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...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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December 18th, 2018
I forgot to post my last month’s feature on Medusa’s Kitchen… what’s going on? Where’d my ego go?
http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-sun-always-rises.html
November’s feature was my 36th consecutive month – started December 2015, basically 9 poems and 10 fotos a month. Huge thanks to editor/publisher Kathy Kieth for this gig.
My latest book of poetry – Where Never Was Already Is, 244 poems, 29 collages, 324 pages, $15 – consists of the first 27 months of Medusa.
http://ccpress.blogspot.com/2018/04/098Smith.html
I have a 45 minute reading followed by Q&A coming up on February 19 at the Art on Madison gallery. There is no open mic, just me… although I’ll give 10 minutes to Lady to read our collaborations. Here’s the blurb.
Steven B. Smith published Artcrimes (1986-2006) featuring 517 poets/artists, including Bukowski and Harvey Pekar; per the Plain Dealer: “with the publication of 21 issues of ArtCrimes, Smith has made a vital and indelible mark on this city’s history.” In 2012, his memoir “Stations of the Lost & Found, a True Tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Outsider Art, Mutant Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing the Cradle, and Leaving the Country” was published by The City. In 2018, Crisis Chronicles Press put out “Where Never Was Already Is” – 244 poems 29 collages over 54 years. He and his wife, Lady K, spent 2006-2009 living in 10 countries on 3 continents recharging their word wells. He’s run from the cops 10 times, got away 9.
Art on Madison, ?14203 Madison Avenue, Lakewood, Ohio, 7pm, February 19, 2019.
My 37th feature will be this Friday… I get the 3rd Friday each month. It’s reassuring to have a monthly outlet.
December 16th, 2018
by Lady K, 20″ x 24″
These are pieces Lady K’s worked on since October.
She has a tendency not to sign, title, or date her pieces (something I found I regretted whenever I did it), but all these except the last are based on sea creatures (tho I see alien genitalia as well), perhaps in the Mariana Trench. Many of the 3-dimensional forms are clay. All the blue is copper corrosion, the orange/brown coming through the blue is rust.
by Lady K, 20″ x 24″
by Lady K, 4″ x 6″ & 6″ x 6″
by Lady K, 8″ x 8″ (work in progress)
by Lady K, 8″ x 8″ (work in progress)
by Lady K, 6″ x 6″ & 8″ x 8″ (works in progress)
by Lady K, 8″ x 8″ (work in progress)
by Lady K, 6″ x 6″ (work in progress)
by Lady K, 19″ x 23″ x 6″
by Lady K, 19″ x 23″ x 6″
by Lady K, 4″ x 6″ & 5″ x 6″
by Lady K, 5″ x 6″
by Lady K, 6″ x 6″
by Lady K, 8″ x 8″ (work in progress)
November 8th, 2018
from A Page of Madness, 1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa director
Watched the 1926 Japanese silent movie “A Page of Madness” – the strangest most amazing depiction of mental illness I’ve seen on film. 30 minutes in, in the middle of an insane melee in the madhouse, the film disappears, turns to grey static with the message: “Oops, Sorry something went wrong. Please close and reopen your browser. Error Code 3000,” so I start over, and 30 minutes after that, Twilightzonesville again with same message. 4 more errors in last 10 minutes. Perfect for a madness movie. And adding to the ambiance, there are no title cards – back then the Japanese hired a narrator to give verbal exposition in each theater – so except for the IMDB plot summary of “A husband picks up a job as a janitor at an insane asylum scheming all the time to be close to and free his wife from the institution where she recently attempted suicide,” its interpretation is up to you.
At one point it looked like the old grieving husband trying to rescue his wife was hitting on a young woman, which did not make any sense, so researched and found it was their daughter.
The film’s first 10 minutes are a masterwork multi-exposure fast-cut montage of insanity. Brilliant. And unpleasant.
The closest I can come in weirdness, style, and intensity is Ingmar Bergman – Personae and Hour of the Wolf.
Powerful flick. Going to seriously miss Filmstruck when it shuts down end of this month.
Madness, madness I say!
~ ~ ~
The Starbucks barista asked which scone I wanted. Since the display had a glass top and a ceiling light above it. I held my finger on top and caressed the scone with its shadow. “The one with the shadow finger,” I replied. “Shadow finger?”, she glanced down, saw the shadow stroking the strawberry scone, looked up and broke out laughing.
