Status Report 206
Good ain’t all good.
Bad ain’t all bad.
Sad’s sad unless you’re glad.
Could all be better.
Could all be worse.
Depends on verse and vector
view and valor
unless you’re cursed
or seeking hearse.
Float like a bee
sing like a butterfly
– Smith, 4.30.2016
My sound card’s still dead, and I’m astonished how lessened the internet experience is without sound – no watching news videos, no listening to music, no meditation bell dinging every 15 minutes, no dipping into the endless treasure trove of dead Prince bits people are sharing.
NightBallet Press is putting out a chapbook of poetry honoring Prince. My first thought was no way could I catch my appreciation of him in a poem, especially since I don’t do celebrity death poems — although I do have one celebrating Richard Nixon’s death, and a second honoring Johnny Cash’s career – but in the bathroom this popped into my brain.
Glow Go Mo-Fo
My computer sound card died
the day Prince did
so I could sit in silence
and respect his sound.
That sexy mo-fo
could cream a kiss
blender bliss
excite this this
speed slo-mo
slow the go
and re-gender is.
– Smith, 4.29.2016
Lady’s poem Sun Dance was the Cuyahoga County Public Library’s poem-of-the-day for Tuesday April 26 – http://www.cuyahogalibrary.org/Services/William-N-Skirball-Writers-Center/Read-Write-30-Days-of-Poetry/30-Days-of-Poetry/April-2016/SUN-DANCE.aspx.
Her poem first appeared in “Oct Tongue -1″ published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2014 (a collaborative book featuring 31 poems each by Mary E. Weems, John Swain, Steven Smith, Kathy Smith, Shelley Chernin, Steve Brightman and John Burroughs. 300+ pages, perfect bound, 6×9” – http://ccpress.blogspot.com/2014/07/055.html. Cover foto by Smith).
Spirit Bone
Before the time of people
there was Spirit, there was Bone
each roamed alone
Light and night they went their way
Spirit air
Bone firmer where
Bone climbed to mountain top
reached for sun
found it could not be done
Spirit flew through valley low
musk of earth to feel
on non-existent heel
So Spirit wedded self to Bone
bore Flesh in pain
for greater span
Now Bone and Spirit walk in Flesh
people air and land
grain the am
– Smith, 4.28.2016
Lady’s duct-taped stung left hand after Dr Smith’s visit
Lady got stung Monday as we picked up our bees from Queenright Colony. With hundreds of 3-pound boxes of bees shipped from California stacked about, thousands of bees were loose and one landed on Lady’s shawl unbeknownst to her. She accidentally brushed it with her hand. and now it’s swollen and itchy because we had no Benadryl to take to soften the symptoms.
The worst part is the itchiness. When scratched, it just becomes worse, so you scratch more and itch more and scratch more and . . .
Last night we covered her hand in a baking soda paste, wrapped gauze around it, then wrapped her hand in duct tape so she couldn’t get at it, and this morning she’s better.
I’ve found the day of the sting is nothing, 2nd day is miserable, 3rd day an itchy swelly hell, 4th day you begin to mend.
We were each stung on seven occasions last year.
Status Report 205
I
Sometimes I reach for my grass in the dark
and cannot feel any in my round tray
so set its three pipes, ashtray,
toothpick and lighter aside
angle tray 45 degrees
tap thrice firmly
and scrape down loose scraps with my calling card
knowing a pipe’s worth of weed will appear,
and it does.
Such is the faith of experience.
II
The daze of the weed:
Monweed, Tuesweed, Wednesweed,
Thursweed, Friweed, Saturweed, Sunweed…
these are the only days I toke.
– Smith, 4.27.2016
Our bees are here.
Last year was our first as beekeepers. Got our box of 10,000 bees in April and by fall had turned them into 70,000 and 125 pounds of honey.
Then early February they disappeared.
So we ordered more for year two. Yesterday drove 44 miles southwest to Spencer to pick up our bees, then 101 miles northeast to Ashtabula to put them in their hive, then 58 miles southwest home to Cleveland . . . 7 hours, 203 miles, and $400 in bees and new hive woodware to replace last year’s that we burned because we think we lost the hive due to bee diarrhea a.k.a Nosema..
This year we will be giving less of the honey away and selling more to recoup part of the $1,000 dollars our first two years will cost us.
Charge
Charge forth
charge fifth, charge first, charge card
buy or fight, fight or buy
American might tripe on sly
lay away now, pay a lot later
check all the sales
dig two-for-one crater
gobble it up
swallow it down
clump with the chumps
stand with the clowns
run to replace
dash to discount
buy stuff for your stuff
have most stuff in town
now you’re talkin’
as possessions you’re stalkin’
stuff’s what it is
don’t think of the ain’t
or those who don’t got
your color of paint
forget about them
they’re on the wrong path
they think easing heart
is best you can ask
well we all want more
we want it now
and we want it all
for we are the big
we write off the small
new stuff brings new you
big bill coming due
– Smith, 4.26.2016
Pollination
Petals’ smoother-than-leaf
plastic velvet house essential
color and oil
Nectaries gild anther and pistil,
ovary, stamen, style and sepal
Methyl benzoate
aerates an immediate halo
of a painted landing pad
Strong busy black legs cling
Pollen shakes on brushing wing
Done, a bee cleans herself on
petals’ protruding lips
From tail to tip
she packs the pollen on
the bootstraps of her backleg hair
And when it’s had enough
when it knows it can make its stuff
a flower’s musking stops
~ Lady
Status Report 204
Is moon half full
or empty?
She says
“They don’t make old people like they used to.”
Vintage run from vine to sage
in muck of wine and wage.
Younger blood make old mice young
so with me and Lady.
You must pent
before you repent.
Sentient life is wrinkle of time
small to big to small we climb.
Much of waste is was
cutting cost of used to be.
Am I getting older wiser
or just more weary in my way?
Beware the old
they slow and sly.
– Smith, 4.24.2016
Walking an alternate reality since doctor called Tuesday saying he wasn’t going to cut me open Thursdayday after all, so today I walk in sun rather than haze under pain meds in hospital while wearing hard collar to keep two metal neck rods from moving.
Operation still likely to happen this summer once they rule out low B-12 as the culprit. Hope I’m wrong. Hope we don’t have to steel ourselves for neck spine surgery again later, but right now quite glad I’m uncut.
Slow Talkin’ Blues
Well I talk to myself
I answer too
yes I talk to myself
and answer too
no one understands
why I do what I do
Moon up high
covers cold cold ground
yes moon up sky
casts no warmth down
if I don’t talk to myself
won’t be no sound
Folk yak at me
but their words got no life
yes folk flap their if
make whole buncha strife
so I gotta ask
why you spout such tripe?
You got a mouth even a mother
wouldn’t want to kiss
you talking crap that smothers
much kinder bliss
so why you wanna
fuck around like this?
– Smith, 4.23.2016
details Mother Dwarf collage weathered outside 10 years
Inner Light
You’re a traffic light
you hang there
shine in sun
sway in wind
drip in rain, ice, snow
go yellow red green
one way
green yellow red
the other
destiny duty done
same color color color
after same color color color
forever and ever for men
to no then
no later
ever changing never changing
until some end
a broken relay, a rusted pin
gets you fixed and working again
or dust binned
– Smith, 4.22.2016
A child crouched
on the aside of a stream
A burbling parenthesis
in some future
reminiscence
Whimsy flows whistling
with the tinsel of sapling birds
Wet work thinking
he plans in his head paced by breaths
he scrapes
Gray clay hard to obtain
with a stick from the bank
His fat fingers fumble
~ Lady