Dark Shadow
Back home in Psycho Point
folks use chainsaws
to carve their pumpkins.
Never saw no results though,
just lot’s of blood and pulp.
– Smith, 2.28.2014
Perpetual eMotion
Anger’s like love,
the more you dish out, the more you have.
Letting it out packs more in.
That shark gotta move, find, feed, feed, find.
I prefer smooth, laid back, eased mind,
doing nothing at all,
yet all,
letting is seep in, seep in it, wash in and out.
– Smith, 2.27.2014
Recorded two songs Tuesday. Here’s the unposted one. I start off quite badly, lost, off time, no idea what I’m doing, and by the time the song ends 5 minutes later I’ve almost figured out what I could be doing. Music’s pretty cool, though. Click here to hear Line Dance. Peter Ball music, mix, recording; me lyrics, vocals.
Line Dance (the song)
I rumba to the samba and tango with the mode
of act and act’s reaction to the tenor of the tone,
chance to dance soup sambar when sombre and alone,
two-step the foursquare over outside our underzone,
Samba tango bop be bop
Sombre tangle low we go
Dancing from the drop up top
To the dangle far below
backbeat and curtsey limber dosey doe,
pressing petty parsnip to the Parson’s pol,
prancing dance of dipping doubtless due the duel
of the outer sniping of inner use of you.
Samba tango bop be bop
Sombre tangle low we go
Dancing from the drop up top
To the dangle far below
Me I muse the music to tap and top and tell
whoop of swooping movement in the swope and swell
of play for higher orbit, bouncing about a bit,
best we not ignore it since it is the it it is.
Samba tango bop be bop
Sombre tangle low we go
Dancing from the drop up top
To the dangle far below
Music, mix, recording Peter Ball; word voice me.
Queen Bee
I tangle with the angle
tussle with the tone
huddle with the humble
as I stumble to atone
being lone and leftish
but that is who I am
so no to why and worry
let’s just spread some jam
let us bumble on the crumble
jelly in the ma’am
Queen Bee being busy
air humping who she can
before prodigious birthing
and the filling of her lair
with wax and young and honey
buzzing back and forth
new tale old already
steeping in the broth
sleeping team of being
seeking dream in brood
in her honeyhood.
– Smith, 2.26.2014
Recorded two songs yesterday. Here’s the second. Mirror Mere. Free listen and download. Peter Ball music, mix, recording; me on word and voice.
Mirror Mere
They call me Mr. Klutz
I keep falling on my butts
I drop my keys
On food I sneeze
And all the wrong things clutch
At parties I don’t talk
At success I seem to balk
At first I fail
And then I bail
And go alone for walk
They say I always pose
Keep looking down my nose
But they don’t see
The inner me
And never will I spose
I have empty billfold
No money does it hold
I can’t buy that
Cuz wallet’s flat
And clothes are shabby old
They keep me from their room
Because my social gloom
When I cry why
The falling sky
It darkens their new boon
Oh they like it when I clown
Or when I’m not around
Please go away
They often say
Cuz we don’t like your sound
But yet the joke’s on them
When I sneak back again
I eat their food
And mock their good
As I their lies condemn
So leave it as it is
Their life’s an ugly biz
They lie, they cheat
And then they repeat
While I work higher bliss
Music, mix, recording Peter Ball; word voice me.
So or Soar
Some say sharks must keep moving or die.
I know people like that.
We, kids, parents and more
grow in a culture soup
consisting of insisting happiness
is big tits, long dicks,
fast cars, shiny shoes,
champagne clothes,
$700 hamburgers,
and illegal immigrants who work for free.
Social mantra is move, feed, eat,
accume, consume,
if you stop you think
if you think you evaluate
if you evaluate you see wrong
see wrong think change,
if not, die more inside
need more outside
to hide not doing need do.
Double speak double think psyche freak mind break?
Or lay back accept ask do task good bask?
I’m talking to me of course.
You’re on your own recourse.
– Smith, 2.25.2014
Ms. MandyCat
Hold her to my breast.
Hear burblechirp in her chest.
Love her birdcoo purr.
– Smith, 2.24.2014
Recorded song below week ago but didn’t post because the music swamps the vocals – but now I think on it, that might not be such a bad thing, so here it is. Click here to hear Status Report
Music, mix, recording Peter Ball; words, vocals me.
Status Report
My death will make no news
half-hung no flag will fly
but it makes no matter
cuz I may not choose to die
East of Eden
West of gloom
Wanting sun
But trapped by moon
I keep most words in mind
share them not with folk
since some are hurt and more unkind
while many more don’t hear what’s spoke
East of Eden
West of gloom
Wanting sun
But trapped by moon
I try to walk good path
be fair in word and deed
yet they call me psychopath
because I care for poor in need
East of sun
West of moon
Wanting Eden
Trapped by gloom
81 Ball & Smith songs for free listen/download at reverbnation.com/mutantsmitht.
Inadvertent Angels
She’s walking down the street
here to help our hinder
to see we dodge defeat
then slips away forever
says it’s chance we meet
beneath angelic flavor
He ambles down the lane
where I wrestle fixing flat
insists no time explain
must buy tube and that is that
by time I see he’s right as rain
wife has tube, store closed fast
– Smith, 2.23.2014
Can’t imagine how this reads without the back story.
