WALKING ON THIN ICE

foto by smith

“When you’re headin’ for the border lord you’re bound to cross the line” - Kris Kristofferson - 1972

wife & i were heading to chicago for a year. but i dreaded the winter weather, and lady wondered whether that was where we wanted to be what with our government’s ever-tightening border policies and all. so we’re heading south, soon as soonest. i’m going for the sun and adventure, but after reading a bit, i see that lady’s reasoning was both prescient and prudent.

looks like after February, 2008, americans will need permission to fly inside the u.s.a.

the newest Secure Flight Program says foreigners and americans alike will need permission from the United States Government to travel on any air or sea vessel that goes to from or through the U.S.

in their own words:

Part III
Department of Homeland Security
Transportation Security Administration
49 CFR Parts 1507, 1540, 1544, and 1560
Secure Flight Plan; Proposed Rule

SUMMARY: The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assume from aircraft operators the function of conducting pre-flight comparisons of airline passenger information to Federal Government watch lists for international and *domestic* flights.

& from homeland press release

(2) Secure Flight Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), which lays out DHS plans to assume watch list matching responsibilities from air carriers for domestic flights and align domestic and international passenger prescreening. Both programs carry out 9/11 Commission recommendations.

“Stopping known threats before they board an aircraft, whether domestically or internationally, is a critical security measure,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

~ ~ ~

homeland security will check the flight lists submitted by the airlines against their List Lists and transmit back who is permitted to board both domestic and international flights.

if homeland security says you don’t go, you no go. they don’t have to tell you why.

there are already 860,000 names on the Watch List, 20,000 added each month, according to CNN.

this may-or-may-not-fly list is being maintained by the same people who brought you the iraqi war that was going to be over 4 years ago at no cost at all because iraqi oil would pay for everything.

we’ve lost habeas corpus. lost the right to face our accusers, have speedy trials, or hire a lawyer if the government says no. now we’re losing our right to fly to another city. just like in the movies where the bad guys take over.

i see 2 ways of looking at this -
as a good sheep follow the leader to the chop shop,
or get mad as hell and don’t take it any more.

i vote mad as hell.

James Madison - “When tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

foto by smith

foto by smith

my lady tells me “all time’s same time,” that we’re in “the big empty,” and need to keep our eye out for “the new normal.” i tell her i’m a large butterfly in a small china shop.

my plan was to temporarily return to cleveland and stay in the same love shack out back we lived in before leaving the country last year. that way, i could sit in semi-familiar surroundings, shake out our 47 moves through 10 countries in seventeen months, and try to see how my me now differs from my me then.

there are a few obvious changes. i am less angry now. more patient most times with most folk. wait better. socialize more easily. i’m happier. feel i’ve finally done something. found my one to do it with.

but today i realized there is no resolution. if you’re alive, you’re not finalized. death is the sole adjudicator. until then, stuff happens that has to be handled. you never reach a place you’re “done” until you die. we’re in the ultimate work-release program - we work at living till death’s release.

foto by smith

foto by smith

Unfairly Tale

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

foto by smith

foto by smith

Light Lucifer Lost

O listen now thou mad, thou meek
Receive and mourn my word oblique
Hear me - for I, Lucifer, speak

God’s impotent envy me from heaven hurled
Manwards toward this god forsaken world
Where you in reward were Eden expelled
And I once majestic upon my belly felled

So I reigned in hell in favor a god
Forever, until upon me science trod
Then even from hell was I disbelieved
And from formal evil my duty relieved

Now no heaven holds atomic aplomb
Nor profits in neutered gamma ray tomb
Knowing crucified wish unworkable womb

foto by smith

foto by smith

folk think i’m putting on weight. they don’t know how cold i am here after months in the mediterranean sun, or that my new bulk comes from the tee-shirt, long sleeved shirt, long sleeved pull-over, and the two sweaters i wear to keep warm. and that’s inside. outside i add scarf, hat and gloves.

in our explorations i’ve seen how cold gray wet sunless skies drain a person’s spirit, while sunny days invigorate. fortunately oaxaca mexico averages 311 sunny days a year - 85%. they call it La Tierra del Sol (Land of the Sun). we go soon to this land of the sun. i will study their moon.

here in cleveland we average 66 sunny days per year - 18%. our time in cleveland is cold fact kept alive by warm fiction.