~ ~ ~
Car starts making weird mechno-electroid sounds on Lady’s way to work. At a red light, she turns it off to see if the sound disappears – whereupon the stop light turns green and the car to her left starts through the intersection… and is hit by a turning car. So noise and stop prevented her crashing too – which is good – but noise comes from dying A/C compressor which is $1300 to replace – which is bad. Already had 2-3 expensive repairs past 18 months. Car is an 11 yr-old Prius and we love it, but looks like time to move up the line.
~ ~ ~
from A Page of Madness, 1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa director
November 1st, 2018
Hafiz (1320-1389) and I wrote a hatcheck girl poem 600+ years apart.
THE HATCHECK GIRL
by Hafiz
Why
Are there
So few in the court
Of a perfect
Saint?
Because
Every time you are near Him
You have to leave pieces
Of your
Soul
With
The hatcheck
Girl
Who won’t give them
Back—-
O
O
O
U
C
H
(from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master, translations by Daniel Ladinsky, Penguin Compass, 1999)
~ ~ ~
A Hatcheck Girl in a Capitalist Bar
The capitalist in the hatcheck bar
suggested to the coatroom girl insofar
as tips were concerned she could go far,
for flirting brought her twenty-five cents,
while cleavage shown was a dollar,
and sharing her tits would pay the rent
and get her a fox fur collar,
while I think if she had any sense
his nuts with her knee she should clobber.
– Smith, 1.1.2014
(didn’t know about his until this week)
October 31st, 2018
This is a 3-fer – the Lady, the Dick, and the Liar.
~ ~ ~
Here is Lady K’s poem written last Saturday in the hour before our monthly poetry workshop called Rufus, run by poet Wendy Shaffer.
Rufus is 6-10 friends sitting in a circle around coffee and bagels sharing 1 new poem each for feedback, and has been going on longer than Lady & I (and we’re in our 14th year).
Rufus includes 3 of my favorite poets – Wendy Shaffer, Russell Vidrick, and Lady K. Smith.
Stone soup is, according to Wikipedia, “an old folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, and wood soup.” Love the concept.”
RUFUS
by Lady K, 10.27.2018
Let’s meet at the the crossroads, I’ll bring a
stone. someone some magic beans, and one a
string from their pocket, and someone a
clock
The cat will bring some cheese, the mouse
will bring some cream, the clock will bring
its hands, and we will make some time
We’ll tie our shoes with patience and button
up our ironed shirts, flashes of the pinks
from filed nails on worried-over hands, what
our barber has made of us this moon.
Harvest conjures measure. This is the time
for apples and carrots, for potatoes and
pumpkins and Mother Goose’s cobbled shoes.
This is the time for the reunion of friends these
words are candles in the closing tilting
cabbage of year each other like a yardstick
turning in measured postures we are, the grace
of our liquid profiles, the loping of shoulders,
and years are offspring of old who have gone
their whimsical way while we, we turn as houses
in each other, seasons housed in us, how I
looked last year, how I look this year, how I
look again, squinting through the sleeping dark
at the blurry clock through years and years.
The solace of friends, friends, this is our
solace, survivors of time’s laminating palimpsests
over memories until the poignancy of a turn
uncovered, the clear mirror of each other through
the madeleine of crisp seen huffs of breath in
huddled sky, we are characters of favorite books
meet in knit caps, we ladle out the stories and
make stone stew.
~ ~ ~
Just reread The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick (1962) and found it much better than I remembered from 40 years ago, though it doesn’t seem to have much similarity to the TV series. Now rereading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? for the first time since they turned it into Bladerunner in 1982 – he died just before it came out, but I read he had seen it in a studio showing especially for him.
Bladerunner is better than Sheep.
The man might have the most titles turned into film/TV… though Shakespeare could be competitive with his 37 plays.
Philip K. Dick 1928-1982.
