Walking on Thin Ice

intermittent internet does not equal interact

foto by smith

we’ve but intermittent internet, if that. none for past 36 hours. so we won’t be interacting with online folk as much as we have, if at all. might be reduced to prowling the internet cafes again.

but this is good. lady & i are addicted to being online - easy research, email, myspace, uploading fotos, interacting with friends, reading miserable nasty depressive news. on myspace we’ve been commenting on comments on comments uncommonly. amazing amount of time.

so reality is messing with us, telling us time to get to the work we came down here to do.

such as
see sun. we’re definitely doing that.
have adventures. ditto.
learn spanish. we start school the 31st.
finish my edit of bad boy memoir so i can turn it back over to lady.

lady’s certainly getting to work. she’s nesting, making the place her own. down on her knees right now bleach-scrubbing years of worn grid grit out of old rock and aggregate floor tile. we put the tv in the closet. she rearranged the sitting room from right angles to oval, making it cozy instead of barcode. i hung 11 prints of our work on the bedroom door, they stream down like a cavalcade of christmas cards. our calling cards.

our ground floor apartment exits to a locked courtyard. we’ve 3 main rooms - a 12 foot x 12 foot sitting room which leads west to a 12 x 9 kitchen and south to a 16 x 12 bedroom. large bathroom and shower off bedroom. semi-enclosed courtyard off kitchen with sink and water. no sink or water in the kitchen which has a refrigerator and a 4 burner gas countertop stove. sitting and bedroom are lime pie green with the ceiling white - rather like we’re in a large square of key lime pie. the kitchen is yellow and beige tile. we face east.

i’m tall. mexicans are short. i’ve walked into a sidewalk tree branch and a store steel awning support, hit the same spot on my forehead both times. left a bruise. lady’s calling me gorbachev now because my bruise is in the same place as his birthmark.

lady had two margaritas the other night. told a friend. he asked “did it make her frisky?” told him lady’s always frisky.

foto by smith

stone green blue cream cool

foto by smith

maybe i’m dead.

at least that’d explain today. i died and went to heaven. except i don’t believe in heaven. i believe in my remains reuniting with the universe and merging wherever however its need and flow take me. but even if i did believe in heaven, they don’t believe in me. i’d more likely go the other way, and this certainly ain’t hell, so i must be alive.

interesting.

we met a man from the north american snows who has happy lines in his eyes from living here. he helped us find a place this afternoon. 6 months, $300 per. and we found we could maybe stay longer legally.

one of the better days. good coffee, sunshine, first meeting of new friend, wife alive as i.

foto by smith

enroute to inspect place to rent, passed church stone green blue cream cool, sacred singing overwafting, outside music underbeating, couple couples lawn court dancing, father crouched down helping 3 year old son piss from curb to street, sunlit urine sparkle eye dance as i float past.

plus i stole couple lines and stories from mr non-american-snow man.

i have more fotos than i can use, more notes than blogs have room. and lady’s as happy as i.

foto by smith

this is one of the days that stay. like a couple i had on the farm as a boy, couple nights stolen car joyrides, my loss of virginity, 1st drunk, 1st take off & landing at controls of prop plane, one night of raging storm spent illegally wedged in the big guns on the bow of a nuclear powered guided missile cruiser crashing through the seas halfway to hawaii, 1st hearing bob dylan’s desolation row, 1st grass, 1st acid, 1st mda, 1st motorcycle ride, the night 3 rabbits love danced in the woods, my 1st solo art show opening, my only sky dive, several runnings from the cops, innumerable days with lady k. and now today.

“Better knock, knock, knock on wood” - Eddy Floyd, 1966.

i wonder why reality likes me so.
grateful i am.

foto by smith

fog and fury

neon sculpture by Chplis, foto by smith

this is adventure. we’re heading for a place far away we’ve never been to live among people we’ve not met whose language we don’t speak.

oaxaca (city) in oaxaca (state) has 258,008 people. the city is a mile above sea level in the Sierra Madre del Sur Mountain. There’ve been settlements in the general area for thousands of years, but the city was officially founded in 1532.

once again into the breach of unknown internet access. we may be blogging once a day, may blog once a week - time and the cyber godz will tell.

