April 2016 – Page 3 – WALKING ON THIN ICE

now is dance of chance and laugh

April 9, 2016 No Comments

Cleveland spring 2016

Operating Manual

Empty eyes are never filled
Hungry hearts aren’t always healed
Past provokes the mind
Future floats in feel

Now is dance of chance and laugh
Now is scent of peel
Now is knot of know and no
Now is art of deal

Then becomes a climbing wall
Then composted real
Then tells truths in lies not whys
Then is filling field

Tomorrow’s then is when of will
Tomorrow’s tool of trade
Tomorrow breeds today’s fool
Tomorrow now abrades

Is is us walking path
Is is bus off road
Is ain’t is and is ain’t ain’t
Is just what it is

– Smith, 4.9.2016

Five years ago I started posting my word/voice jams with the late Peter Ball’s music/mix/recording online at

. . . now have 107 songs there under Mutant Smith which have 8,544 listens. Currently #5 on the Cleveland blues chart. Started at 24, got as high as 2, usually in the top 10. There’s only 29 Cleveland blues bands on ReverbNation.

Most recent six songs are to the music of Ball’s friend Billy Clarksville because Peter died last year (1949-2015).

I see myself as veering between werewolf blues and werewolf rock cuzza the growl howl groan moan tone.

107 free listens, free downloads unlike anything you’ve heard – whether that’s good or not is up to you, though some say there’s a Captain Beefheart Howlin’ Wolf Tom Waits element to my graveled delivery.

in sin elation

April 8, 2016 No Comments

Insinuation

I don’t know but I’ve been told
the streets of heaven are made of mold
a bill of goods oversold
by forked tongue of Satan
hawking slick satin
in sin elation

– Smith, 4.8.2016

Night train whistle moan

April 7, 2016 No Comments

Night Train

Night train whistle moan
for those who yearn in heart
for part unknown

Dark moon
black sky
uneasy I

Another day
to find my way
from say to pay

– Smith, 4.7.2016

I’m a man of bad bone

April 6, 2016 No Comments

Status Report 201

I’m a man of bad bone
constant pain
occasional sorrow

Walk old shoes
in crooked path
to best guess possible

Trying hard
to keep heart open
and mouth closed

My path not your foot
your shoe not my road
yet same roam home

– Smith, 4.6.2016

Craft Wrap

April 6, 2016 No Comments

Sadhus of some modern place, plaster of paris museums like a herbie hancock rockit head future funk sculpture at the mixture of everything like so much gray paint. A sadhu beholding a pool of combined exertions, what rolls off, drips down. Sadhus dancing hands in twilight ecstasy to mysterious smokey saxophones and undulating snake drums, every turn defined by cymbal clash and smoke. Serenity, letting it wash with only incidental thought dripping like that muddy paint. Serenity, an actual thing.

Or Satie, Satie — not only Sadhu — too, like the balance of a posable wooden art manikin sitting Pinnochio on some artist’s table, the artist in a live-in studio with paint-splattered wood or concrete floors, and large windows, large windows with bright gray light and saturation of the senses. Or maybe the artist with a clay chisel, unmuddying mud.

Meanwhile mountain wisdom prayer flags open sky to contain the incidental warble of a bird of prey. And here, a robin forces keen excitement, a yearning for the change to warm weather like the pang of a bandaid pulled off winter to get to summer.

Indulgences for children, too… remembering indulgences like school songs and watercolor.

~ Lady

that now’s not now now

April 5, 2016 No Comments

Status Report 200

It’s now.
Now another now.
It was now but that now’s not now now.

If now never stops
how can now be now again?

Was now.
Is now.
Will be now.

When’s now then?
Where the flux before and after?

Now then lie.

– Smith, 4.5.2016

Seven years ago stopped by Social Security building on West 75, walked in, took a number, was served, and left.

This morning ride my bicycle up in 27 degree spring weather, walk in to metal detectors and two brown-suited armed guards.

Told me to empty my pockets, take off my belt. Hauled handfuls of change and poetry and metal scraps into their bins, followed by a baggy of baking soda for emergency stomach acid which looked an awful lot like a bag of cocaine . . . their eyebrows went up but they said nothing.

