Saint Petergate
“Here’s your bill, sir”
For what?
“Services unrendered.”
I didn’t order.
“Pay anyway.”
For?
“Being. Nothingness.”
Ah, of course, original sin.
“Sign here.”
Thought the crucifixtion took care of that.
“Just the tax, Jack.”
– Smith, 12.1.2013
Another odd Smith story, this one of uneaten Thanksgiving dinner and losing two pounds.
This is a Frankenpome, partly poetry, part-time reportage — an awkward lumbering beast.
It’s poem 61 in 61 days. Lady and I were part of the Crisis Chronicles Press poem-a-day-October project, and I found the process enjoyable enough to keep going through November. Hope to continue to first week of January, but no guarantee cuz guarantees without warranties are burdens and I’ve enough of those thanks to church and state.
Out at the In-laws 5
I’m so wanting to try
wife’s first sweet potato pie
as with a Taurus behind and a Honda ahead
over the slivers and through the shoulds
to Ma-in-law’s house we go,
mountain man music bluegrassing radio
motivating over the hill.
We walk winter wonder
deer tracking tunnels
around pond bound brush,
sedimental journey
shooting b&w pictures
in digital dusk divide.
Though veggie vegan,
I carveThanksgiven turkey
popping meat in my mouth
which unused to the thickness
sticks in my throat
and stays.
As they all are eating round table talking,
I’m gulping water attempting to vomit
over and over till sore,
small upward movement
no downward going
my dinner done done unbegun
me only wanting me to be nibbling
wife’s sweet potato pie
whose square shape brings pondering
does pie require rounding,
when wife resounding replies,
“We also wondered if my square pie was pie,
but you know what they say –
pie are squared.”
Come home hours after
wondering if safer
but sticking still stucker
me my own sucker
afraid of trying again
cuz throat flesh swelling
from constant grilling
and don’t know when it can mend
be nice to know over
but untry’s no clover
so try and still knot
it is not.
Seek sleep relief
when wake wife sez
“How long did it take to go down?”
“It did not.”
New try sly,
coat throat with honey
but water hits blockage
me thinking awful
must go to the hospital
when swallow and it all goes down,
my 12-hour clump lump unbound.
Drink morning coffee
taste sweet potato pie
aye yi yi
well worth the waiting, absolute greating.
That’s my Thanksgiving ,
thnx truly given,
instead of adding pounds I lost two.
How about you?
– Smith, 11.30.2013
Eve and Ever After
We must remember what we know
walk what we remember
Never knock the know
recover under ember.
It’s all quite interactive
this cosmic game arcade
They’re hiding all the answers
in puzzle-shaped charade
I’d love to let you listen
but words no most of all
In spite of what we’re given
we’re bleeding from the Fall
We stumble from foundation
crumble in the toil
Working way to station
in relation to the All
Yet reason for elation
when dom does wed with wise
We walk in chalk gestation
in wake of open eye
– Smith, 11.29.2013
WHAT SOME BIRDS DO ON THANKSGIVING
Widgeons quack and squeak,
squawk, “You’re here, you’re here,”
“I love you, I love you”
Turkeys, some of them
meander in the gold and gray of woods
suit feathers dripping from their black bulks
seeking ferns in seeps
Sparrows
flit and fluff
puff themselves up
for insulation, newly
remembering harshness
of colder months
They’re at the bird feeders
earlier, before dark, now
to forage for whatever
seed and berry’s
there for them
~ Lady
Life 8
You should beat meat,
not eat meat,
that’s my manifesto.
Life’s a sticky wicket
basket of fix it
or let go,
so flow, bro, take it slow.
Do the do
to be the be.
Second chance advance
new do due day dance,
spent life going slow,
time to take the chance
– Smith, 11.28.2013
1%
Mayan urine fertilizes later
ladders stretching long their loathsome letters
claiming ancient altars lurid, lucid,
luring scheme with skein of dream of dripping
need, heedless how such flowing flux first formed
magic pattern, this from that, these from those,
supposing whim could bend that then to now,
somehow, without the know which even young
the apprentice knew, hoping only urge
would do for making new their ugly sheen
of old adieu, thus keeping rich the few,
removing scent of fecal when they poo,
and still they reach to rip and reap our heart
in mind, destroying clime and parsing time,
they’re always grabbing at what’s yours, what’s mine.
– Smith, 11.27.2013
JOY
Chinking of bells
musical bells
like the tinkering
of elves in a workshop
but it’s not little elves
and they’re not in a workshop per se
I’m hearing bells
from musicians
or spiritual practitioners
or both
They’re chinking bells
and it’s like pleasant
knocking on my ears
asking, “are you here,
can you be here?”
What can bring me
more into the joy
in the present
moment
than a bell?
There’s a reason people say,
“I hear you, clear as a bell.”
The other day
I turned my key in the door
and rotated the doorknob
It was Sunday and it happened
to be at the time to announce
church service,
and as I turned the knob…
church bells chimed!
And I felt part of
this big clock
this big Sunday instrument
glad for the availability of
happy sunny sobriety
humane society
~ Lady
In Line of Logic
Stopped sipping at the green of grass
as summer slipped to fall
and fell to winter.
The burdened light is heavy with intent,
its walking way a looking
over shoulder.
The past has neither hand nor hasp
yet grasps in mired path,
says “Told you”.
– Smith, 11.26.2013
Dancing at the Edge of Dawn
I wish I could take her fear away,
yours too,
yet I am a part,
carried in the apple of the orchard
naked and red and throbbing with juice,
green leaves hiding nothing but worm,
that harbinger of snake signifying thin liquid
being and somethingness,
licking your shin with tongue forked wet with wanting.
It is counterintuitive, but blood follows softness,
its sacrificial altar hard with stone,
and fire,
alone.
– Smith, 11.25.2013
Leaser of the Lesser Light
He didn’t feel adequate going from
the warmth to cold, or winter to summer,
TV his pathos, apathy, empty V,
nor the way the traffic rules changed at will
red to yellow to green to red as both
exit entrance ramps opened closed willy
nilly, the bridges burnt and unabridged,
no ground zero for calibration or
grid to lock the stock to bond the bound
whose sound surrounds short shift serves to double
tongue of teeth, bright false light with lie applied,
logic lost cost but boost to bottom line
beshat with splat and sad and slow, lower
wind withered without wonder, with no wise
to light lies no longer believed even
by pliers of their corporate cloners
collecting cash from affairs of others,
losing both car and key in lesser light
powered down to shutter by unaligned
trolls droll in rock roll of stolen booty
looting fires for liars’ higher druthers,
no gas oil to roil plot of counting
crow, stop and go in flow ending bounty,
pockets flashing empty, empty, empty.
– Smith, 11.24.2013
Wrote this in Wallace Stevens style after reading 178 pages of his poems from 1915 through 1940 . . . just 220 pages and 15 years of poems to go. I idolized him in my twenties, became bored with him in my forties, and now nearing seventy picked up a used copy of The Palm at the End of the Mind (Vintage Books, 1972, edited by his daughter Holly Stevens) from Guide to Kulchur and find myself once again enthralled.
The man’s extreme marital misery, his vice-presidency of Hartford Insurance Company, his loutish drunken arguments with Robert Frost, his losing fisticuffs with Ernest Hemingway, his Pulitzer Prize for poetry, his love of fine champagne and finer paintings propel his poems profoundly.
Dude also had the best titles in the business.
I understand him more now I’m older, suffered, humbled.
