The Lady came and stayed
I’d barred the door
unwelcomed mat
said no way
I’m over that
besides you’re young
but whippersnap
we’ve wayward flow
no future flap
so you must go
right now
not slow
but the Lady stayed and came
– Smith, 3.31.2013
Zen over Zero
Dog week later in mourning kitchen pouring
Coffee into my veins with a dull cup
A daze of morals and Moses
Whines and Rosicrucians
It’s raining cats and gods
And I am a fine unman
– Smith, 1974
My first book of poetry that Lady published in 2008 was titled after this poem.
Zen Over Zero, Steven B. Smith, Selected Poems 1964 – 2008
69 poems & 22 collages spanning 44 years, $12 + shipping, 6″ x 9″, 84 pages
To order: lulu.com/shop/steven-smith/zen-over-zero/paperback/product-3765106.html
“Smith, in poetry’s whorehouse of many rooms, you belong in the philosophical-scientific wing with us.” – Jim Lang
“Let’s face it Smith, if the song ‘My Way’ were written about your life, it would be lyrics by William S. Burroughs & music by Laurie Anderson, as performed by The Velvet Underground. The 45-RPM vinyl would have been a blue corrosion color rather than black, with Voodoo Lounge as the cover and ‘Voodoo Child’ as side B. And THAT my friend would be one highly collectible single.” – Steve Reynolds
Here’s the first poem in the book, so you’ve only 67 poems and 21 collages to go.
Grasshopper’s Tale
My life’s dog food for do gooders
Hot dodgers dogging God’s zone
Fur sure of itself
Per path and position
Point portion pursued
We who rise in heat from dream
Lick recollection loose
From cold fire’s template
Futility’s fog
We bleed in abandon
Dance dawn’s dapple light
— Smith, 1989
Facebook friend gave me a term for something I’ve been experiencing for decades but didn’t know had a name — ASMR = Autonomous sensory meridian response.
It’s a rolling shiver that moves up the back of my neck into the rear of my brain vibrating in waves of pleasure.
I experience this reliably when I’m driving and look up at chain-linked fenced overpasses as we pass beneath — when I see the moving moiré patterns of the front links against the rear, it sends shivers up the back of my brain.
Also get it when I slowly lower my torso into a hot bath . . . once my neck hits the water, the tingles roll up my neck into my brain.
Plan to use this sensation in a novel about stealing a second section of my soul. Appreciate finally having a term for what I’ve been trying to explain. I’ve always seen it as ‘recharging’ some psychicsoulspirit gland.
When I get a good hit from a highway overpass, it also causes a small body shudder as it fades, and an inner flesh afterglow.
Sometimes I mentally “squeeze” inside my head down in the back and send a small wave up on demand, but they’re always way weaker than those induced by heat or moiré.
I am not a robot.
“How do I know?”
I’m gooshy.
“They program robots to be gooshy now.”
I’m complicated.
“They program robots to be complicated, too.”
I have a complicated personality.
“They do that, too.”
I bleed.
“Robots can bleed, too.”
My thighs look like chicken.
“They can very cleverly do that, now, too.”
~ Smith & Lady
Well, I dood it. Something I’ve never done and was convinced I couldn’t do — I got up on stage with a band and in front of poets and strangers sang three songs.
I made lots of mistakes — the audience laughing caused me to laugh and lose my place a couple times . . . I lost timing because the band played live over our original recordings and my memorized musical cues were covered . . . and not only we did we not practice as a group, ever, but our performance was the first time I’d met DJ Dimitri van Puptent and electric guitar / tabla player Rick Wager . . . keyboardist and composer of the music Peter Ball was the only one who’d played with everyone.
Yet it worked, at least for me, especially for my first time. The 20-minute set went whooooosh and was over just like that. Had fun and another fine time one-of-a-kind adventure.
I want to thank Peter Ball who tried for 15 years to get me to record with him before I finally gave in in 2002 and made a fool of myself . . . after I got used to being the fool, we created some fine unique tunes together. Jamming with Peter has changed for the better my reading style, and I’ve written a slew of new poems for us to jam on.
If we get a chance to do this again, I’ll be there.
Has anyone seen the rest of this dog? I seem to have misplaced his body.
In 26 hours I’m going on stage with a keyboardist, an electric guitarist, and a DJ to sing three songs to a crowd of people. I’ve never done this, never sang in public, mostly because I can’t. But why should I let that stop me? Blues singers don’t have to be able to sing, and as my lyrics warn, “I’m more into growl and groaning, maybe some mellow moaning.” We will be doing “Bare Cat Blues,” “Blowhard Blues,” and “Booze Lose Blues” . . . music by Peter Ball, lyrics and vocals by me.
