Walking on Thin Ice

cat by Lady K - foto by smith

bits in pieces . . . notes from my pocket poetry pad.
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a laugh a day keeps the fascists away.
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lady said she’s glad i went right instead of wrong. replied you either work on yourself or you don’t. some can’t. some won’t.
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we saw “I’m Not There,” Todd Haynes’ symbolic metaphoric bio-pic of Bob Dylan. the film used 7 actors, 2 genders; 2 races, many ages to portray Dylan’s life and career. good stuff. only know two people who handle word play at such a level - William Shakespeare and Bob Dylan. Dylan’s more relevant, and the better poet.
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life is possibility shock.
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28 degrees fahreinheit here with wind howling against our love shack out back in cold hard light. be in 70 degree mexico in 2 weeks. we missed last winter thanks to the adriatic and mediterranian seas. waiting for laptop battery to warm my lap in laptop dance.
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for the curious - 59 years of smith face change - 1946 thu 2004. i have more faces than Lon Chaney, more inside twist than Jekyl & Hyde. all these inner and outer mes pretty much get along these days and collectively rule as the United Mutants of Smith.
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we no longer ancestor worship - we worship instead our shallow present, even shallower precedents.
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3 poet-teachers are putting together a history of cleveland poetry 1945 to the present and are including me as one of 50 for the accompanying anthology. out. of. sight. shows my shallow, but i love nods from others. it’s the secret evil of my id.
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lady says reading my old journals gives her hope because my writing has improved so much the 40 years hence that it gives her hope for her own writing down the road. i think she’s damn good now and needn’t worry.
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keep thinking of the poetry thieves of barcelona, wondering what they thought after they found what they pick-pocketed from me was my poetry pad, not my wallet.
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now for something serious, some poetry from a song i heard when i was 3 (sung by Perry Como & the Fontane Sisters, 1949)

The Magic Song

Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ‘em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

If your mind is in a dither
and your heart is in a haze
I’ll haze your dither and dither your haze
with a magic phrase

Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
It’ll do magic believe it or not
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

if you’re chased around by trouble
and followed by a jinx
I’ll jinx your trouble, and trouble your jinx
in less than forty winks

Salagadoola means mechicka booleroo
But the thingmabob
that does the job
is bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

Salagadoola menchicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ‘em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi
bibbidi-bobbidi
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

(we were more serious back in the day.)

sculpture & foto by smith

tremont, ohio - foto by smith

“I believe in redemption.”

that was Lady’s answer when i asked why my checkered past didn’t bother her, why her reading my past lies to my old wife doesn’t make her doubt my current truths to her.

redemption of course leads to redeemer, redeem, which here in the western world frequently leads to Green Stamps or Jesus. and Jesus leads to a spiritual pilgrim i met on MySpace - Jesus Crisis.

i’m a private person, prefer to be either alone with my wife, or alone. my social switch has two settings: off, and further off. but this Jesus Crisis persona interested me so much i invited he and Mrs Jesus Crisis to meet for dinner. after good conversation and food at a dying mexican restaurant, we agreed to meet again for dinner last night at their place. again good food and conversation, with two dogs (Lucky & Lady) thrown in, along with a fire in the fireplace, and Buddhas and roosters everywhere. in person JC is much the same as his cyber persona - gentle, thoughtful, kind.

he recently angered some cyber folk when he changed his name to Lord Jesus Byron Crisis for a Lord Byron blog. some folk thought that sacreliigeous. didn’t bother me.

but now i think he’s gone too far. for the christmas season he’s changed his name to Jesus Claus. that’s courting the dark side of sacrilege. there are some things sacred - like Santa.

my dead mother told me i once explained to my younger sister we couldn’t tell our younger brother there was no Santa Claus because as long as our brother believed, Santa had to leave presents for all 3 of us. no use losing loot.

let’s put the X back in Christmas.

