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Sunny days – foto by Smith

I’m going to start re-posting a few of my favorite poems I’ve written over the past 48 years. They’ve been seen before but not by my new readers, and I feel an urge to reestablish my bona fides.

But first, an update on my hip replacement and a recommendation to those of you possibly in the same pain.

Well, the doctor said no driving for eight weeks after surgery. Tomorrow makes three weeks since they cut me open and chopped and channeled my chassis, and yesterday I drove 60 miles back from Lady’s parents because it was best that way since I was awake and she wasn’t — and our last ride home with her driving asleep at the wheel was the scariest ride of my life (and I’m the guy who actually rolled his own car upside down in his own driveway – of course I was going way over 60 mph at the time, which ain’t easy to do in a driveway). Last night I figured I’d rather incur some extra leg pain driving so we wouldn’t become part of that old 1970’s comedy group Firesign Theatre’s famous quote “And there’s hamburger all over the highway in Sector Seven.”

I think maybe the doctor knew what he was talking about on not driving because today I hurt in new places. No damage done, but a wee bit of caution learned.

As for the hip replacement – anyone out there in serious hip pain, go for the operation. It’s changed my life; in fact it’s given me my life back. The years of horrendous debilitating bone grinding against bone pain was gone as soon as I woke up. And the bad torn-flesh pain only lasts about two weeks after the operation and there are a lot of pain pills to help you make it through the night.

Two days after the operation I was home. Two days later we went to a party. Two weeks later I’m walking without crutches or cane. It’s like magic, the proverbial before and after. If the doctor wanted, I’d make a free commercial for them praising them to the skies.

I’m poor and had to wait 6 years so Medicare would pay for the operation, but if you hurt and you’re covered, go for it. It’s literally a miracle.

Anyway, for the next few days I’m blogging some Smith classics, poems that always work when I read them to audiences, poems I’m still proud of 5 decades down the road, poems from each of those five decades – starting with this.

Dear Occupants, Accidents & Occidentals

Just yesterday it was yesterday
Now it’s already today

Confuse not mercy with weakness
Confuse weakness not with an upset liver
And confuse not an upset liver with love
It is the shape of the silence
Which defines the sound
Like winter rubbing against summer
Each refines the other

Only certain curtains can be drawn
The rest must be endured
The souring sermons
The centered self serving
The lion den Christians in Coliseum stands
Twixt ape and angel wandering
Torn between the knowledge
And the need

Do I worship the moon or sun
Or yet the blooded one?
I bloat and smell
Decay in age
The focus runs

— Smith, 2003


Lady K, her Grandmother Lenore, her parents’ dog Miles – foto by Smith

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