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...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Archive for the ‘life’ Category
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
Fool moon green man with red rose – foto by Smith
Junkie Business
I’m losing my last two crutches:
coffee
and marijuana
In the old days
I could have coffee
after dinner.
You know,
this junkie business
is for younger bodies
You keep doing it,
and pretty soon,
you end up like Keith Richards,
falling out of trees
and landing on your head.
— Smith with Lady K, 2006 (in Marrakech, Morocco)
I’m losing my junkie status.
No, that’s not true; I lost my junkie status over a decade ago. It’s just now I’m accepting it.
This year was legal prescription drug heaven. And hell.
During my hip replacement in May, they put me to sleep with Propofol. I said, “Isn’t that the drug they killed Michael Jackson with?” They answered, “Yes, but we’re much better at it.” I waited to judge its effects, but there’s not a single memory between being told what it was and waking afterward.
When they took me to recovery, the nurse injected me with Dilaudid, and as soon as it hit my system I smiled real big at the nurse and went, “Wow, now I know why this was Elvis Presley’s favorite drug.” I know it sold on the street 15 years ago for $50 per pill because I bought one, although it was probably counterfeit because it didn’t work.
They moved me up to rehab and gave me two Percocet pills every four hours, the drug Jerry Lewis became addicted to. I can see why — it do kill pain.
I came home two days later with 90 legal Percocets to control the pain, plus I had another 60 scripted Vicodins left over from pre-operation pain management — and they both very effectively dulled my MAJOR bone-on-bone torn-flesh sawed-bone agony.
And earlier in the year I got a Valium prescription to help me handle me as I was trying to keep calm helping Lady through her reality attack.
But I’m no longer as young and vigorous and healthily stupid as I once was; and while I seriously appreciated the pain relief, I did not like the logy, thick, dull dense body high; in fact the “high” was no longer a high, just something to put up with. And of course serious pain medication creates serious constipation problems, so you gotta choose your misery cuz you can’t have it both ways.
This morning I foolishly drank two cups of super strong Costa Rican pan made cowboy coffee and my body started screaming “why did you swallow so much speed?” So I dug out my prescription Valium, took the last pill, then swallowed the Valium dust in the bottom of the bottle that had accumulated from cutting each pill in half (which probably equaled a whole nuther pill) and I got a body high so high my mind said “No. Enough. I do not like this. THIS IS NOT ANY FUN.”
So I’m finally biting the bullet, giving up coffee, foregoing any pills unless absolutely mandated by the doctor, while still wishing for the one drug I still love – grass . . . which of course I cannot afford here in America. It cost me $30 for a quarter pound of top-shelf Kind/Chronic smoke during my 15 months in Mexico, which I purchased every month, plus a couple grams of hash and opium — all that up here would cost me over a thousand a month . . . probably way over.
I’m also cutting way down on sugar, which is another poison drug; fortunately we’ve already cut out eating meat most days.
So, welcome to reality Mister Smith. Although I’ll be clean and sober, I’ll never be “straight” — I was bent before I ever did drugs and alcohol, and shall remain strange after.
I guess it’s about time — I’ve had a 44 year run on drugs, maybe 20 on alcohol before I drank myself to death in 1991 and woke in intensive care — haven’t had a sip since.
Folks wonder about my art and poetry and drugs. I wrote poetry and made art way before I ever took a drink or did drugs; I wrote poetry and made art all through drinking and drugs; did the same during my mostly drugless 14 months living in Europe; and will easily do so now.
It’s time. I’m tired of being mini-me; time to become maxi-me.
Oh the adventures I’ve had along the way.
Oh the adventures that await.
Life is good. Loving Lady even better. Having my health the icing on the sugarless cake sans coffee. (I’ll still toke ganja at parties though, as long as I’m not buying.)
This all is slightly humorous because I wrote a drug song this morning just as the Valium was nicely kicking in; we’ll record Thursday and if it’s any good, I’ll blog it Friday. It’s titled Prince Valium . . . maybe I’d best re-title it Goodbye Prince Valium.
I’ve known for twenty years this day was coming, and I fought it every day of the way.
“When you’re headin’ for the border lord
You’re bound to cross the line”
(Kris Kristofferson – Border Lord) – fotos by Smith
Posted in Bio, life, Photography, Poetry | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Here Again – foto by Smith
“What would it take to make you happy?” Lady asks.
“Transparent dancing girls under the palm trees beneath the sun.”
