WALKING ON THIN ICE

city sauce

8 a.m. dentist started the day. took out old filling, filled in new. i come home to find a rock n roller with my wife. she’s in the kitchen with urban-jellen‘s blue seven over coffee and computers. what’s the world come to when you find band leaders at your kitchen table when you return from your pain? life’s a concert in a psychedelic cabaret.

i did come up with the seed for the 2nd smokey grey story walking back: a fennel seed, a golem, and pod central. probably title it The Man In Grey Fennel Suite. i have no shame.

later blue brought polish painter by who needs kathy’s help selling art on e-bay. she sez she had to re-channel the old engineer kathy to help him. now inner engineer kathy is primed for purpose and won’t go back to sleep till done. i sed sometimes you have to use your old yous, your old skills, to get the job done. but i can’t channel my old smiths any more. they’re not there. i’ve accepted all the old mes, and now they’re gone, lying still, down in my basement - future clues for the smithologists.

kathy’s almost done with issue 17 of TheCityPoetry.com – her largest, most diverse issue yet – and the 1st international issue to issue from her intellectual loins. seeing her enjoyment at laying out and editing others’ work makes me yearn for yet another ArtCrimes to work on. but ArtCrimes is dead – long live ArtCrimes. 

she saw me looking longingly at her issue so she went out and bought me lawrence durrell’s alexandria quartet to keep me out of her hair. “going to read that man right outa my hair” as they sing in south specific.

5 days and nights left in krakow. then train to lodz for one night. hope kathy doesn’t decide to ride on the outside of the train on the way back as she did the way down. then england 2 nights and on to a small croatian fishing village on the adriatic sea for 3 months. this is like no life of mine, nor life i’ve known of others. i am so glad to be here, to be with kathy.

she and i are reading 1 last time as part of the urban-jellen test‘s opening dada cabaret this friday at club tytus i koka. this will make 3 concert readings and 1 featured reading here. krakow has been good to us. krakow is the first town i feel affection for, want to return to. amsterdam is cool because of its beauty, canals, culture and grass – but krakow is cool because of its old city center and its people – and i still found culture, and herb.

here there be dragons.

80s

This talk of music got me to thinking about music I used to listen to when I was a teenager. Wanted to share some of it with Steve. So I spent a half hour making an album from iTunes. Here’s the list:

Mr. Roboto (Styx)
Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics)
Tainted Love (Soft Cell)
Video Killed the Radio Star (The Buggles)
Turning Japanese (Blank Pages)
Desperate but Not Serious (Adam Ant)
Ghost Town (The Specials)
Electric Avenue (Eddy Grant)
Radar Love (Golden Earring)
Twilight Zone (Golden Earring)

Molly Ringwald would be proud.

Urban-Jellen Test

The Urban-Jellen Test has a concert scheduled for this Friday, Oct 27 at the Tytus i Koka club on 25 Jozefa (Krakow). I’m not sure but we might be included as one of the opening acts.

Sample songs can be found on their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/ujtest

Meeting musicians is an unexpected benefit of entering the poetry community. I didn’t just enter the poetry community; I entered the entire creative world. My favorite poets are those I’ve met (other than Neruda). My favorite musicians, artists are those I’ve met. I believe talent is local, accessible.

I remember being astonished first at the high number of photographers in the Cleveland poetry community. Wendy Shaffer opened my eyes to other worlds through her Guatemala photos. Made me want to visit, made me dream.

Pedro Dell also charmed with his photos and music.

Bree astounded me with her original lyrics, eerie nuanced voice, and her coolness.

And it goes on.

One of my favorite UJT songs: Nowa Huta 

I bought a new pen
Wantin’ to write
Hooked up with the crew
And got-balls-deep
 
Went to Łubu Dubu
Needed a light
She needed some air
We went out into the night
 
Her hair was curly red
And her tongue was quick
The taxi took us to the-aaaaah
And I think that her name was-aaaah…
 
NOVA HUTA!!
 
Climbed to the flat
Losing top and bra
She dropped her purse
Then dropped to the floor
 
No time for a Hookahhh…
And I think that her name was-aaaaah
 
NOVA HUTA!!!
 
Woke up and looked around
No sign in the place
Of that greedy lovely smile
And that sweet and forward face
 
Looked for my pants
Then looked in every room
Like an Angel she showed up
And like a mist she disappeared
 
And I don’ t know how to find her-aaa…
And I think that her name was-aaaaaa…
 
nOVA hUTA!!!
 
