AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

SOME WORK

SOME WORK

They say
the grasshopper
didn’t do it

But I’ve seen
grasshopper industry

I’ve seen
insects of orchestras
folding, thrumming and vibing
grasshopper there with the rest of ’em,
singing his leg on forewing
sexy

How one can carry an instrument
with them

How voice can be like a leg
like an arm
for what you need to do

Voice
voice in void voids void

A fish splashing in itself

A satellite broadcasting
some kind of rain

An umbrella for a spot

Or an antenna

A key

Flash lightning

Opera

An opera singer
doesn’t have to carry
a suitcase
for her things,
just sing and sing

Like the grasshopper
zinging along its thing
on a string

Someone at home with
herself, in herself,
herself home

Carrying all her worldly
possessions zipped
in her own self world

Finding vast velvet
when convenient

She lets things open
fallow, fertile
future replete

Sung, sing, will dip
and sing again

~ Lady

THE FREEDOM TO LIVE HAPPILY

I want to write a poem about the freedom to live happily.

I want to write a poem about the freedom to live happily.

But I feel this kind of heaviness, a kind of pain.

I feel suffering, I feel like I am suffering.

I feel so weary from the struggle. I feel this load on my lungs, my heart, my back.

I worry about things I needn’t even worry about.

Why do I do such things?

I want to write a poem about the freedom to live happily.

Somewhere are doors to happiness even in this moment, this moment in which I am remembering yesterday’s pain.

Like there’s the door to happiness from remembering the joys of yesterday.

And the joys of the present moment.

And how I am so lucky, am, am.

How Smith brings me a cup of coffee every morning.

How I hear the birds almost every morning.

How I love the view out my window, the trees.

How I love making things better.

Even cleaning, I even love cleaning.

How like, when I am cleaning, if I am hurrying too much and thinking about the stack of next moments to happen in a hurried manner,

How if I am stooped down and cleaning in that moment, how I am not getting all the happiness I could get.

Sometimes I think I could create a zen practice: clean the kitchen, slowly, over a 12 hour period, with a toothbrush. Just enjoy the cleaning. Just sit and enjoy the cleaning, do it slowly and don’t hurry. Just have fun, cleaning. Think and clean. Relax and clean. Clean, sit on the floor with some coffee, relax and sit back, take a break, then clean some more.

That’s how I could clean some time in theory, yeah, that’s how I could clean.

That would be a kind of practice, though.

I wonder if the stack of subsequent moments would bear it.

Would they come rushing in and invade my toothbrush clean floor time?

Would the stack of moments trample over my clean floor time?

I think the stack of moments would wait. Or even perhaps some of the moments, or at least, the plans for that subsequent stack of moments… well, I’d find that I didn’t need to do so many things during those moments.

I could have just sat with my coffee on the floor.

Or how about this: I could sit with my coffee or whatever, you know, my comfort, if coffee represents comfort. I could just sit with my comfort and do whatever I feel like doing as long as it makes sense somehow.

There are a lot of things to do, after all, in the subsequent stack of moments! There’s a lot I could pile in them!

Sometimes I wonder if they are like cardboard boxes, those moments, those plans.

I could chomp through those plans, do a lot of them, do some, yeah.

I could do some mindfully, I could do some mindlessly.

You know what? Sometimes being mindless is being mindful. Being mindful is always being mindful, well, at least some of the time. Being mindless–meaning, not worrying about a thing, can also be mindful. You know, like not manufacturing any thoughts I don’t necessarily need.

The thought factory has a lot of good use when it’s in a good box or outside a box in a good way.

But sometimes that thought factory feels it needs to meet some kind of production quota without any reason for it.

So those are some of my thoughts about how to be more happy… to realize what has been causing me mental grief and not do so much of it unnecessarily. That’s my thought. And something about the stack of moments. I feel through my fingers that this is good. I find this pretty good. It’s not complete but that’s OK, it’s pretty good.

~ Lady

GOOD DOGS, LET THEM GARDENS GROW!