“Transparent *dancing* girls?”
“Oh, you’d like them too. You can’t see them. All you can see is what they’re wearing, swishing back and forth.”
“Go make me some tea.”
“Why should I?”
“I’ll make you a lot happier. In the next life, you’ll have all these ribbons for your hair.”
I don’t have any hair; I shave it all off every few weeks. I’ve always thought the higher one’s level of evolution, the less hair one has. God would be a bald headed hermaphrodite.”
“With no transparent pubes?”
“No, with just an amorphous mass down there, like a mutant Ken Barbie doll. That’s where the Mass originally arose in church — the amorphous mass of God’s genitalia. Although actually religion is more mess than mass.”
“What do you have against religion?”
“Basically because of their pay-now-don’t-collect-later policy of taking money from folks for a product that cannot be verified until after you die, when it’s too late to make sure what you receive is what they promised and there’s no chance for a refund.”
bent cross – foto by Smith
Posted in life | 2 Comments »
Monday, December 27th, 2010
cat kill – foto by Smith
Me and Mandycat have something in common. We’re both mouse catchers. Her catch this morning is the foto above.
Mine’s a different story. Took the empty dishes out to the kitchen and as I get ready to rinse them, I see a small gray fur mass trying unsuccessfully to jump out of the sink. I spray the mouse with water with one hand to keep it disoriented while I reach for a jar with the other. I easily trap the mouse only to be caught myself with “Now what?” I can’t kill it in cold blood — the poor thing’s frightened and wet and I know how it feels because I’ve been there myself. I briefly consider giving it to Mandycat, but that’s the same as me killing it. So even though my leg’s hurting, I walk it down three flights of stairs to toss it outside, but stop because throwing a wet mouse out into the freezing cold is something I very definitely would not want done to me, so I take it on down to the basement and let it go. I figure there’re three floors between it and us and the first floor has four cats and even if it gets back up here our cat will kill it. But at least for this moment, my hands are bloodless — the rest is up to fate and chance.
fate and chance – foto by Smith
Posted in life | 4 Comments »
Sunday, December 19th, 2010
asunder- foto by Smith
I’m looking forward to the Rapture — it’ll mean more parking places for the rest of us.
Meanwhile, I’ll be reading 14 new and old and really old poems today a half hour west of Cleveland at Jim’s Coffee House on 2 Kerstetter Way in downtown Elyria Ohio from 1 to 3 or less.
no parking – foto by Smith
Posted in life | No Comments »
Sunday, December 12th, 2010
Huntress – foto by Smith
I can tell when our nine year old tiger cat Mandy goes into huntress mode – she lowers herself to the floor and elongates to reduce her footprint and shifts into stealth stare where she patiently crouches unmoving pounce-ready while slowly rolling her head from mouse was through mouse may be, scanning for the slightest sound or movement.
Yesterday she radared in on our collage pile, so I got up to watch. She sat on top of a tin pie plate filled with paint brushes and reached way underneath the top edge of the tin as far as she could go with her left paw, then under the other side with her right paw, back and forth back and forth until she touched something from the right and a fat mouse leaped out to the left where Mandy snatched it mid-air in her teeth. As I stare in disbelieve, she scampers into the other room and tries to play with it, but it just lays there.
I find the mouse later cold hard dead by the head of the stairs and as I’m trying to decide to throw it away or let it dehydrate for future art use, Mandy rubs against me and shows me her mouse. I kneel down and pet her, say good kitty and she purrs and suddenly darts down, snatches the mouse in her teeth and flips the corpse up into the air and as it hits the floor looks up to me for approval. I say good huntress and pet her again and she darts down and flips the mouse twice more into the air so I say okay okay as I lure her away and trash her evidence.
Then yesterday Lady sees another mouse come out from under my chair and try to get my chocolate covered peanuts. She moves the chocolates up to the table, sits down and watches the mouse climb up my chair and out on the arm ready to jump across to the chocolate, totally ignoring her yelling at it so she chases it off. The cat stares nowhere, sees nothing. I come in and sit down and the mouse runs from beneath my chair across the floor and under her couch, waits awhile, then comes out to the rug and stops and looks around like it’s wondering how many mice it can invite to the party, and I see it’s a young small mouse with big ears. It suddenly leaps into the air, darts, stops, creeps, then swish disappears at right angles faster than a flying saucer. I figured this one may be quick enough to have a chance against Mandy, but maybe not because right now she’s got an injured one trapped under the fridge.
