grass hopper


grasshopper - foto by smith

This summer, British and Italian researchers found that molecules in marijuana can slay the superbug methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

In recent years, compounds in cannabis or related molecules have been shown to slow the growth of lung tumors in mice, decrease hardening of the arteries in rats, and boost the egg-binding capability of tobacco smokers’ sperm.

It has also spurred hopes that these molecules (or similar ones) might prove therapeutic for traumatic brain injury, inflammatory bowel disease, allergic contact dermatitis, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s disease, among others.

Between 2007 and this summer, several randomized clinical trials have found that smoking marijuana can relieve pain in patients with nerve degeneration caused by HIV or other disorders. Compounds in cannabis also seem to reduce nerve pain and possibly decrease spastic movements in people with MS.

In the 1980s, the Food and Drug Administration approved an oral formulation of THC, the most psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, to treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy. Later, it also approved it to boost the appetites of people with AIDS.

Patients who smoked cannabis reported significantly less pain than those who used dummy cigarettes.

- the above data taken from http://www.slate.com/id/2203922/

Also from online searches and the street vine - grass eases pain, settles the stomach, builds weight, steadies spastic muscles, and relieves PMS, glaucoma, itching, insomnia, arthritis, depression, childbirth, attention deficit disorder and ringing in the ears.

From my own research, add an ounce of good grass to a quart of olive oil and put the jar in the sun to heat for 3 days, then let sit for 4 weeks. Massage the oil into your arthritic sore places to assuage pain. Or better yet, go online and search for the recipe for making grass salve with beeswax.


grasshopper - foto by smith

no body of evidence


dry leaves - foto by smith

Had a close friend who had his arthritis cured by acupuncture, so I thought I’d try to cure mine the same way. I expected a Chinese gentleman with thousands of slim slinky needles. Turned out to be a mid-30s Hispanic dentist looking dude in a small westernized office.

I had but one fact before starting - wherever acupuncture is trying to fix, the needles go in somewhere else because our bodies are interconnected, but its aura energy flow is never one on one.

The thousands of slim slinky needles turned out to be one electrode - he said this was Japanese electrical acupuncture. He poked my arthritic thumb, asked if it hurt, and when I said yes, he tapped the needle right into the sorest part. It or the electricity or both hurt like hell. He did three holes in the base of each thumb, all six extremely painful. I’m lying there squirming in pain, Lady and I both laughing at my misery, me through tears.

Afterwards he asked when I wanted my next appointment. Told him I’d wait and see if this showed any improvement. Since I see absolutely none yesterday or today, I won’t be going back. So much for that $30.

Still want to try old Chinese acupuncture though. Have this movie image (Body of Evidence, 1993) of a nude Madonna in an old dusty seedy shop lying on her stomach with dozens of quivering acupuncture needles rising from her body. Somehow my actual experience lacked that magic.

At least it was an adventure, albeit an unsatisfying and unproductive one.

We’ve begun another adventure - in the spirit of exploration, once a week we board an unknown bus and ride it to the end of the line where we walk around awhile, then try to figure out how to get back home. Our first try was last week. Bus took us east and south to an unknown little peopled place with no visible name. We walked an hour back and finally flagged a cab because we weren’t even close to home. Hope today’s unknown ride is more interesting.


south wall of Governor’s Palace - foto by smith

Weirdsville


weirdsville - foto by smith

Weirdsville last night tumbling through stillness and cold sweat going places I’ve not gone before and would prefer to not ever visit again.

