Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 12

Constellation Pigeons

on these most beautiful nights when I accomplish nothing

dreams and death and power outages, all the same

full of weepy this, weepy that

or waves of synthetic happiness

slapped up or down like a light switch

today I floated green ghost over a sick city

after taking out the garbage, taking out the recyclables 

after dropping off my taxes 

plz save your applause till the end

birds make trees to sit in 

by flying and shitting

spent the day pecking seeds

from pavement 

and now, look at me, naked in front of a computer 

retired: smile this, chipped tooth that, even did the dishes

as the moon began to gnaw on the building

I’m just one man

sucking in all the pollen wind

exhaling out 

rainbow puddle gasoline ocean.

Anbesol and Netflix

leave a voicemail on psychiatrist’s hotline

“finally dropping by to see you

I’ll bring an extra large pizza”

I’ve been on my way to see him

for 16.5 years

I stand my cardboard sign

against the broken washing machine

pour two shots of mezcal

drop in tumblr with ice, lime

tastes and smells like medicine

same goo they rubbed on my gums

when I screamed through sharp teeth

in a rainy summer house

our apartment

is in another state

we’ve moved the bed so we can lay like spoons

her in front, me in back

Netflix on the computer fills a dark room

dizzy light, strobed distraction

gun play noise

in a church

every night

I kill the computer

and in same room, now dark

lay same way, spinning

kissing neck, hair in teeth

slipping underwear to side

—ah, such kind of light

such better kind of noise

after, we’re sticky

and she says my mouth tastes like Anbesol

I say “yeah, yeah, that’s what it is.

Hey, got some news, I’m finally going next tuesday”

“where?”

“to get cured on 72nd street”

“oh no! I hope not. don’t do that

don’t get cured on 72nd street. I like the way you are”

call the psychiatrist back while she’s in the bathroom washing up, whistling

psychiatrist answers on the third ring

“hello”

I can hear his TV in the background

he’s watching the last episode of Game of Thrones

I’m ahead of him, I know what happens

“turns out I’m not coming to see you

but I’ll still drop the promised pizza off though”

“much love” he says, “extra anchovies”

“mos def”

“Bottle of Pepsi too”

my wife does a somersault into the room

a backflip onto the bed

she says, “Debbie at work died”

“Oh, I’m sorry, that sucks”

“we’re using her Netflix password” she says

our lives will change now too

our room will begin to spin

our milk teeth that once came in

may fall out while we dream

tomorrow I will beg on the street

for an HBO GO password

my card board sign says:

‘WOUNDED VET TRYING TO

SEE PREMIUM CABLE 4 FREE

ANYTHING HELPS

B THE CHANGE U WANT

2 SEE”

if I fail, we can download what we need.

I Was a Mess Today

This morning I woke up and almost made it out the door early, but then I realized that I didn’t have my wallet. I looked in the usual places around my apartment, but couldn’t find it anyway. So I poured myself a cup of black coffee in the same ceramic mug I always take, and I walked out into the frozen morning, with no wallet.

My car was parked on 177th street, a couple blocks from where I live. The Bridge was still barely lit up. I smiled at the bridge. Somebody in a red car started backing down my street, following me to where I have my car parked. “You leaving!” he yelled.

“Yeah, I’m leaving.”

People always ask me if I’m leaving at five am. Sometimes there’s a few cars following me down the NYC streets as I walk towards wherever the hell it is I’ve parked my car–I usually can’t remember where I’ve parked, but today I did remember.

When I unlocked my car, I hoped the wallet would be sitting there on the center console but it wasn’t. I warmed up the car and pulled out, drove towards the bridge.

My LOW FUEL alert came on. I opened the center console and counted one dollar and fifty six cents in small coins. I began to pray I’d make it to New Jersey with the gas I had.

Halfway down the turnpike I realized it’d be so close, I’d probably putter in, skin of my teeth. But I also remembered something else, my badge to get in the front gate at the oil refinery was in my wallet. I called one of my coworkers on my cellphone. He answered, “Hey man,” he sounded like he was asleep.

“You asleep?”

“I’m staying home.”

“You motherfucker.”

“What? Why do you care.”

I hung up.

I called another co-worker, the call went to voicemail.

My gas gauge dipped down below an 1/8th of a tank.

I called another co-worker, voicemail too.

I left a message, “YOU MOTHERFUCKER.”

My coffee spilt into my shifter. I soaked up my coffee with a scarf that my wife bought me that I only use to soak up coffee when I spill it when I’m screaming at my co-workers over the phone.

I got in the middle lane and shut the radio off to conserve gas. I shut the heat off to conserve gas. I shut my headlights off to conserve gas.

My phone rang.

“Wut up?”

