WALKING ON THIN ICE

“So our one new friend said, ‘Thanks for trusting me and letting me into your home.’ That’s odd, don’t you think? I’ve never had someone say *that* to me.”

“I just told him it was our pleasure,” says Smith. “Plus, it’s a reasonable attitude. We’re all strangers. We don’t know him. He doesn’t know us.”

“It justs make me think about some conceptions of Gringos. That we don’t trust anyone.”

“Fact is, you *can’t* trust everyone. You know that. You don’t know which ones you *can* trust, so you have to keep an open eye. After our first meeting in the restaurant, I felt we could trust him. So did you.”

“Well there’s a prejudiced thing out there about Mexicans being lazy. Which isn’t what *I’ve* seen.”

“And one of the cliches is Mexican cars up on four blocks, without any tires. I’ve seen maybe seven as we’ve walked the streets. But how many working cars have we seen?”

“There’s cars don’t work in Cleveland.”

“Anywhere there’s poor, there’s cars don’t work.”

* * *

“Do you want to talk about our other new friend?”

“What about her?”

“Well, she believes the Nancy Davies book is all propaganda. And she told us about the students and the police shooting at the University yesterday. Did you understand that?” (We were talking in Spanish.)

“I guess so. I guess maybe students took five buses and had a shootout with the police.”

“They were protesting over a peso a ride raise. So I said to our friend, ‘I’m amazed at how people are protective of their rights here.’ And she said, ‘They probably weren’t even students. Probably agitators.’ And she told us to be careful if we saw demonstrations or things like that, to go back to our apartment and hide. Anyways, she said Nancy Davies lied about most of the deaths. But I tend to believe Davies would have no reason to do that.”

“Davies said that’s the number of deaths APPO reported.”

“Anyways, I thought our friend had a conservative attitude.”

“Well, she’s invested. She’s lost work and money because of the protesters. Her boss had to close down his business for three months because the loss of customers and tourists. And she gets her news from the government controlled news channel. She’s looking at it a whole different way.”

waterisneaky.

water is sneaky. also, patient, and insidious.
it’ll beat against you for thousands of years
in big waves
until it smoothes you down
or breaks you apart.

or it’ll lie still in quiet pools,
and insidiously work
on the weakest
point

leaking

and

dripping

and moving.

And then when water does slowly sneak
inside, and lie in wait,

then it can FREEZE and EXPAND with

TREMENDOUS FORCE and BREAK

(so water is sneaky,
incidious
and
patient.)

while SOUND is slippery
(and sneaky)

SOUND slip slides off every flat surface

SOUND double or triple slip slides..

skips from here
to there

(so you think what came from there
came from here.)

SOUND plays tag with yr ears
and lies
a lot.

Plus, in destructive force, SOUND
(shatters)

whereas
water

wears away

THEY USED TO CALLED ME THE BLUE GOOSE

“Your facial hair is very uneven. Varies from the sides and the bottom,” I tell Smith as I trim his beard.

“That’s cuz I couldn’t afford to buy all the hair at the same time. Had to buy odd lots. Same thing with the penis. I couldn’t afford the whole penis right away, so I just bought the foreskin. So I just had this flap of skin down there, this little skin flute down there. Once, when I went on a date–still couldn’t afford the penis–so I just broke a hot dog in half and stuffed it inside the foreskin. Trouble is, my date performed oral intercourse on me. And I discovered when I got home she’d eaten the hot dog. It’s hell being poor.”

“That’s it. I’m gonna go write this down.”

“You wanna see my penis?”

“Yeah.”

Smith puts his hand in his pocket. Pulls out a blue lighter.

“Ta-dah!”

“Hey!”

“They used to call me the blue goose.”

Smith 1976

YESTERDAY’S NEWS; TODAY’S POTENTIAL

“Smith, You’re gonna be hit hard when you read your prison journal. It’s heartrending. Here you are in the first half of your journal - ‘I love Robin, everything is beautiful, la tee dah tee dah.’ And then WHAMMO! You’re hit with four other men. One thing I want to know: is this one passage in your notebook an affair?”

No. That woman I’m fucking in that motel is my wife. I was faithful from when we married to just before the end.

I even turned down free sex from other women when I was married. On Charles Street in Baltimore, the woman upstairs was real lonely. She came home, turned on her TV for companionship and would walk all over. She offered herself to me.

I was too scared to follow through. Bought grass from her. Couple times when she was gone, I crawled up the fire escape and got some grass anyway.

And, one of the secretaries from the ad agencies repeatedly offered sex. And I turned her down. Then I found out she was epileptic. I started fantasizing what it might be like to have sex with an epileptic.

See, wives don’t get this kind of information from husbands.

“Why not?”