Was sitting reading last night when the book page started swirling counterclockwise. Looked up and the whole room was rotating like I’d drunk too much, yet it’s been 17 years since I had a drink. Lay down to recover. Got worse. Started feeling nauseous. Got up to splash cold water over my head because I was beginning to get scared. I had no balance so had to use the walls to get to and from the bathroom. Lurched from wall to wall as if intoxicated. My arms were tingling and my head light and rising like I’d shot too much speed. Nausea got worse. I called to Lady who brought me a bucket which I tried to fill with all my me. When I emptied my body, the retching wouldn’t stop and I tried violently to force out the rest of me. Looked like I was vomiting blood, but peered closer and saw it was Monastery lentil soup and chocolate cookies mixed with strawberry yogurt. Cold sweat and chills with a temperature a couple of degrees below normal. At this time we both independently decided it was food poisoning. I’ve had food poisoning a dozen times in my life - you could add them all together and they wouldn’t even come close to being this bad. Couldn’t move because my body was falling through space to the left. If I slightly moved left or right, the nausea multiplied exponentially. It was as if my body were a gyroscope, and if I deviated from its plane even slightly or slowly or gently I became much worse. Had to keep my eyes closed because the spinning room made me nauseous. Lay there in cold sweat, eyes closed, holding body and mind together with sheer will, making the occasional sardonic comment to Lady to reassure both of us. Couldn’t undress because couldn’t move, so lay there with a blanket over my cold wet chills. Fell asleep. Woke 3 hours later and made it to the bathroom by hugging the walls. Had to use the wall to hold myself upright on the toilet because my body wanted to fall to the left. Walked the walls back to bed. Woke this morning shaky, no nausea, 99% of my balance back. Got down a cup of coffee, will try a bowl of oatmeal. Feel chilled and weak and a bit chagrined - not used to having my body betray me. I’m indestructible Super-Smith, so what the flux is going on?

Think I’d rather be an energy being, except then I couldn’t hug Lady.


nausea - foto by smith

tedious tendon


thumbs - foto by smith

i lost the full use of my right thumb. it swings and swivels but won’t bend. i’ve gone from opposable to semi-opposable. i’m moving down the evolutionary ladder. but that’s cool - i hear there’s a lot of room at the bottom.

i was cleaning sage last month for MadManMax’s handmade sausage. 10 pounds of ground pork&fat sausage-to-be means a lot of sage. the endless circular cleaning picking pull and tug twixt thumb and forefinger aggravated my arthritis. i’d been out of anti-inflammatory pills for three days and was hurting, and this hurt way more. finished the task anyway, being macho mindless and male. haven’t been able to bend my thumb since. the tendon that pulls the thumb tip down won’t contract. can’t flick my bic. lady thinks i’ve lit so many lighters these past 40 years with that same thumb tendon i done wore it out.

now that i’m short-thumbed, i can’t ride shotgun on the sage coach no more.

it was good sausage though. they say when folk tour a chocolate, wine or ice cream factory, everybody wants a taste of the product afterwards, but after seeing how they make sausage, no one will touch the stuff.

one of my worst food moments was eating blood sausage outside zagreb croatia. i ordered it because it’s so over the top - they cook the animal’s meat in its own blood, in my mind adding insult to injury. the poet in me made me try it. it tasted good, but the flesh was soft, pale, odd, felt regurgitated, pre-chewed. made me queasy. had to force myself to swallow. kept thinking i tasted blood. ate half, smeared the rest around. that night i lay in bed thinking i had to vomit it out of me, i did not want it in. messed with my mind. what started as poetic metaphor turned barbaric. lady had wild boar that night, and it was delicious.


all thumbs - foto by smith

penis, breasts, heart


two hats and a scarf hanging on wall hooks - foto by smith

looking at the internet, billboards, bus ads, wall ads and spam ads, it appears life in the usa comes down to how big your dick is if you’re a guy, and how large your tits are if you’re a gal.

the size of your body parts, your amount of disposable income, the brands your wear, and the status of your jewelry, clothes, cars, homes, spouse, watches decide how good a person you are, how great your life is, how worthy and important you are.

in the eternal war of mammon against spirit, today is MAMMON versus spirit, EVIL versus good, WRONG versus right NOW versus later, HELL NOW versus eventual heaven..

such shallow shit we share - and shouldn’t.

