AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

Number 1 Son


Pappy – foto Smith

40 years ago I asked my father Pappy Smith to write or draw in my art journal. This is what I got.

Number 1 Son
by Pappy Smith

I ain’t no artist so I can’t paint a
masterpiece

I ain’t no poet so no poetry

I ain’t no writer so can’t write a
story and therefore can’t write
anything in this book.

Love, Pappy

~ ~ ~

He was 50 when he wrote this; it’s his one and only poem and appears in Stations of the Lost & Found, a true story of armed robbery, stolen cars, outsider art, mutant poetry, underground publishing, robbing the cradle and leaving the country by Smith & Lady, which will be available next week for online ordering. Finally, after almost seven years in the making and 66 years of living it, my memoir makes its move.






Pappy – fotos Smith

The Better Be Blues


Strange country – foto Smith

The Better Be Blues

No rhyming no reason not even scheming
just riffing on flukes toning down town
where clones within the clowns abound
around circus centers short-circuiting service
with whethered words reworking the reins
while raining rains rain and reign
leaving me yet but wet strand in sand
unknightly nervous
in juke joint jam
hamming the bone
outclassed yet unowned
a strange country crossing
leaping lines on the map
in lap dance of chance
choices chosen charred or frozen
a very small clasp in long line of nuance
posing my moaning
in Mohawk of morning
blowing blowhard through these Better Be Blues
my daily do my me for you
our final truth our playing our dues
amidst these youse and me be clues
which rule rue

— Smith, 7.30.2012


Why settle for less? – foto Smith

Professor Smith — lost in the vaults


One half second – foto Smith

Here’s a long lost Ball & Smith song from the vaults (from way back in December of 2011).

I didn’t post it then because I didn’t like it. Peter Ball, my musical maestro I jam with, reintroduced me to the song. Maybe my standards have lowered but it doesn’t sound that bad now.

So, a goldy moldy fresh from the vaults of the recently rejected, Professor Smith.

Professor Smith

Heisenberg dances here and there
dead alive with why of where.
Dark matter outweighs the known
here and on stark side of moon.
The Universe is a holographic projection
part of the Great Programmers’ Entertainment Division.

One half second slow on is
Conscious brain body fizz

Quarks are bound by gluons
inside protons and neutrons.
Quirks are created glitches
tightened tautological twitches.
Neutrinos are faster than light
reach day way before night.

One half second slow on is
Conscious lie brain body fizz

String theory holds it all together
in various kinds of variable whether.
Light is particle or wave
depending on the question you gave.
No time or space exist
are merely brain created myth.

One half second slow on is
Conscious lie brain body fizz

Heisenberg dances here and there
playing dead alive with why of where.
Dark matter outweighs the known
both here and on stark side of moon.
The Universe is a holographic projection
Just part of the Great Programmers’ Entertainment Division.

We’re all one half second slow on is
Conscious lie brain body fizz

— Smith, 12.2011

Music, mix, recording Peter Ball/Apartment One; words, vocals me.

48 more free Ball & Smith songs at ReverbNation.com/MutantSmith.


Time – foto Smith

Natural progression


Better later – foto Smith

Linear now – foto Smith

Weak signal – foto Smith

Transition – foto Smith

Ascension – foto Smith

Two more YouTube videos of Lady’s late Grandmother from last year when she gave a teach-in to Occupy Cleveland downtown on Public Square.

OCCUPY CLEVELAND Teach In With Lenore Ireland Speaking On Childrens Disablities Nov 9, part 1

OCCUPY CLEVELAND Teach In With Lenore Ireland Speaking On Childrens Disablities Nov 9, part 2

Lady’s Granny, 1924-2012


Granny called 3-5-2012 – foto Smith

Lady’s Granny, 1924-2012

July 20, 2012:
Dark cloud horizon
Rain falls on wife’s Grandmother
Must bring her our sun

July 24, 2012:
Granny’s husk waxes,
wanes, fine turns to tune of moon
dries wings for new flight

July 27, 2012:
Butterfly blossoms
Exits tired shrunken shell
Rises to new light

— Smith, 7.27.2012





Poetry Granny – fotos Smith

Broken fotos


Watercolor Smith – foto Smith

My camera broke again. Here’s a few of the new non-pictures highly fotoshopped. In art there are no accidents, just opportunities.

I’ve used the same model of the Casio Exilim digital camera for ten years now because it’s just the right size to fit in my jeans front pocket and the camera and I are simpatico.