“Hey!” I said, “You at work? I need help, I think I left my wallet in the trailer …”

“I’m running late,” he said. “See you there, though.”

I threw my phone against  the dashboard, it did this cool somersault thing and landed with a ten point landing into my coffee cup, but  thankfully the coffee cup was empty. Finally I was winning.

I got off the turnpike. The gas gauge was below EMPTY. But I blew through a red light and made it into the oil refinery and looked like I’d even make it to the gate on time, just without my badge that I’d need to get through the turnstile.

I called the last person I had left to call, as I walked to the gate. He answered and said, “Bro, your wallet is sitting here on my table.”

“Bring it to the gate!”

“Okay.”

As I got to the gate, there was my friend, passing the wallet through the turnstile, so I could swipe in, with just about ten seconds to spare before they’d dock me half an hour.

I fucking CHEERED!

Everybody looked at me. The guard in the shack. My friend. The guy who runs the coffee truck. Six guys leaning against the fence looking for a ride.

AND

AT THE END OF

THE DAY

I STOLE

A FIVE GALLON JUG

OF GAS

TO FILL

MY FUCKING CAR!!!

On the way out, at 4 o’ clock, an ice storm was just starting. When I got to my car, somebody pointed out that I had a headlight that was burnt out.

I kicked my car.

The headlight came back on.

That’s how you fix that.

Not A Single College Credit

happen to believe in love

in the shape of crumpling temples

pyramids, morals and fear

happen to have a place to go, a need to get there and a ground that won’t stop sucking me into the earth.

here I am leaping tree to tree

here I am hand over hand on power lines

here I am taking a break, eating a handful of peanuts then washing my face in a gas station bathroom

now I am feeding my high school diploma to a mutt sleeping in this doorway beneath a flickering light.

hi everyone, I’ve never felt perfect, or classic or carved from precious stone

hi everyone these are my hands full of clean water and this is the dog drinking from the hands before it walks out into the dark.

before I climb another tree.

before I scale the low lying cloud, my work ID swaying on my shirt, reeking of jet fuel.

Instead of Going to College I Went to Work

I wanted to write, I just for some stupid reason didn’t see how it’d help me to get taught, especially since the thing I wanted to do was so far away from journalism, which if you ask me, you probably should study with somebody who knows what they’re talking about. I figured with writing fiction, it didn’t matter, it was this big ball of goo, it was a bunch of tubes of bright paint but if you did it wrong for half your life, no one would even care to tell you to stop. They’ll just let you flail around and occupy yourself. Novels aren’t life and death, they’re a distraction from death and probably life too, but you’re not going to ruin any one’s existence if your books suck or if your books never get published. I put on my boots that’ve shrunk in the rain and I walked through the metal turnstile, where I don’t have a desk or a list of answers about anything. I eat my lunch cold, surrounded by industrial hum, typing a novel slowly on my iPhone with my fat uneducated thumbs.

Take a Penny, Leave a Penny, published at The Nervous Breakdown

Hey! Happy to see that The Nervous Breakdown are running a thing I wrote called “Take a Penny, Leave a Penny” that is about life’s weird ups and downs.

Read it here

Have An Essay Published at Vol. 1 Brooklyn

A few weeks ago, Vol1. Brooklyn ran an essay I wrote, about being creative despite all the stuff that the world does to try to stop you from being creative.

Check it out here if that sounds like something you’d like to read.

an excerpt:

“Today I opened my PO box and there was a shipping envelope stuffed in there, crushing my other mail. It was a paperback book I’d been waiting for, like a 7 year old would wait for Christmas morning. I tore the envelope out, ripped the packaging apart, and stared at my book through the bubblewrap for the first time.

 It’s a proof copy, for a collection of stories that is never going to be released. I’ll read them here in NYC from time to time. Some stories might make it into real books that get published by real humans that aren’t me and don’t live here in apartment 12, other stories will only be in this proof copy, typos and all, and will die in it.”

IN CARS

last week I was pulled over for driving

the wrong way up a one way street

cop came to window with a full-moon-flashlight

“know why I pulled you over?”

I said, “I was driving the wrong way up a one way street.”

he said “No, you have a taillight out.”

There’s nothing Americans can’t do in a car. Or wouldn’t do for a car. I want to be buried in the trunk of my car. I want a friend to place a brick on the gas, then slipping the gear in drive, send me flying off the cliff. Friends and family all dressed in black. Weeping for me and the car.

It’s what we all want.

we’ve all been lost on fog thick roads

GPS making things worse

‘in 500 feet turn left at gates of hell’

don’t listen to the GPS

eventually we’ll all get home

Odysseus went off drag racing for a thousand nights—one morning he came home to find Helen had left him for a woman who didn’t even have a driver’s license. James Dean got smashed flat in a Porsche Spider. Thunder Road is where I first went down on my girlfriend. She was driving 106 miles per hour and I was doing it wrong. Route 66 is all dusty ghost towns now, the pictures we took during our drive through the desert were eaten by an iMac that hated America. That’s how it goes. Now we have the Cloud. But we don’t have Route 66.

