AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

dead camera, live wife

November 30, 2010 2 Comments

faded ceiling fan, original foto from dead camera – foto by Smith

My camera’s dead. Again. Looks like final death this time.

My mind is dead as well. No words, no thoughts, no echoes.

So where be blog? Here blog, come on bloggy . . . I have some odd fotos for you.

Flux it. Here are a few poems I wrote for my wife, before and after we married six months after we started. Most seem sexual, but you have to keep in mind that I was in my 20th year of voluntary celibacy when she came along and ignored my GO AWAY door mat.

~ ~ ~

Wife

Let me be your rat dog baby
Let me lick your underside
Lace my like to you my lady
Stick my stack in overdrive

You thing my swing in ever land
You wind my wig in counter time
You slip my slide in slither land
You bounce my bump in rhythm rhyme

No rubber bumper baby bugger
Our poems and art offspring will be
No inside box no barcode rudder
We free rove range about our be

So let me be your rat dog baby
Please let me lick your underside
I’ve laced my like to you my lady
You stick my stack in overdrive

~ ~ ~

Lineman

Hey baby, what’s your sign?
Cum here often?
Wanna see my coloring book?
I’ve got a big red crayon
Fit right between your lines

~ ~ ~

My first poem to her. eight days after we took up.

Pulp Lust

Your “you do with me as you want”
Popped plans of white slave trades
And long slow humid caravans
On large lumbering cockroaches
Thru jungle green into my brain.

~ ~ ~

My Scarless Lady

My woman has been with many men
Before coming with me
Her her makes her she
Her she wishes me
Our now exoskeleton her then

~ ~ ~

Match

Mingus our magic
We mingle our meld both mode
And modality

~ ~ ~

My second poem to her back in September 2005, ten days after we began.

Dada Graybeard

A lady poet followed me home
And asked if I could keep her
I replied
It must be denied
For I had no room in my freezer
She engineered her stay
Of relocation with play
Charm and elocution
Praised this and that
Allowed a wee pat
Counted on evolution
I may be cheap
And easy too
But for female I’m hard-wired
And too
It’s sort of cool
This once being the one that’s desired
Though I question her taste
Her need of rat’s waste
A too hasty fade
Will shatter shades
I cannot replace
Best to see
What she reweaves
What treasure in her trundle
Though it fracture my plan
I am but man
And man is meant to bundle

~ ~ ~

And this from three weeks later when I realized I was in love, not lust.

Plant Shepherd

I water 3 plants at work

Just now went to each, thrust
My fingers through their leaves
Into their soil to check for moistness

And flashed on this morning
You on your stomach
My fingers deep
Sampling your wetness

None of these need water

Though I may need to sample you more
To see your need
So I’ve made an appointment
For you to be closely examined
Tomorrow after work in my sanctuary
In the Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering

~ ~ ~


faded ceiling fan, heavily Photoshopped for detail – foto by Smith

cannibal cannabis saliva sativa

November 29, 2010 1 Comment

pink elephants of boozeville – foto by Smith

Cannibal Saliva

Marijuana and Mozart on a Sunday morn
Plethora of complacencies
Of tongue, beard, bush

Poets fall down.
Dream
Drown

One of my side aims of not smoking cannabis sativa is to remember my dreams because when I toke daily it affects my short term memory buffers and I forget my dreams when I wake. (Of course my main and only real viable reason for not smoking pot is money – we can’t afford what it costs up here in the States.) But my amazingly great surreal story dreams only happen once every month or so, while most remain oddly minor surreal castoffs, like this one from last night.

Somehow I did something clever and left a physical map trail squiggle of how to do it again, but my squiggle accidentally got baked into a muffin and I was half afraid it was lost and half confident I could carefully break the muffin open and my squiggle string of truth would be retrievable and readable and reusable.

But that faded into me being shown how to legally paint a car pink with a bottle of Pepto Bismol, which I of course modified so that I could illegally paint two cars with the same bottle and get a brighter pink in the process; but I suspected I was dreaming and wouldn’t be able to bring this cool pink car painting knowledge out of the dream with me and was worried the technology would be lost.

Then my plane landed and I saw Cher with her long neck and Mona Lisa smile resting on her back on the concourse floor, surrounded by half packed baggage with cheap colored aluminum foil fantasy paintings spread about her head and I was going to tell her I loved the paintings but then looked closer and saw all the hidden demons and dark and trouble waiting behind the trees and beneath the leaves and I felt so sad being older and experienced and cynical and tried three times to tell her “I hate being grownup,” but kept losing the words in the breaking sobs of my thickened throat.

These are not dreams worth not smoking grass for. I like being high, buzzed, especially after toking for 43 years. Grass and I are friends who get along, except for the financial cost. I wish I could at least drink alcohol, but the last time I drank 20 years ago I drank myself into the emergency room and 6 pints of transfused blood and it was somewhat iffy whether I was getting back out, so I quit when it turned out I was going to live.