The Man keeps knocking
Down my front door
Wants to sell me some
Sorta social spore
Says grits & groceries
Ain’t enough
In the modern life
You need much more stuff
- excerpt from smith’s poem Bye Buy

on a less commercial plane, but still heavily invested in maybe money is my heart. i’m sitting here wondering why i’m so bloody tired. we walked a couple miles today, but nothing near worthy of exhaustion. so i took my pulse. my heart is beating 3 times, then skipping one beat. instead of 60 beats per minute (my average), my heart is beating 45 times a minute right now, which means i’m getting three-fourths of the oxygen my body needs and is used to. when you have 75% circulation, you lose a quarter of your oxygen and blood nutrients, the blood only removes 75% of your toxins.

the doctor in croatia 2 years ago said not to worry about my skipped beats unless it gets down to the 5 beats and a skip range.

sometimes i take my pulse and it goes 100 beats without skipping. it varies widely during the day depending on the time and how active i am. one night it was two beats and a skip when i was on codeine pain medicine, so i stopped taking that right there - which was a shame, because i’m a codeine man from way back. i find i begin to feel a decent energy level when it beats 8-12 times before skipping a beat. when it beats 60 times per minute, i feel unstoppable.

my normal heart rate is too slow to take medicine to regulate my heart, and our bank account is too small to afford an operation to install a pace maker. plus after the pain and trauma of my hernia operation, i really don’t want doctors to open my chest, break my ribs, and install a pace maker. besides, they were worried my heart wasn’t regular enough to survive the hernia operation - it was worrisomely erratic during it.

maybe my heart’s too big, too soft, too generous for this world. i am getting weary of the man wickedness in this world - if it weren’t for lady in my life, i’d just as soon not be here. she’s my joy, my direction, my goal.

the sad bad part of this is my heart skips worries lady. the uncertainty reduces her quality of life, stress strains her joy. and sometimes it gets me down as well. it’s no fun taking your pulse to see if you’re alive or not.

on the good foot, my mom Mother Dwarf had heart arrhythmia, and she died at 79 of something else entirely. she was overweight where i am thin and trim.

~ ~ ~

it took me 62 years to get my first book of poetry and art published, and i had to sleep with the publisher to get it done.

Zen Over Zero
Steven B. Smith
selected poems 1964-2008

69 poems / 22 collages , 78 pages, 6 x 9 inches, $12, through Lulu.com at
http://www.lulu.com/content/4265160.
published by The City Poetry Press.

starburst (1987 collage in Zen Over Zero) - foto & collage by smith

snakes in the grass


murky lady - foto by smith

who knows what IS is down here south of the border. the garbage truck comes on thursdays and sundays. the truck stops and clangs a bell every couple blocks, and we all stream out our doors with bundles of trash to toss in. there are no trash cans on the sidewalks which they empty. if you want your trash taken away, you walk it out when they clang. sometimes the truck comes wednesdays instead of thursdays, but today is tuesday, and it’s here. in mexico, just because something happens one way one day doesn’t mean it’ll follow that line next time.

today is lady’s and my 3rd anniversary. 3 years together, 2.5 years married, two years traveling, living outside the u.s.a.

these three years have been a magic fairy tale. and like all fairy tales, just when you think it’s heading for happy ever after, the dark demon reality of trolls under the bridge and witches in the gingerbread house rears it’s ugly head in the form of my wife’s bipolar manic sidestep into an alternative reality this past month.

it’s scary going from being the co-star in your wife’s movie to being a minor figment in a major fragmented reality only she can see and interact with. love and relationships succeed because both people try daily to make it work. when one stops, the burden on the other to supply both sides of the love and caring becomes complicated.

doc says it’ll take her two weeks of sleeping a lot to make up for her month of sleep deprivation. yesterday was lonely because she slept most of the day. but it was an easy loneliness because i knew she was healing her fractures.

lady’s breakdown was helped along by a myspace poet who lead her on, lied to her. in her vulnerability, he convinced her my Like Candy On Ice Cream poem meant i no longer loved lady, instead loved a cleveland poet. it bothered her so much that in the middle of our love making, she asked me if i loved poet x instead of her. i think he’s trying to get into her pants. no honor. actually there are several writers of both sexes flirting with lady behind my back. scum is as scum does.

lady’s torn about taking the antipsychotic medicine. on the good foot, it calms her anxious frantic 24 hour a day mania and lets her talk and sleep and eat and participate in household chores with me. on the bad foot, it dulls her, takes away the voices she was hearing which made her life more special - although her life has been upper stratospheric special these past 3 years of adventure, creating, and living around the globe. but i guess sometimes even special wants to feel more special.

lady’s as special as they come.

the poem in question was written as a poetry assignment. i took a challenge to use “like candy on ice cream” and just started playing with the puns. took 10 minutes. it’s pure stream of consciousness, all about the world and the end of times, nothing about lady and i. certainly nothing concerning the mediocre poet asshole who lied to lady.