I had a friend names Ed who I used to commute to work with. Ed had a trick pen that would send an electric shock if you held it and pushed the plunger down. He’d get everyone with the pen eventually. Even me. One day he dropped the pen in my car and I kept it, waiting I suppose, for my chance to shock him back, when he’s forgotten his own trick.

My mother often bled severely in the kitchen.

My father hung his head under the hood of a wrecked muscle car.

Us children would scream when mom came out of the house with her hand wrapped in a bloody dishrag.

We’d weep in the back seat as Dad sped to the hospital, passing milk trucks, narrowly making the one lane tunnel before the train came, air horn depressed, crows scattering.

I do my best thinking, drunk, passed out in my own back seat, moon roof open.

most cops have let me go with a warning. If I say, “All roads lead to Rome, so all roads go only one way”

and IF the cop says, “next time just go a block farther”

I’ll know I’ve made a new friend

Namaste

never once have I replaced a taillight

it’s why I’ll die a Saint

Yesterday, walking to our cars, a coworker tells me he is thinking about buying a house in Puerto Rico—he says “it’s only a three hour flight to make it into work”

“that’s too far” I say

“I already drive an hour and twenty two minutes just to live in New Jersey” he says

We’re ripe with dreams: everyone on our shift has thrown $20 into the pool of a $500 Million Dollar lottery

he says, “I’d buy a Porsche Spider, same car Marlon Brando died in”

“That was James Dean ”

“Hahaha, I meant to say Billy the Kid”

“He died on a Porsche Horse, before America was America.”

It’s fairly often I have no idea what I’m doing

It’s fairly often I drive for 500 miles in a straight line with my left blinker on: world mad at me.

(my friend Bill L. says we’re all tumbling ass forward towards success)

there is a gatehouse at the mouth of the long road that leads to beach

the woman at the gatehouse looks very upset when I pull up

“$5?” I ask pointing at the sign.

she takes my money and warns me “be careful there’s some strange people on that beach.”

“what do you mean?”

“the car before you was full of these crazy girls and when I asked for the $5 they lifted their bathing suits and flashed their naked chests at me and took off without paying”

I tell the woman at the gatehouse, “I’m always tumbling ass forward towards success”

my brother, Will, had a a zillion Matchbox car–he brought them into my mother’s car and we played in the front seat as mom and dad steamed up the windows in the blueberry house

my brother said “Zzzzzoooooom!”

and I said ‘Zzzzzooooooom!”

and we crashed our cars together till our knuckles bled

then I said, “Oww!” and he said “Owww!”

and we were wrestling in the station wagon

I smacked his head against the seat he raked my eyes

I punched his gut he pulled my hair and down went the shifter into neutral

and we began to roll

down the driveway

towards the busy street

we fought on! “YOU!”

and we fought on! “YOU!”

And here was the mailman in his truck laying on the horn swerving and driving up on Mrs. Tillman’s lawn

and here was a red truck locking up its brakes

and here was mom’s station wagon demolishing the fence at the house across the street that gave out no candy on Halloween.

We sat. We waited. Nothing happened. We kept playing.

My friend Ed sat in his car, garage door down, engine running. He was waiting. Revving his engine, But grew impatient. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He couldn’t sleep. He took the shotgun off the rack and placed it in his mouth.

The back windshield blew out.

Sometimes I take out the trick pen

and hold it till my hand goes numb while I’m drive home, alone. I too am thinking of Puerto Rico, but I’m worried about getting my car there. I’m worried about what wrench works for what and why I don’t own it. We all are.

New Novel

Alternating Current has a list of the novels they’re excited to read in 2015, one of them is F250, my new novel coming out in the upcoming weeks.

Article Published at Vol 1 Brooklyn

Last week, Vol. 1 Brooklyn published an article I wrote about creativity and what it means to ‘make art’

The article/essay is called “More Childlike Wonder, Please” and you can read it here

The essay opens up like this:

“Today I opened my PO box and there was a shipping envelope stuffed in there, crushing my other mail. It was a paperback book I’d been waiting for, like a 7 year old would wait for Christmas morning. I tore the envelope out, ripped the packaging apart, and stared at my book through the bubblewrap for the first time.”

I have some questions for you:

Q: WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON?

Q: WHAT ARE YOU MAKING?

Q: WHAT ARE YOU BUILDING?

Q: WHEN WILL IT BE DONE?

Q: WHEN CAN I SEE IT?

much love,

Bud