“Mad Sing You”, the first “poetrymusic” festival, happens tomorrow night, Wednesday, March 20, 2013, from 7 to 10 PM, at Mahall’s 20 Lanes, 13200 Madison Avenue, Lakewood, OH.
Estimated performance times:
SHOW STARTS ~ 7:15-7:30 PM depending on crowd size
1. TOM ADAMS ~ 7:30 to 7:50
2. SHELLEY CHERNIN ~ 7:55 to 8:15
3. TRIBUTE TO JAZZ
(Vladimir Swirynsky, Art Berg and Brian Taylor) ~ 8:20 to 8:40
4. THE JESUS CRISIS EXPERIENCE ~ 8:45 to 9:05
10 MINUTE BREAK 9:05 to 9:15
5. T.M.GOTTL & ZACH ~ 9:20 to 9:40
6. SLEAZY WEASEL & THE TOWELS OF UNBELIEF
(Steven B. Smith, Peter Ball, Dimitri Van Puptent, Rick Wagar) ~ 9:45 to 10:05
7. LATEX MENAGERIE
(spoken word by Bree, Adam Brodsky and Russ Vidrick) ~ 10:10 to 10:30
8. dan smith & the DEEP CLEVELAND BAND ~ 10:35 to 10:55
“Bare Cat Blues,” “Blowhard Blues,” and “Booze Lose Blues” (plus 60 more) may be heard at reverbnation.com/mutantsmith.
Get Me to the Witch on Time
I’m smitten
with the kitten
who scratched
my inner itchin’
tied me to
the loving post
arranged
free range
to ring
with me
I’m Wiccan wed
and wonder fed
I better butter be
married 2006.18.3
— Smith, 3.18.2006
Wrote that the day of my second wedding, seven years ago, 37 years after my first marriage, six months after Lady and I took up. Looks like I got it right the second time around.
Happy anniversary, Lady . . . you are my favorite person.
from the memoir:
I told Lady that being a Bohemian, I didn’t feel it was important we marry, but she said it made a difference so we set a January 2006 date which was three months after we’d met. But she was still married to her first husband; she’d left him three years earlier and had stayed married to keep her health insurance active. She finally got her divorce in March 2006 and a day later we were married by a Wiccan witch. That evening we were two of six featured poets at the Inside Outside Gallery next door to my studio and after the reading we invited the poets, artists and audience up for a post poetry wedding party.
— from “Stations of the Lost & Found: A True Tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Outsider Art, Mutant Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing the Cradle, and Leaving the Country” by Smith & Lady, 2012, 364 pages, 5.06″ x 7.81″, $20 at createspace.com/3903652, or Amazon.om, or Mac’s Backs in Coventry, or Visible Voice Books in Tremont, or from us at readings . . . there are purchase links as well on www.agentofchaos.com and walkingthinice.com.
There come those mysterious helping angels again.
Lady prepaid for two $10 blueberry pancake breakfasts with a guided nature walk for dessert at the Holden Arboretum. As we left on the 30 mile trek, a snowstorm hit and the highway went iffy . . . where normally I drive 75 mph we were doing 27 to 40 max. Changed lanes at one point and the car started sliding, with a big semi-truck right next to us. Got the old adrenaline glands pumping away for both of us.
A mile away from our food, on an unplowed country road, we came upon a car at the bottom of a hill of steep snow and ice. She’d gotten partway up, lost control and slid back down. We tried, got a wee bit further before giving up and backing slowly down so we didn’t crash into her.
We gave up, turned around and started back, hungry and foodless, but accepting. Within minutes a snowplow salt truck came by, plowed and salted the hill, so we turned around and made it to the most excellent blueberry pancakes.
Get in trouble and it seems frequently if you don’t lose your cool, reality sends someone or thing along to rectify your situation.
Don’t know why, but I’ve been helped by strangers all my life; enough so that I started helping other strangers myself.
A bad day gone good . . . early this morning Lady did a scheduled HP update to her computer and it crashed it. She called her extended warrantee hot-line and they hassled her because when she bought the laptop with coverage, they’d miss-typed her warrantee number by one letter. She miraculously convinced them it was their mistake and they helped her . . . best they could do was wipe out everything and start her over from scratch. Fortunately her last restorable backup was less than a week old, so she only lost a little.