What good gardens can be planted
without you good dogs
digging them up and up again
to say
those there bones
been buried
that those there bones
are what happened
bringing them up and up again
bones
good dogs
favorite bone to eschew about

Good dog
railing, you hold fast to them bones
or is it me seeing you rail
and wondering at the holding fast
holding you fast
quicksand or looking for you in it

Good dog
I look and I look for you out of it
I look for you out of it
you are getting out of it
you are getting out of it now
just now
I see
just now
you are getting out of it,
lion rose turner

Good dogs being dogs

What kind of good gardens
even the smallest monkey
in the world
can grow them

Even an elephant can know them

(An elephant
looking at its
own knees, tail, trunk
an elephant
in a mirrored room)

Who would carry the lamp
looking for,
effecting,
most always the good?

Spoons be bent and unbent
good dogs be dogs
good gardens grow too

~ Lady

I am not a robot.

handface

I am not a robot.

“How do I know?”

I’m gooshy.

“They program robots to be gooshy now.”

I’m complicated.

“They program robots to be complicated, too.”

I have a complicated personality.

“They do that, too.”

I bleed.

“Robots can bleed, too.”

My thighs look like chicken.

“They can very cleverly do that, now, too.”

~ Smith & Lady

Walking on Thin Ice

Walking on Thin Ice is not about the world losing polar ice caps. We’re going to stop that. We’re going to thicken those ice caps right back up. We’re going to populate the glaciers again. We’re going to make sure there’s an adequate head of snow on the Himalayas and everywhere else that its needed. Cool breezes bleeded.

This blog is named after the Yoko Ono and John Lennon song. It’s the first song by Yoko Ono I ever heard, and smith introduced me to it. In my opinion, it is one of the most far out yearning and tragic songs ever made. They were finishing up the song the day Lennon died. I only learned a long time after naming the blog that such sadness had happened around the generation of the song.

When I listen to it, it brings back the giddy creativity, the yearning sated, the ecstatic discovery I experienced when I hooked up with smith. I listened to it on “The Best of Yoko Ono” album over and over, spooling my Miata around, lost and found. It was novel, yet old. Like smith.

In the months after we hooked up, I’d collapse on his rocking chair sofa and poof into smoke. He told me the rest of his stories for his memoir. I tore down his cancer. I spackled the walls. I barfed as he was irradiated. We made art. Night time was Ono and Meat Beat Manifesto. Morning was Mingus, breakfast and golden sun.

Walking on Thin Ice, in the song, is about daring do on the edge.

Walking on Thin Ice is about adventure.

Walking on Thin Ice, in smith & lady’s lives, is about walking on water.

~ Lady

Dharma Run

Dharma run May 16, 2012. 3+ miles & a stop to water the peas. ~ Lady

smith’s Wake-up Dream – Dec. 14, 2011

smith relaying his dream to Lady this morning:

it was a big old house, many many floors. all the people had been turned against each other, so they were misusing each other, abusing each other. and we convinced them to work together.

one bad guy even apologized to the rest of us for bullying. then the people who had turned everybody against each other–the controllers–came, and we pretended that it was discordant like before, and we fooled them.

but somebody had left a note on the banister on one of the stairwells that would have given us away. the bad people stopped by and were checking us out. we fooled them; they thought everything was normal.

but they were walking up the stairs and we were afraid they were going to see the note and find out, and that’s when I woke up. it’s the wake up dreams you remember the easiest.

– smith & Lady

Personal disclaimer by Lady: I do not believe that bad people exist. I believe that the situations have sometimes been such that we sometimes have perceived some people as bad.

Walking wheel


Me by she – foto by Lady K

In Throe of Woe

Well, well, well, what haven’t we here?
How goes your daily throes?
Mine clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.

I keep trying, but I doubt I’ll ever get it right,
this needed balance twixt good in strive and bad in whirl,
reaching Zen goal of happy life in unhappy world.

The Buddhists teach letting go of attachment
is the secret to ending suffering
because wanting is suffering born.

But wife, cat, friends are all appendages
my life would be lessened without
thus see wobbly road ahead
in reaching this Zen then
as my lane of life loops on itself
in look and like and love.

So no final scene, no play over,
just walking the wheel
until my why’s rubbed raw
my energy moves on
as body slips past in endless sleep.

Until then, gotta keep on fluxing
(as they almost used to say).

Or is that flexing?

Both.

— Smith, 11-6-2011

(This poem was massaged from a paragraph in last month’s blog, for those whose brains tingle in deja voodoo.)


Looking for the light – foto by Smith