Like Candy on Ice Cream

Like Candide’s best of all possible worlds
I lick my like from lit of wit
and why the worry ways of ruling rats

Like Wallace Steven’s Emperor of Ice Cream
I take in tacky death
of horny heels and hopeful hellos

Like Candy on ice cream
her nipples pearled pert
we hump in happy horizontal

Like the constant lice of American dream
scum encrusted, yellowed
I yearn for debugging powder, ponder

Like good on bad and bad on worse
I burn for light and love
in lieu of this miss called is


104 - foto by smith

which truth ya want, we got em all


nighttrain - foto by smith

we had lady’s 4th monthly first saturday open poetry reading yesterday, the second one held here at the apartment. last month’s apartment reading brought two guests. this brought 4 writers, plus a fifth showed up after we finished because he got the time wrong. figure next month we’ll get 7 readers plus us. lady’s monthly oaxacan poetry reading lives! i showed my credentials by reading “My First Armed Robbery.”

lady’s first antipsychotic pill two days ago didn’t seem to register, she got more manic. then intense stomach pains hit her and lasted for hours. at 9 she took the second pill and went to sleep for 10 hours, got up, took her morning pill and slept for 6 more hours. got up for 8 hours then slept another 9. after her not sleeping at all or only for an hour or two for the last month, she’s slept 25 hours in the last 36 and is still tired. today she’s lucid and likes me again, is affectionate, but feels weary, confused. she hosted yesterday’s poetry reading after all.

she misses the excitement and importance of her other world. she misses the sense of mission and the voices. that world was exciting 24/7 while this world is slow, lacking, languid. she was burning with creativity before and now seems a little dulled. for me, i’m just grateful to have lady to talk to again; but for her, it’s a lowering and lessening of life. gotta get through these two months and get her off the antipsychotic so she can bounce back. there’s a high incidence of bipolar disorder in creative people, so maybe creation is the act of selectively dipping into this higher world she was visiting.

this mind drama has been an excellent weight loss program. lady’s down to 142 pounds, the lowest she’s been in 20 years. she used to be over 300. i’m down to 166, the lowest i’ve been in 45 years. i used to be 260 but prefer 175.

i worried about posting yesterday’s blog of lady’s troubles. i was afraid of violating her. told her if anything in it bothered her, i’d change it, or i’d delete the blog. she said no, it was fine. as we say in my memoir, “I have that writer’s disease: it’s all material.” i tend to tell the truth. i write about all my shortcomings and failures along the way. i’ve documented my drug overdoses, drinking myself to death, vicious fights with my first wife, my adulteries, armed robberies, lies, thefts. with me, if it happens, i write of it. with lady, i feel constrained - not sure what is and is not proper. i try to be respectful. thought writing it would help me and explain our current oddness to others. felt describing how something like this progressed may help another down the line. or maybe this is all just self excused rationalization. i really don’t know anything except i’m driven to write. even when i feel bad, writing good about feeling bad makes me feel good.

and now a commercial from our sponsor - i got a poem in the latest issue of Women’s Socialist:

Truth du Jour

Get the truth
Get your red hot truths
Truths du jour
Truths of the day
Today’s truth today
Your style of while
Your version emergin’
Too truths
Truce truths
Which truth you want
We got em all
Today’s truth at today’s price
For today’s people
Step right up
Step right in it
kleenex xtra

(remember,
we are the fine print)

both lady and i have a poem in the Michigan Socialist as well, but they haven’t sent us a physical copy yet.


