Mexico Way
The high water rustle of wind
in palm tree leaves
hanging in pre-rain sky
soothe as I walk
toward cloud shroud mountain
mañana and morrow
mixing in my mind
— Smith, 8-8-2011
The Man keeps knocking
Down my front door
Wants to sell me some
Sorta social spore
Says grits & groceries
Ain’t enough
In the modern life
You need much more stuff
— excerpt from Bye Buy, 2005, Smith
I recently received two issues of the travel magazine AFAR in the mail. The magazine costs $20 a year and we did not order it.
Then yesterday Lady received an Amazon hardback book titled “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain – How I Went from Gang Member to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur” by Ryan Blair with Don Yeager which neither of us had ordered . . . receipt said it was a gift.
So, who is/are our secret admirer/s who sent us this stuff?
Maybe someone wants us to continue our foreign travel adventures so they sent me the AFAR travel mag to whet my whistle and shipped the entrepreneur book to Lady so she can find a way to make the money needed to travel.
Or perhaps they’re trying to lure Lady into a gang, or maybe just trying to get me back out of Cleveland.
I think when we eventually get some money, I’m going to start sending folk anonymous gifts of books and such just to mess with their minds.
The Doers of Perception
Irregardless of irreality
“Go thee and suffer less”
is the tip top tenet
of
The Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering
the irreverand Smith and his beloved Lady presiding
Four more core . . . or
“Do as you would be done”
“This too will pass”
“What does not come from within may be lost without”
“It’s your life, you live it”
Our thesis is simple —
You are broken
and cannot be fixed
it is not your fault
get over it
Our last mass mingled One-ness was before Big Bang
in mid meld muddle
of pre-time cuddle sans clang
but since then
one went, and we’re we
slivered into smithereens
pieces
parts
portions of point past particular
And now being broken token
it’s what we do with what we got
how we get back up
hit the spot
take the turn, earn the burn
learn to walk the plot
— Smith, 8-7-2011
These are a few of my private journal collaged covers from the 1970s.
The cover above is mentioned in the excerpt below from my soon to be self-published memoir.
(Note – DMT is the weirdest hallucinogen I’ve done . . . it makes “reality” an interactive collaboration.)
I got to be so much in the flow in Brahman, Michigan, one morning I walked half mile up to the highway, stuck out my thumb and a guy picked me up and drove me all the way to Chagrin Falls, Ohio to my friends’ front door.
On the second leg of the journey, I hitched from Chagrin to West Virginia to visit Stone Ranger. It was during that time–DMT time–I had collaged my notebook with word balloons cutout from comic books. Twice on that trip word balloons answered my questions. For example, I asked, “What should I do now?” And a word balloon said, “Well, now we eat.”
It started raining badly, so I sat up under a highway underpass, smoking DMT-soaked parsley and reading one of my religious books, a small, black Brotherhood book that said we could manifest our own reality. I looked up and saw it was still raining. I looked down and saw there were thirty pages left. I said, “Well, I’ll finish the book, and when I’m done, the rain will stop and the sun will come out.”
Whammo, when I finished the book, the rain immediately stopped and the sun came out. I laughed in delight and said some sort of joke to God–to reality–at God’s expense and stood up laughing, lost my balance and landed in a puddle of rainwater. I made joke on God; God made joke on me.
Hitchhiking back, an attractive girl picked me up and said, “Oh shit, if you’re going to kill me, kill me now.” She explained she was on speed and was nervous but had to have somebody to talk to.
“I can help with that,” I said. She flinched as I reached down into my pack to pull out my pipe and some marijuana. I got her stoned. She drove me back to Chagrin and gave me her phone number, but at that point I was being faithful to another man’s wife and never called.
— from chapter 23 of Stations of the Lost – a true tale of armed robbery, stolen cars, outsider art, mutant poetry, underground publishing, robbing the cradle, and leaving the country by Smith & Lady.
WE HAVE TENTACLES
we have tentacles
extending into the immediate
not only the capsule of skin
tentacles that mix
and throb and meander with
the immediate
innumerable tentacles
innummerable tentacles
permeate into our skins,
our cells
ultimately and immediately
every tentacle
is connected
to every other
tentacle
the thickness of it
is that it is clustered
skin is abstraction
for a bundle of will
a bundle that seems to bump
itself around
eyes, legs, hands, mouth
allow the bundle to move
through the greater mass
it is sticky, the bundle,
pulling itself through this
mother mass
this is what we perceive of
as separation
separation
clumped together again
with gravity…
I pray
and it casts a net of will
tentacles
into this greater mass
of information
I pray
for immediate perception of
connectedness
everything is so simultaneously logical
and illogical, simultaneously banal
and miraculous
the banal part
is mostly the grind of ambition
of getting through the day well
and the miraculous
is the empirical stuff
that I observe “around” me
signs and sounds
it would seem
it should be the opposite
that the mind inside this shell
should be where novelty resides
and everyday sights and sounds
should be not so novel
but I look at our breathing
tail-swagging cat, and hear
the river of traffic outside,
and I know it is an orchestra
and a ballet
and the permeating song
of crickets outside
the lush August sonic carpet
it is thick, This
the carpet of sound
is thick and humid
it is fabric cumming
into my perception
that by handling with mindfulness
I either tune in to
or it tunes in to me…
I focus my ears, my eyes,
my attention and it is a machine
that becomes keener
the volume and quality
pulls itself together
by my tightening attention
Lady
Can’t hog all the cyber ink . . . time to share my internet ego bursts with Lady.
