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WALKING ON THIN ICE

Summer Salt




timecycle – fotos Smith
Summer Salt

Sun turns to sunburn
Slow churns June through September
Entropy time’s heir

– Smith, 8.21.2013

Sex (no take outtake)


Fuzzsmith – foto Smith

This is more of a no-take than an out-take. I was so bad that after two minutes I said “I ain’t even close, man” and broke out laughing. Peter put my confession in front of the song snippet and posted it, so since it’s already out there, I’ve nothing to lose.

Hopefully we’ll do an actual song of this sometime this week. Gotta find some way to stop my temporary teeth from whistling in the mic on my sibilance.

Click here 2 hear Sex (no take outtake).

Music & recording Peter Ball of Apartment One, words and vocals me.

65 more free songs at reverbnation.com/mutantsmith.


UV Smith – foto Smith

hello Weirdness my old friend


Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Picnic – foto Smith

I’m not one you’d think would volunteer for a local Chamber of Commerce function. Nor am I one they’d normally take.

Lady’s looking to the future and is dipping into networking to help her Mom’s web company find new places to go. She’s also involved because she wants to plant trees on city sidewalks and found it prohibitively expensive for a citizen to do so and is hoping the local power structure can help. She’s working on her social shyness as well, so it’s a win-win-win 3-fer.

Being Lady’s outside-the-sheep-pen husband and occasional driver, I thought hmmmm, never been with this crowd, maybe I’ll learn something, and tagged along to the 2nd annual Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce city park picnic party.

I manned the kiddy metal pedal car raffle ticket table. . . 10 small heavy well -made cars around 3-foot long, 18 inches high, 2-foot wide awaiting 10 winners at $1 for 1 ticket, $5 for 6. Started my four hour shift with $51, finished with $164, one more than my tally.

I’m not a social critter so my voice eventually faded into a low growl explaining when and what and why, shouting for the last hour and a half to compete with the Funkology 10 member band blasting 20 feet behind us, me smiling all the time, enjoying the heck out of it all. The Chamber folk were great, the attendees generally sweet and nice and friendly.

But it was the small kids that made it worthwhile, and a bit sad. They all wanted to play with the cars, which they couldn’t. And they wanted the car right now. The want and need playing their faces didn’t grasp the drawing was to be six hours later, nor that it was a gamble . . . and there were hundreds of tickets already stuffed in the jar, so the competition is serious. I’m looking directly into the children’s eyes and gently explaining they may win the car, and they may not win the car, but I hoped they did. And then their parents took them away, the kids further confused because money had changed hands yet no car.

Lady suggested we buy some raffle tickets so she could give the car to a future niece or nephew if we won . . . I pleaded ‘no’ because I didn’t want to compete with the kids or lessen their chances even remotely, plus I’d have felt miserable had we won.

Some folk wanted to buy the cars outright, kept explaining they came in kits, had to be put together and specially painted, which was pain to do, and no I didn’t know who’d done it or where they could buy a kit nor how much they’d cost.

By the time our shift was up I was hoarse and buzzing like strong coffee.

Also got a free bright green t-shirt with black VOLUNTEER across the back. And of course a few more fotos of sweet Americana (or so I thought).

A good day yesterday.

Ooooooooo, today it’s Twilight Zone Time. Downloaded 32 fotos from yesterday’s picnic. Processed 4 of them. Went back to do #5 and all 32 original fotos had vanished. Nothing in my Trash Bin, no “Recent places” trail to follow. No pictures. no clues. No nothing. How do I lose fotos numbered DSCN2031-2062, including the originals of the 4 processed for this blog. They were there, these 4 prove it.

Reality toys with me. Shame, some nice shots too.

Whoa, something’s rearranged the icons on my home page in the past few minutes, someonething without my knowledge or permission or my eye’s feng shui sense of balance.

Hmmmmmmm, randomly rearranged laptop monitor screen icons, 32 fotos gone, error message saying the Chrome browsr didn’t shut down correctly.