USA Today

Meat bags bound by fog and fury
Fear silence
Little horrors of swarming selves
God’s flesh
But fallen water across the log

In service so sweaty warmth
Begotten in flesh and feast
Double cause
Crowing cock cracking dawn

Let doubt die
Mangled thread, legal mixture
Here be dragons
Slave state seared by vision
Decrees of silence

foto by smith

bent solar system

foto by smith

i scour the news. just learned Voyager 2 finds our solar system’s shape to be dented, squashed, bent. how appropriate. it helps explain why things don’t work well here on mad-manned planet earth. we’re probably in the crook or crack or squishy part or bindy bend.

a blog i read said she couldn’t keep reading the news because it’s so endlessly bleary it depressed her. she has to take a step back, and was curious how others dealt with it.

i left this in answer . . .

i’m lucky. i’m 61 years old and have had a fascinating underground kind of life full of magic, special people, and massive amounts of luck with marvelous adventure.

past 2 years i even found the love of my life - long after i’d ceased thinking such a thing possible.

right now, if i wake up dead tomorrow, i’m way ahead of the game. no regrets. no putting off for some maybe later that which brings light now.

it’s the old zen goal - how do you live a happy life in an unhappy world?

well, it’s always been an unhappy world. it always will be. i live so that i bring light to life from within, spread light and not dark.

i still read the news closely. i need to know the bad so i can fuel my creativity and work against the bad - maybe mock it, or expose it, or even occasionally rant and rave.

we’re all dying anyway - and if humans fade away, mother earth will recover, life will go on. i don’t think people are the highest purpose of life, or the most important part of earth. if we die off, so be it. earth would really be better off and prettier without us. no big loss.

live now to the best you can. brighten the corner where you are. make someone smile instead of frown. help, don’t hinder.

and fight the bad guys every step of the way, just as if we could save our sorry asses.

foto by smith

not enough too much

foto by smith

kind of blue. partly due to not enough sun, too much gray cold. but mostly because of moving on again. i want to be gone, but i don’t want to do the going. this will be our 48th move, our twenty-thousandth mile in the past 17 months.

every time we stop, we accumulate stuff. everytime we go, we must calculate, pack, and discard because it’s throw away, give away, store away, or carry on our backs in packs. life is more elemental when reduced to weight and size.

1st rule we learned - you have to want something a lot to carry it on your back up a hill. life would be so much less complicated if we all had to carry all our possessions on our backs. less comfortable too.

it sounds like i’m whining, and how can one whine who’s on an open-ended endless adventure traveling from country to country with the love of his life who considers him the love of hers?

well i gotta tell you, nothing’s free. for all we gain in freedom, exotic locales, and adventure, we pay in aching muscles, lost sleep, lack of home, no possessions, unknown stress. ain’t no free lunch. ain’t no free free. no matter what you do, there’s a cost there somewhere.

but being anywhere lady is is always worth the pay of playing.

part of the reward this time for me will be seeing jungle, wild parrots, Mayan temples, and sun. and maybe someday i’ll cross the equator, go on the other side.

“South of the border, down Mexico way.”

foto by smith

earth rats

foto by smith

not sure anyone’s home inside me today. woke tired. remain tired. perhaps the aliens took us up last night for extended lab rat tests. i’m always extra tired after alien encounters. or maybe it’s the earth rats talking to me during the night. they ask such pointed poignant questions, but their rat bias is so extreme i can’t understand what they want from me.

bad day for me not to be me. from 3 to 5 it’s our last poetry reading at the gallery. from 5 to 8 it’s the closing reception for the Lady K / Mother Dwarf / Smith OFFWORLD assemblage show. then at 8 we go to dinner with our hosts.

tomorrow we spend with Lady’s folks. monday tuesday we pack up and discard, then fly south. 34 degrees here, 81 where we’re going to live. time to leave.

Autumn Leaves

Leave me not in love and truth
Leaves me not at all

Leave my loss its soft misuse
Leaves my foreskin small

Leave my lost belief in youth
Leaves my use in thrall

Leave my use in used abuse
Leaves me moist of all

Steve M, Kim, Lady K in front of smith pieces on wall at closing - foto by smith

marginalia

photo by Lady K

hurrying through cold rain, lady said hello to a white cat huddled in a doorway. it followed us to the bus stop, rubbed our ankles. i spoke sibilant sounds down to it as it stared up at me. it suddenly leapt to my chest, ran up my arms, and walked back and forth on my shoulders, purring.

i talk to animals a lot, some plants, a few birds. in england i told a farm cat he’d best go back and pick up the mouse he’d dropped, and he did. it’s all in tone of intent. cats and dogs listen to timbre and cadence, plants listen in vibration. birds listen to no one. must be the bird brain.

which reminds me, for a great moment in poetry, listen to Allen Ginsberg’s “Birdbrain” - a song he wrote in Yugoslavia in 1980 and recorded in 1981 with a Denver punk band called the Gluons.

here’s a taste of the lyrics Ginsberg shouts over the music . . .