trieste italy - foto by smith

Lady K - foto by smith

wife stopped me on stairs, said “This is a toll stairs” and demanded a kiss to pass. i replied (after kissing her of course) “wasn’t Tollstairs the Russian novelist who wrote “Climb & Punishment?”

more recent bad smithisms -

What u want, excuse or use?
Skim new prophet from the old.
Who was that math man?
What’s the agender here?
I’m wiser in my weariness.
2 Wongs don’t make a white.
Each their own being be.
The mind makes light the dark we cannot bear.

my new jones is unfed - wife hasn’t finished typing my 5th journal into her computer, so i have no more old me to read. so weird that my now wife is reading my 40 year old lies, betrayals, and fights with my then wife. and now wife still likes me. ain’t true love grand.

here’s how notebook #4 ended:

7 April 71
Been down so long it looks like up to me but looks like I’m getting downer. Damn. Wonder if I really care anymore.

(pages of psychotic scribble)

Looks like Robin is unhappy with her poor nobody husband who makes her work. Should kill myself and give her 20 grand at one time.

Waitress just coughed into my ordered coke cup then filled it with coke coughing twice more into it – I just sat it down on floor and walked away – I am sick today, restless inside.

Main question is: WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? Continual failure? Settle down to what?

LOUSY SURREAL CHESSBOARD OF MY LIFE – AUTOMATIC SELF CHECK MATE

I am the cause of pain I must be removed
But how
I have 2 choices – leave her or suicide
Leaving her leaves her nothing
Suicide leaves her $20,000
Suicide would also cause her pain.

you’ve probably guessed since i’m writing this 36 years later i didn’t kill myself. but for 25 of those years i tasted endless symbolic suicide with alcohol, needles, cops, and more. but bit by bit i killed the worst within - i kind of like the rest that’s left.

doodle from 1972 journal - foto by smith

foto by smith

the me i see in words i wrote 40 years ago isn’t a person i’d expect to be alive this long down the line. i burned with inner rage, frequently burst into anger - i’d hit objects, smash my fist through walls, once kicked our couch and broke my toe.

back then i was not a person you or i would like. now i can look in the mirror and feel neither sorrow nor shame - though a lot of you still wouldn’t like me. so be it. each their own being be.

i am fascinated by young me, amazed i got from there to here, flabbergasted my memory had forgotten so much of what and who along the way. my memory glossed the dark, made it light.

i’m hooked on reading more. the 30 journals go from 1968 through 1993. i began seeing right light when i stopped drinking in 1991 and went to europe in 92. so as a semi-bearable human, i’m a teenager - a 17 year moral creature in a 61 year body, with a 34 year wife. with these ages, my wife could be my daughter, my younger self her child, and i my own my grandson. keep this up we’ll become our own ancestors in ancestor worship.

it was hard reading journal #4, my prison notebook. first half is simplistic proclamations of love and longing for my perfect faithful wonderful wife, followed by nothing but months of pain as she tells me piece by piece by piece she’s been sleeping with 4 men while i’ve been gone, has VD, and may be pregnant. and each visit, each letter, she says the last thing she told me wasn’t quite true - such as her sleeping with convict Dave only once was really living with him for two months.

whoa - pain express. even 38 years later i’m blown away. how could i have forgotten such heavy stuff?

on the other hand, all this material from a writer’s point of view is goldern golden dynamite. i paid for it in that hell of then, so i may as well harvest my bounty of pain now.

this is what my first wife told me 40 days before i got out of prison:

19 november 1970…
first she hits me with “I slept with David once and I give my word I was disgusted and it will never happen again” then she slaps me with “I have an infection in my vulva it may be VD from Dave I’m so sorry” and then it’s “I slept with David three times I’m so sorry” and then “I fucked Phil and Ron and Jerry and I fucked David for 2 solid months until he left me but I’m sorry and I was sick afraid you would be gone 10 years and I give you my word that’s all the facts” and then she says “about a month ago (actually 2 weeks she always lies about the date time difference) I went up to Jerry’s apartment while his wife was away and this is just so absurd but we lay naked for two hours on his bed and he never entered me or touched me with his penis or had a climax but my stomach hurts and is swollen and it’s so absurd but could I be pregnant, you know how the vulva magically attracts sperm and well you know…”

i better run, i hear the fool killer coming.

foto by smith

foto by smith

explanation of following journal excerpt - i’d served almost 10 of my 11.5 month jail sentence for armed robbery when the warden and the guards went to the judge and convinced him to let me out 36 days early.