Here we go round the mulberry bush, my luck chased by weasels.

I wonder why these 4 processed fotos remain?

Hello Weirdness my old friend . . . I’d welcome you back cept you ain’t never left.




remaining 4 processed fotos, 32 originals gone – fotos Smith

frogs, poison ivy, muck



West Creek Watershed Center front pond frog – foto Smith

Lady K’s wall post: “Had a bit of a challenging time in a stream yesterday! It was murky and full of muck! Our boots would get stuck and we had to test each step with a stick. Smith found multiple leaks in his boots. It was not my favorite stream. Poison ivy in abundance on the banks. We barely made any progress because moving took so much effort. I sure hope most of the streams aren’t like that, unless that’s how they’re supposed to be. OTOH it is one of my favorite running areas–lovely marshy area nearby. But am seriously thinking about different work in the watershed program rather than assessing the streams. But we felt that it was still an adventure.”

Lady’s got us dog walking for the APL every Monday, doing BEHI (Bank Erosion Hazard Index) for the MetroParks twice a month, and today we’re volunteering for the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce picnic. She also lures me into the occasional of her constant anti-fracking meetings and protests. There was feeding Occupy Cleveland for 9 months as well, and the irregular ongoing peace march or police violence march or neighborhood solidarity march. I’ve accompanied her to a few meetings at our Senators’ and Representatives’ offices for her anti-fracking presentations, and probably other stuff as well, like this week’s Greater Cleveland Bee Keeper’s monthly meeting. She’s a busy little soft-hearter smart-brainer, while I’m more of a cynical hardened heart stay-at-home-write-about-it-and-make-art-for-or-against-it type. She also calls the White House and her Congress folk weekly to nudge them in more moral directions, which I won’t because I hate being on fone with friend or foe.

So I’m having a lot of adventures I normally wouldn’t. Once thought you lived your life, then when you got to my age you settled down, rested, played, philosophized, summed up. But not true. Seems life just keeps on living, each day a new dilemma, each sleep new recharge.

Our stream walking this week was something. We’d tried to asses the creek last week but it was swollen and dangerous from the constant rain. This time it was lower and slower, but as soon as we stepped in through the poison ivy’d banks, the soft wet clay bottom sucked us down, tried to pull our boots off and dunk us in the gas-sheen covered water with each step. Had to use walking stick branches to keep balance and test unknown depth through the muddied waters as the clay muck bottom even tried to snatch our sticks from us. Humans versus nature . . . think it came out a tie.

This was our first BEHI assessment alone. You have to analyze how much toe protection the stream bank has, height and slope and composition and striation of the bank, root density, vegetative cover . . . add all these indices together and get the danger factor for the stream’s health.

It was brutal, but fun. My stress levels dropped as soon as we entered the water, which was so high I discovered several small leaks in my hip waders.

I fell against the bank once and by grace of space landed in a rare small area not covered with poison ivy. After we got back to the car and took our boots off we realized our boots were covered in poison ivy oils and we’d just handled them and were worried, but we were either lucky or aren’t susceptible. I’m pondering touching a poison ivy leaf next time with the back of one finger just to test my sensitivity, but probably won’t.

Interestingly, the warming of the earth is putting more CO2 into the air which is making poison ivy poison oak poison sumac even stronger because they feed off it. It’s also making plant pollen denser, causing worse asthma attacks. Such crazy consequences we leave in our human wake.



West Creek Watershed Center front pond frog – foto Smith


thigh high waders (my right boot leaks) – fotos Smith & Lady

Sex Complex


stuffed beaver – foto Smith

Sex has always mystified and confused me, since before my first bare breast at 11 up in her father’s hayloft after a 4-H club meeting, and way after my first vagina in a grassy field at 14. Had to be coerced into losing my virginity by my girl after boot camp at 17. Always loved the chase, but like a dumb dog chasing a car, I never knew what to do when I caught one.