It’s gotten colder with snow and ice and blow earlier than normal so I think the mice are checking out our warmer havens for guest residency. Not the best house for them though what with the owner’s four cats on the first floor and our Mandy mouser up here.
Lady told me Mandy’s the mouse killer, I’m the cup killer, and she’s the plant Kervorkian — so I guess we are a unified unit after all, a nuclear family of two two-legged and one four-legged killers.
After all, the family that slays together stays together.
Shadow Queen – foto by Smith
Posted in life | 2 Comments »
Saturday, December 11th, 2010
they say carrots are good for your night vision – foto by Smith
This is that ‘they‘ we all talk about, you know — the they of they said or they’re not going to like this, the they that make the rules that we but not they have to follow because after all it’s their game isn’t it?
We don’t even know if they really exist or are just mind puppets we wear in our heads to keep our hearts in place; and if they are out there, do they work together or merely in large diaphanous groups?
But most of all, is/are they singular or plural because even though there are a lot of they, they all seem to be of one mind, like many bee in one hive brain rolling in same brand of mind pollen.
They
wing word round
in classic clown
till dry discourse
rues rule
Courts gesture
recourse
of course
Lambs lame lions
and liars lie down
in one main line
of fool
they said it wouldn’t snow – foto by Smith
Posted in life, Poetry | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
yesterday’s Lady – foto by Smith
Too jangly and stressed due to two cups of homemade super strong cowboy coffee, I gathered our dirty laundry and lugged it through the snow blow and ice cold to our little red car, got in, pushed down the clutch pedal to start, and it went softly to the floor. No clutch pedal, no shift; no shift, no drive; no drive, no clean laundry.
Came back in with the news. My first thought was how we were going to get to Lady’s reading Wednesnite at Mac’s Backs with poet Steve Goldberg; my second was that I’d best cancel my own reading Dec 19th in Elyria.
We started to go gloomy over the stress and expense of yet another emergency in our limited income life, when wham, we turn it around, change direction, say this is just reality playing with us, testing to see if we’re worthy, and you know what — we are worthy.
So we talked it over, decided if more than $500 to repair, we’ll can the car and walk.
And we tested our walk. Lady decided she really wanted a burger, so we bundled up and trundled down to Grumpy’s through the cold and blow and snow, ate, trundled back. Then Trinity Repair called – the slave cylinder had died and leaked all our juice.
Three hours after diagnosis, the car was fixed and ready. We decided it was only 2 miles to the repair shop so we’d make it an adventure and walk through the wind and falling snow a second time that day. Bad move. The cold and blow and my bum leg which had already walked a mile and a half for food began hurting enough to make me think of cabs and buses and forced marches.
I barely made it, limping into the repair shop to be told “Oh, Trinity moved a month ago.” I laughed realizing the gods were having a little extra fun with me and we walked five more blocks to the shop where I collapsed in a chair while Lady paid the bill that was $19 less than their original quote.
Not a bad day in its way. The car repair shop’s owner’ was worried because his 80 year old mother got scratched by a cat, got a blood infection and was in the hospital, so he’d been running back and forth between his shop and the hospital all day, aware it could go either way.
His story touched me because my mom got a blood infection, ended up bouncing between emergency rooms and repair homes for nine months before coming back home and dying seven days later.
After we got back from our one-day adventure, Lady made herself a tall water glass rum and coke, drank it, turns to me and says “I need more wine, er, rum,” and comes back with a second full glass.
Earlier walking through the snow she had mentioned she wanted to get drunk tonight. I look at her full glass; “You were serious. You *are* going to get drunk, aren’t you.”
She turns to me, smiles, “That’s the plan, Stan.”
“You know you’re going to hurt tomorrow, don’t you?”
“I Don’t Care! ! ! I’m tired of this; I need to break out of the mold.”
Break away, Lady.
We had a good day.
karma cleansing – foto by Smith
Posted in Bio, Lady, life | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 29th, 2010
pink elephants of boozeville – foto by Smith
Cannibal Saliva
Marijuana and Mozart on a Sunday morn
Plethora of complacencies
Of tongue, beard, bush
Poets fall down.
Dream
Drown
One of my side aims of not smoking cannabis sativa is to remember my dreams because when I toke daily it affects my short term memory buffers and I forget my dreams when I wake. (Of course my main and only real viable reason for not smoking pot is money – we can’t afford what it costs up here in the States.) But my amazingly great surreal story dreams only happen once every month or so, while most remain oddly minor surreal castoffs, like this one from last night.
