AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

Smith & Lady travels more or less Aug 2006 – Mar 2009

August 15, 2022 No Comments

Smith & Lady travels more or less Aug 2006 – Mar 2009

We first left with 70 pounds of backpack each — returned with 35 pounds each . . . quickly learned you REALLY have to want something in order to carry it on your back.

>>>>> to chiplis (1 mile)
>>>>> to chicago — (312 miles)
>>>>> to london — (3,954 miles)
>>>>> to north england — (250)
>>>>> to london — (250)
>>>>> to amsterdam — (221)
>>>>> to london — (221)
>>>>> to lodz poland — (719)
>>>>> to krakow poland — (204)
>>>>> to lodz poland — (204)
>>>>> to london — (719)
>>>>> to pula croatia — (788)
>>>>> to zagreb (122)
>>>>> to pula (122)
>>>>> to trieste — (54)
>>>>> to venice — (71)
>>>>> to pula — (125)
>>>>> to beziers — (914)
>>>>> to barcelona — (156)
>>>>> to madrid — (314)
>>>>> to marrakech — (652)
>>>>> to essarouira (95 miles)
>>>>> to marrakech — (95)
>>>>> to london — (1,432)
>>>>> to braithwaite — (250)
>>>>> to london — (250)
>>>>> to marseille — (623)
>>>>> to albeilhan — (120)
>>>>> to paris — (393)
>>>>> to albeilhan (393)
>>>>> to barcelona — (156)
>>>>> to nyc usa — (4,083)
>>>>> to cleveland — (402)
>>>>> to mexico — (1,946)
>>>>> to cleveland — (1,946)
>>>>> to mexico — (1,946)
>>>>> to cleveland — (1,946) = 26,499

June 13 2016 Lady Poem

June 13, 2016 No Comments

Incense answering a yearning
to fill here now with palpable
this volume, my space decorated
in the land that harbors me

I read of Vicuna, Chile
and persimmon marmalade, kaki –
avocado on a breakfast table
validation – thoughts of the native –
wishing to be native – and traveler –
within, within, so valid

Brown men in cowboy hats
and women in bowlers

I’m braided in
my own land here in the Americas but how
here, incense, fruit, text and
alchemist moments

~ Lady

Poetry Month Poems – Lady’s #13

April 13, 2015 No Comments

 

Eritrea

We have crossed many rivers
but anywhere a mother’s touch, anywhere
family there is common ground, home and warmth
couches around the family table, nakfa for coffee, nakfa
for tea, coca cola for the ceremony of meals yielded from
work and harvest, bright smiles and shared plates,
same needs, same needs

~ Lady

 

Poetry Month Poems – Lady #5

April 5, 2015 No Comments

 

English Easter Eclogue

Mistle thrush sings to moonlit morning
Arrow spots on its chest, rufous underwings
Scruffy little bird, mistletoe eater

Sacred honeyed breath
Selling the day with sober wakeup call
“Hey man, what’s happening” whistle through
its front teeth

Sheep smelly in the denuded fields
divots of grassy shit under hoof
we have stuff to do before the sun comes up
like milking cows on concrete
even on Easter morning

~ Lady

 

Smith & Lady Poems March 2015 – Lady’s #25

March 25, 2015 No Comments

 

Mexico

Falling asleep on the bus
nodding off to cumbia beat
din of dreamscape, rumbling
carnival heart in the paper mache
garden of the world

Waking up at the stop
in the saddlebow of siddhasana,
like breathing suddenly clearly
wobbly fawn steps down to the street
new eyes delivered to daylight

~ Lady

 

Smith & Lady Poems March 2015 – Lady’s #24

March 24, 2015 No Comments

 

Unsure about the threads of his bed he set to rolling
on radial tires the medicine of the steering wheel his
own

quiet authority a mechanical shaman easing his
weave the road’s trance of flowing white lines

his
unwavering eyes the molded crease of his mouth the
movie light of the night strobing chiaroscuro pores of
his skin

staring straight ahead thinking,
thinking

~ Lady

 

Smith & Lady Poems March 2015 – Lady’s #18

March 18, 2015 No Comments

 

Labradorite rock
gleaming blue glint in polished feldspar,
sky and water swimming in matter,
northern lights held in the hand

I’d give you a stone, if I had one,
a token of my vision of the best of our romance
captured in rocks cultured under midnight sun
forever like the traveler of Ella Fitzgerald’s
voice riding radio ripple to outer space, as large
as constellation’s everspreading embrace

I kiss your lips like Lucy’s cordial, a flask
of something delicious and good, eat the daily
replenished bread of your arms, my heart squinched
wanting more contiguousness for our handheld
expanses as vast as the cast of an aurora

~ Lady

 

Smith & Lady Poems March 2015 – #16

March 16, 2015 No Comments

 

Laying flowers side by side on the table
to array the palette of a bouquet, my jackleg fingers
in this matter remembering the words of
Thich Nhat Hanh, “leave space in
between things.”

Looking towards learning skillful compositions,
juxtapositions of color and shape and mood, so many
ways to make and discover frontiers

Which reminds me of you–how you
would have every day novel, a zany birthday party
on a dance floor platform for whirling happiness, your
camera curiosity seeking out photos like the world
is full of easter eggs, and it is

Yet sometimes the spicy lightning
of your attention’s like you’re zapping barbed xrays
of unjust situations with moralizing words–promising
them their comeuppance

Condemnation of entire domains
heuristically earned yet with wild daisies of grace
sprouting exceptions to the rules and you smile with
surprise like the cheer of holding my hand and running
through a sprinkler

I’m growing a whole bunch of exceptions for you,
a lawn, a street, a town, a county, a country, the world–
I’m gathering them and the other flowers
for the fiesta of our lives

~ Lady

 

Black History Month Poems #18

February 18, 2015 No Comments

 

A coriaceous book spine narrative
given jacktars, romance of masculine flounce,
marking skin with punishment proud tattoo
on roses of muscles, scrimshaw feast
for eyes

Drinking, flogging, religion and rocking courtship
of creaking boards and shifting stances, wind whipped
sunburned toughs blooming sails, tugging feel
on rope

In actuality
there was the ladening of burden
dispensed unequally on the cast of fraternity,
the clenched taking of it, muscle taxed,
mind gritted, hollowed out until what’s left
either’s hulked husk or honed bone
body polished to an ivory knife
pushing abacus’s possibility
of mutiny

~ Lady

 

BLACK HISTORY MONTH POEMS – 13

February 13, 2015 No Comments

 

The Morrocan men I met
had some echt fatherliness, the
responsible gentleness of which conjured
femininity to my European-American
lens

Homegrown walks
through the neighborhood, children
dancing like dolphins alongside, tell me
a story, give me an apple, sing me
a song

Musicians in galibiyas played
a music box of sound on walks back from
parties, their late night returns adjoining
the sacred hour of early morning spiritual
commuters pattering like the shine of
ecclesiastical chandeliers

At the mosque the soaring moan
curtain of woon–call to God, call to Allah–
meet us like the slow and peaceful glide
of the crane to his nest in
the minaret

~ Lady