random strings of theory
 for sale - foto by smith we walk city streets. shop after shop filled with manufactured goods hung wall to wall, floor to ceiling in baited display saying “buy me,” “need me,” “want me,” “take me home with you,” “let me make your life brighter faster better cleaner easier lovelier sexier more selfish.” store after store filled with things made by the poor for the rich to sell to the rest. street after street, city after city, nation after nation - endless things crowd together, displayed, for sale. for every one thing sold, 999 remain lost and alone hanging on display walls, lying in display cases, forgotten in remaindered bins. there are more hanging handbags for sale than there are hands on earth, more for-sale shoes than there are feet. warehouses of watches. plastic dishes. dog collars. letter openers. women’s clothes. extruded plastics. rubber chickens. toothpicks. floss. lip gloss. jars of mayonnaise. forgotten plays. gew gaws. coleslaws. bracelets. rings. things. bleach. dead meat. strange treats. repeat. life on earth is set up on the premise that enough outside things can fill our inside emptiness. feel sad? buy ! glad? buy ! lonely? buy ! scared? buy ! insecure? buy ! bye? buy ! by? BUY ! humans are obsessed with stuff. it’s all they do. they make stuff. grow stuff. transport stuff to market. make markets to lure folk to to sell stuff to. transport folk to & from markets. feed and board buyers and sellers. collect, clean and process human waste & trash generated by this gathering of stuff to be bought and sold. then they hire thugs called police and army to protect the stuff before, during, and after. humans have this history of trading, buying, selling, swapping, collecting, protecting - and if none of those work, then taking by force. we spend a lot of time on our outsides, not much on our within.  market stall - foto by smith |
was that a real poem, or did you write that?
 internet store - foto by smith my main reason for moving to mexico was to live in one warm inexpensive place long enough to finish our book. wrote last chapter today. Lady’s doing one quick smoothing and we’re done. Lady’s reading me the early chapters. they’re sweet, poignant, innocent. not a bad beginning for a book called Criminal. once in a cleveland bookstore bag-o-zine reading, a woman responded to the poem i read with, “Was that a real poem, or did you write that?” that’s my response to what Lady’s reading - “Is that a real book, or did we write that?” now i do some art, add a couple pages of fotos to agentofchaos.com, study spanish, learn typing, and read through our 1,000 walkingthinice blogs for salvage material and poetic inspiration. and, figure out what my life is to be here now in this strange land. my only goal was to finish the book. now i need another. i figure reading through the blogs will lead to something. ~ ~ ~ after screwing me around for almost 5 months, social security finally promised to deposit my first check on may 15th. woke up this morning and found they’d already put the money in my bank, and it’s only the 2nd. load off our minds. we were running out of money. ~ ~ ~ Lady collaged her table. challenges me to collage mine. she’s getting feisty. she’s blossomed this journey. now we’re done with my story, she’s going to do her own. this will be The Time Of Lady. what time is it? it’s half past kissing time and time to kiss again.  collaged table by Lady - foto by smith |
the validity of relationships
 sinking sun - foto by smith The Validity of Relationships Full moon Dead The moon is moist in Autumn wrote that in the early 1970s.  cup of stuff - foto by smith |
back pat
 Cleveland Poetry Scene, A Panarama & Anthology - cover by Jim Lang april is poetry month thanks to T.S. Eliot, and it’s been a good month so far for creative recognition for me. i’ve received my copy of Cleveland Poetry Scenes, A Panorama and Anthology. i’m one of 9 poets born in the 1940s to be included. they printed 3 of my poems, and Lady and I are both mentioned in half a dozen of the articles. book is available from Bottom Dog Press.  