Forgetting to take off my belt, I told them I had metal in me that would set off their detector anyway. It did. They wanded my cobalt and chrome shoulder and my titanium hip, both of which set off alarms, and let me in.

Can’t wait for more metal when they add two rods to my neck in two weeks. Don’t see me and the metal detectors getting along in the future, which in these days of Big Brother could be interesting.

here comes Smith, the new Tin Man

April 4, 2016 No Comments

I’m getting more body metal.

The doc’s going in the end of April through the back of my neck to scrap extruding bone spur and cartilage off the inside of my spinal column because the protrusion is pushing against my spinal cord and has bruised it.

Have had tingling and slight numbness in my finger tips since November, and I drop things, find my balance a bit off, and my nerves are stretched tight because of it.

They’ll insert 2 rods and some screws to stop my arthritis bone degeneration, then put me in a hard collar for two weeks . . . when the doc said that, Lady piped up, “Oh like one of those dog collars so he can’t bite himself?”

Don’t like being fixed all the time, but am grateful I’m fixable. Thank goodness for Medicare. And we’re poor enough the hospital will absorb what Medicare doesn’t cover, otherwise we couldn’t do it.

Forgot to ask what metal the rods will be . . . my hip is titanium, and my shoulder is cobalt and chrome. Doc says since I like posting my x-ray fotos, I’ll really like the rod and screws version of my head. Now when folks say I’ve a screw loose, I can show them the x-ray and say no, I’m screwed fine.

Status Report 199

One neck bone’s not connected right
to next neck bone jammed too tight

so Doc’s going in with micro knife
to straighten my serial spinal strife

going to add two rods and some screws
increase my metal density too

got one titanium hip screwed alone
one shoulder built of cobalt and chrome

two hernias covered with synthetic mesh
keep me from being tossed with the trash

my eyes have metal and plastic glasses
my teeth ceramic and metal for noshes

grass for my brain, love for my heart
help keep me from falling apart

so I lumber on in stumbling style
trying to reach one more mile

gotta live at least 31 years more
to keep my wife from the misery store

imagine my clink and clanking then
here comes Smith, the new Tin Man

– Smith, 4.4.2016

dark mass on right at curve pushing into white is going to go

rope-a-dopamine

April 3, 2016 No Comments

Here There Be Dragons

Hear about the existential frog?
It died and couldn’t croak.

Imperfection is my middle name
I’m up the hill without a paddle.

About the rich, which is it-
cream rises to the top, or shit floats?

Let’s play the survival game
a.k.a. The Rope-a-Dopamine.

Worm worm worm worm
this is a fact of life.

Then there’s the existential frog
that croaked and couldn’t die.

– Smith, 4.3.2016

on-off-on in computerspeak

April 2, 2016 No Comments

Status Report 198

Promised Lady K.
I’d live another 31 years minimum
cuz ain’t no sense dying before 101
(which is on-off-on in computerspeak)
but our 10 years so far have seen
1 throat cancer killed with radiation,
1 hip replacement,
nose polyps removed,
1 shoulder replacement,
2 throat biopsies, 1 root canal,
throat polyps taken out, 2 hernias,
upper dental plate and partial lower,
and 1 broken knee
so hate to imagine what’s ahead
before I run out of parts
to break, fix, or replace
though on the sunnyside
she’s eased my inner rage
and softened how others see me
she’s my eye candy heart candy soul candy queen
who’s probably checking my warranty
as we speak

– Smith, 4.2.2016

blog fotos from 2006 – http://agentofchaos.com/smith001.html

some eat, some gamble, some sex, some steal

April 1, 2016 No Comments

Sisyphus Bound

Put food in, poop food out
Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep

Clean sheets, clean body, new made bed
Dirty sheets, dirty body, unmade bed

Cuppa coffee to get going
More cups when run back down

This land of glossies and weight losses
Thick with greasy guys and fat lasses

Rayon orlon nylon dacron polyester eschew
cotton, silk, wool and fur that we kill

Rally round what the script employs
as we stumble across the stage

Our old roles nailed through extremities
to keep us crawling cross

Sun up sun down sun up sun down
pay the pain of play again

Some eat, some gamble, some sex, some steal
to get through repeat of difficult deal

– Smith, 4.1.2016