So here I am, yearning for a buzz while all the chemicals and pills and hallucinogens and powders and liquids and needles and whatnot have fallen along the wayside over the decades because my body and soul can no longer handle them and no longer need them leaving me down to one cup of strong black Costa Rican cowboy coffee a day and a couple tokes of devil weed a month from passing friends and family.

This is not the life for an outside the barcode outlaw like myself.

Can’t just up and go back to Mexico’s $6 an ounce grass because we now have a cat we love and can’t leave, so I guess I’m going to have to generate more money up here, or else just get used to the so-called normalcy of unstoned life. I was straight for 75% of the time of the 31 months we traveled the world — found grass and hash and opium for 7 months in London, France, Amsterdam, and Mexico, but the remaining 24 months of no drugs at all didn’t bother me at all, since once I don’t smoke for a week the need goes to sleep, though never the desire.

~ ~ ~

* Explanation of above poem title: Cannibal Saliva is a pun on Cannabis Sativa. The tongue, beard, bush reference is me with my beard performing cunnilingus on my girlfriend’s bush — so since I was “eating her” while stoned and my saliva was mixing with her vaginal juices, I ended up with cannibal saliva. This was on a nice sunny Sunday early morning back in 1974 with Mozart playing on the stereo.


sin dealer – foto by Smith

new lady reading

November 28, 2010 No Comments

car window Lady – foto by Smith

Lady K is reading today down at PoetryElyria.

Host John Burroughs posted this bio for Lady:

“Lady K is a poet, web designer, collage artist, photographer and videographer based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founder and editor of The City Poetry Press and art zine, she has created and disseminated art in diverse places including London, Croatia, Morocco, and Mexico. She recently instigated a successful Poets for the Homeless project. Follow her and her husband Smith’s cosmic adventures at walkingthinice.com and visit The City at thecitypoetry.com/”

She’ll be reading with poet Elise Geither:

“Elise Geither is a northeast Ohio playwright whose works (including The Poet’s Box and Prom for Angel) have been produced across the country. Mom to three kids, she teaches at Baldwin Wallace and recently earned her PhD with an Urban Ed/ESL focus. She works with charities including Love Without Boundaries and Fill This House (Cleveland). Her book Horse Latitudes: Monologues for Women was published by deep cleveland press.”

Jim’s Coffeehouse and Diner
2 Kerstetter Way
Elyria, OH
Sunday, November 28 · 1:00pm – 3:00pm

I’ll be one of PoetryElyria’s featured poets for the December 19th reading with Courtenay Roberts.


native Lady – fotos by Smith

Lady’s Thanksgiving Recovery Plan Soup

November 27, 2010 No Comments

Lady’s Thanksgiving Recovery Plan Soup
Celery Root & Lentil Soup

1 large celery root
1 C lentils
1/4 head garlic (2 large cloves)
2 red peppers (optional, seeded)
1# carrots
1 large onion (preferably red)
4-8 T olive oil
1-2 bouillon cubes (I used beef, but you could use vegetable or chicken boullion as well, or even miso)
dash celery seed (optional)
1/2 t dried basil flakes (optional)
2-3 bay leaves (optional)

Soak lentils in approximately 3-4 C water overnight.

Chop garlic and onion. Heat olive oil in a large, heavy bottomed pot and saute the garlic and onion. Then chop the carrots and peppers (I prefer large pieces) and throw them in the pan.

If the celery root has come with stalks and leaves, cut them off, wash them, chop them up and throw them into the pot & stir.

Skin the celery root and chop the root up into 1/2″ chunks, and throw them in and stir. Salt the veggies a little bit and stir.

Saute until the celery root is slightly aromatic, about five minutes. Keep stirring the ingredients over medium heat so that they don’t stick to the bottom.

Add the lentils and enough water to cover the veggie mixture with about an extra half inch or so at the top. Add the celery seed, bay leaves, basil and bouillon and put on a high flame bring to a boil, then simmer, about 30-40 minutes until vegetables are nice and tender and water is somewhat reduced. You might need to add seasoning to taste (I use adobo powder.)

word, sound, internal rhyme, logic

November 27, 2010 No Comments

shape shadow – foto by Smith

This is my favorite poem of mine to read to audiences because it flows in word, sound, internal rhyme, and logic.

Alone This Train

I look to pain to gain
Sleep devoid of sheep
And master’s muster walk
Or talk of tinkers’ conforming will

Alone this train
I see you born
To breed
To die
Infected meat
You teach to cheat
Your fly from famine
Shallow matter
Decayed in safety’s slumber

You briefcased fellows
Bellow farts to follow
Hollow smells
Of high topped fashion
Passion fish not flesh
But flounder

Hurried waters sleek in sinning
Shower lies and cry forgetting
Licking compulsion’s flesh

This land is long, and lost in shadow
Her sweets succinctly sour

Here’s a video of me reading Grease Your Grill and Alone This Train in Detroit at the Beat Cafe last year — library.crisischronicles.com/2010/08/25/steven-b-smith-reads-2-more-poems-at-the-beat-cafe–15-august-2009.aspx.