This is for the old daze.

Sex Complex

This beast of sex
Is most perplexed
The way it works
A circle jerk
Make my move
From need or love
Or wait to see
What it could be
Never understood
What’s bad, when’s good
An alien thing
This theroried string
When say is now
But means not yet
And yet somehow
The wet wants pet
But like the cat
With coming purr
Quick claws scratch
My human fur
So I’ve decided
To have mine removed
No more excited
Just calm demurred
Since human mind
Cannot be read
It’s better blind
With said unsaid
As limbic lust
descends to dust
And human sage
Waits calm offstage

– Smith, 8/15/2013


Leave It to Beaver

SOLAR MAXIMUM

SOLAR MAXIMUM

Sun silvers through
wind chime song

What might magnetic field feel like
if magnetic field
be something translatable
to feeling

Bats translate soundscape
to brainscape

Ancient humans navigated by
cryptochrome proteins

Sun silvers the moon
phases seen through rotations
not just position in sky,
the Old Solid Ball Model of the Universe
sleepy school desk textbook–

Sun oozes sunthing in us, too
rotation of heavenly spheres
heaven in us zapping peacefully
novelty plasmaball
ink mathematics

Sun

Sun’s fields
trickle, turn
yellow warblers
bobbing within it

Somehow it made them birds
somehow the sun thinks about them birds
heliocentric fantasia
phoenix firebirds

And I think magnetic field moving through sun
must feel like wind chimes moving through it

Spine stretching
celestial chiropractor tinkering
with it in
periodic chunks,
thisness spread into
doles of apparent time

~ Lady

there there in the fair ware


Cuyahoga County Fair 2013 – foto Smith

Saw my first Cuyahoga County Fair yesterday, actually my first fair ever.

It was an interesting experience, educational in many ways, but I’m somewhat taken aback; expected more, although now I think about it, it was a rich adventure for all I noticed.

The artifact displays were mostly unintelligible, just a lot of things laid on boards behind chicken wire with no explanation of why they were showing old sheet music and dolls and doilies, no sense of layout or design or labels.

The amateur arts and crafts displays made me realize how very talented my artistic friends are.

This was the final day of the fair, so the desiccated vegetable displays looked like something out of a zombie flick since they’d all dried out, while the pastries had fallen apart and occasionally been nibbled on.

The animal pens just made me sad, a bunch of unhappy farm animals in too small cages with no water or food, constantly harassed by folk and child. My year in prison makes me extra sensitive to this. Fortunately we couldn’t spend too much time with them due to Lady’s allergies (especially birds).

The food is basically inedible for a vegetarian going vegan, and unhealthy for any human by any standard. Fried dough anyone? Deep fried oriole cookies (at least I assume the orioles were cookies and not birds), deep fried cheese, deep fried pickles, deep fried mushrooms, deep fried sugar-animals-roadkill-undecipherables.

The people-watching was great, especially the children in their joy and fear, and there was a lot of small child fear of rides and just general crying and screaming due to being tired and over stimulated, with frustrated parents getting angry. Also a lot of tattoo ink in odd places on all ages, sizes and sexes; one massively inked man had “Tesla” written across the side of his neck, which intrigues me. Plus a lot of cleavage, mostly on females.

Tried listening to the Tabloid Travelers sing and play country music but the sound system was cranked to max to compete with the rides and crowd sound so was unintelligible.

Was also surprised at all the vendor booths selling hot tubs, cheap trinkets, rubber floor tiles, cars . . . although we did buy some much needed raw honey. We were there two hours, didn’t do much, yet somehow spent $57. Parking at least was free.

But it was quite the learning experience. The traffic controllers were brilliant and efficient, and the fair folk do know how to run things, keep it all flowing. And it was fairly inexpensive to get in — $7 for Lady, $6 for me.