speaking of which, i used to love reading fiction - it was sunshine for my mind. i’d devour 4-5 novels a week - sci/fi, crime, horror, humor, mainstream, alt, classic, avant garde, true life. i found i missed english fiction in poland, croatia, france and morocco, so when we got back i bought a bunch of used paperbacks by folks i’ve loved forever - elmore leonard, robert b. parker, john d. macdonald, et al. sat down for a read feast and found i couldn’t get into any of them. they all seem tame and contrived - less happy and interesting than my own existence since lady.

it seems because of our own adventures and the current insanity of the neo-fascists in the white house along with their quislings in congress that fiction can no longer compete with the real world (as unreal as it is). so now, only poetry and non-fiction will do. it if ain’t true, it won’t do.

foto by smith

foto by smith

i’m snapping at people around me, including lady. that is a no-no.

it’s no excuse, but i’m tired of
being cold . . .
being sore . . .
too little sleep . . .
being tired . . .
too many people, not enough down time between . . .
being back in america . . .
not enough time to hang show or prepare reading . . .
too little weed to reduce edge above . . .

and i’m tired of all my external excuses.

just as alcohol releases the demons within, so exhaustion and frustration release my natural crankiness and curmudgeon-ness. i hope that’s explanation, and not excuse. i am not a social creature - i’d make a right fine hermit.

call me the loan reality arranger - they will whisper of me as i pass, “who was that masked sham?”

wednesday, i cleaned and hung 49 pieces of art on 4 walls in 4 hours. anyone ever hung a show knows that’s fast time - - - 5 minutes per piece to clean, decide, and hang. some pieces are 2 decades old. same gallery Lady’s show’s in - we’re piggy-backing on her 23 pieces.

after hanging, we went across the street and read poetry to our smallest audience yet - 7. but great reading. lady selected an exceptionally effective set. remember a poetry reading 11 years ago with the legendary daniel thompson - we had 6 poets reading, 1 person in the audience . . . and yet had a wonderful evening. poetry god say “wherever 2 or more gather in my name . . .”

thursday took us 3 hours and 5 buses to visit lady’s grandmother in her assisted living home. then she and she spent 3 hours catching up on relatives i’ve not met. afterwards, we went to monthly Lit poetry performance till 1. long day, short night, gray bags grow beneath my eyes. could be in romero’s next zombie movie without make-up.

seeing lady’s grandmom made me think on how close i am to physical incapacitation, being at the mercy of nurses, institutional food, other’s druthers. i don’t believe i can let that happen - will have to go out with an avant-garde perfromance piece, leaving one last tale to be whispered among the young grasshoppers.

up 7 friday, price the show, print gallery wall maps, post the data, then 6 to 10 work the ArtWalk walkers who might stop by. it’s cold dreary weather, which affects culture crowds. mind say yes, body say no. matter over mind.

in spite of my whining above, a good show was hung, a good poetry reading performed, and life, sense, and place are better than they were before, for both us and others. a good week.

today, saturday - great art crowd last night in spite of cold wet. good conversation, new and old friends. i sold one piece. i hang 49, sell 1… lady hangs 23, sells 6. mother dwarf also always outsold me. the women in my life do better with folk than i do.

now, on to morning food shopping, morning laundrey doing, afternoon monthly poetry reading, evening poetry/art lecture, occasional weed in between.

no wick for the un-rested.

foto by smith

foto by smith

Back in Black in White Film Noir

I once thought I was the good guy, the hero in white. But in truth few of us are heroes, and black is more wearable than white. White shows the soul’s stain.

My first six months in jail I was in the tiers.

A tier is five two man cells and a shower all enclosed in bars. Each night we’d be locked in our cell, each morning let out to wander the 10 by 70 foot communal area. Our tier had Ringo. Ringo said they couldn’t get him for murder because the dude he beat to death was still alive when he walked away. He was big, black, brutal, and he did not like me. Not because I was white, but because I wouldn’t get out of his way when he walked. He walked all day in this continuous oval, a short detour each loop around me. He was working towards hurting me and said so. He scared the shit out of me - but I scared me more because I couldn’t give in. I’m not made that way. When I’m that afraid I seem to go out of my way to piss off what I’m afraid of even more - and what I was afraid of was a bigger, stronger, faster, meaner, proven fatal fighter. I did not feel good.

