Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 11

“The Cloud” at Dr TJ Eckleberg

happy to see my short story “The Cloud” is running at Dr TJ Eckleberg Review. The story is about a man and a cloud and a complicated relationship they’re having. Read here

Reason to Believe

subway to stadium

was a jet

the skies are nice

elsewhere

but I am underground

book in hand
I always have faith for the beautiful girls
save a seat for the children
carrying popcorn
the white hair’d elders
or the pregnant women
who may save this wasteland

heard only cousins or nephews get to conduct this train

but I have a friend at work

who had miracle tickets

to this unwanted game

shivering at the Yankees: opening day
lost in the line for the whatever
talk for 20 minutes to a traveler from South Africa
explain, this is baseball but doesn’t mean anything
my phones dead, yeah
that was a rattail yeah, you missed it
this is random, what?
what?
our country came up with this radical idea of slaughtering everybody moving west
then pretended like it was an accident
yeah, let’s hug, let’s drink a $20 beer: I love you too
let’s leave the infield
let’s flee the outfield
lean against a stranger in some tunnel leading home
D train south
to A train north
I follow my blind ambition
and confide any secret I think I can get away with
me and you are no different
you just live where you live
I just survive where I live
173td street
as it happens
flag me down with eyes wide and worldly compassion

I’m happy to give directions
to any person talking french
on my subway platform
just talk to me
and I will guess
alway guess
always guess
it’s 3am I gotta beat the sun
to my manual labor

station

but I will point you east

never west, man

never west

somewhere out there

threw the book

in the trash.

Everyone On Earth Lives On My Street, Yours Too

I have a paper skeleton hanging on my wall

to remind me everyone is the same

sometimes in the middle of the night

we wake up and are not sure why

always blame it on a scream

from the street

must have just missed it

yesterday I heard kids laughing

in the branches of a cherry blossom tree

our history has been misremembered

misquoted, misplaced

since it happened

yesterday

today under the cherry blossom tree

I saw a pool of blood

I got nervous

bent down, called 911

took a big sip

it could be anyone’s blood

our blood looks the same

probably it was that person

screaming in the night, who woke us up

I have a paper skeleton hanging on my wall

to remind me everyone is the same

but no one is as important as you.

Lamplighter Interview

 

The Lamplighter is a website based out of New Jersey that covers Art, Literature and Music happening in the garden state and of course NYC, Philadelphia (and beyond). Right now there is an event happening through April called Artist/Writer Mashup, that pairs illustrations by New Jersey artist Lauren Clarke with far flung writers all across the country. The illustrations were sent to various poets, flash fiction and short story kids. The writers use the illustration they are given as a prompt, and the while thing will carry through the month of April with blog posts by participants talking about their unique creative process.

So, as the Lamplighter asked, and here’s some answers to a few questions that asked about who I am and what I’m doing on this bizarre earth.

 

Who are you?

I’m a 33 yr old man, living like a drunken child in a blinking neon NYC. I work heavy construction in New Jersey: welding, rigging, taking apart machinery in industrial hell holes. I build power plants and refineries for money as a Boilermaker. I’m a novelist too, the books are F-250 (forthcoming from Piscataway House), and Tollbooth, I write short stories, have a collection called Or Something Like That, and a poet, my poetry book is called Everything Neon. 

I have a car in NYC and that in itself probably tells you how fucked up I am. Haha. I lift weights for exercise, even though the lady downstairs always comes up and screams at me. I put barbeque sauce on eggs sometimes. I have a wife who is a textile artist, and she always fills our apartment with light and laughs and Prince played at top volume on the stereo. 

What is your experience with writing?

Writing is a big ball pit. It’s stupidly fun. It’s fireworks going off inside an arcade that serves cold beer. 

I got tired of playing in bands, so I started sending poems and short stories out. Got published in cool lit mags like Smokelong, Word Riot, decomP, The Nervous Breakdown, Vol. 1 Brooklyn … That led to some novels being put out by some presses, like Piscatway House, and a book of poetry that came out from Marginalia in California. 

I don’t take the writing stuff very seriously. I try to keep it light. Keep it weird. Just enjoy it any way that I can. If it’s not utter joy, don’t do it. 

How did you find Lamplighter?

Heard about Lamplighter from my friends at The Idiom Magazine, Mark Brunetti and Keith Baird. They said that Lamplighter is doing very good things so I went on the site and looked and agreed. Lamplighter is adventurous. Covers it all. Reminds me of why I’m happy as fuck to be from New Jersey. 

What do you expect to accomplish while participating in the project? 

The usual. Just make Stuff. I don’t care whether it’s good or bad. I want to be making Stuff every day. This is an excuse to have a good time and see what some other writers and artists are up to. 