(i apologize for using bigot words back then. i don’t anymore)

2 december 1969
Nicknames here: Squirrely, Tiny, Mule, Mole, Captain Marvel, Ferd Burfel, Quicksdraw, Cloth, Adam 12, Granny, Cockey-Suck, Sarge, Slim, Ringo, Fats, Slick, Blackie, Elf Ears, Mighty Mouth, Gnat, Water Rat, Snake, Hack, Nutsy, Corn Flake, Fish Cake… then there’s Dale Becker’s nicknames, Rat, Dale Evans, Becky, Rebecca of Sunny Brook Farm, Suzy Creamcheese, Faggot… and so on.

11:15 pm – well, did I blow it? Hope not – don’t think so. Long story: Tyrone and I started running Becker about 10:00 so he got up grabbed a newspaper and accidentally brushed Tyrone’s face… Tyrone pushed him some more and then Becky gets up and turns off his TV – says we can’t watch his TV anymore… then Whitacre pushes Becker for awhile then I get up and turn TV on again Becker unplugs it I plug it in he unplugs it tries to push by me I make him go around me and post… more verbal abuse from us all to Becker he takes TV up – later I come down and push him more verbally call him a faggot etc. he saying nothing I say can bother him says (or rather hints) that he’ll go down to baltimore and hurt my wife – then I say his wife is a lesbian and he jumps up orders me to shut up I call his wife lezzie again he picks up wooden chair I walk over to card table and tell group better not call Becky’s wife a lesbian cause he doesn’t like it then he throws the chair at me (he’s seven feet away) but misses me and breaks chair against post he picks up broken pieces and I walk over and grab the pieces he has in both hands but he won’t let go so I jerk the rung out of his right hand and smash it across his left hand and broke the rung and he drops the chair but picks up a jagged L-piece and I began wondering if he would beat my head in walked back to him and took this piece away also – thought about hitting him but aware of having only 20 days left so I turned around and took the piece upstairs and told Ed and Dolly and Mike what happened and that basically is it. I have witnesses and guards on my side and all – but maybe who knows – they took Becky out to the hospital to X-ray his hand for a possible broken finger. Damn, I can’t stand the thought of losing my 36 days I’m not getting out for Christmas. Nom myoho renge kyo. Find out one of these days. It will be all right – it must.

Thursday third december 11:10 pm – Becker’s finger is broken but the whole affair is being officially ignored. I went to hospital today had part of my ingrown toenail removed – wanted to put me in hospital for a day but I wouldn’t go for it… so my toenail may grow back. Was in much pain tonight and Becker gave me one of his pain pills – the pills he was given to take care of the pain from his finger that I broke… he’s odd.

foto by smith

sculpture & foto by smith

lady and i are hooked on reading my 40 year old private journals. soap opera raw honest and true.

i’m not the “me” i remember me being. for example, i’d forgotten the violence in the first year of my marriage. scary the way my mind lightened that dark, made everything better over the years.

reading these is invigorating, makes my mind jump juxtaposing what i remember with what i wrote at the time. triggers all kinds of reflection. a lot of good stories from long ago when i was quick and limber.

and some nasties . . .