Then the odd backhand of salvation.

I smuggled one too many letters out of prison. Unfortunately this letter described a psycho sicko guard’s brutality. The warden called me down. Showed me the letter. Said smuggling is 18 months. Wondered if I had anything to say about my charges against the guard (who of course like everyone else in jail on both sides of the bars had a cliché name… he was Sarge, the 400 pound guard was Tiny, the undercover nark was Speed). I told the Warden what I’d said was true and I hadn’t even scratched the surface of his mean spiritedness or verbal and physical abuse of visiting wives, etc. He told Sarge to return me to my cell and for me to think about the 18 months, that we’d finish tomorrow. I go to my cage and worry. I worry about tomorrow. I worry about Sarge’s retaliation. I worry about 18 months. I worry about my wife who’s sleeping with an ex-con that’s not me. And I really worry about Ringo.

The next day the warden casually tells me I’m moving downstairs to the dorm where he’s making me head cook. No mention of the letter or Sarge or the 18 months. The one thing every prisoner wanted was a job that got you to the dorm with its one locked gate + radio, TV, eating what you wanted when you wanted where you wanted. And of all the jobs, the cockerel’s walk was cook. Switching from certain sorrow to unwarranted wealth in but a breath fucks with your mind, sends too many simultaneous threads in way too many directions, and yet instantly I flash in relief “release from Ringo.”

That for this tat for tit.

One of the dorm trustees ratted on Ringo, who in punishment was in a locked cell in a locked tier three floors up. We’re watching TV and in he walks - taller, stronger, larger than any of us. The rat was maybe Woody Allen’s size and build. Ringo walks up to him and says “you ratted me out.” Rat says no. Ringo repeats “you ratted me out.” (He really did rat Ringo and we all knew it + he’s the one who ratted my letter). Rat tries to explain but Ringo hits him hard, knocking him to the concrete floor, then stomps 5 times on his head with his work boot; each stomp Rat’s head bangs against the concrete and bounces up to meet the down coming boot which smacks his head even harder into the concrete as Ringo says (one word per stomp): “you. . shouldn’t. . have. . done. . that.” None of us moved or spoke the entire time. When he was done, Ringo looked at us to see if he had a problem, decided he didn’t, turned and left. Rat got up and started stemming the blood, his head swelled thrice its size.

That’s when I knew I was not the me I thought was me, the me I needed to be. It’s not my only lesson, but it is the one that worked. Yellow has nothing on me.

Had I said or done something, two things could have happened: 1) I’d be dead or broken. 2) The others would have rallied and we’d have stopped him. But had that second happy Hollywood scene happened, at some time at some place Ringo would have found me and hurt me. A lot. I know now I did the right thing, for me, but it did cost me my mirror mirror on the wall who’s the hero here of all view of myself.

Love the can do. Hate the do do.

Steven B. Smith 4.7.2003 on 33 years ago

this is included in my bad boy memoir titled “criminal” which we’re in the process of final edit. this and yesterday’s My First Armed Robbery will be the only excerpts blogged.

foto by smith

this got a great response at last nigtht’s reading.

My First Armed Robbery

None of us are bad. All of us are stupid.

In late 69, my crime partner to be fell in lust with my wife. He had just published one of my short stories and my first article in two of his magazines, and now wished to pubicize my wife. I and my depression were thinking of letting him. So was she and hers. I had recently been fired, was deeply in debt, indifferent, artistically frustrated, immature, and unwillingly married. I had been ignoring her because I did not want her.

One night during our cheap wine patrols, my partner to be started flirting with my future ex-wife in front of me, and she responded. I being a hippie bohemian believed in freedom of choice, but got jealous anyway and tried to compete. She bloomed beneath our dueling affections and rose in wine and smoke and slowly shed her clothes down to bra and panties. We three went to bed when the wine ran out, and they touched too much while I faked sleep.

The next night at Burger King, he talked to me of robbery while I thought of breaking his fingers so he couldn’t touch her again. His ad agency was failing, and he was about to lose his type setting machines which were going to print my future genius. I gave him theoretical advice. Simple problem solving. You can’t do this, you might try that. Burger Kings are bad, big box office movies aren’t.

Within the week he showed up with two hand guns. Big ones. For the robbery.