Birdbrain runs the World!
Birdbrain is the ultimate product of Capitalism
Birdbrain apportions wheat to be burned, keep prices up on the world market!
Birdbrain lends money to Developing Nation police-states thru the International Monetary Fund!
Birdbrain never gets laid on his own he depends on his office to pimp for him
Birdbrain offers brain transplants in Switzerland
Birdbrain wakes up in middle of night and arranges his sheets
I am Birdbrain!
Birdbrain dictates petrochemical agriculture in Afric desert regions!
Birdbrain lowers North California’s water table sucking it up for Orange County Agribusiness Banks
Birdbrain harpoons whales and chews blubber in the tropics
Birdbrain clubs baby harp seals and wears their coats to Paris
Birdbrain runs the Pentagon his brother runs the CIA, Fatass Bucks!
Birdbrain writes and edits Time Newsweek Wall Street Journal Pravda Izvestia
Birdbrain is Pope, Premier, President, Commissar, Chairman, Senator!
Birdbrain voted Reagan President of the United States!
Birdbrain prepares Wonder Bread with refined white flour!

in europe, lady and i never saw national flags displayed. here in america, there’s flags everywhere all the time - on cars, doors, undergarments, houses, clothes, poles, uniforms, bayonets. . .

a croation gentleman told us americans don’t know history, don’t know geography.

an american poet mentioned he could get into some good conversations in other lands, but talking to people in america was like talking to ghosts.

perhaps we need less nation, more notion.

photo by Lady K

cyber sluts, steel mills

foto by smith

i’m in the midst of another myspace slut cycle with their endless bombardment of emails and friend requests begging me to go to their ‘other’ sites and pay money to look at naked pictures of them.

why would i want to pay to see naked cyber wenches when i have a marvelous lady of my own who is frequently au naturel?

plus, those naked gal pals aren’t even really gals. a poet friend’s older son used to send out these lonely women requests - he was paid a few pennies for each sucker he got to click on the faux flesh sites. so it’s guys who are trying to lure other guys to fake naked slut sites - these guys are interested in your pennies, not your penis.

i was going to start a new myspace place accepting only sluts as friends, call it Sluts R Us, but changed my mind when i saw how quickly their avatars disappear and the sites shut down - kind of like 1 night cyber stands, complete with viral disease.

back to real feel-able female flesh - here in our love shack out back, the entire house consists of two 12 foot by 12 foot rooms, 3 windows, small porchette, small bathroom. the shower is in the kitchen, between the fridge and the stove. i sit at the kitchen table, drink my coffee, and watch my wife dance nude in the steam and soap suds of the shower. it’s like we’re in a foreign movie in our native land.

here be 3 pictures of our love shack out back. it’s off the street, in back of a long deep skinny house where the backyard would normally be. here in tremont, any house with a backyard has a house built in it to house all the immigrants who came to work the steel mills down in the flats in the early 1900s.

front to back shack

refrigerator, shower, stove

back shack to front
foto by smith

the heart as arsonist

foto by smith

The Heart as Arsonist

Sure the kindling,
but as well the wood.
The place as such
and substance
of the matter.
Time.
Amounts of time to flicker,
flame in bright arrogance,
become fuel to continuity,
faded maturation.

It is not wonder
yet is
why wolves, weres and lovers
lie dreaming before fires
fire places
emotions.
It is the melancholy
of the cycle calling.
Warmed atavisms
consumed in life
in love of rebirth.
The remembrance
of werewolves wanting wings.

All these
the core past caring
belonging
the fire is
is love.
The spark
to kindle the passion
then human the substance
to weather completion
this this is love.

foto by smith

7 day gone soap op pop

west african coast
low tide, shadows, sea bottom
tracks from brine to blues

7 days till our journey continues.

few know our backstory, so here’s reader digested version:

end of 2004, my mom Mother Dwarf went to the emergency room. spent 9 months bouncing between intensive care and rehabilitation centers before she came back home. she died 7 days later.

i wrote 9 short pieces on her passing, went down to Border’s book store to read them. gave Lady K ride home. 4 weeks after that, she moved in. week later we decided to marry, sell the place, and move to europe. took 10 months to leave the country for europe and africa.

in those 10 months, we had to deal with
a) Lady’s psychotic stalker who wanted to kill me, keep Lady in his closet, and threatened to kill a stranger to show he was serious,
b) discovering i had throat cancer
c) its removal operation
d) 8 weeks of radiation
e) Lady’s bulemia
f) me being 4 years older than Lady’s parents
g) cleaning up my studio to sell
h) quitting my job
i) Lady divorcing her 1st husband
j) she and i getting married by a Wiccan
k) publishing ArtCrimes 21
l) three art shows
m) having our art stolen by a rogue gallery owner and spirited off to another city before being recovered
n) a plethora of poetry readings
o) a second operation to remove a head full of nose polyps
p) a root canal
q) etc.

once we left, we spent 14 months backpacking around england, netherlands, poland, croatia, italy, france, spain, morocco, england, france, and spain again before coming back here to the love shack out back where our travel journey started. been back 9 weeks.

next week we move to mexico. once our legal 6 months is up there, we’ll skip south down central and south america country by country until this or that. other than that, no way of knowing what we’ll do because i’ve got this crazy talent lady named Lady in my life and there’s no way knowing where she’ll go, there’s only going along. glad along i am.

just seemed to me if you’re going to follow our soap opera, you need to know this back being of ours.

Marrakech at dusk
Purple petals on the ground
Red flower falling