Well, normally, when a man is with a woman, it doesn’t help the situation for the man to talk about sex he’s had with other women. It tends to bring about hostile situations.

You and I do not have a normal relationship. I know way more about you than anybody else does, and you know way more about me. You can start calling me “Waymore.”

- - -

When I was still in the tiers, I was going fug bucky. I couldn’t see a clock anywhere. I didn’t know what time it was. I like to know time so I’ll know how long before we’re walked into the little tiny cells from the big cells or when we’ll eat or when my wife would be there for a visit.

I had my wife smuggle me in a wrist watch face. I can’t remember how we transferred it, because there was a screen between her and I, but I got the watch. Sarge the large sadistic guard caught me. Took me into the office. Searched me up and down and up and down. All the time, my hands are over my head so he can pat me.

Can’t find it. Finally he checks my hands, and it’s in my right palm.

“I can’t believe you had the chutzpah to try hide a watch while Sarge was searching you.”

Once again, if you give it to him right away, you’re caught. If you try to get away, maybe you’re not caught. It’s logic. *Known* bad versus *maybe* bad.

I couldn’t see Robin for four or six weeks after that and went buggy. It really isn’t much fun to be locked up; I don’t care what the movies or the books say. But I do got some stories. And I paid for them.

friend’s studio - photo by lady

“Why do I feel guilty?”

You’re a good rat. Don’t worry. We’ve ordered a guilt-free brain for you.

“Hm.”

It hasn’t arrived. They’re like free range chickens. Free range brains.

“Hm. I like the idea of a guilt free brain. But people can rationalize anything, can’t they.”

One can if one is good. That’s one of my potential jobs, professions I could have. I can spin anything, no matter how ludicrous. But there’s a difference between spinning for humor and spinning for morality.

“Don’t you mean humor and exploiting something?”

I can only spin guilt-free in morality-free situations. I can’t spin right and wrong. But I can make fun of it. Especially wrong. If we all made fun of wrong, it’d go away.

“You really think so?”

Yes.

“Ah. So this is a defense for the rhetoric of ridicule…”

Not ridicule. More laughing in the *face* of. Evil don’t like to be laughed at. That’s why Dick Cheney has no sense of humor. Wait, you don’t need to write that down. We don’t need Dick Cheney.

“I like that. It’s relevant.”

I’m trying so hard not to be nasty.

“No, it’s OK to make fun of Dick Cheney. Really. He probably won’t find us and kill us…”

He did shoot his friend in the face.

“No really, I’m not afraid of Dick Cheney. Are you?”

I fear anything that moves…

“That moves?”

And even some that haven’t moved yet, like falling rocks.

“Ahhhh. I understand completely. If you’re heading for the border, you gotta cross the line. If you’re building ‘detention’ camps…”

Make the future ‘detainees’ pay for it.

“Wow. Yeah. I didn’t even think about that. You afraid to post this?”

Nope. Not. Besides, he’s a lousy shot.

(brought to you by Thin Ice Productions)

Photo by Lady

You endure and you endure and then you die. And then after you die, you either have an answer, or you don’t.

All my life I’ve tried to work things out, study the clues. Learn shit. Pay attention. Think. Analyze. Still ain’t got no answers. And I ain’t gonna get any answers. So what the pluck’s it all about?

If we’re supposed to be learning something, nobody seems to be giving us much information.

If we’re supposed to be DOING something, nobody’s giving us many clues.

Can’t just BE, because they took that away from us with advertising. We don’t even know what be IS anymore. So you gotta select one of those roles they offer you.

“Central casting?”

More or less. Good Mom. Good Provider, Good Rat, Good God. Although in this case, Good God would be Good Got, because it’s all about getting and got. That’s our gods, Getting and Got. I worship the Big ‘G.’

It’s kinda funny, the few folk on this planet know how to live are tribal islanders or northern eskimo tribes, aborigine dream timers. The only folk who have a sense of how to live, we’re killing off. We’re drowning the islanders, destroying the fertility rates of the eskimos, and just beating the aborigines to death.

So all we got left to guide us along the path of life are CEOs, politicians, television evangelists, and PR guys. Those are our gurus. I just lucked out. None of them roles they offered me ever came close to fitting.

“What roles did they offer you?”

Sacrificial son, lawyer, believer, follower, shit head.

“Shit head?”

That’s what most roles they offer you are: shit head. Be a shit head. Get ahead.

Cleveland sidewalk (photo by Lady)

HEAVEN AIN’T GOTTA BE LAST

Whatcha reading?

“An article on climate change affecting billions through wars.”

We’re in a frigging disaster movie. And the price of admittance is our lives.