Somehow I did something clever and left a physical map trail squiggle of how to do it again, but my squiggle accidentally got baked into a muffin and I was half afraid it was lost and half confident I could carefully break the muffin open and my squiggle string of truth would be retrievable and readable and reusable.
But that faded into me being shown how to legally paint a car pink with a bottle of Pepto Bismol, which I of course modified so that I could illegally paint two cars with the same bottle and get a brighter pink in the process; but I suspected I was dreaming and wouldn’t be able to bring this cool pink car painting knowledge out of the dream with me and was worried the technology would be lost.
Then my plane landed and I saw Cher with her long neck and Mona Lisa smile resting on her back on the concourse floor, surrounded by half packed baggage with cheap colored aluminum foil fantasy paintings spread about her head and I was going to tell her I loved the paintings but then looked closer and saw all the hidden demons and dark and trouble waiting behind the trees and beneath the leaves and I felt so sad being older and experienced and cynical and tried three times to tell her “I hate being grownup,” but kept losing the words in the breaking sobs of my thickened throat.
These are not dreams worth not smoking grass for. I like being high, buzzed, especially after toking for 43 years. Grass and I are friends who get along, except for the financial cost. I wish I could at least drink alcohol, but the last time I drank 20 years ago I drank myself into the emergency room and 6 pints of transfused blood and it was somewhat iffy whether I was getting back out, so I quit when it turned out I was going to live.
So here I am, yearning for a buzz while all the chemicals and pills and hallucinogens and powders and liquids and needles and whatnot have fallen along the wayside over the decades because my body and soul can no longer handle them and no longer need them leaving me down to one cup of strong black Costa Rican cowboy coffee a day and a couple tokes of devil weed a month from passing friends and family.
This is not the life for an outside the barcode outlaw like myself.
Can’t just up and go back to Mexico’s $6 an ounce grass because we now have a cat we love and can’t leave, so I guess I’m going to have to generate more money up here, or else just get used to the so-called normalcy of unstoned life. I was straight for 75% of the time of the 31 months we traveled the world — found grass and hash and opium for 7 months in London, France, Amsterdam, and Mexico, but the remaining 24 months of no drugs at all didn’t bother me at all, since once I don’t smoke for a week the need goes to sleep, though never the desire.
~ ~ ~
* Explanation of above poem title: Cannibal Saliva is a pun on Cannabis Sativa. The tongue, beard, bush reference is me with my beard performing cunnilingus on my girlfriend’s bush — so since I was “eating her” while stoned and my saliva was mixing with her vaginal juices, I ended up with cannibal saliva. This was on a nice sunny Sunday early morning back in 1974 with Mozart playing on the stereo.
sin dealer – foto by Smith
Posted in dreams, life, Poetry | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 15th, 2010
Sarah is the change all right, for the worse – foto by Smith
I wrote this just before our last election, then decided not to blog it because it depressed me and I wanted not to put more negative energy out over the airwaves, especially since the Tea-Party and Republicans are so full of it.
But then the election results depressed me even more, so I’m posting it now in hopes the truth will set me free. I mean, if I remain silent in the face of evil, I am complicit in evil, as the Germans discovered after they silently watched the Nazis haul the Jews and Gypsies away.
Besides, the two new used t-shirts I bought today at Unique Thrift for $1 each will make perfect graphics for this blog. I shuddered when I saw both t-shirts, picked them up and put them back three times because of their extremist right-wing fundamentalist Christian messages — messages I don’t really want seen on my chest as I walk around in public. But I finally figured maybe their being seen on me would undercut their function and emphasis their irony — so bought them anyway.
I believe the third line on the second t-shirt below which says HOSTAGE INIALATORS should read “HOSTAGE ANNIHILATORS. Grammar and correct spelling and such things as education and scientific fact often don’t appear to be major concerns of the far right. And I would think that by LAZARITH, they probably mean LAZARUS as well.
By their misspellings shall ye know them.
~ ~ ~
I’m really scared about this upcoming mid-term election. I’m very much afraid we’ll be returning to the totalitarian mindset of the Cheney-Bush regime where the religious right Christian fundamentalists, the war-mongering neocon killers of non-white civilians, and the flat-earthers think they can tell the rest of us what to think and what we can and cannot do. These people violate the Constitution and deny the very basic beliefs of the Christ they claim to worship. (I admire and respect Christ as a social activist, but I am not a Christian – if anything, I’m somewhere between a Buddhist and an animist).