29 July 1969
So much pain in my right arm… I slugged the bed so hard I pulled something… Robin and I are having our worst fight ever – she yelled at me for so long I put my hand over her mouth she scratched I shoved her against the wall she kneed me quite painfully I slapped her and we went downhill from there… I yelled at her loud enough for the whole apartment to hear for about 15 minutes and it finally ends up with her vowing never to speak to me again and me replying I won’t eat until she does – and I won’t either… does this have to happen every 28 days – she’s around 80% in the wrong this time and I’m about 60% in the wrong… she’s so – I started to say non human but maybe it is I who am the non human one. Must go console her now even though I feel so much anger at what she’s done… the main thing she’s done is broken me down once again proving I can’t control myself.

30 Dec 1969
It’s raining as I sit in the car during lunch hour – the vending machines didn’t work and when I got a hot can of macaroni the can opener broke – Robin went vicious again last night – I became displeased with her so she first got mad, then cried then, when I ignored her and tried to go to sleep, she came in and drenched me in verbal filth and hate and finally flew into a rage and attacked me beating my back lower spine and buttocks as hard as she could with her angry little fists – and today I hurt. I’m not sure where the answer is – I know I should do something. I don’t know… I think I’ll care, but later – there’s just too much.

“Expect poison from the standing water.” - William Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

foto by smith

foto by smith

here’s a bit of green-eyed jealousy from my private journals from almost 40 years ago.

it appears my wife was messing around before and after we married.

15 June, 1968

I guess I’m no, start over… I trust a person completely until something shakes me and then I’m never sure… after our first year together I trusted Robin completely – never once did ever doubt her… never once until after we were engaged and I called her, found her gone and half an hour later found her at Joe’s… (am I to be forever plagued with that name?… Joe and Connie Joe and Lynn Joe and Dianne) caught her down at Joe’s just as she was going up to his apartment. She said he only wanted to talk about his problems – she finally convinced me that it was on the up and up which is a lousy cliché and I drove home after she said she’d be about 15 minutes… she was up there over an hour and a half finally coming out and convincing me that for 90 minutes she sat and listened and he never touched her… I finally dropped the whole thing and actually forgot about it – until… until… wonder how many more untils… until on our honeymoon I got in bed after she was asleep whereupon in her sleep she snuggles up to my warm body and sighs “Joe, Joe” which sent me through hell… finally drop that only to come back and hear her say “Joe this…” and “Joe that…” everyday – I would call from Hershey sometimes and she would be out or she would promise to wash her hair on my night out of town only to come back to find she hadn’t done anything, nothing except maybe my mind thinks seeing Joe… and now today she says Joe calls and needs to talk with her about his problems – it doesn’t hit me until later this is sposed to be my night out of town… I wonder if I’m upsetting her little schedule by staying in town tonight… perhaps my mind is working a little over actively in filling in the blanks – yet, I do know she has called him often before we were married and he has called her as well.. I do know that on one of my out of town nights she went riding with him until way after midnight – I do know she kissed him one night – I do know I caught her at Joe’s apartment one night when I wasn’t sposed to know she was there and I do know she was up in his apartment from a little before midnight until one thirty and it was just the two of them… I also know that ofttimes the most guilty circumstances arise out of the most innocent occasions and I know a suspicious mind finds always more to be suspicious about and that if my doubts continue I could finish us – I know also that I keep forgetting about Joe and my suspicions but somehow she keeps bringing up his name in such a way as to inflame my doubts all over again… while I’m sitting here writing she keeps saying how wonderful it is that I’m home tonight and I don’t believe her… I will later though because I want to – I want to believe she’s faithful even if she isn’t – what I don’t know can’t hurt me and what I do know can’t hurt me but what I suspect may destroy me… soon I’m going to tell her I’m staying overnight in Hershey and am coming back instead and telling her I finished up by chance – and I hope I catch Joe up here or her down there because I will then beat Joe almost to death and I don’t know what I’ll do with her.

foto by smith

foto by smith

finished reading my 2nd journal written between december 1968 and june 1969. my life’s sort of sad then - always working, broke, in debt, doing drugs, going out with my future wife, lying to everyone, and yearning for the sleep i never got due to the drug life i was hiding from work and fiancée. i had at least 5 lives going then - worker, lover, drugger, writer, liar.

my younger life in those 6 months between proposal and marriage seems to be tired desperation mixed with the occasional wildman adventure. my drug life wasn’t as much fun as i remember it - some bad trips, boredom, fear, and a lack of money in between the good times. it’s good to replace some of my glossed over memories.