Socialist Women, fall 2008 issue - foto by smith

camel straw


one face - foto by smith

it’s become weirdville here. we went to an expensive restaurant on the zocalo. i asked lady if she needed to use the bathroom before we walked home.
she said “i don’t know, i have to ask.”
who?
“my grandfather.”
but your grandfather’s been dead 2 years now.
“i know, that’s why i was so surprised when he contacted me.”

after visiting a friend yesterday, i mentioned he gave her a couple really odd looks at some of her more non-reality based statements. she said “that’s alright, i wiped his mind before we left.”

step 1 - past clues:
lady inherited her grandmother’s worry gene, and has always been a worry machine. her worry sometimes creeps into paranoia. she has a compulsion to help and take care of others, and to try to pre-plan and order situations. she was bulimic for several years until me, and took prozac for a year for depression 5 years ago. to counter that, she has the kindest, gentlest, generous heart i know. she’s also as smart as she thinks she is. and extraordinarily talented in art, writing, photography, editing and publishing as well. she’s a perfect companion for a fellow artist - except for the fact that artists have the highest incidence of bipolar disorder, no one knows why. creation is dangerous.

step 2 - changing the bar:
lady’s 1st magic mushroom trip last month introduced her to the concept of oneness with the universe. she liked it. a lot. wanted to stay. wants to get back. wants to deal with cosmic reality daily on a one-on-one direct relationship.

step 3 - straw that broke camel back:
when they brought me back to my recovery bed after the hernia operation and lifted my spinal blocked dead flesh onto the bed, it took me over an hour just to sit upright, another hour to massage life back to my legs. lady saw me as old and helpless and her fears of me dying before her exploded. before we started, i explained our relationship was not a good idea due to our 27 year age gap, that i’d get old and feeble before she did and it wouldn’t be fair on her the price she’d have to pay. she poo-pooed this. you can never tell another a truth they haven’t learned on their own. youth has no conception of age. and age but dimly, imperfectly remembers youth.

step 4 - aftermath:
after the first week of her taking care of me, when i could move around on my own again, she withdrew from me. stopped eating and sleeping and drinking water. spent 24/7 on the internet. lost 10 pounds past two weeks. started getting instructions from her dead grandfather. she believed she moved the path of hurricane gustav away from new orleans with her mind. says she is a witch. feels possessed by an unpleasant ex girlfriend artist of mine who was shot to death 2 years ago for ordering someone to turn down their stereo. believes she’s the first mother, is fated to save the earth and must sacrifice herself to redeem us. mentions putting political bloggers under the protection of her psychic neural network. constantly rearranges the plants and objects around the house into totemic shrine charms to alter the flow of reality. turns on me if i point out any of the inconsistencies in her realital structure. she hears voices, has hallucinations. all the time sighs, moans, breaks out in laughter, yawns, or crying jags. she’s gone from trying to hide her body to walking around naked, from smoking twice a week to smoking every day, early morning on. she shut the plants away from the light, saying “i think those plants have to learn to respect us.”

when she insisted i had to have faith in her, that what she was experiencing was real, i said i loved her too much to do that, and she picked up one of my paintings and smashed it two handed into the wall. she raises her hand, wanting to hit me, but hits the bed or air instead. told her i was trying to help her and she said “fuck you.” she brings up all my past failings we documented in my memoir and says that’s what i am now - a woman hater, a woman leaver, sneaky, sly, that i’m not trying to help her, it’s my fault she stopped sleeping, eating, drinking water, that i should have protected and taken care of her. i haven’t shed tears like this since mom’s death.

she splashed up to 20 blogs a day on myspace these last two weeks, all written from within her higher realm. bizarre, cryptic, scary shit - although some of the earlier stuff is excellent writing. she definitely has oodles of talent.

yesterday morning i went to our general practitioner and explained these past two weeks. broke down bawling as i enumerated her symptoms. he said he’d find someone to help us that day one way or another. when i tried to pay him for the visit, he refused to take it, saying he doesn’t profit on human misery.

went to see the brain doc yesterday afternoon. he prescribed Ziprasidone aka Geodon, an antipsychotic prescribed for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (the old manic depressive). the pills are blue. i looked up the matrix movie red & blue pills and found the red pill will answer the question “what is the Matrix?” (by removing us from it), while the blue pill is simply to carry on life as before. if her blue pill brings back our before, i’ll be happy.

he says she’ll only have to take the pills for two months, then she should be healed. he’ll be seeing her regularly.