America is about freedom of expression, freedom of goals, freedom from religion, freedom of speech (as long as the corporations get their daily kickbacks that is), and these folks are trying very hard to take this from us, to destroy independent thinking and herd us into the corporate consumer sheep pens where their one-sized narrow minds fit all and they no longer feel threatened by our superiority.
How can Christian and Republican and Tea Party bigots who judge folk by the color of their skin and the thickness of their wallets and who claim to worship Christ but deny his call to help those less fortunate than they claim to have the *right* way for us all to live, that theirs is the moral path? These are the same people who reward the hate speech of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin with millions of daily dollars.
I mean we outnumber these rabble rousing morons, we’re better educated, we’re nicer, more moral and way more generous, so how did they get all this power? Simple – they vote on feelings and fear while we don’t vote at all.
“Anosognosic” is the medical term for people who are too stupid to know they are stupid. I suspect most of these folks above sincerely believe they are morally superior to progressives and liberals, even though it is we and not they who practice what Christ preached; however I do not include the hate mongers like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle and Joe Miller and Bill O’Reilly and Rand Paul in this category because I believe they are neither sincere nor honest — they are smart people who have voluntarily sunk to lies and hate simply to steal power and make money. They are essentially evil, doing the devil’s work
Anyway, here are some of the more egregious scarier slime headlines from these folk which have tarnished our current political process and made a mockery of our nation in the rest of the world’s eyes. We’ll start with the Queen of the Mean. Read and weep.
“anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath”
Vanity Fair Profiler BLASTS Palin: I Wanted To Like Her… ‘She Lies About Everything’
Palin as bullshit artist.
Sarah Palin: ‘Corrupt’
Palin “WORST GOVERNOR EVER”.
Palin: I’m a redneck
Journalists trash Palin speech – “Now I know the dumbness doesn’t come just from sound bites,” one says into an open mic
Shameless Schemers Like Sarah Palin, the Tea Partiers and Right-Wing Christians Trying to Start a New Religious War Against Muslims
John McCain – “it could come down to lying or losing. I chose lying.”
McCain’s Favorite Animal is “the rat, because it is cunning and eats well”
McCain: “I’ve always done whatever’s necessary to win.”
Liz Cheney to Obama: Why isn’t the president thrilled that an American citizen and 8 others were killed in a botched Israeli raid?
The End of Dick Cheney’s Kill Squads
Sharron Angle: Rape, Incest Part of God’s Plan — Opposes Abortion No Matter What
‘Screw with Their Faith and They Will Kill You’: The Strange, Obsessively Anti-Government Sovereign Citizen Movement Makes a Comeback
Tea Party Gop O’Donnell: I Wouldn’t Lie To Hitler Even If There Was A Jewish Person Hiding In The House
O’Donnell In ’07: Scientists Have Created Mice With Human Brains!
Christine O’Donnell Uses Campaign Cash To Pay Her Rent
JOE MILLER’S ETHICS BREACH: ‘I Lied’ About Accessing Computers For Political Purposes
Rand Paul supporter stomps on woman’s head
Rand Paul Headstomper Just the Latest Violent Right-Winger: 17 More Instances of Recent Violence by Conservatives
Bill O’Reilly Compares Gay People To Al Qaeda
O’Reilly Sad We Can’t Make Fun Of Arabs Anymore: ‘What Has Changed In America?’
Rachel Maddow: Bill O’Reilly A ‘Race-Baiting Fuck’
Beck: I Cannot Tell A Lie, Except Sometimes When It Suits My Political Agenda
The Glenn Beck Effect: When Stupid People Don’t Know They Are Stupid
Glenn Beck Outdoes David Duke With Shameless Racebating
Glenn Beck’s Favorite Smear Tactic: Call What He Doesn’t Like ‘Nazi’
Glenn Beck promotes a “racist and anti-Semitic tract” by Nazi author Elizabeth Dilling
I’ve hundreds more of these harvested headlines, many much worse, but these are more than enough to give you a bad taste of their morals, goals, racism and hate speech. So I’ll leave you with one I made up myself:
Refudiation – is Sarah Palin Dick Cheney’s afterbirth?
Annihilate Inialators – foto by Smith
Posted in life, news, Politics | 5 Comments »
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