Second Variety, 1953, shortstory, Screamers, 1995 movie
Paycheck, 1953, shortstory, Paycheck, 2003 movie
Imposter, 1953, shortstory, Out Of This World, 1962 TV
Imposter, 1953, shortstory, Imposter, 2002 movie
The Hood Maker, 1953, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
The Commuter, 1953, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
The Hanging Stranger, 1953, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
Sales Pitch, 1954, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
Exhibit Piece, 1954, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
The Father Thing, 1954, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017
Adjustment Team, 1954, shortstory, The Adjustment Bureau, 2011 movie
The Golden Man, 1954, shortstory, Next, 2007 movie
The Crystal Crypt, 1954, shortstory, The Crystal Crypt, 2013 movie
The Impossible Planet, 1955, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
Human Is, 1955, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
Autofac, 1955, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
Foster, You’re Dead!, 1955, shortstory, Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams, 2017 TV
The Minority Report, 1956, shortstory, Minority Report 2002 movie
The Minority Report, 1956, shortstory, Minority Report 2015 TV
The Man In The High Castle, 1962, novel, The Man In The High Castle 2015 TV
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, 1966, shortstory, Total Recall, 1990 movie
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, 1966, shortstory, Total Recall 2070, 1999 TV
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, 1966, shortstory, Total Recall, 2012 movie
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968, novel, Bladerunner, 1982 movie
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968, novel, Bladerunner 2049, 2017 movie
Confessions of a Crap Artist, 1975, Confessions d’un Barjo, 1992 movie
Radio Free Albemuth, 1976, novel, Radio Free Albemuth, 2008 movie
A Scanner Darkly, 1977, novel, A Scanner Darkly, 2006 movie
plus some short films like Piper in the Woods 2016 7 minutes from 1953 short story
~ ~ ~
While I have not read of a single decent person ever saying a good thing Trump has done, I have seen that he has publicly been accused of 3 rapes (one of a 13 yr-old), of stealing from his vendors, cheating on his taxes, cheating on his wives, laundering money for both the Russian and the American mobs, of treason, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, destroying evidence, voter fraud, stealing from charity, of being a genuinely shitty person, and of siring Trump thug junior 1, Trump thug junior 2, and Trump thug daughter who’s married to a Trump thug wanna-be… I dream of Trump and his Klueless Kluck Klan of a family in jail, without bail, all in one cell with no food – the deal being the last one left uneaten gets to be put in a cage and floated out to sea.
October 23rd, 2018
2018.10.15 – Alphaville
2018.10.16 – Ego & the Seven Smiths
2018.10.17 – Status Report 278
2018.10.18 – Lest Ye Be
2018.10.19 – Status Report 279
2018.10.20 – Wingdom Weather
2018.10.21 – Karmic Strip
~ ~ ~
Alphaville
What is the privilige of the dead?
– To die no more.
Do you know what turns darkness into light?
– Poetry.
What is your religion?
– I believe in the spontaneity of our conscience.
Those that have not been born, do not cry,
and have no regrets
~ ~ ~
Ego & the Seven Smiths
Grumpy, Irritable, Grouchy, Stubborn,
Arrogant, Angry, and Curmudgeon
~ ~ ~
Status Report 278
Night yet clings to dark earth
most folk still asleep
the air untainted with their need
but soon sun will rise
and dark dissipate
even if sky is clouded, rainy,
sun will rise
sun always rises
until it doesn’t
~ ~ ~
Lest Ye Be
Judge? Analyze?
The book or the cover?
Ya gotta, and you can’t.
You shouldn’t and you do.
But even this is a judgment.
Zen monks saying judgment is bad
is judgment.
Ya gotta cross the street
so you look both ways…
analysis, judgment
until you go
or don’t.
~ ~ ~
Status Report 279
Color creeps up sky
shadows rest for coming night
we wake
rise
lay on yesterday’s lies
step stepped steps
set old chairs round used table
looking at anything but each other
everything but ourselves
as we lie in layers
and rot
or not
~ ~ ~
Wingdom Weather
We don’t know what we don’t know
and we don’t know what we do
so believe Easter eggs and chocolate
and big debt Christmas crying on the cross
used-car lot asphalts forever
no-service service stations
big box stores
laugh track sitcom lives with no prize
going coming coming going
scarfing down legal lies
forgetting why`
how to fly
or even try
they’re so sly
~ ~ ~
Karmic Strip
I used to sail up denial
mile after mile of reprisal
drinking bitter brew
In fact, still do
Weary worry bone deep hurry
running lies up the line
leaping looping time
Worshiping fool
It’s in this niche that
the nose knows
the toes goes
Karma’s after fact
October 22nd, 2018
My October feature at Medusa’s Kitchen is up, thanks to the generous heart and flowing eye of publisher/editor Kathy Kieth. I’m especially happy with this one – sometimes what you choose one month doesn’t read as well a month later when it appears, but this one flows right fine.
