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WALKING ON THIN ICE

Good Sirens

April 5, 2013 1 Comment

Skin
Skin is the first thing I think of
when I think of you
your warmth
smoothness
the hearth of cuddle
wrapping my skin around yours
my arms along yours
the big bird bones of our hands
knuckles gently bent around
how calm and warm and smooth it is
and then suddenly
how short–you’re up like that
there are ten minutes of this or so
and then you’re up like that
making coffee

Oh that we would have the luxury
of feeling able to settle into
each other for a whole amniotic morning
a whole one

Hours without time ticking down
to some task

Just in the flow
in the womb flow
Mandy walking on us
walking on top of the blanket
braver when we’re inert
or meowing from the other room
now and then

Birds becoming more persistent
in song and then
less persistent
introspective
meandering with my thoughts
meandering

Even a siren can sound
comforting
especially in the morning
a siren like business being done
somehow elsewhere
juxtaposed
with us relaxed
in the here & now

A siren like rain happening perhaps
the extras on the scene outside our door
should we choose to get up

The siren an anti-siren
saying don’t come out there, it’s other stuff
going on out there, just soundtrack stuff
beyond
the intimate cell of your domicile

Siren, such a weird word
heralding some sad stuff
but also some happy stuff
and poetically mostly happy stuff
in this spool at least

There’s the siren song of now
that siren song of the womb room
that siren song of Mandy plodding on carpet
her feet making oddly heavy sounds
though again she is light like
the birds
our hands are like
the birds
the birds are like
the birds
and sirens
and the sirens are like and unlike
sirens

~ L

me and Shakey(speare)

April 1, 2013 No Comments

screen shot – foto Smith

Was on the English news site Guardian and to the left of an article on Shakespeare, they displayed an Amazon ad for my memoir “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.

At least they have us in appropriate company.

amazon.com/Stations-Lost-Found-Steven-Smith/dp/1477628290/ to buy on Amazon.

createspace.com/3903652 to buy on CreateSpace.

facebook.com/StationsLostFound on Facebook for fotos, art, raw material, extracts, and reader comments.

One side note — this book is my life from 1946 through 2006, but it is really Lady’s book because she’s the one who insisted we needed to write it now, not later. She also started it by gathering my true stories and poems together and then interviewing me for more. She created the initial manuscript and then we spent 7 years passing it back and forth 40 times or so, each of us editing, deleting, rearranging, adding.

Check out the Facebook link to see the good words being received from readers. Maj Ragain said he’s never read anything quite like it, that it had crept into his dreams.

A few comments:

Wednesday Kennedy: your book is my toilet reading Steven Smith it’s terrific.
I can pick it up on any page. I love your book so much Smith. I just went to the toilet and read another paragraph it was only a wee …ahaha. a poo and I can get through a whole page. your book gets better with a second read and on the loo i can really relax into it ahaha.

Mary E. Weems: A real page-turner, downstairs in my front room laughing my ass off—instead of exercising which was the plan before I opened you to read for about 10 minutes…..wow, my friend, wow….

And a fine write by book and paper artist Melissa Jay Craig (aka Filed Marshal May Midwest): Stations of the Lost and Found, co-written with his lovely and talented wife, Lady K, is utterly, at times even painfully, honest. It’s all there: outrageous drug use, armed robbery, sex, adultery, his near-death by alcohol…and, perhaps glossed-over a tiny bit: redemption. A Next Chapter needs to be written, definitely.

I liked this book, A Lot. Much more than Kerouac, to which it has been compared. Yes, Smith is my friend; I’ve read earlier versions and have known some of the stories for years (and have lived through some as well, though I learned some new things, like about the LSD). This is the best telling ever, no question, and I think I would have liked it if I didn’t know him or the stories. Smith’s own blurb about the book is much, much better than anything I can write; so please read it here. He has led one strange life. The oddest thing about it, though, is that Smith is – and has always been – one of the most morally sound people I know. And absolutely one of the funniest. One story that didn’t make it to the book is something another friend told him years ago (the second thing that comes to my mind after ‘brave’): “Smith, if we just went by the facts, none of us would be here.” Read this book; it’s truly true and stranger than fiction.


Smith’s brain – foto Smith