20 or so notebooks to go - not sure i can be around that much of myself. but i am curious how i got from that me to this me.

and which me is this me? i just left a comment online signed red leaf white sky. think i like it. red leaf white sky smith. my other secret name is radish.

may you live interesting times.

foto by smith

foto by smith

wife’s typing my second journal into the computer. i just finished reading the 1st one (31 march 1968 through 28 november 1968). i’ve tried to read these journals before (i have maybe 30 from 1968 through the 1980s), but my immaturity and over-inflated ego always put me off after a few pages, embarrassed me too much - i had trouble accepting my 22 year old selfish self.

but now i see a tremendous repository of honest thought. going to steal a bunch of it for my manuscript.

here’s a taste of 39 year ago self (explanation - Robin became my first wife, Janice was one of my office co-workers):

Oct 19, 1968 – Quite a night last night… started the day off – no, start over: stayed up late Thursday nite smoking some THC – had real wild dreams – I’ve been having all too real unreal dreams lately – Thursday’s dream we were in a haunted house and some one was telling me not to drink milk or my flesh would rot & fall off. Anyway got up Friday & was tired… so I crushed up my Orbutrion T pep pill and snorted half of it… this was fine cept I really crashed around 3 pm – had to drag myself through till 5. Got home and was going to snort the other half of the pill, but decided to try to mainline it instead. Borrowed a needle from Nick (who was staying at John’s) (Nick calls it a point) and went back and got a coke cap as a cooker, held it with tweezers, used Listerine as an antiseptic – I had never mainlined myself before, & I really shook. Used a belt as a tourniquet… I did it, I pushed that old needle right through my skin & into my little old vein.. felt good – left almost no track. Then I fired Nige & left to pick up Janice… got her, drove back to pick up Nige & Donna – snorted and dropped a cap of THC first, & then went over to see The Electric Circus. They were good – damn good – especially the Mime who first did a thing about being stuck in a glass cage & then grew & rolled a giant joint. The THC never did get me off, & the speed I fired didn’t work more than an hour. sometime during the night I popped a blood vessel in my left ear cause it was full of dried blood – it bled all night. We cut out & went down to my fountain, then back to my place. Nige came back with Donna & I finally had to ask him to leave – then Janice & I made love twice – she racked my shoulders so badly I was bleeding… she was having her period & we had blood all over the place – it was nice not having to pull out at the climax. Finally got to bed at 7 & slept till 3 – called Robbie & lied to her – told her I went to dinner with some of my artists & then riding in the rain. Right now I’m sitting on her bed while she’s taking a bath – we’ve done nothing but fight since I got here – almost entirely on her part … she’s scared stiff cause it’s been 41 days since she’s had her period. The balloons are hanging from her ceiling – the ones I wrote love notes on Friday so she’d find them after work Friday… I wanted to give her something to ease my not seeing her Friday night. She has been so bitchy today… she’s also been throwing real bad 12 year old temper tantrums – I hope she’s not pregnant because she’s so far from being mature enough for marriage – much less for being a mother. Right now I don’t even like her or love her – but I go through all the motions – if she’s pregnant I must marry her, & I don’t want to say anything now I may later regret. It’s all so useless – I’m supposedly intelligent yet here I’m heading towards being another statistic – forced into marriage and maybe having an unhappy one at that and having a forced or unhappy home for my kids to grow up. And then again perhaps marriage and pregnancy will help both of us and we’ll live happily ever after – oddly enough, it is entirely possible.

foto by smith