My first digital camera in 2002 was new and lasted three years. My 2nd new one lasted two years, but that included some hard traveling thru three continents for three years. After that we started buying used versions off the internet and they each lasted a year or less and none of them would do what my first one would which was let me put the lens up to a preying mantis’ head or in a wasp nest and get sharp-focused real close-ups.

My 3-sectioned lens mechanism won’t come out all the way, makes a grinding noise. I sprayed it with 4-in-1 oil to make it slide better and it got worse, so I guess I’d not recommend oiling your digital camera.

However I have a trick. After the lens grumbles its way half-way out, I grab the tip with my fingers and pull it out till it stops, and about half the time I can focus and get a foto. Very strange art process. But I’m addicted to taking fotos so I gotta keep trying.

No, not addicted — more symbiotic . . . reality likes pictures of itself and seems to have chosen me along with untold others as a foto finder for images to tape to its Great Cosmic Fridge Door High in the Why.


Ashtray and couch – foto Smith

Dark moon – foto Smith

Vacuum tube – foto Smith

Blues Boy Smith – foto Smith

Here’s the original of one of the above to show you what my camera’s doing.


Dark moon original – foto Smith

State Trooper, Dog Shit & Me


Do not follow my actions – foto Smith

Got a brand new good cop story: State Trooper, Dog Shit & Me.

Went rural to visit ailing Granny who’s grandly holding court from her hospital bed in the middle of her daughter’s living room surrounded by relatives near and far who’ve gathered to talk laugh and listen in gathered goodbye.

Somewhere between leaving the house and getting in our car I stepped in dog shit. Fresh, smooth, easily evenly spread dog shit over brand new running shoe soles with all these alien protrusions and curved pools and valleys.

Three miles down the road I realize this country smell of manure not only isn’t fading with fresh air and distance but is getting stronger and is too close, too fresh, and way too doggy.

I pull to the side of the highway, put on my flashers, get out, take off my shoe to view total canine coverage, so I limp around on the gravel, bend over, pick up a stick, stand up to see a Highway Patrol car with its red and blue lights flashing in my face.

I can’t help it — the fresh dog shit shoe from a dog that I love, and now flashing police lights — I start laughing.

I walk toward the police car, holding my shoe up in my left hand with its shit sole facing the Trooper, and the stick in my raised right hand, and he puts his palm up, fingers spread, telling me to stay back.

I back up, lean against our red trunk which is held shut by a yellow bungee cord, grin, and lower my weapons. The Trooper gets out of the car and I immediately apologize, explain the shoe shit and the stick — twice — and he says “Then you don’t need any help.” I raise my shoe and shake my head and he leaves, asking for no I.D. or registration. As he drives by he suggests I go down to the park where I’ll have more room to take care of my business.

I drive down to an empty church lot and it takes me forever to more-or-less clean the shit off my shoe. There are endless brand-new gullies and rivulets and channels and loops and pools and depressions and this shit is so smooth and fine and fresh you can’t scrap it out because it oozes around the stick instead. Finally scraping and scooping and rubbing in grass and buffing with gravel and dusting with dirt and pouring water over the sole I was good to go, a smile on my face because when things move past a reasonable point all you can do is laugh n smile n shrug your shoulders n get on with it.

And thank goodness for a reasonable policeman. My laughter and raised shoe and stick could easily have been misinterpreted.


Only violators – fotos Smith

Lady’s Granny


Granny Lenore Ireland at Snoetry Poetry Festival 2011 – foto Smith

Granny’s husk waxes,
wanes, fine turns to tune of moon
dries wings for new flight

— Smith, 7.24.2012

Lady’s Grandmother was moved from hospital to hospice status yesterday, brought home to her daughter’s living room to die surrounded my family while cocooned with serious pain drugs . . . a sleep, slip, slide away from stage 4 cancer.

Was hoping she’d last another 24 days to see her grandson’s wedding but four more days would seem to be pushing it . . . except that Granny has failed and rallied before, is tough, stubborn, persistent and positive, so can’t be counted out — but it sure looks like this is the current script’s final scene, in this theater anyway.

Granny’s especially important to Lady because due to financial insecurities and family dynamics early on she lived with her Grandparents when she was 3 and 4, a happy time of bonding, remembers her Grandfather feeding her weak milk-coffee and dancing around the kitchen with her standing on his toes.

Granny’s 87 so has had a good run. We’ve taken her to a couple poetry readings where she’s entranced the audience with her chutzpah.

Herr’s a link to one of her readings. Grandma Poesy: 84 Year Old Poetry Virgin from her May 2010 reading.


