bus stop no loitering – foto by Smith
I don’t participate in a lot of MySpace flow like apps and tags, but Christie*~Ordained Princess of Poetry~* has been very sweet to me and she said pretty please and I do have a soft heart so here are 10 truths about me. But I won’t tag others – just like I’d never pass a chain letter on in the old days.
1 – I was born in 1946 in the Bitterroot range of the Rocky Mountains in the Idaho panhandle, raised on a 40 acre farm on Paradise Prairie 20 miles east of Spokane Washington. What future poet could ask for better metaphors than being born in Bitterroot, raised on Paradise Prairie?
2 – An excerpt from our unpublished memoir CRIMINAL by Smith & Lady:
When I was nine, the doctor pulled my foreskin back over my penis head. It hurt like heck because the foreskin had never been stretched before. Doc explained I had to wash under the foreskin every bath, or head cheese would develop. So I did. I washed it. A lot.
One night while reading and fondling my penis, I had my first climax. I didn’t understand what happened. No one had told me about sex. All I knew was it was wrong to touch myself, and I figured I’d broken something essential. Thinking it was God’s punishment, I wiped away the clear sticky goo, lay down in the dark, and waited to die. Next morning, still alive, I touched it some more. Made it break again. I broke it over and over.
Few years later, doctor said, “Your left testicle has dropped considerably lower than your right. That’s usually caused by playing with yourself too often.†I burned in shame, but kept on breaking my penis two or three times a day anyway. I must have had the most broke dick in town.
3 – In 1960 when I was 14, we moved from the farm to the city, and this 18 year old boy taught me to steal stuff from unlocked cars. I knew it was wrong but it was exciting. Couple months later I missed the last bus across town and couldn’t get home. I thought “If I can take from the glove compartment, I can take the whole car” and went into a church parking lot and found a 5 speed Fiat. Pushed it out of the lot and down the hill (I was 6 foot 3 inches tall), figured out how to make it work, drove it home. That night going 70 mph, I lost control, went off the road into a golf course where the car flipped upside down and tore one heck of a divot in the grass. Unhurt I walked home, then stole 12 more cars before I got caught and spent 9 days in juvenile detention and a year on probation. They figured it wasn’t my fault because I was getting straight As and loved my parents who loved me, so they blamed it on my older friend and made him join the Army.
4 – As a Midshipman in the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1965, I resented being made to march to Chapel every Sunday, especially since all the Officers and Midshipmen slept through the sermon, so one Sunday I took a large wind-up clanging alarm clock, set it to go off 20 minutes into the service, and wrote “THE YELLOW PHANTOM STRIKES AGAIN” in black magic marker across the face. I dropped it by the front of the Chapel as we marched in. Our guest preacher that day was Billy Graham. The alarm went off, echoing everywhere in the great stone dome while Officers and Midshipmen startled from sleep popped up and frantically looked about like jack in the boxes, and Billy Graham paused maybe three beats and continued on as if nothing had happened.
5 – In 1968 I was one of 12 Midshipmen kicked out of Annapolis for smoking marijuana. Since I had come in through the back door as an enlisted man, they either had to Court Marshall me or give me an honorable discharge. They didn’t want the publicity (we had already made the front page of the Washington Post) so the gave me an honorable. When I enlisted in the Navy in 1963 I explained I was joining the program where the Navy paid for one year of college for every two years I served. They said “Fine.” When I got to boot camp they said “Ha ha, you have to be 21 for that program, you’re only 17, so screw you.” I went to 3 months boot camp San Diego California, 9 months electronic school Memphis Tennessee, 9 months U.S.N.A. prep school in Bainbridge Maryland for the Naval Academy, 2.5 years at Annapolis, got kicked out and had the G.I. bill pay for two more years of college at Loyola in Baltimore. So, who screwed whom?
6 . When I left the Academy, I swore there were two things I’d never do – take LSD because I was crazy and it’d push me over the edge, or use a needle. Within two weeks I’d done both.
7 – I’ve ruin from the cops 10 times, got away 9. The one failure was my second and last armed robbery. Was sentenced to 11.5 to 23 months in prison. After serving 10.5 months, the Warden and the guards went to the Judge, said I didn’t belong in jail and got me released one month early. One of the guards gave me his badge as I left. (Jail is the reason I went back and graduated from college, to show I was on a better path).
8 – The happiest moment of my life was my first sky dive. After free falling almost 2 miles I pulled the ripcord and hung in total silence a mile above a gorgeous green earth, watching the sunlit slow moving farms fields woods lakes below.
9 – Saw rabbits dance in the Michigan woods one night in 1976. A male rabbit danced slow courtship circles about the female rabbit. Suddenly a second male rabbit came along and the two males started to fight dance around each other. After awhile the female got bored and hopped off. Eventually the males noticed she was gone and hopped off in different directions.
10 – Here’s the Cliff Notes of my life:
Smith 2009
9 March 1946 / Wallace Idaho / 6′ 3†/ 175
poet 46 years, artist 45 years, ArtCrimes publisher 24 years,
AgentOfChaos.com 7 years, Walking Thin Ice co-blogger 3 years
1950s
farm boy cow milker chicken/rabbit/hog waste remover
hod carrier
1960s
paper boy
car thief
house wrecker
sailor
electronics technician
poet
USNA midshipman
artist
hippie
life insurance salesman
husband
1970s
chemist
armed robber
prison cook
bankrupt
graphic arts salesman
bethlehem steel extraman
snow cone flavor delivery man
college graduate
newspaper film/music critic
milkman
avant-garde theatre manager
women’s shoe salesman
divorced
computer operator
drug dealer
carnival laborer
adulterer
church janitor
1980s
programmer analyst
drunk
condo owner
publisher/editor
celibate
1990s
near dead
sober
european traveler
2000s
unemployed
agentofchaos.com
cancer
remarried
walkingthinice.com
expat
criminal by smith & lady
repat
skin deep – foto by Smith
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