October 24, 2024
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Smith poems September 2024
2024.9.1 – Like the cicada
2024.9.1 – I wind the stopped clock
2024.9.3 – Leaf eats sun
2024.9.5 – Raise my face to sun
2024.9.5 – Sometimes you keep moving
2024.9.7 – I empty my sweater pocket
2024.9.7 – Your body tired ?
2024.9.8 – Awfully slippery slidery
2024.9.9 – Wife 9.9.2024
2024.9.9 – New light
2024.9.10 – Yup another waiting room
2024.9.13 – Humid in hot bath
2024.9.14 – I bash bounderies
2024.9.16 – O yes
2024.9.18 – Tombstones glisten
2024.9.18 – A soft sun
2024.9.19 – There’s an ache to find the truth
2024.9.20 – Is is long road
2024.9.21 – I take what sun I get
2024.9.22 – “Oh What A Lucky Man”
2024.9.23 – I love my life
2024.9.23 – Outside my parents
2024.9.24 – I write what I see
2024.9.24 – You know how it goes
~ ~ ~
Like the cicada
I sing my song
leave a husk
~ ~ ~
I wind the stopped clock
reset the time
nothing changes
Here we go again
a new day for an old dog
heading into the fog
Twixt good and evil
a sticky jam
you is what you am
Still, I try
~ ~ ~
Leaf eats sun
insect eats leaf
small flesh eats insect
bigger eats more and more eats bigger
until finally human me eats it all
Or all eats me
or eats what’s eaten me
et cetera
Going to be an autotroph when I grow up
I want to head the food chain
~ ~ ~
Raise my face to sun
suck what source I can
closed lids peach red glow
and luminous yellows
knowing if I open them
I’ll be damaged
flash to last year
staring at sun
eyes open
for four minutes
of total solar eclipse
it was alien
other
that burning thing up there
fuming fusion
everyday deadly
stare now eyes closed
letting the lid light warm
skin wrap my face
in shine
fine time
~ ~ ~
Sometimes you keep moving
cuz you know if you stop
that’s it
Sharks and capitalists
understand this
~ ~ ~
I empty my sweater pocket
yellow Splenda packets for the wife
and biodegradable poo bags for the dog
I’ve a good life
~ ~ ~
Your body tired ?
Your being listless ?
Your bones not supporting you ?
Your pain tense past present and future ?
Well there’s a cure ! ! !
It’s called caffeine and cannabis ! ! !
Toss in a car and some concrete
if you’re stupid and lucky
just kidding
(not)
and for heading your skeleton
on down Meat City
a gummy or two will do
nicotine or booze’s for those who loses
I’m more weed-given will to their won’t
and don’t
~ ~ ~
Awful slippery slidery
this thing called truth
it finally settles
then WHAM
it’s gone again
But thanks
for the blue skies
the green leaves
the wind
Pleasures treasures
~ ~ ~
Wife 9.9.2024
Our life story so far
19 years ago I told you to go away
you didn’t
I’m glad
That pretty much sums it up
~ ~ ~
New light
old lies
here we go again
Yesterday stains today
today strains tomorrow
tomorrow never comes
You then-past
you then-future
you Zen-then
Is always now
dreams imply elsewhen
elsewhere
I drive highways high
cuz that’s what they’re named
high octanes go
It’s in the “maybe tomorrow”s
that sorrow borrows
faint fumes for the gone
~ ~ ~
Yup another waiting room
surrounded by the tearing down
and the building up
Hope of doing it better
fearing way wrong
(and the winner is . . ? )
I know the rich gotta eat
but do they have to eat us?
more calories in each other
I started below zero
talked my way up to sewage line
never escaped societal smell
Which is cool
being neither fool
nor tool
There’s right
there’s wrong
there’s blunt force of money
Lizard brain
leading us to big pain
yet again
No fear here cuz here still here
but in quantum squiggle
giggle gone for good
~ ~ ~
Humid in hot bath
sweating toxins out
hoping some good left
~ ~ ~
I bash bounderies
caffeinated
and tokenated and
thinkingated
until my head becomes Tardis
bigger on the inside
than out
though I ain’t got no magic throttle
nor time control
I still go wormhole places
and time before after
run on son of long-gone daddy
~ ~ ~
O yes
Mind monsters
cranium creatures
environmental viruses
survival of the fittest
sing hallelujah
ever onward in sorry sojourn
I dance between the shadows
suck what sun I can
watch women walk the harder path
Wife says she’s “the Zen in resentful”
while I keep pushing OFF buttons
in this ever-ON world
O let us pray
may the bad be better
and the good remain
~ ~ ~
Tombstones glisten
o so endless in the sun
cars rush by in their robot run
~ ~ ~
A soft sun
a good wind
the deep dance of leaves on trees
Sometimes the big picture
is less interesting
you lose the lace
~ ~ ~
There’s an ache to find the truth
and tell it
There’s an ache to find the truth
and be it
There’s an ache to find the truth
~ ~ ~
Is is long road
outside direction
or perfection
big bunch of life lessons
out there
think I’ll stay in
sometimes outer silence
lets inner silence sing too long
shake up the shuffle
my report card’s all C’s
caffeine concrete car cannabis
cradling coffee
round Dead Man’s curve
watering life
if there’s past Karma fare
to repair
I plead guilty
my bright words this morning
dim now
who was that man?
time goes on
I don’t
~ ~
I take what sun I get
I give what cheer I got
life goes on
I got coffee
I got me
I got wife in kissing tree
the road not taken
I been taken
repeatedly
There’s lies below
more lies above
helping push of shaping glove
you got your gods
you got your not nods
you still have to pay the rent
Sitting in a parking lot
watching a man sitting in a car
driver door open
scratching betting cards
looking for money
finding little or none
doing it again
and again
going in coming out
more cards
grim face
doing it over an hour now
in for cards
out with cards
sad silence
I wish him well
must be serious to keep the prayer going
My god’s not meat
my god is the all of nothing
the knot of now
Never pray to meat
it rots
Where’s this edge?