“Yeah, wouldn’t it be nice if there were an Afterlife? Losing my life wouldn’t seem so terrible if I could just have some continuity of consciousness afterwards, some kind of afterlife. Eternal peace.”

But who says the afterlife is peaceful? You know, you think about it. Let’s say there is an afterlife. After all, the body loses 21 grams when it dies. Some say that’s our master program. And it returns to the Great Databank in the Sky to be recycled.

OK, so now, you got two worlds, two existences. Living people on Earth, and wherever their master program goes when they die, the Spirit World. Now, there’s a problem here. People simplistically say, ‘Earth existence bad, Spirit World good.’ But we already know this isn’t true. A lot of folks insist there’re at least Three over there. Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. And it doesn’t matter. There’s either this One Existence: you’re born, you eat, you die. Or there’s more than one. And if there’s more than one, there’s probably more than just one more than one. There could be a whole elevator series of Life After Existence After Life After Existence.

Who knows. You might go from Earth to Hell to Purgatory to Heaven, and who knows what after that? Heaven ain’t gotta be last.

Now, my theory is each level on the Other Side is just a wee bit nicer. Because each one’s a test. This is all if you’re Good, of course. If you’re Bad, the Other Side’s gonna be worse. If you’re Good, the Other Side’s not quite as Bad. But even not quite as Bad still got Bad. You got flesh sharks here, you probably got Spirit Sharks there. You got slimy flesh politicians here, you have bloodsuckers there. It’s just spirit wounds rather than flesh wounds, and they’re gonna hurt just as friggin bad.

So the way I figure it, if you keep being Good, and you keep dying, you’re gonna keep being born into Bad. Until finally the Bad’s all gone, and you get Good.

At this point, you’re either so weary from getting this far just surviving the tests that you don’t give a shit, or you reach Eternal Peaceful Nirvana and you’re bored out of your gourd.

“So are you saying that Badness is interesting?”

That’s an interesting question. Yes and yes and no.

I mean, great actors always like to play the bad guy in the movies, cuz the bad guy gets to chew up more scenery and have more fun. Bad guys get the best lines. Better wardrobes. They usually get the girl for most of the movie until they have to give her back.

Bad guys have more fun. Bad guy movies and bad guy books and bad guy TV shows are more popular. So yes, it’s more fun to be the bad guy.

And humanity’s fascinated with badness to begin with. They stop and look at road kill. Slow down and sniff for blood at accidents. Will click on the most horrendous misery-bringing story.

If you saw two headlines, one said, ‘Boy Does Something Good’ or ‘Man Rips Mom’s Head Off and Stuffs Her Down Toilet’ you can guess which one’s gonna get more readers. I think people secretly yearn to be wild. And getting to watch or read about bad is their only outlet. It’s catharsis.

And bad eats up time and shows you what you’re made of. Just surviving this life, I can’t believe how much work it is. And when bad hits you, like your mother taking nine months to die, bad just builds and builds and builds. And you learn in what you do, who you are.

So bad makes time pass more quickly, just surviving.

Ultimately bad detracts you from good, and good is always deeper, richer, more rewarding. Probably better looking, too. There’s a beauty to good.

Weak ending. See, even this, the good ending is weak. Bad is more interesting.

Barcelona - Commissioned Graffiti (photo by Lady)

UNINTENDEND CONSEQUENCES DOWN AMONG THE SINNERS

“I feel like I’m cheating, taking photographs. I’m just shooting what I see.”

But it’s what YOU see. It’s what YOU selected out of everything else going on at the time. It’s your eye. It’s just detail in somebody else’s existence.

You’re the editor. You’re taking one detail and saying, ‘Hey, this is worth looking at.’ It could be a photograph, it could be a painting, just about anything. But you’re the selector. Conductor.

You’re an attractive woman.

“I am? I’m gonna go take a look at myself.”

What do you see?

“I don’t know. A girl-woman.”

Well, you are a girl-woman. Don’t you see yourself that way in your mind?

“I guess so. Yeah. And you’re raising me.”

No, not raisin. You’re more in the grape area.

“Ha ha.”

Well, there’s my grape joke. Trouble is, it’s not tellable. I’ve got a chicken joke, and a knock-knock joke. I’ve gotta get a tellable grape joke…

“You have many.”

…of my own. I got three grape jokes.

“Uh huh?”

What’s purple and lies on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?

“Hm?”

Moby Grape.

What’s purple and lies in the North Atlantic Ocean?

“Huh?”

Grape Britain.

“That’s terrible.”

And what’s purple, and punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison?

“Hm?”

Statutory Grape.

“That one’s OK.”

I think my favorite bad taste joke of all time is the little boy comes walking into the kitchen, licking his fingers, saying, ‘Mom, remember that soft spot in Baby’s head?’

“Ugh.”