Tonight we’re reading from our book down at Kent, Ohio, a college town I hope to infect with my memoir-itis. The book is a college student’s wet dream with all the adventure, drugs, and anti-authoritarian antics . . . if I can snare a few students as readers, it might prime the pump.
Event page: facebook.com/events/493319390726421/ =
WHAT: Rick Marlatt “Desired Altitude” Launch Reading with Smith & Lady
-Launch of “Desired Altitude”
-Smith Book Tour of “Stations of the Lost & Found” Memoir
-Readings by Rick Marlatt and Smith & Lady
-Books available for purchase & signing
-FREE to attend
WHEN: Saturday, March 16, 2013 – 7:30 PM
WHERE: Last Exit Books (in back of bookstore)
124 E Main St # 1 Kent, OH 44240? (330) 677-4499
ABOUT “DESIRED ALTITUDE” BY RICK MARLATT
The captain says feel free to move but I’m not going anywhere…
Rick Marlatt’s newest collection opens with this take on modern society in a multidimensional dreamlike void where myth meets math, theology meets technology, and spirituality meets the stagnation of a world saturated in electronic static. Like any intriguing and complex dream, Marlatt’s multi-layered collection is woven together through an impressive number of binding threads that lead the reader through a fascinating loop of reflections on everything from ancestral roots, spirituality, myth, and the natural world to the psyche, tension, and the fatigued technological hangover of a desolate decade of “connected” disconnect.
While readers feel as if smoke signals and spirit animals are leaving a web of warning and igniting the speaker’s anxieties at every turn, they will want to learn whether the speaker successfully navigates the mechanics of this over amped dimension where “the buffalo are all gone” and “pigeons are actuated by satellites,” where even “the microwave wants a little rest. / The light switch pines for solitude.” Subsequently, Desired Altitude will leave enlightened readers relieved to relocate the ability to find simple resolution within themselves. In a unique and subtle man-versus-machine missive, a constant bevy of new discoveries to consider both surprises and pleases with each subsequent read.
ABOUT RICK MARLATT
Rick Marlatt’s first book, How We Fall Apart, was chosen as the winner of the 2010 Seven Circle Press Poetry Award.
Rick is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of California, Riverside, where he served as poetry editor of the Coachella Review. Previously, he studied English and Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where he also earned a MA in Creative Writing, and he is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
A teacher, poet, screenwriter, and literary critic, Rick’s work has appeared widely in print and online publications. He lives in Nebraska with his wife and their two sons. His website is rickmarlatt.com.
ABOUT “STATIONS OF THE LOST & FOUND” BY SMITH & LADY
The man Cool Cleveland labeled “everything your mother warned you about” (2003) has released an autobiography that continues his tradition of shock and awe.
The book, *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, is the story of Steven B. Smith, a Cleveland artist who pursued the outrageous and the good, finally finding meaning in art, poetry and odd life experiences.
The back book blurb sums it up:
Drug orgies, massive refindings of reality, the acceptance of interdimensions. Errant life scout, cultural adventurer, perception tester, court jester, inner seeker, reality adjuster, flow surfer, servant and searcher of Other.
Born in Bitterroot, raised on Paradise Prairie, farm boy, car thief, Naval Academy, expelled for dope, society marriage, armed robbery, jail, illegal loft dweller, Artcrimes, rat attacks, overdose, celibate, remarried, expat. Ran from the cops ten times, got away nine.
ABOUT LADY K (KATHY IRELAND SMITH)
Kathy Ireland Smith, a.k.a. Lady K, is a poet, publisher, artist and surreal photographer from northeast Ohio. She and her husband Smith spent 31 months of traveling in 10 countries on 3 continents from 2006-9, and you can follow their ongoing adventures at WalkingThinIce.com. Kathy is also founder and editor of The City Poetry (www.thecitypoetry.com), a cutting edge art and poetry zine based in Cleveland.
ABOUT SMITH (STEVEN B. SMITH)
Smith was born, is living, will die. He’s been a poet 50 years, artist 49 years, publisher of the Artcrimes journal 28 years, editor of AgentOfChaos.com 11 years, WalkingThinIce.com blogger 7 years, ReverbNation.com/MutantSmith singer & lyricist 2 years.
“Stations of the Lost & Found: A True tale of Armed Robbery, Stolen Cars, Outsider Art, Mutant Poetry, Underground Publishing, Robbing the Cradle, and Leaving the Country” by Smith & Lady may be ordered at createspace.com/3903652, or via Amazon-dot-com.