Cleveland Poetry Scene, A Panarama & Anthology - cover by Jim Lang i had one of my fotos accepted as the cover art for Sara Holbrook’s new book coming out on Boyds Mills Press - actually getting paid for it. that makes photography, poetry, art, and publishing i’ve been paid other people’s money for so far. i took the foto inside the old walled city of Essaouira, Morocco, on the northwest coast of Africa. the magazine Balanced Living is using both Lady’s and my art as illustrations in their next issue. Jesus Crisis of TheCrisisChronicles.com blog is doing a blog on me in his poet series - i’ll be included with previous poets Alexander Pope, W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, and Ferlinghetti. believe i’m the only Unknown Poet he’s using. i’m near the end of our 14th edit of our bio of my bad-boy past - CRIMINAL by Smith & Lady. the book is 309 pages, 135,000 words, and covers the inglorious low-lights of my life from 1946 through 2005 when Lady and i decided to split the u.s.a. folks wonder how two people (Lady & Smith) can write one autobiography. when Lady first moved in, i started telling her my stories. she wrote them down. then she started interviewing me for more stories. we took her interviews of me, my previously written true stories, plus other stuff she or i or others wrote and said, and combined them into a memoir we’ve been working on for the past 2 years. the book was Lady’s idea. she’s the one who arranged all this mess into a more or less coherent chronological order. she wrote some of it, rewrote some of what i wrote, re-flowed the entire manuscript, and kept it going even when i believed there might not be enough interesting stuff there. it is my story with a bit of her and my story at the end, but it is spiritually her book. and it is a good book - funny, fascinating, and outrageous. now we need to find a publisher. this is a major book, so we need a major publisher.  cover to upcoming book More Than Friends - background foto by smith |
trickle down reality
 graffiti - foto by smith  monster mask - foto by smith  advert - foto by smith |
dead frogs when i have to
 advert detail - foto by smith excerpt from CRIMINAL by Smith & Lady: When I drank myself to death and ended up in intensive care, I got a call from Dick Head. I told him, “I can’t drink anymore or I’ll die.” He screamed, “Then why don’t you die! I’d rather die than not drink.” Dick Head’s highlight was when he read poetry at the Old Brooklyn Inn wearing nothing but an octopus wrapped around his waist. The octopus tentacles hung down, and so did Dick Head’s dick. Dick Head’s holding a large stuffed frog in his left arm, a butcher knife in his right hand, and is standing on a plastic drop cloth. He starts shouting: I only eat dead frogs / when I have to Art is free / but paint cost money Then he gut stabs the stuffed frog with the knife, and the cow entrails he’d sewn into it the previous night spill out on the floor One of the finest poetry moments I can recall. Even the college kids sat up. Last time I saw Dick Head’s dick was at the ArtCrimes 20 publication party. He had a stud in his penis head, I could see it flashing in the spot light as he read from the stage. I’ve seen him with leopard skin hair, I’ve seen him with half his hair shaved, and a safety pin through the scalp. I’ve seen him with bloody scalp. Nobody knows how he’s stayed alive this long. I know he’s alive because he still makes noises, but no more dead frogs.  local stencil graffiti - foto by smith |
head dress
 street advert detail - foto by smith  street advert detail - foto by smith  street advert detail - foto by smith |
the lucky sevens (comic by smith ‘n’ lady)
psycho doodle do
 1973 journal doodles - foto by smith private journal, February 20, 1973 Paul psychology major says my in-class doodles are in his abnormal psych book… under the label of psychotic. It is nice to have labels. I like labels. I am a lot of labels: man, woman, boy, girl, ex-con, ex-this, ex-that. I am ex. Period.  1973 journal doodles - foto by smith  1973 journal doodles - foto by smith  1973 journal doodles - foto by smith  1973 journal doodles - foto by smith  1973 journal doodles - foto by smith |
flux university
 white bird dance - foto by smith Flux U - that’s the school of life i attended. their majors were Learn & Live and Live & Learn, with minors in Learn & Earn and Earn & Live. only problem is the school is endless, never lets up or out. i hope there’s no school on the other side, after death. i just want endless summer vacation. when i die, i want to be unaware and really dead.  poster - foto by smith |