Lady and I were helped often by strangers in our 31 months of living in ten countries on three continents 2006-2009.
In Krakow Poland, we checked out of our one-week loft for two months in the old Jewish Quarter, donned our too heavy backpacks and walked cross town to find our new place locked, no one answering the office buzzer. I stood there with the packs while Lady went looking for a fone since she had a few Polish phrases memorized. She came back, unfoned, which is when we decided to get cell fones.
We’re standing there wondering what to do when a young blonde woman bops along, says “Oh, are you trying to get in,” whips out her fone and calls someone, turns to us and explains “They thought it was to be tomorrow,” buzzes the custodians to let us in, carries Lady’s backpack up to our apartment, has the custodian loan us her key until tomorrow, explains she’d just been coming by to tell her boss she was taking a sick day when she saw us, wishes us well and leaves.
In south France bicycling from one wine town to another, I hit a pothole and blew my tire. I was trying to fix the tube with my repair kit when a tall gaunt dude walks up and says I need to buy a new tube and I need to do it now because the store’s closing for mid-day snooze in 10 minutes. I thank him and explain I can fix it. He insists, takes Lady into the store. As they come out with the tube, the store closes, and I’ve realized the tube blew at the base of the air nipple and is indeed unfixable. I thank him gratefully and he leaves.
Two strangers, two saves.
Lot of less than nice stuff going on in the world right now, but folk forget how much kindness and good stuff constantly happens all the time. Pay it back by paying forward.
Inner Rx
I get this rage when I see wrong
and have to stop,
breathe,
say “No thank you,
I will not respond wrong with wrong,”
repeat until rinsed,
smile.
– Smith, 2.22.2014
Feng Shui
I.
Some unaware this flows into that,
that decent belly density is desired.
II.
The dark night of the soul is twentyfour seven,
but you get time off for good behavior.
III.
May way less stress move over earth and calm the waters.
It’s list ticking time to prime for next.
IV.
Thump clunk of car door closing in the back,
rising whine of engine running road out front.
V.
“I have to dust off some fusty been building up for years,
some fusty must dust” she says in passing.
VI.
She’s pagan egg and I, the light above the light,
uninjured ear of engineer stoking engine box.
VII.
Won’t be finding me down at the Bar Code Corral,
my sheep pen’s past.
– Smith, 2.21.2014
Bakers Shoeman
Working at the shoe store
seeing ladies’ thighs, seeing ladies’ thighs, seeing ladies’ thighs,
working at the show store seeing ladies’ thighs,
heaven is a state of mind.
But since eyeballs bring no commission,
and pussy don’t pad the paycheck,
cash’s more important than the flashes.
– Smith, 2.20.2014
excerpt from SotL&F:
When I started at Loyola College, I couldn’t work at Bethlehem Steel anymore because of the hours, so I became a snow cone flavor delivery boy. Once I saw how filthy the flavoring vats were, I stopped eating snow cones off the street. Then I became a womens shoe salesman because the store had flexible hours and I could still go to school. After I sold a pair of shoes, I was required to try to sell a belt, purse and gloves to go with the shoes. This made me feel unclean and indelicate, so I didn’t.
One day I told my boss, “I’m not carrying my weight around here, am I.”
“No,” he said. “But you add a sense of class.”
I didn’t wear underwear then. One night my pants ripped as I crouched down to put on a customer’s shoe and my testicles popped out. The boss gave me a stiff canvas money bag, and I went down to the mall’s mens room with its seven urinals and green metal toilet stall walls and sewed the bag to the crotch of my pants and got this poem:
National Debt
Huddled beneath behind
Green metal stalls
The tile encrusted
Yellow, he sews an
Empty money bag
To his crotch, watches
His reflection mirrored
In regimented urinals
five six seven
Decaying down the wall
Cradling his existence
Fraying five to seven
In staid erotic fear
Small spider woven
Through uninforming ears
Tired of heaven he sews
His money to his crotch
He huddles
Outside of being one of 2,754 naked people in Spencer Tunick’s Cleveland nude shoot in 2004, I have never seen as much female flesh as I did as a womens shoe salesman. Women knowingly spread their legs as I crouched at their feet and asked me help them on with their boots. But after the first couple weeks all I cared about was commission.
– 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, The City Poetry Press, $20, 364 pages, 5.06″ x 7.81″
amazon.com/Stations-Lost-Found-Steven-Smith/dp/1477628290
STEVEN B. SMITH
Time with you is treat,
a boon, something I’m used to but boon,
like familiar warmth of bathwater, something
I can dip into at most any time. I can dip into the bath;
I can dip into your arms, your voice, your attention,
the co-creating of fun…
This is one of your best things: your fresh mind–
you are amused by your finds
Like an alien surveying the landscape, you collect
photo samples of objects–not just as musing points
in their entireties but you document features apart from
conventional meaning as though objects biological specimens
in their own right, evolved from process in which humans
are unwitting facilitators, pawns of objects and gods
You catalog their skins
~ Lady