I had not thought our conversation serious, but went along anyway. It was something to do, and I was depressed and bored and in deep debt, reduced to writing whining Rod McKuen prosery. Since we were going to rob with guns, he figured we should fire them first. We did. Nasty gut wrenching noise. I took it back after he took out the clip, and the gun discharged, the bullet just missing my foot. Good omen.

After he left, she said he’d been here yesterday. He’d talked awhile. Took her hand and led her into the bedroom. Unbuttoned her robe and caressed her breasts. He wants more, but she doesn’t. The interest of another and their furtive touching has satisfied her as far as I know. I know she wants and loves me, that is why she tells me. I would rather be an artist.

Hippie me, I’m free of this possession package the suburbans wrap around their female property. I don’t own her. What she needs to fuel her future is her business, weighed on her karmic balance, not mine. I don’t want her, yet hate his want and her response. I know I ignore her, but she should run to more than him.

I write in my journal: “29 January, 1970 – Thursday 12:19 PM about 55 degrees heavily overcast occasional short showers. Me, I’m tired. Mainly from lack of sleep, but partially from beginning fear – fear that says we’re going to go through with it tonight. I want to, and I don’t want to.”

Since I’m a freak, I slick my long hair back, wear a white shirt with a narrow black tie and Glidden Durkee safety glasses as a disguise. As we were leaving, his wife calls. She’s crying, asking if I know where her husband is. She had been drinking and seeing the snake of truth, knowing something’s wrong, but not the gun or breasts. She talked for ninety minutes and cramped our scheduled crime spree. As I calmed her, I saw her husband’s hand on my wife’s flesh.

I chose the 7-Eleven in my boss’s neighborhood because they were all rich and bastards. We walked into the store and hesitated, not really believing we’d do it. We wandered around waiting for the customer to leave. My partner and potential wife-fucker bought a 20 cent pack of cigars, and as he paid, I tried to pull the gun out of my pocket. It got stuck on the gun sight. I finally got it out and pointed at the clerk and coolly said “Leave it open” just as he closed the cash drawer. He reopened it and handed me all the money. 64 fucking dollars.

It wasn’t enough. I didn’t know then they hid all the big bills under the drawer, but I knew there had to be more money, so I demanded his wallet. As he handed it to me I said “No, that’s yours. I can’t take this” and handed it back. Told him to lie down on the floor, and we ran out just as more customers rolled in. Scared, we cut through the alley and up the hill. It was raining and he was in front of me as I slipped and fell face down in the mud, my gun in front of me. It went off and I missed him. So far, that made two of us I’d missed.

We bought some more cheap wine and went back and flirted with my wife.

We did it one more time. We got caught.

Steven B. Smith
written in 1989 and forgotten . . . re-found 1.15.2006

collage by smith

we met our first unmet MySpace blogger friends last night - Jesus Crisis and Mrs. Jesus Crisis took us out to dinner. (why are people taking us out to dinner? this is the fourth time past few weeks.)

reality was so flummoxed by my stepping out of my hermit character - i initiated social contact myself and actually invited them over - that 40 minutes before they arrived, our electricity went out. they arrived at our little love shack out back to candles and a flashlight.

enjoyed meeting the both of them. Jesus Crisis is as gentle and kind in person as he is in his comments.

so, MySpace friends will become an actual flesh and blood friends - from MySpace cyber space to my actual space space in the space of a few electrons. we live in interesting times.

3 more MySpacer bloggers i’d like to meet - Wednesday Kennedy in Australia, and two Californians - Kim Meadows and Handsome Duke Deal.

we’ve met a Cleveland artist MySpacer in real life, but we would have met her anyway because she’s one of our main poet friend’s lady love. lovers meet lovers. JC & Mz seem to be in love too. maybe that’s why the world’s still turning cuz love do make the world go round.

MySpace says there’s 160.6 million blogs on their site, 440,000 new blogs logged from midnight to noon yesterday, and 208 million folk in my network. i figure about 30 of those folk read me each day, so i’ve garnered much much much less than .00000001% of my potential audience. only room to grow - bruu ha ha haaaa… someday they’ll ALL be mine.

i took a gander at the most popular blogs of all, and see one basic element tying them together - sex and as much naked flesh as is possible to show on a no-nudity site. so i’m going to start adding nudie pictures of myself in compromising sexual positions with various small animals and assorted road kill.

as lenny bruce said, it’s all tits and ass.

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