And for those not raised on a farm as I was in the Norman Rockwellian 1950s, I spose the animals are quite educational. I did learn llamas are very oddly proportioned, being too long and short for their graceful high-necked heads.

I got a few fotos, and a Ferris Wheel ride. In 1976 in Phoenix Arizona my brother Cat and I and Jones took down a carnival Ferris Wheel for a few dollars an hour while on massive amounts of white cross speed, and we beat their previous take-down record by an hour. Afterward the carneys offered us a job, but they were going back the way we’d just come so we declined. I’ve always regretted that because of being a writer and all the stories I would have gotten, but I watched the carneys’ faces yesterday and they are an unhappy lot, one sad worried prematurely aged face after another, so I doubt I would have lasted long had I joined, although I suspect the true magic lies in the camaraderie of a band of rejects after the fair closes. The guy offering us the job explained that when they hit a new town, for safety they had just one guy go in town to buy what drugs were needed. Always liked that. Can’t remember why he would have told me such a thing unless it was obvious I was high on speed. And just like in the movies, we had gone to a pool hall to find our speed. Sometimes life imitates art, or art is education for life.

Overall worth it, especially being out in an excited crowd on a sunny summer day. Believe I’d like to try a state fair someday just to see if there’s any more there there.

We’re going back to the fair grounds soon for the weekend flea markets. If you do collage or assemblage art, flea markets are your art supply store (as are the streets).











Cuyahoga County Fair 2013 – foto Smith

new Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem (he hasn’t seen)


page 1 of Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti – foto Smith

Here’s a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem that he has never seen.

I picked up a used copy of his surreal 1960 novel “Her” down in Mexico for almost nothing, and one of its previous owners had underlined over a hundred phrases throughout the book; I typed them into a poem in the order they appeared, then deleted over half of them because they didn’t flow.

These are all Ferlinghetti’s phrases, in Ferlinghetti’s order, underlined by a stranger.

I read the poem today at open mic and was amazed at how well it reads, how coherent it is, even though the phrases were dispersed throughout 148 pages of the book.

Like a Far Note in a Blue Bottle
(words by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, edit by chance and Smith)

I was bearing a white phallus through the wood of the world,
I was looking for a place to plunge it,
corresponding almost exactly to reality,
Like an extra in a grade B movie,
I was looking for the main character of my life,
strayed onto the stage by mistake,
I had somewhere dropped the key that explained the action,
ran off through the streets of the world,
a small eternity passed,
I returned and returned.
a scene I had already painted
the paint had now grown wet again
a melting mirror
suspended in silence
a waiting hush.
exiled me to spend the rest of my life picking
recurrent delusion
mounted on the beast of myself,
one pollywog willing to lose its tail
in a cracked shaving mirror under a bare bulb
junk
jism
fertile rain
the streets of the earth
fossil footprints
knotted rubber bands
an anonymous receptacle into which I could pour myself
classic columns holding up nothing.
made of real American pigeon feathers,
Love
Poetry Revolution
pocket watches hung from trees
crowds of black berets and herds of sandals
combing their hair with Grecian lyres.
mad poets
in and out of reality.
one huge landscape of flesh,
unbaked clay
innermost swinger beyond the self,
stationary, running.
manufacture existence,
squeezed from a tube,
sperm rain,
like the tiny tail of a swallowed goldfish,
like a far note in a blue bottle
true beat paint-poet
eternal tourist in Hell
white as the bleached skull of a cow.
made of mascara,
black flower,
the green leprosy of moss
B.O. of the soul,
a round egg in a square world,
unharm
alarm
when my pinball machine registers tilt
zow wow
who stole robin’s cock
wonderful wizard of odds

(taken from under-lined phrases in a used copy of Ferlinghetti’s 1960 novel “Her.” The word “zow” in the third to last line is not Ferlinghetti’s – it was inked in just before “wow” by whomever underlined the phrases)


Ferlinghetti’s cover drawing for Her – foto Smith