Looked outside my door
And what did I see?
My angel left a trace
Kissing back at me
 
I looked at the label
While I held it in my palm
I PUT IT ON THE TABLE!
it was her….
 
Heavenly LIP BALM
 
And it was pink and it was sparkly in the-aaahh…
And I think that her name was-aaahhhh……
 
 
nova- Nova- NOva- NOVa- NOVA- NOVA HUTA!!!!!………

 

english delinquent publishes smith story

i will have a short story in the 1st issue of The Delinquent, an English online & hard print magazine. not sure when, but the magazine’s launch party is november 27, 2006.

they asked for unusual submissions – so, since they call their mag The Delinquent, i sent them My First Armed Robbery.

you may read my version at http://www.agentofchaos.com/poetry19.html#armed …

folks who’ve read it asked if there’s any follow-up, so here’s my one prison story so far – Back In Black In White Film Noir – at http://www.agentofchaos.com/poetry14.html#noir

The Delinquent is at http://thedelinquent.co.uk/

punctuation

there are two places a missing period makes a difference:
COBOL programming, and menstrual cycles.

Steve’s work

My Steve, a.k.a. “smith”, is the companion and friend I’ve always wanted, never had until now. One thing that attracts me to him is his outrageousness. But I think the outrageousness is actually a symptom of his desire to explore and document his explorations. His curiosity, creativity, outrageousness, and intelligence are what I admire most in him.  I’m honored to be an interest of his.

That said, here’s a record he’s keeping:

lady k periodic chart with prediction:
 
k periodic chart
– – – – – – – –
01.19 – 01.22  . . . 3 day period . . . 21 days till next period
02.12 – 02.15 . . . 3 day period . . . 20 days till next period
03.07 – 03.11 . . . 4 day period . . . 20 days till next period
03.31 – 04.05 . . . 5 day period . . . 23 days till next period
04.28 – 05.01 . . . 3 day period . . . 24 days till next period
05.25 – 05.28 . . . 3 day period . . . 24 days till next period
06.20 – 06.23 . . . 3 day period . . . 23 days till next period
07.16 – 07.18 . . . 3 day period . . .  23 days till next period
08.10 – 08.12 . . . 3 day period . . . 23 days till next period
09.04 – 09.08 . . . 5 day period . . . 23 days till next period
10.01 – 10-05 . . . 5 day period . . . est 23 days till next period

10.28 Saturday should start your next period

nowa huta

 

kathy found herself singing the Urban-Jellen Test’s Nowa Huta song yesterday while cooking… so – since the Boston Globe says ”Come visit historic Nowa Huta, where George Orwell’s dark vision of a perfect industrial metropolis was executed with stunning precision. Until, that is, the workers rose up and overthrew Big Brother” – we went today. may have been something once, but now’s just a bland appendage to krakow’s much more interesting old city center.  i spent 40 minutes looking for the large statue of v. i. lenin they had pictured on the main square map… finally came back & read the fine print – it was torn down in 1989. so all i found was broad avenues and weak coffee.

its history is interesting tho – wikipedia sez a Communist referendum was soundly defeated by the people of Kraków, a major cause of embarrassment for the Government – so – to “correct the class imbalance”, in 1949 the authorities built a satellite industrial town to attract people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to the region, such as peasants and the working class.

was interesting to walk thru a town that was 3 years younger than i am. looked like a really big really old really sterile government project for the proletariat. did have nice trees tho.

much more interesting was kathy’s pronouncement that noses and ears never stop growing – they just keep getting bigger as you get older. the average internet user seems to believe this, but the scientific studies i found tend to disagree – tho some say flesh sags so they may appear larger.  personally, i think old flux stop using their brains causing their heads to shrink while the cartilage in their ears and nose stays the same – thus appearing larger. the sad part of this is i started looking at everyone’s nose we passed – and that is not something you want to do…. odd, ugly things they are.

agitprop

Lady’s foto journal

Zapiekanka bar. This is the best one we’ve found in Krakow. Zapiekankas are like french bread pizzas but instead of pizza sauce, there’s a layer of mushrooms under the cheese. This is the best street food ever.

 

This is a wall near a main road and little park. In the park someone sets out pie pans of water and little concrete blocks for the pigeons. When they’re startled, they fling themselves up to this building.

 

Concert advertisements.

 

Hat store display window reflecting a jazz club across the way, “Troll.”

 

main street flesh, now and then

1st 3 images are krakow public street ads, the last image is a detail from one of my collages using 1940’s magazine ads. figure these go hand in hand with the masturbation manual blog just below.