Walking on Thin Ice

me, 1946 - foto by smith

leaving on a jet plane in the morning heading south of the border down mexico way. last time we went thataway it was to start a new life. this time we’ll be returning home to our mile high city in the Sierre Madre mountains with low humidity and temperate clime. and a happier people too. they’re poorer down there, but their lives seem richer, happier, more tranquil. of course i’m observing from the outside there and the inside here in the u.s.a.

but enough of that - can’t blog in the morning because we’re leaving before the cock crows, so here’s a silly ditty i wrote for lady.

Baked Apple Cream Kisses

Baked apple cream kisses for you my love
For your giggle wiggle wondrous why

Creamed apple baked kisses to you my dove
From your hair below to those above

Baked kissed apple cream I’ll then apply
To your skin within, without, and try

French kissing your wiggle giggle for I’ve
Apple creamed baked kiss in you my love

Head to toe side to side all the in between
Cream kissed baked apple in you my Queen

Lady with smith art tee-shirt (soon to be 4 sale) - foto by smith

sold as is - foto by smith

Lite Verse

We come from light
We go to light
But what a heavy in between

this will fail - foto by smith

Whethered Would

Old uneasy cockroach existence
Exilic, yet extant
Contingencies of space and time

smith for supreme court - foto by smith

CRIMINAL by Smith & Lady (book is 6″ x 9″) - foto by smith

lady slapped an excellent cover on CRIMINAL and had a private copy printed by LuLu.com press so we could sit with it in our laps and proofread it one last time.

folk are curious how 2 people can write 1 person’s autobiography.

it’s easy. when lady moved in, i started telling her my stories. she wrote them down. when i ran down, she’d sit down with her laptop and say “tell me a story.” when that ran down, she started interviewing me. then she took all that and added in all the non-fiction pieces i’d written over the years.

she took this amorphous mess and restructured it into a more or less chronological order. then she passed it to me to edit. i handed my version back to her. each pass she’d change stuff, add stuff, delete stuff, move stuff - as would i. it’s all my story, but some is my words, some my words rewritten by her, some her words, some her words rewritten by me. hard to say who’s what at this point.

then she turned it into a manuscript, slapped an absolutely excellent cover on it, and printed us off a 352 page 110,000 word copy to make final adjustments to. right now i’m on our 18th edit pass. i’ll give it back to her for edit #19, and then we start looking for a top tier publisher.

it’s my life, my story, our words, her order and flow, and our book. if it weren’t for her, the book wouldn’t be. if it weren’t for my life, there’d be no story to tell. this is a real collaboration, and a splendiferous partnership.

believe we have the real goods here, with a chance to go all the way. how weird life is.

and now, a word from our sponsor - 2 more america poems for this 4th of july season.

~ ~ ~

Original Cinema

Small signs of logic pool to larger sockets,
Sprocket rules of flow

Autumn snap cracks cross
Yes no boundary, now then grime
And the even Steven myth

Add in :
   Coffee rotation
   Bee pollen white crystal
   Hotel Babylon
   One million years TV
   Suburban life halfsounds
   Fungus eyes
   Hotdogs with blood and pus
   Artists of perpetual perception
   Fat bottom womyn in glass bottom boats
   Nature and man gone wrong
And this war of little mist
And reefer sticks
Stones
The two soul sham
Of wham bam action ma’am
(long way virgin slim to glass ceiling fan)

This bad boy business nuzzles
Nose near own navel lint
Bug belly blood in amber
Waves of shame
Dinosaur dregs dynamo hum
Blood rough ready rumble
Reflecting clone,
Trade in tiny tins

Liberty’s filthy whore Profit
Loss enough for now

~ ~ ~

Our Public Servants
or
The needle men,
 the wee within
 hides hollow
 shadows small
Such slime
 and sin
 and grime
 they grin
Much mock the moral mall
In greed they grip
 the public tit
Lick all
 the wrong behinds
The useless twits
 with inbred wits
 use farts
 to fuel their minds
Call down rehearsed
 their red tape curse
 in girth
 of unknown tome
Whine
 why alone
Mime
 no known tones
But worse
 they ALL tell lies

4th of july 2008 cleveland - foto by smith

dragonfly shadow - foto by smith

cleveland so far has been good people, great talk, glorious weather, fantastic fotos plus poets & artists (& all the in-between hyphenateds) galore. the 4th of july’s a good time for gathering the cream of the crop.

unfortunately there’s too little time in 13 days for the places, people, and poetry readings we need to see to be - more folk want to see us than there are days left. yesterday we had 4 different social engagements - started with 1 person, took that person to a second person, then to 2 other people, and finally we drove to a 9 people and 2 dog cookout (one small dog adorably bright with large ears named suzy creamcheese). not a bad social day for a curmudgeony anti-social unskilled sociopath who used to have a door mat that said GO AWAY.

here’s 2 more america poems.