Granny at a Taste of Tremont chocolate eating contest – foto Smith



Granny reading various places + her poetry book – fotos Smith

Reconnecting with the lost tribe

Grandma is dying, sometimes calmly, sometimes poignantly in a bed in my Mom & Dad Green’s living room. “I’m so happy, I’m so happy,” she said several times yesterday. I am too. I am glad that she is not dying slowly and/or painfully in a nursing home, but quickly and surrounded by family.

“Now it’s your turn to hold Reality together,” I told Mom. Me, I’ve been forgetting pots and pans on the stove during this time. Three times in three days. I think I’m taking a little vacation from conventional aspects of Reality to handle some shaman duties like rainmaking.

I’m doing a lot of thinking about tribe, family–the good aspects of it and community. I’d like for us to reclaim community, tribe, family. Not the ill parts of nationalism, but more of a global thing yet also local. Refined, iterative, nuanced, compassionate, discerning. I’d like for us to reconnect with the lost tribe of extended family.

I think social media and the Internet is a great way to reconnect families that have been estranged from each other by virtue of distance and the frenetic pace of how we have been living.

Seeing Dad Green hold my cousin’s head on Skype screen, seeing her talk with Grandma swaddled in bed… “I love you, I love you, I love you” and tears flying at the screen. The immediacy of it so heartwrenching but beautiful. We editorialized a bit and my cousin said, “We don’t yet have etiquette for this, do we.”

It is valid, this part of modernity. We should claim it and know how to apply it wisely. We should. Let us see our families’ faces again. Let’s forget about TV but instead use these other screens–let’s connect face to face again. Slowly, calmly, wisely, discerningly. I am vowing to Reality to do so.

~

One of the things we used to do when we lived in smaller communities was to talk about tribal matters together. I think one of the big issues facing our tribe is how we obtain energy. So around Grandma’s bed in my Mom & Dad Green’s living room, I talked with family yesterday about the fracking issue, and how it is important to protect our holy waters.

~

My brother is marrying next month. I am so happy about this. I’m so happy, I’m so happy.

~

I worked all weekend on Grandpa’s memoir to get it through another edit so that Grandma can see it before she dies and know that the family is getting copies ASAP. The proof will arrive today or tomorrow and as soon as it gets here I’m rushing it over to her.

I am glad that Grandpa’s memoir and Smith’s memoir are both being printed at the same time. I feel so blessed with these projects.

The name of Grandpa’s memoir is “Learning to Swim,” humorously, after his having been born in a toilet. But the title is a metaphor for life. It’s about being thrown into life and making the most of it the best way one can, as he did.

Here’s my back cover blurb:

Thurman James Ireland was born in a toilet in Cleveland and came of age during the Great Depression. Checker Ice Cream Bar vendor, automobile mechanic, World War II Veteran, proprieter of Ireland’s Garage, father and foster father, Appalachian Trail Scoutmaster, de facto engineer for Ingersoll Rand and role model to many, he built his own house and practiced the philosophy of living life completely.

Readers can benefit from his down-to-earth, pragmatic wisdom and self-taught, articulate manner of explaining reality. His tales of problem-solving with Ingersoll Rand show life and work are not just “by the book” but totally hands-on and interconnected with the human condition.

~ Lady

basking back in this gilt guilt glow?


used Unique Thrift t-shirt – foto Smith

Alert

The front of my used XXXtra-large t-shirt sez

Alert:
Lazarith Hunters
Hostage Inialators
Stronghold Crushers
It’s time to be about
Our
Father’s business
New Beginning
by Diana

I don’t know what it means
but love how it hangs from my large frame
hiding its message in drapes and folds

Don’t believe I’ll be hunting Lazarith though
or even Lazarus
because the dead are dead and back in the flow
so why would I want their husk
or they wish to busk
basking back in this gilt guilt glow?

Neither will I inialate nor annihilate hostages
because we’re all hostage to flesh
and feel and air and see
in this be

The stronghold crushers?
That could go either way depending on flex, flux and flow

As for my Father, he’s dead these 23 years
burned to ashes which grow in my mind

And I’m all for new beginnings, we all could use some
but please, this time think it through
recall back in the new day of the Old Tribe
greed was considered a mental illness
a condition to be cured

Discerning Diana
she of the hunt and the moon and the talking to animals
and the many bare breasts with the long seeking nipples
my hunt is truth
my moon high
my woman my wife
and I talk to everything all the time in my silence
plant, flesh, weather, animal, mineral, thing, now, then, here, there
and sometimes they even answer

Like when this enigmatic t-shirt appeared for a dollar
a unique gift from Unique Thrift
life giving me a lift

— Smith 7.22.2012


The goddess Diana from allgirlworlds.com