http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2018/10/sometimes-won-sometimes-lost.html
September 27th, 2018
My 34th consecutive monthly feature is online at Medusa’s Kitchen out in northern California, thanks to publisher/editor Kathy Kieth.
https://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2018/09/used-ego-for-rent.html
My recent book “Where Never Was Already Is” consists of all the poems that appeared in my first 27 months on Medusa’s Kitchen… 324 pages, 244 poems, 29 illustrations, perfect bound, $15, 6″ x 9″ — http://ccpress.blogspot.com/2018/04/098Smith.html
September 15th, 2018
This fall, Cleveland State University Poetry Center is publishing selected poems by Russell Atkins (1926), co-edited by poets Robert MacDonough and Kevin Prufer.
Atkins lost all his personal papers when he went into the hospital then assisted living years ago and the city tore down his house, so they are looking for any poems published in magazines or chapbooks.
They discovered 4 of his poems in Artcrimes # 7 (1989 edited by Chris Franke) and 2 in Artcrimes 11 (1991 edited by Ben Gulyas) – and of the 6, 4 were unknown to the editors.
If anyone knows of any other published Atkins poems, please let me know and I’ll pass it on.
Russell AtkinsWiki article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Atkins
The 6 Atkins poems in Artcrimes — the blog editor deleted the special spacing from his poems and left justified.
~ ~ ~
Transit
by Russell Atkins
th’ baby came forward
with out-held arms
saying, ” — dah!”
to me?
I
knew a terror not to dare!
with fled I rushed
about the terminal
looking for things going now
like a bus for Canada —
a car’s approach:
“I need the swift of your help,”
I said, ” — a baby
with arms out-held!”
the driver said, “I dig!
(he knew the worst)
— let’s split
~ ~ ~
Backyard
by Russell Atkins
reaches about
and has hold
of the throats
of trees
— such shake it to death wild!
the snow octopus
widths into blizzards
of mists
then furiouses!
a dash through sky
flung tentacles
jet
full squid
~ ~ ~
Spring’s Generation Gap
by Russell Atkins
it takes evening
a long time to arrive — it
feebles (slow old man
still trying to hold down a job,
decrepit) forced to move fast
— janitor of the above offices!
he replaces things that
were used puts them in special
dark corners, closes shadows
into spaces like doors,
straightens, covers until
all seems gone
just before
youthful day comes to work
demanding, “Hey, dad —
— where the hell is everything?!”
~ ~ ~
Old Man Carrying A Bible In A High Crime Area
by Russell Atkins
Condense, will it? grow a barrel
for shooting?
flash open and spit God’s
electric al bullets, Leviticus
as the holy trigger – the thief
drops into hell? book develops
dimensions turned sanctuary
where no muggers plunder?
Does the dope fiend defer
to this, struck to a fix? will the book
in black, cleric vestment
convert loose women?
Old friend, listen: don’t wait
– when they come at you,
throw it at them!
~ ~ ~
Ninety Kilocycles
by Russell Atkins
Ever stuffed in that box living’s
claustrophobia’d surely, small
this harangue or abuzz’d of news
where miniature Savings & Loans
are robbed, where murder, as if betwixt dolls,
squeaks a gloom’d spider’s kept
spinning no matter what –
– to have everything in handfuls
is most convenient(even conscienced
by dials)
if someone leaps at end
from a vast height, it’s brought
between fingers of a mere hand
held for a minute, for a time
at this squat package of sounds
– when, quickly,
the button snaps off the world’s harsh
after its hush, sprung like a trap,
one imagines the rage goes on
within –
~ ~ ~
Public Square
by Russell Atkins
The light is at the back
it lets one know
it’s not for sure
as I’m amidst
this alit of a
chess’d up jut
long’d from by
shadows that ail
twilight’s haunt
is in appear‘’
downtown’s vaunt
is muted
so, half way
through some monstrous’d
abstraction
I sense but its
short-shrift
– things told
should be open
by now
to what is
turning
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