You get to it and there’s another
there’s always another
another up or down
in or out
and they all want rent
If not rent, respect
which is psychic rent
Here in workaway world
stress runs the mess
gets the killing done
fills the pantry
cooks the kitchen
preys on land run wrong
Stop and smell the roses
before they rot
and fall to the ground
They’re beautiful either way
~ ~ ~
“Oh What A Lucky Man”
saw Little Richard in mirror-shard dress shimmying atop a piano as he wailed away in 1971. . .
Bill Haley same night – nasty man, even his band disliked him, tried to intervie w and he snarled “Go away kid, I’m counting my money” . . .
1968 Frank Sinatra controlled entire Baltimore coliseum by standing still, continuously looking slowly over entire audience while singing, singing, singing . . .
Cream’s 1968 Goodbye concert, Ginger Baker’s solo with fluorescent drum sticks under black light highlit my 1st LSD concert . . .
Elvis 1976, big belly and all, bigger voice
myth and magic, electrified me in 58 . . .
Ella Fitzgerald, once Count Basie as pianist, once Oscar Peterson, class and gentle sass . . .
Willie Nelson’s wonderful twice, big place and small, magic overall . . .
The Plastic Exploding Inevitable, 1968, too long ago and too many drugs to remember program but Velvet Underground part of it though all I can be sure of is my left ear was filled with caked blood after . . .
Moody Blues on acid (“Timothy Leary’s dead”). . .
Emmylou Harris’ pure sweetness opening for Willie . . .
Tiny Tim doing astounding 50-song melody spanning 100 years in small Maryland bar then talking with me 45 minutes in dressing room him singing Bob Dylan as Rudy Valley and Rudy as Bob into my tape recorder talking of George Harrison smoking grass in a hotel party closet – pure genius, gentle sweet caring generous man . . .
Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, The Residents, Devo, Meat Beat Manifesto, Santana, Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Waylon Jennings, Cat Stevens, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Dwight Yokum, Shawn Phillips, Terry Reid, Badfinger, and of course my many myriad missing mind losts. . .
strange, saw The Rolling Stones in 1977 7th row for free with my adulterous married woman yet remember zilch. . .
1st concert Martin Denny 1963
seriously uncool lounge lizardness . . .
2nd concert forced to attend The Lettermen at Annapolis as Plebe at U.S. Naval Academy 1966 . . .
on good foot, Bob Dylan 5 times 4 brilliant . . .
didn’t see them perform but got stoned with Alice Cooper and Flo & Eddy (The Turtles and Frank Zappa) in ’72, and quite drunk with Paul Williams who was fun, funny, and wanted to play a Hobbit in the movies . . .
the one that got away? – Leonard Cohen, couldn’t afford him by the time he came around . . .
gave ’76 George Harrison ticket away at stadium – too many people queueing and moving and rustling and I’d taken too much acid, somehow got cab home alone in my fog . . .
now stay home thanks to plague and inclination, shuffle my fine pool of tunes . . .
this Get-Off-My-Lawn-ness is not my default mode though I’m of the age – I’m more You Can’t See Tits On The Radio or Cool Water, a beautiful song of mule and master thirsting to death in the desert . . .
“Happy trails to you”
~ ~ ~
I love my life
I love my wife
don’t like world strife so much
down to weary
wary
worried thought climb
from good of me
through bad of them
(and me we)
I sweat my poisons out
hope sum left in balance
thing about pain
they’re daily
like dark seed of sun
thing about seed
is plantings unknown
in brain of bloom and blame
and groan
which we must own
thing about thing
is no thing
Zen in
Ing
~ ~ ~
Outside my parents
best things happened to me were
being raised on a farm
LSD
and Lady
Best things now
are my moist leaking memories
lurking in my brain
and Lady
~ ~ ~
I write what I see
and my day’s all wet and gray
like the sea sees when it sez
“seize you on the downsize”
and sea change arranges
new shells of hells
atop your cherry pie
I know you’re going to say
I’m all wet
and yet
you might be right
I’ll wet you know
~ ~
You know how it goes
you just keep moving
sometimes slow
sometimes slower
sometimes not at all
but “still is still moving”
in inner morning lunar light
So they sing
I wouldn’t know
there are different rules after dark
but knives come out day and night
stick and stab wherever might
fit the story arc
Do know half cup afternoon coffee
not enough to really help
but enough to hurt
Face it folk
our gods are false
high on hallowed homies
hollowlujah
waiting for their money calls
on our invisible phones
So pass the plate
please the Preacher
and pay the plucking God Phone bill
~ ~ ~