I don’t think I enjoy anything more than meeting great artists. There’s a party promised at an art gallery at the end of this April free for all. I’ll be there. I’ll be in the motherfucking gorilla suit. Unless it’s hot in there. 

Lamplighter NJ, April Writing Event

What is the illustration’s composition?

The illustrator drew a girl with sleepy eyes, who has a beehive hairdo, that is being built by bees who are hard at work while she does nothing at all with her life.  


How is it shaded and colored?

Intricately sketched, pen and ink it looks like. Black and white. Stark.


How does it make you feel?

Like a somnambulist. Like I’m dull and dead. Like bees are controlling the unseen/unknown factions of my life.


What do you think you can learn about the artist through these choice?

How happy she is with her own existence. My guess is that the artists is not happy and does not feel challenged in her day to day life.


What do you recognize about yourself as not being the artist?

I’m a lousy artist. I would have drawn the girl with eyes that look like she might make a bolt for the door. Who would escape. I am not this artist because I don’t like art about people who aren’t actively seeking/looking to fuck things up and shake their lives apart. However, I find this sketch to be super high quality, of unlimited interest and also, a great pleasure to look at.

Fuck Ups

I’m not sure how to get to where you are

all I have is this room I’ve always had

sometimes it rains and the raindrops hit the lake

outside the window and the fish come up

and kiss the spots where the rain is hitting

because they think the rain is mayflies

you’re where you are and you can’t get to me either

both me and you, we’re perfect

we survive on mistaken rain

perfect.

I’ve Thought of Ways to Survive NYC that I Shouldn’t Need

in Target, I’m standing by the sporting goods section

and I can’t stop myself from picking up an inflatable hot tub and lifting the inflatable hot tub over my head

I buy it and set it in the trunk of my car where the spare tire should be but there’s room because the spare tire has been on my car for sixty six weeks

I drive up the turnpike at 115 mph because that’s the only way that I can get through the toll booth without the cameras catching my license plate. If I am going to live in New York City I cannot afford to pay the bridge toll every day

I work in New Jersey

I don’t have a barbecue grill

I live on 173rd where I have no religion or cable TV

I am surrounded by dust bunnies in apartment 12

I set up the inflatable hot tub in the center of my living room

but I need a hose

that’s something I didn’t think of

so first, I walk over to my next door neighbor, who is a surprised to see me, I have never encountered my next door neighbor, not in the 12 years that I have lived here

“what can I do for you?”

“do you have a hose?”

my neighbor closes his door very slowly

I hear the dead bolt

I can sense his eye looking through the peep hole

I slap the door where the peep hole is and I walk away

the super is carrying garbage bags up from garbage storage area

it must be garbage day

that is one of the ways I have survived in New York City

I have not thought about garbage day in 12 years

sometimes I can even just toss an entire bag of garbage out my window so it crashes down near the cans, the super takes care of everything else

“hey man, I could use some help”

“what you need?” he says

“a hose”

“sure!”

he disappears for  minute and then comes back with a garden hose

that was easy

but then he says “what do you need it for?”

“I can’t tell you”

“then keep it,” he says “ I don’t want to ever see it again”

I fill the inflatable hot tub with scolding water

it is the best water in the country

everyone says that

they say that NYC tap water is a miracle

they say that pizza everywhere else can suck NYC pizza’s dick

they say bagels anywhere else can eat NYC bagel’s ass

it’s all thanks to this water

a friend of mine was arrested for swimming naked in the reservoir where this water comes from

he says they pointed a machine gun at him

he has a few stories where he has been naked and has had a machine gun pointed at him

he has never been in a war

but has had machine guns aimed at his nuts multiple times

I think he should avoid war

war would be no good for him

I’m not going to war either, I’m just going in this hot tub

my phone rings

it’s my mom

my mail still goes to my mom’s house in New Jersey

it’s been 12 years, I get no mail here

“hey, have one thousand tickets for you here”

“what kind of tickets? lottery tickets?”

“you’ve been driving through a toll, everyday?”

“yes, but every fast”

“okay … haha, go faster”

the doorbell rings

“hey, gotta go”

it’s my downstairs neighbor

she looks very upset

“it’s raining in my apartment”

I look at her shocked

I say, “you need an exorcist, probably”

but she can see the water rushing down the hallway

and she points

“what is that!”

“oh fuck, my hot tub …”

I close the door

I shut off the hose

I plug the hot tub in

the water swirls like heaven

bubbling like the afterlife is supposed to be like

and then there is more knocking on my door

but I’m getting naked

I’m climbing into the inflatable hot tub

I’m submerging

I’m going under like a frog

I’m thinking that I will also fill the living room with beach sand

and a charcoal grill

I can get the sand at Target

I can get the barbecue grill at Target too

both are on sale, saw them today

Duke and Jill by Ron Kolm

Unknown Press is publishing Duke and Jill by Ron Kolm before summer hits. If anyone would like an ARC, contact me.