~ ~ ~

Love, Lust & Atlantis

Big cups of American coffee cheat rent
White bread rat dead

She and he honkeys
Random willed sex smiles
Eco eat spun doc wet work
Paid by skin inch

Collective shoals hustle bush
Shapes shadow symbol
Vargas vaginas piss shit shower shave
Customized codes of conduct

Sheep indivisible suckle our young
On the teats of the old
Dewey without decimal
Rather India-inked Indians
Than dead baby truth

Missed and Mr. P.R. Clone
Dildo ditto dodo
Mime mind
Sheep asleep
Next dead guy to cum along
Arguments amongst the monks

Broken soul mesa, America . . .
No desire
No fire
No fur

~ ~ ~

Mausoleum, Museum, Movie

Entombed in night, uneasy
In the wrought iron knots
Of the gray spider’s thread
vague eternal, ember
They scurry replete, unfree
To such preconceived thoughts
As are hung from the dead

west side market clevaland ohio - foto by smith

mexican political graffiti - foto by smith

having wonderful visit so far with mucho fotos and thought notes for blogs - but many people and little timem leaves me blogless. so here’s 2 more american poems for this 4th of july.

~ ~ ~

Sold American

We’re born in blood, raised in flesh
In Ragnarok n roll Armageddon
So let’s go let’s go let’s go go Sell American
For the red, white, black and blue

Schrodinger’s cat is dead, perhaps
And we but lie, lie dreaming
This tit for tat means this this ain’t that
No matter what the ragweeds weaving

My Little Bo Peep’s down eating her sheep
With Darwin doubtless her handle
Your Little Boy Blue’s sniffing glue
While cooking his spoon over candle

So drink a drink for all that hasn’t happened
Bleed in need for all that never will
3 cheers for the crippled, the misbegotten
All hail politicians finger in the till

~ ~ ~

Promise Land

Greyhound bound
To Tupperware City
Light like liquid Zen
Wars time tatter tight
As tight asses tie
Meat neat man to kine, kino
Contempt of course
Playing Plato’s barn

Blue bloods
Stabilize fish at 7
Mime the ma’am
Bamboo cathedrals
In wondrous disarray
Just outside real
Where the fat
Flee frantic
Fleece feed the poor

Competing EXIT signs
Dance specific disease
Rude crude
Plus tax
Bouncing Betty’s
Slouching Bethlehem belly
Slips on guilt
And splinters.

Emiliano Zapata 1879-1919 - foto by smith

cemetery stone pillar, trash barrel - foto by smith

Night Fragment

As has been said
The night weighs upon the city
In tired, fat insolence. Rat scurry.
Old papers flap down empty streets.
It is an ugly season. Full.
Day slouches in, in shameless anonymity
Devoid of great chained excuses of being
A voided has been of god, notion and country.
Unfocused without, we hunt worms within
To bait further cold excretion of reason, rationale.
Refuse refusing our naked nothing.
Cautious.
Strip steal by night.

wall - foto by smith

graffiti - foto by smith

SOP

It hurts to be a teddy bear
To sit alone, unused
No longer wanted anywhere
Just left alone, confused

I’m tossed aside to lie in here
This dank and musty chest
The dampness serves to hide my tear
The dark to mock my past

Not always thus, this has been no
I was her fair haired toy
She loved me once, I pleased her so
I shone, her chosen joy

Yet here I lie in darkest net
Her love for me did end
My love for her she deemed forget
She found a stranger friend

And now the stranger she does mold
And twists him through the air
While in this chest my heart grows cold
Alone and frightened, bare

graffiti - foto by smith

e=mc2 - collage & foto by smith

Ciao Chow Boogie

Ciao chow boogie
Go down wail gone
Sassafras the fancies
She’s my daddy-o mom
My moldy goldy oldie
My crazy maybe one

Raise sin to sensation
Peel feel from the ground
There’s no explanation
Just loose liquid sound
Undress in nude nation
Do the two-back get down

I’m cool cat copacetic
In absolute time
Sling now into never
In ever sly lie
Jig forever together
In metaphoric fire

3 Kurt Schwitters collages collaged into one - foto & collage by smith

rain flower orange - foto by smith

Confessions of a Conservative

Let others munch spare frogslegs and things
Or their mother’s tidbits so fine.
Not me.
I prefer wee bumblebee wings
With a pipe of blueberry wine.

I’ve no desire for porcupine stew
Aunts coated in chocolate yea thick
Fried crocodile
Ala flayed caribou
Or some other chef’s table trick.

A simple table whenever I dine.
Not mine all these modern cuisines.
I’m quite satisfied with blueberry wine
And old fashioned bumblebee wings.

peppers - foto by smith