Here’s her latest 4-panel cartoon. She started doing cartoons in France in 2007 and I love every one of them, from the first ones which featured our conversations as we walked through the wine vines to her latest featuring Fishthing.
After the four panels, I typed out the words in each panel since some are too small to read.
PANEL 1:
=======
God-Goddess Sun, Jesus
Antenna, Life Giver
Oh Sun Goddess, I
have learned of stars
that shoot out water,
water plumes from fire.
Gaia “Jee-ah”
Healing <------->
Help <------->
Love <------->
Peace <------->
Tides <------->
Calm <------->
Insight <------->
Luna
Mother Earth, Mother Organism
Goddess Planet
Fishthing saw… Fishthing saw that the “earth”
was in great flux. Like when it is a hot
summer war day & the ants are fighting or
carrying away their dead, the “animals” of “earth”
were being irrational with their policies as well…
Fishthing had manifested an earthquake, two
earthquakes, a horrid disaster, but no one was
talking about it. Instead it came out in
PANEL 2:
=======
horrid fear, fear mongering with irrational
manupulating political speech & spin. If things
would be right for the planet, though, what
would this look like, & how would it
manifest in humans & political policies:
Cutting “waste” =
scary politically charged historically –
how do we reclaim this concept &
make it work?
Cutting the “defence” budget =
a cool thing
HOWEVER…
what did they try to pull on
us with this SUPER CONGRESS
THING ? ? ?
? ? ? Help us, Fishthing!
PANEL 3:
=======
? ? ? ? ?
What… Does… It… All… Mean?
Whatdoesitallmean
Whatdoesitallmean
Whatdoesitallmean… Huh? Whadoaya say?
Eh?
Yeah? What’s that? Uh huh?
What? How? Why?
What does it all mean?
Well…
PANEL 4:
=======
(no text – you’ll have to decipher the symbolism, or ask Lady K)
Then she drew my portrait below — she said my art was “Cosmic alien punk.”
I’m a wordsmith who’s lost his words, so I’m going to post more of my old art.
These pieces range from 1971 through 2004 and vary in size from 3″ x 5″ (Limbic Lizard) to 24″ x 30″ (Examination of Consciousness).
Six of these eight are in other people’s art collections and I’ve not seen most of them in decades
Sculpt in and feel the shape of will shaping or touching the shape of the future. Using imagination like a flashlight, like a rope, like a sketch, like a lasso, like a definition…
SCULPT IN
Sculpt in and feel the shape
Know the shape of a situation
Know the shape of your will
like a lasso shaping a horse
like a lasso shaping a rider
like a lasso shaping the horse running down a range
like a range coming back into your eyes and
defining your imagination
like the future that is in 4D coming back
and defining your imagination
Imagine that your imagination
is defined by the shape of the future
and know this.
Know that your imagination
has feelers, has feelers
creeping around a curve
that the curve wraps around your head
that your head wraps around your adjacent step
and if you had access to the rewind button
you could go in reverse as well
You could go in reverse by remembering
Your moment’s brain remembers
and defines the past
Your moment’s brain’s imagination
defines the future
The future defines
your moment’s brain’s imagination
Now is a thick thing
Now has the highway
Now has a lasso on your ears
Now has a lasso on the way you are sitting
Now has a lasso on the stationary sofa
Now has a lasso on the thick moving through thick
Imagine you are a rider on your horse
or if you are in a car
the car could be your horse
know that you *are* the car
that contains the human
that you *are* the horse
that carries the human
and that the Earth’s lasso
is sticky and throbbing
that the Earth’s lasso
and gravity and movement is shape
moving through and on and in itself
Lady
6 more of my paper collages from 1985-1999 which were published in Artcrimes, Clevebland Rag-o-zine, Taproot, SpitCity, Little Albert, Hey Daddyo, SplitCrimes, Brain Cell and other underground publications.
Last month was all new poems, so first two days this month will be old collages . . . 7 today, 6 tomorrow. These are from 1985-1999 and were published in Artcrimes, Clevebland Ragozine and other underground publications.
