AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

Smith – 9 poems, 10 fotos, Medusa’s Kitchen

September 28, 2019 No Comments

“A big thank-you this morning to Smith from Cleveland (Steven B. Smith) for his musical, mythical land of poetry and his eye-popping visuals. “Cool Cat Copacetic”, for sure!.” – Kathy Kieth, editor/publisher of Medusa’s Kitchen/Rattlesnake Press.

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2019/09/sisyphus-rocks-n-rolls.html

1st foto below waaaay too large to show but I like the distortion… correct sized foto beneath it.

 

Smith reading 2019-02-19 at the Art On Madison gallery

September 24, 2019 No Comments

Seven month old fone video of my Art on Madison reading 2.19.2019, with guest appearance by Lady, hosted by John Burroughs.

Video volume is inconsistent due to ceiling heater cutting on and off, plus my soft speaking voice, and lack of a microfone – but it gives you a feel for the rhythm of the words. I had to use headfones to listen.

Friends have mentioned the best parts are Lady reading from the memoir at the end of her set, and me ending with mom’s death around the 40 minute mark.

Introduction by John Burroughs — 0 to 3:12
me reciting — 3:13 to 14:35
Lady reading — 14:36 to 27:13
me reading — 27:14 45:53
Q & A — 46:54 51:56

Watching it, there are moments of magic, but I need to be way less laid-back, and to add volume and texture to my vocal delivery… compensate for having part of my voice box removed in the early oughts.

But the words themselves are right fine. And the audience generous.

The two books read from are —

Where Never Was Already Is, 2018, Crisis Chronicles Press, 324 pages 244 poems 29 illustrations, $15
http://ccpress.blogspot.com/2018/04/098Smith.html

and my memoir

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, 344 pages, $20
https://www.amazon.com/Stations-Lost-Found-Steven-Smith/dp/1477628290

Lost (x 4 x) Found

September 18, 2019 No Comments

Lost lost sorta-lost lost.
Cards for Medicare, SSN, debit, and credit.
Days pass for some, weeks for others.
Weary worried worn and wan.
And then
found found found found.

Last month hospital asked to see my new Medicare card. Wasn’t in my wallet so they said bring it next time.

Came home, looked everywhere. Nada.

Decided to bicycle to west 79th and get a replacement card, so looked up their hours and find they’re not there any more… have to go downtown, to the BIG Building, where my shoulders, hip, and neck will set off their metal detectors, me hoping they won’t shoot me. Of course I’m old, white, and male, so I’d probably be alright.

Today I get an email reminding me to bring my Medicare card next time.

So I search harder. Take the bin I keep wallet and keys in with years of odds, ends, notes, collage pieces, bills, and look through each piece, getting rid of a lot of trash and finding 9 laundry quarters, but no card.

Then I take everything off the bookshelf by my chair, again to no avail.

Look behind a large broken assemblage leaning against the bin’s bookcase and see a card face down on the floor – think aha, there it is, but it’s my SSN card I didn’t even know I was missing, the very card I’d need if I have to go downtown.

I give up, take a bath, mull… figure card could have fallen with the SSN card and slipped beneath the bookshelf, so I get dressed and take everything off the shelves, the first being a small collage and a book it rests on – I set them on the work table, then take everything out of the bookcase, turn it upside down – no card, and no card on each book I replace. I give up, again.

Wife comes home, tells me her bankcard is lost beneath the car seat for the past week, and she can’t fine her credit card past 4 days.

I get up to go down to the car and notice the collage and book I’d put on the table. I start to put them back, then out of curiosity pick up the collage to see what the name of the book is – and there between the two is my Medicare card.

I retrieve her bank card from beneath the driver’s seat, then clean out the entire car to be sure her muissing credit card isn’t there somewhere. She comes down to help and mentions the last time she used it was 4 days ago at a local restaurant, so she calls them, and viola – they have the card.

4 for 4. How lucky can we be?

face, freely fragmented

September 15, 2019 No Comments

more freely fractured Smith face
1st 2 Lady:
foxy Lady above
Warhol Lady below






old Provost, new Smith

September 14, 2019 No Comments

Took this foto of a chair not there because Jim Lang frequently quoted “A day without Wittgenstein is a day without a chair” going back maybe 25 years. I never knew he was quoting a Terry Provost poem.

Interestingly, I shot this outside the Negative Space gallery at our monthly reading while Terry was still there – so I took this foto because of him while he was there and me not knowing it was because of him.

Reification

— Terry Provost

A day without Wittgenstein is like a day without
disappearing chairs, without
weaving cloth at an empty loom. Where
the dog fails to talk
to himself.
A day where it neither rains –
nor does-not.

How hot the taxing pursuit
of exactitude. A few millions upon billions of
electron volts exuding the threat
of electrocution, the guillotine-sweat of essence
from some Manhattan Project nuclear pile gone critical
beneath Chicago.

One day a new order of insects shows up
on the front page, as yet
un-named, as yet
un-begging the un-question of its un-filed
family,
genus,
and phylum. As yet both a coelacanth
and not.

Before there were alphabets there were no
spelling errors. Sure,
your pictograph of a wooly mammoth might
have resembled an Erymanthian boar, but the
terrifying, gory, Byzantine abomination of
orthography was as yet a buchstab
in some Phoenician-father’s eye.

Phonetic-Phoenicians everywhere,
and ere the iridescent wing,
a golf course gone to green in Phoenix
has made the snowbird sing.
When plumbing the unknown, the lyric’s a poetic
analgesic for bumps on your noggin.
Contusions acquired where confusing desires ride toboggans
near cobbled-walls where language
ends.

On a day without Wittgenstein
a dangerous virus,
not quite living, seeks
life’s essence,
and not quite understanding, speaks
what it does not quite
know. A petroglyph
a stone’s-throw away from
a glass-shattered house,
putting the sigh in
science, as you cast
bricks from the roof
of your mouth.

fluid face fractured fine

September 5, 2019 No Comments

Discovered the LIQUIFY option in the FotoShop filter box. Results remind me of the old 1980’s days of manipulating Polaroids as they developed… you could move elements around with your fingers, draw on them, wrinkle them to produce spider webs, toast freeze or microwave them as they developed, though you had to be quick and careful with the microwave because metal element in the foto would start sparking.

Here are my 1st 9 tries.

Fun fun fun until Daddy takes my keyboard away.