after two doses yesterday, she slept the night through for the first time. she experienced drastic stomach cramps through the night, and now is in bed with nausea. could be not sleeping or eating right for a month. donno.

today we have lady’s monthly scheduled 1st saturday poetry reading here in our apartment. looks like i’ll be hosting it while she sleeps. she usually makes snacks and food for the poet folk, but today they’ll have to be satisfied with my rough charm. this is the first poetry reading where i’ve chanted that no one shows up.

i suggested to lady she take her medicine for two months and then we’ll explore together her higher realm. i mean, she may be right, may be communicating with the dead, may need to save the world - the world surely does need saving. told her i’ll support any path she must walk, be it with or without me. i know this higher realm exists - i’ve interacted with it off and on my entire life. my sole concern is she be able to transverse this lower normal daily reality as well, that she be able to function and take care of herself while walking her higher world. after all, there is no one truth for all. there’s especially no one truth when you have two people.


or more others - foto by smith

purple penis eater


wild purple penis plant - foto by smith

i have a purple penis, and dark blue balls.

two days after the hernia operation, my penis began going purple. now the whole thing’s gone. ridged purple, like an elephant trunk. only in my case a very small elephant, one that wouldn’t scare a mouse - more like an elephant in Todd Browning’s film The Devil Doll (1936) where Lionel Barrymore learns how to shrink animals and people in Africa down to 5 inch heights, then returns to London wearing a dress and uses his little people to wreck vengeance on those who wronged him. (fabulous flick). maybe i can use my purple penis to wreck vengeance on the world. i’d show you a foto of it, but myspace says it’s too small to exhibit, that i have to throw it back.

maybe i can work out a sister-city-ship with Blue Ball, Pennsylvania. Blue Ball isn’t all that far from Intercourse, Pennsylvania.

and i keep hearing The Purple Penis Eater by Sheb Wooley - the original song said purple penis, but the flat earth bushites made em change penis to people - which is cool cuz penis is how people is made. as you can see, we had serious song lyrics back in the day.

Song Lyrics: “The Purple People Eater
Recorded by: “Sheb Wooley”
Written by: (Sheb Wooley)
Single: Released - June, 1958

Well I saw the thing comin’ out of the sky
It had the one long horn, one big eye
I commenced to shakin’ and I said “ooh-eee”
It looks like a purple eater to me

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater
(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater)
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One eye?)

Well he came down to earth and he lit in a tree
I said Mr. Purple People Eater, don’t eat me
I heard him say in a voice so gruff
I wouldn’t eat you cuz you’re so tough

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned flyin’ purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One horn?)

I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line
He said it’s eatin’ purple people and it sure is fine
But that’s not the reason that I came to land
I wanna get a job in a rock and roll band

Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin’ purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin’ purple people eater
(We wear short shorts)
Flyin’ purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me

And then he swung from the tree and he lit on the ground
He started to rock, really rockin’ around
It was a crazy ditty with a swingin’ tune
Sing a boop boop aboopa lopa lum bam boom

Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin’ purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin’ purple people eater
I like short shorts
Flyin’ little people eater
Sure looks strange to me (Purple People?)

And then he went on his way, and then what do ya know
I saw him last night on a TV show
He was blowing it out, a’really knockin’ em dead
Playin’ rock and roll music through the horn in his head

(clarinet solo)

Tequila


purple hand from touching purple penis - foto by smith

fertile lies


festival ad - foto by smith

this is my last day of cipro. cipro is the antibiotic they passed out during the anthrax scare of 2001. one of its side effects is diarrhea. my backside is sore from six days of sitting and shitting. hey, if your flowers need fertilizing, i can come over, you can feed me, and they’ll be fertilized before i left.

Fertile Lies

Small particles of truth lace love’s lies

Peeping one-eyed cat’s seafood stores
Mount used two love carnivore rides
Cast past sated loss

Self to self slip service schemes for the day
Emasculation Mama stiff with semen
Screams dreams porta piss shit machines
Message me to mine

Bile regenerative truth du jour:
loving spoonful’s
pearl jam
nirvana
to my hole


the real me, a 1972 collage - foto by smith