Here’s the other one in the video — another of my audience favorites.

Grease Your Grill

I’m an oven cleaner baby
Come to scrub your grill
Yes this oven loving man
Means to steam your grill
Get the heat back baby
Flame and fire the thrill

I’ll rub your rust off lady
Get your grid to shine
Rid this mood of maybe baby
Lady let me lick your lime
Make much meat that might be
Moistened by munching lightly
Juicy, prime

Gonna grease your grill
Put the heat back baby
Then, send you the bill


evil eye – fotos by Smith

crystal city

November 25, 2010 1 Comment

Crystal City – foto by Smith

My digital camera died, played dead three days, and on the third day rose again to take pictures. I don’t know why and I’m not asking questions.

Now I can take you back to Crystal City where beneath the glare and glaze backside the gleam I seek and report the smallest sparkle particle plausible possible present past perfect this Thanksgiving cheerful evening as we stumble ever errant on toward Xmas.




Crystal City – fotos by Smith

Remember the dream

November 25, 2010 3 Comments



It’s an existential morning, this morning. We’re in one warm room and the rest are cold. We’ve cordoned off the living room from the rest of the place and it seems like a desperate little room of temporary comfort on some ship headed on a crash course of a spiritually and materially impoverished future full of gray hair, regret and woe. Smith and I are already picking up the pieces of each other like the ghosts in the movie Beetlejuice. Smith & I have crash landed into each other’s sanctuaries. Thank goodness for the sanctuary but what about the world?

It’s such a dark time of year–November beginning some kind of serious nocturnal thinking or some kind of hunkering down. The celebration is an internal one, Christmas tree fireworks in the darkness of the brainpan. The creeping of the house as though it, too, is thinking and hunkering down. The solidity of the house. The quietude of the house before Smith wakes up into pain.

Cat is so thoroughly asleep on her plush blanket, her creature eye and whiskers competent in comfort.

Me, I’m trying to wake up from numbness, the muffled coccoon I’ve swathed myself in to abey the buffeting of the rocket barelling into the future.

Dripping with the physical, mired in the physical the brain is like a swathed observer with a tinny old-timey radio voice trying to say, “Remember the dream….”

& that’s where I’m at this morn. Reality is telling me to remember to write, to remember to pursue & make the dream tangible.

Lady

7 tunes for the misbegotten

November 24, 2010 1 Comment

hyperSmith looking for his camera – foto by Smith

My camera died. Guess I was blogging too many pictures and reality’s saying it’s time to move on.

So how about a few performed word music jams?

Peter Ball — aka the musical group Apartment One — and I have been sporadically jamming for the past 8 years: my voice and words, his music and recording mixing editing.

Peter’s putting his music online at reverbnation.com/apartmentone, and he’s included seven of our jams and jellies.

Two of them — Mass Mambo from yesterday’s jam, and Bluesmith — are on his home page, or will be until new Ball songs push them down.

To see the rest, click on See All 83 Songs. On the next screen, you can either scroll down his long song list to the six “*smith” songs — or do a ctrl-F (hold down the Ctrl key and press the F key) to initiate SEARCH; once the search box comes up, type in “smith” and it will take you to the songs in the following order:

Bluesmith / Bloodsmith / Trainsmith / Bitchsmith / Byebuysmith / Brainsmith

To play, click on the b&w Play button on the left. Sometimes it takes 5-20 seconds of downloading before they play.

I quite like our two newest: Mass Mambo and Bluesmith, and find Bloodsmith, Trainsmith, Bitchsmith, and Brainsmith to be odd, strange, eccentric, occasionally uncomfortable creatures, maybe music from an alternative reality that has different sounds and values. But there’s usually some small thing somewhere in my psychotic monkey howlings that should be of interest at least to students of abnormal psychology, and Peter’s music is always interesting in these cuts by our interdimensional duo.

Lady heard these tonight, most for the first time, and her initial response was “You sound like a character,” and near the end it became, “You’re possessed.” Hmmmmmm, is she saying I am possessed of character?

Peter’s been making music for more than 30 years, alone and with friends and strangers in his apartment. He and I have recorded maybe 120 musical jams so far. My next project is to get some of these up on my own reverbnation account along with a bit of Lady’s and my recorded poetry.


lungSmith wailing his words – foto by Smith

sum do some don’t

November 23, 2010 No Comments

Some like my poetry blogs, some don’t. A few like my political blogs, more don’t. Pretty much no one likes my rants. But most folk seem to enjoy my pictures, so today we’ll take the easy path of image over word.


Wow Mom – foto by Smith

intimations of mortality – foto by Smith

ring of fire – foto by Smith

Moon Meat – collage & foto by Smith

look into my lies – foto by Smith

black cat fever – foto by Smith

detail of Dana Depew sculpture – foto by Smith