The book is about two midwestern kids who crash land in late 70s NYC and inhabit a Lower East Side of Manhattan that is burning down every night. They bounce like pinballs through the ashes, encountering punks, art scene absurdists, pick pockets, hookers, police .. and they do it in style, high off their asses.

Part comedic misadventure, part love story as map to a city that no longer exists. Fun times.

One Year Anniversary of Everything Neon

A year ago today, my full length collection of poems came out. It’s a series of linked poems that tell a bigger story like a novel would.

here on Amazon

here on Goodreads

“This is a book of poetry for everyone–for both poets and people who hate poetry. In this book you will find Bud’s heart, as well as the hearts of the people he knows. His neighbors, co-workers, and friends are all here, in this book, and they are all flawed and charming. Loveable despite all. You will hear them through the walls of the book. And you know them already, from having lived.” Aaron Dietz, author of Super

Call This One Paper Moon

9000 paper balloons were hand stitched by small-handed children at a school taken over by soldiers. 34 sand bags on each balloon, and one bomb—dangling like a shiny pear on a metallic chandelier. Bye Bye: The balloons were jettisoned off a cliff, to 30,000 feet! shoved en mass towards America. Jelly fish floating in a blue sky over the Pacific.

—that was May ?, 1945

at night when the temperature cooled and the balloons sank in the atmosphere, an altimeter triggered a fuse to burn, that’d cause a sand bag to fall—and so the happy jelly fish bomb balloons bounced up and kept floating in the swift jet stream…

and so maybe …

problems are secretly departing

small apocalypses seldom reported

shhhh, don’t tell any one, ever

(text to steward) “Tomorrow I won’t be at work. There’s a banana at the desk where I sit and I might have left out rainbow trout sushi and seaweed salad—none of us are infallible. My boots are under my desk, soaked in diesel fuel. My father’s father helped lob the nuclear bomb. I’m reading a paperback book, it’s lying face down, page 58-59, spine cracked, on my desk … could use your help, think I left my paycheck underneath the book. Missed nine days last week, but still could use the cash, text me if you are going in. You could grab it. You could be a pal. Throw the seaweed salad out.”

(Response) “K….get btr”

Tomorrow I’m off/I’ll be at:

a) the movies, something scary enough to be  an A+ distraction

b) visiting two doctors. one will tell me I have brain cancer, the other will say I’m fine. They are Ying and Yang motherfuckers, these universal doctors

c) a haircut: shave half my head, make me half beautiful and half fucked up. Half offense, half revenge. Half sick, half thriving. Half old war, half new calm ignorant apple pie. All American.

The water tower behind our high school was a metal jelly fish with a setting sun and a bonsai tree air brushed on it. The real sun was gone. I was on Kura, pressing down in her back seat and she said, “You can cum in me, I can’t get pregnant.”

But I didn’t do that. I pulled out and got some on the seat. Later, we looked out at the sky and she said, “I saw a UFO last week.”

“Where?”

“Floating over those trees.” She pointed over the water tower.

“What’d it look like?”

“Big. A lost moon, maybe, not like this one, not a pussy little crescent. This one was tough, fat—round, shaky. Not the moon though. Or the moon if it was parachuting. Then I saw a flash. Danny’s car shook. We put the peddle down.”

“Why can’t you get pregnant?”

“Because I already am,” Kura said.

A boyfriend from another school, who I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. A foreign enemy. Looked different. Ate different. Different god. Different  school mascot.

—That was May ?, 1999

I heard their kid was born without any hands, but gets along fine.

(text to steward) “Tomorrow I’m off. Remind the boss. Eat my banana if you want; piss in my boots, hahaha.”

(response to text) no response

here’s a list of maybe’s 
 —maybe come back
 —maybe never coming back

—maybe too many sand bags
 —maybe not enough sand bags
 —maybe shouldn’t have started some shit

—maybe float across dark ocean, altimeter dropping sand bags on old life/strange ocean, sharks getting slapped in the head; each night all my helium cooled, but calculations keeping me going towards Oregon! and California! and Revenge!

therapy is probably self-terrorism

you were funny till you got numb, dummy

even grandma helped the war cause

I won’t be at work tomorrow

If all goes well, I will land in a grassy field and not detonate. And I will lay there and I will wait. And nothing will happen. And no children will come running, laughing, singing the songs that bring the sun up and set the moon to sleep. There will be no explosion.

9000 ballons were pushed off the cliff

It’s estimated that 400 survived their trip.

A trip/a normal, quiet, calculated life

a life of floating

a drifting confidence

in another life I want to be a non-electric jellyfish. I don’t want to hurt anything. I want to bob beneath silent moonlight, absolutely no honor, absolutely no pride. no students. no soldiers, or scientists–all chance. just sit here for-fucking-ever, ma.