WALKING ON THIN ICE

The Not O.K. Corral

Warning – slippery surface

Did it!

Wrote 31 poems for October for the Crisis Chronicles Press project featuring Mary E. Weems, Shelley Chernin, Dawn Shepler Shimp, John Swain, Steve Brightman, John Burroughs, Lady K, and me. This is going to be an interesting book when it comes out since we’re all such different poets.

The Not O.K. Corral

If my name were Who
and I knocked at your door
and you called “Who’s there?”
and I replied “Right”
what would you do?

I mean the O.K. Corral might have been okay
for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday say
but not so okay if you look
Claiborne, Clanton, McLaury’s way
(30 shots, 30 seconds, 6 feet apart, 3 guys gone)

I believe Guantanamo is male,
whereas Guantanamera is female . . .
though I’m too poor for a parasite,
can only afford a single site.

Our new lies are 17% more factual than our old lies.

The Princess had no pea
so I offered her my rumpled foreskin.

Whoa mama,
better get that skitter tied down
before it departs.

Coco Chanel never wore flannel.
Though women wear falsies, men wear false he’s.

Is the plural of men menses?

Lady was bargaining with me
so I called her a Berber woman
as did the Berber vendor in Morocco
when she bargained him below her original offer.
She told me, “No, I’m not cold at all,
but if you keep pummeling me with puns,
I’m going to need a punbrella.”

Life is hard, and then you climax.

Wanted for unrest – the Coffee Kid.
I’m serving time in the plenum-tentiary.
My odds are getting odder,
especially from the otters,
not to mention others.

I dye lemma, for I am my own lexeme.
All godz chillun gots problems.

Ah yes, the lesser of evils . . .
could be a business opportunity here
for if I had two evils
and rented them by the hour,
I’d be the leaser of two evils.

Hello weirdness my old friend
I’d welcome you back again,
but you never left.

The United Mutations of Smith now in session,
the Irreverend me presiding.

Take your time.
No hurry.
Heal.
Be well.
Sorry bout the broken bits.

– Smith, 10.31.2013

hope u had a good time – fotosmith

Reading Room

Reading Room

Reading Auden in the living room,
Stevens in the john.
Good to sit, good to go.

– Smith, 10.30.2013

Holy Martin Luther, Batman ! ! !

sky lodge

Holy Martin Luther, Batman ! ! !
(quotes by Martin Luther, 1483-1546, father of the Protestant religion.)

You dear asses. You poisonous loudmouth. You are jugglers of imaginary sins. I would not smell the foul odor of your name. You are a bungling magpie, croaking loudly. All you say is sealed with the devil’s own dirt. Snot-nose! My soul, like Ezekiel’s, is nauseated at eating your bread covered with human dung. Do you know what this means? You are a little pious prancer. You have a perverted spirit that thinks only of murdering the conscience. You should rightly be called lawyers for asses. If you are furious, you can do something in your pants and hang it around your necks – that would be a musk apple and pacem for such gentle saints. You condemned the holy gospel and replaced it with the teaching of the dragon from hell. You reek of nothing but Lucian, and you breathe out on me the vast drunken folly of Epicurus. You vulgar boor, blockhead, and lout, you ass to cap all asses, screaming your heehaws. You are spiritual scarecrows and monk calves. I am tired of the pestilent voice of your sirens. Your Hellishness. You are one of those bloody and deceitful people who affect modesty in words and appearance, but who meanwhile breathe out threats and blood. Your home, once the holiest of all, has become the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the kingdom of sin, death, and hell. It is so bad that even Antichrist himself, if he should come, could think of nothing to add to its wickedness. You have set out to rub your scabby, scurvy head against honor. We should not only refuse to obey you, but consider you insane or criminals. I think that all the devils have at once entered into you. Take care, you evil and wrathful spirits. God may ordain that in swallowing you may choke to death. What else can one say here, except that these ideas originate in your own wanton concoctions, or in a drunken dream? A seven-year-old child, indeed, a silly fool, can figure it out on his fingers – although you, stupid ass, cannot understand anything. I am tired of the pestilent voice of your sirens. You are ignorant, stupid, godless blasphemers. You pant after the garlic and melons of Egypt and have already long suffered from perverted tastes. Phooey on you, you servant of idols! I must stop: I can no longer rummage in your blasphemous, hellish devil’s filth and stench.

– Smith, 10.29.2013

All these lines are from a Martin Luther insulter site which harvests quotes from his writings — for example, the final line “I must stop: I can no longer rummage in your blasphemous, hellish devil’s filth and stench” comes from his 1545 tract titled “Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil,” (page 332 of “Luther’s Works,” Vol. 41).

Doesn’t sound like someone I’d follow, were I a follower. Of course the Papal hierarchy he raged against wasn’t exactly pure what with their luxuriousness and booze and mistresses and bastard children. Toward the end of his life, Luther became an anti-Semite and turned against the Jews as well as the Catholics. Not a happy pappy by any means.

Try him on for size at ergofabulous.org/luther/ . . . you get one insult per click.

hellhouse – fotosmith

By Sin of Reason Worship

the crack between the now and then

By Sin of Reason Worship

Forgive me O Great Furthur
for I sin in seeking logic
in your willful whirl.

I prod cause for effect,
weigh the yea and nay of yes and no,
move for right unwrung from wrong
so sin in reason worship.

No selling sacrificial fire
with need, want, wish, won’t,
in burn of flower radish.

Instead weigh
the good and bad of ugly.

So tell you what
I let it go
you warp and woof your winning season
but I’m off this bended knee
to grieve my own weave.

We’ll pretend your random matters
but I plant my seed in fairer furrow.

– Smith, 10.28.2013

what in the world – fotosmith