That goes along with my own line. Children belong — in cages, or soup cans.

“That’s terrible.”

It’s absurd.

“Anyways, I think we ought to talk more about ME, the girl-woman.”

Does that mean you’re going to grow up to be a woman-woman? If you had a sex change, you’d grow up to be a man-woman.

“What is a girl-woman?”

Don’t ask me. I don’t understand women of any age or size or genus.

My ten pounds I’ve gained have gone straight to my face. Gonna have to grow my hair long and straight down, so just this thin slice of face remains.

“Is that why they grow long hair? To look thinner?”

That, and to hide. And like Veronica Lake, to look mysterious. She hid one eye behind her falling hair, and seduced you with the other.

“I don’t know. My world is so far removed from that. World no longer seems mysterious.”

It *mystifies* me.

“I have found magic in revelation. Mystery uncovered. Horror revealed, tho, too.”

Your basic magical mystery tour.

“Well, no. Cuz there’s no more mystery.”

Ah… You’re wrong. How do you think we got together?

“I followed your clues.”

They weren’t left by me.

“Oh hoh yes they were. I saw your GO AWAY mat. I thought, ‘CHALLENGE!’ You left clues. Artwork. Poetry.”

I left a lot of clues along the wayside, then.

“That’s what art is. CLUE. It’s the CLUE to YOU.”

I dare say folk put my stuff together, they’re gonna have a hard time placing me.

“You’re a scientific primitive.”

Darned right.

Ah, your fingers are cool, but not cold.

“That’s because I warm them up in my crotch.”

Aha. Finger warmers.

Barcelona (photo by Lady)

At Barking Spyder, Cleveland (photo by Lady)

“It’s probably gonna get pretty environmentally bad. So, we probably have a couple years left on Earth. How do you want to go?”

I know how I’m gonna die. You’re gonna walk me to death. I’m just going to wear away, trying to keep up with you. I’ll keep getting smaller and smaller as I wear away. Pretty soon you’ll be looking down on me. Eventually you’ll just put wheels on the bottom of my feet and tie a string around my neck and pull me along.

“I could suck you to death.”

Maybe you are. You’re looking younger, I’m getting older, yet we’re on the same journey. You look alien, you know. You’re the bastard offspring of Spock and an errant elf.

Yes, I’d like to go painlessly, or during a climax. I’d go BOOM. Wake up on the Other Side, think I’m in the same place, feeling good.

“The tingle of the Afterlife.”

At my funeral, when you cremate me, I want a bale of marijuana burned with me. I want the smoke floated inside the church, so everybody gets stoned.

And after, at the wake, you can put little piles of my ashes on the sideboard with little straws, to snort. And before you burn me, you’re gonna remove a good section of my back skin and cure it, tan it, and you’re gonna bind my final book of poetry in it. Cripples will crawl from thousands of miles away, to kiss my poetry and be cured.

Alien Lady At Barking Spyder, Cleveland (photo by Lady)

Double cross:

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

To get revenge for the road crossing him.

West Side Market, Cleveland (photo by Lady K)

So, we going to Mexico, or Guatemala?

“Who knows? It’d be nice to see Guatemala after Mexico.”

We’re going to Guatemala, have some guacamole. Guatemalan guacamole.

I used to have a radio show at the institution, and between visits with the psychiatrists, they’d get me a microphone, and I got to be everybody.

“You never told me about the institution.”

I’m telling you now. You know why Freud said there’re no jokes?

“No, why?”

Because he was the joke.

“That’s a good reduction.”

Yes, ma’am.

“But you’ve never been in an institution. You’re lying.”

I have been in an institution.

“Yeah, penal.”

Yeah, also in the cubicle farm institution with the suits.

“Are the suits like straight jackets?”

Oh yes. So’s the desk, the briefcase, sniffing the boss’s ass. Good beta behavior to the alpha dog. Sniff sniff.

“How do you get out of the institution?”

With a passkey. Yes, I knew how to pass as sane. I walked out the door. They weren’t even sure I was there. Maybe I’m not… completely. You can just call me Some of Smith.

“You think you’re incomplete?”

Oh yes. We’re all incomplete since the Big Bang blew us apart. It was all Oneness and hunki-dory-ness before. Until the Big Bang blew us into life units. I’ve been trying to reunite with the Universe ever since. And we can’t until sub system collapse at the End, when the Universe sucks itself back Up, into One Big Pre-Puddle.

“How do you know you’re incomplete?”

I have this aching inside, this not-rightness, this lack of inner peace and satisfaction.

“I think it’s The Planetary Scream.”

That could well be. We’ve all been painted by Edvard Munch.

Essaouira, Morocco

Why did the chicken cross the road?

“To make chicken pot hole pie.”