in warmer wheres that brain realized there were options and now mind gnaws at winter’s rope.

Meditation

The ubiquitous
hibiscus unfolding
in full flowing.

– Smith, 11.30.2014





bitz & piecez

November 18, 2014 No Comments

Mary E. Weems

Poet, Professor, Playwright

Reading Mary Weems’
serial daily haiku
I grin, nod head yes.

– Smith, 11.18.2014


Mary E. Weems

We were outside this morning in 12° . . . Lady was going running but couldn’t see because her glasses fogged up, so I offered to take them upstairs and put them in my pocket. As she left, I took a couple fotos, walked less than 100 feet, moved the car, came upstairs. When she returned and asked for her glasses, they weren’t in my pocket.

Went out and closely searched my entire route. No glasses. I felt like a pile of do-doo. She was graciously forgiving. Still felt like crap. Took flashlight and broom back out, swept the leaves, looked in the shadows, and finally found them under a parked car. No logic for them being there. No logic for them falling out of my jacket pocket.

But for once logic ruled. I had a finite path from the front of the house to the back. If second search hadn’t succeeded, I was going to crawl the route sifting everything with my frozen fingers. I am so grateful for the amazing luck I’ve been gifted my entire life. No fame, no money, but good friends, good adventures (and bad), good parents, good luck.


foto I took before I lost her glasses

Last night I got sick, probably food poisoning. Lost my inner ear balance so as I walked, I fell to the left, had to hang onto items to walk. Got a little scared, researched things like stroke symptoms (not even close) and the closest I could come was inner ear damage.

Suspected food poisoning though because it happened once before when we lived in Mexico — the room was spinning so badly I leaned left holding myself up by the wall as I walked . . . in between walls, I had to crawl. That episode was way worse than this one.

Woke up this morning with minor vertigo, but as soon as I ate, It was gone.

Scary.


morning window

Hot Cold Fusion

November 6, 2014 1 Comment

warmshine

Hot Cold Fusion

The heat of the bath
relaxes meat in my mind —
o holy liquid.

If it’s not the heat,
it’s the two hundred percent
damned humidity.

Arctic ice melting
freeing the polar vortex
for vacation south.

It’s too hot one day,
too cold or chilly the next –
welcome to Cleveland.

– Smith, 11.6.2014


coldshine