Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 13
February 2, 2015
groundhog’s day
last night my wife held her mouth
and said she didn’t want to go
get her teeth filled with metal
on groundhog’s day
I said I wouldn’t want to either
the football game imploded.
“I’d skip the dentist if I was you”
“why?”
“the time loop you could get stuck in”
“oh fuck”
“and they’d drill your teeth for infinity
everyday over and over again”
“I’m gonna cry”
I joked, “until you become a better person”
“like Bill Murray did”
“like Bill Murray did”
she sips her ginger ale and rum
the sugar sizzles
probably sounds like the drill will
forever
I say, “you’re kind, ya know. he was an asshole.
I’m not sure the kind get the same Hell.”
“you’ll be hungover from the Super Bowl for a zillion years”
she puts her hand in mine
“fuck it, this is America, sometimes we puke for eternity.”
I crunch down on my ice cube so hard it makes her slip off the velvet couch
ass hitting hard wood floor, laughing. crying, rubbing the tooth.
January 27, 2015
Mad Hat Reviews Tollbooth and Everything Neon
Hello!
NYC blizzard fizzled out. We only got a couple inches of snow. That’s a good thing I guess.
Mad Hat ran a review of two of my books, the novel Tollbooth and the poetry collection Everything Neon. You can read the reviews here.
I have some copies of Tollbooth if anyone would like to buy direct from me. Here are my books.
January 25, 2015
Blue Collar People: MAKE ART, SHOW ME!
Read an article I really liked on Salon about writers and how it’d be helpful if they admitted that they come from money, so when aspiring writers are asking, “How did you get so successful?” and the truth is the writer comes from a trust fund and hasn’t ever had to work for a living or raise kids, and the writer says, “HARD WORK!” which is true, but also the writer might be more helpful if they said, “I’m supported by a trust fund and I don’t have any kids to raise and HARD WORK!”
The article is by Anne Baur, it’s called,
“Sponsored” by my husband: Why it’s a problem that writers never talk about where their money comes from”
and after you read it, this is what I have to say about it …
I like what this woman has to say. She calls out privileged people and admits she is privileged too. And she didn’t have it easy, she had a difficult road, like we all do. I admire that kind of self honesty. She’s saying in this essay that it’s easier to be creative when you’re allowed the time and space and funding (love too) to do it.
Really, rich or poor, I hope everybody who wants to make art, can find ten minutes everyday to do it. That’s the real issue, you’re only alive for so long and no matter what your economics, there are always things fighting to eat up your time.
I love my broke friends though, the ones raising two kids, the ones working two jobs, that are writing, that are STILL making art, despite all the trouble it creates for them. For their families too. I admire them most. The ones on the bus going back home, writing in a notebook, the ones typing on their cellphones on the long train ride back to the sleeping kids. the ones driving their cars down the road and trying desperately to remember an idea they have at mile marker 107, an idea that they’re terrified they’ll lose before the rest stop, when they can jot it down for later. They’re the ones I aspire to be like. The ones that work for a living and still come back to their typewriter/keyboard/notebook or their paints or guitars or whatever. I love these ones that didn’t get golden tickets. The mutts of the common world. Coolest of all the pups, these mutts.
The lucky ones, the ones that came from old money and got to go to fancy schools without a problem, I don’t mind them. I don’t get pissed at people who have something I don’t have. I don’t think that solves anything. It certainly doesn’t help a person be a better artist. Maybe what I think though, is that someone who has never had to work a manual labor job and go without a few meals, maybe that kind of person is missing a few beats about what I desire to read/see/hear in art. But that’s not to say that a person who comes from money should be ignored either, talent is talent. You can’t choose where you come from. I don’t hold it against anyone.
My dad has worked his whole life, a mechanic and a volunteer fire fighter, my mom has worked her whole life too, a while in a factory, a while in retail, always on her feet. They always found time for the arts. And I’m not talking like the arts have to be this fancy inaccessible thing, I mean, fill your home with music and film and crafts for your kids, and take them to the library as much as you can. If you don’t come from old money or scam money or any kind of money, if you’re blue collar and working for a living, GOOD, that’s good, MAKE SOMETHING.
show it to me. I want to see.
January 23, 2015
Mayweather, a bit of memoir
Hi everyone. Hope you’re all doing good. It’s cold here in New Jersey today, I’m at work at the oil refinery, having my coffee break. There’s a lot of things coming up, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you. New stories and poems published at a couple sites and a couple reviews coming soon for previous books of mine. And whoa, it’s just a week or two away, the release of F-250, my second novel. That’s fun.
But here today. I have a new story published at, I Can’t Stop Thinking About Diet Coke, called “Mayweather”. Thanks to Josh Spilker for running the story.
You can read Mayweather https://t.co/yWQ4rdSysf
Let me know what you think. It’s a memoir and I’d like to hear from you about it if you can.
Much love
Bud
January 22, 2015
Not A Single College Credit (poem)
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.
January 18, 2015
#MYAGE: Poetry, Twitter and a New Way of Interacting With Text (with Bill Lessard and Clive Thompson)
Bill Lessard is a badass, he’s also my friend and neighbor. Lucky me.
Originally posted on Twenty-Four Hours:
Bill and Bill and Bill and Bill and Bill and Bill and Bill… (Courtesy of William Lessard)
On Dec 12 I went out to Mellow Pages in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to read some poetry with my friend Bill Lessard, at his event #MYAGE.
Here’s the explanation of the collaboration poem, from tech and culture journalist Clive Thompson, who introduced Bill at the event. Thompson explains:
“He’d printed up a bunch of tweet-length utterances and everyone in the room made a huge conga line, and we circled around each picking one randomly out of a bag and reading it out loud.”
In addition to me, as a warmer-upper, there were numerous readers there (Bud Smith, Alexandra Wuest, Emily Toder, John Deming, Theo Thimo, and Madeleine Alpert ) and they were great. As I was standing, listening, I began to feel dizzy… like I was drunk. It was just connecting… the words and…
View original 1,473 more words
January 11, 2015
UNO KUDO RELEASE PARTY / BROOKLYN
Hello Everyone:
Having a party next weekend in Brooklyn
for the release of Uno Kudo 4.
Any people in the NYC area, come hang.
NEXT SATURDAY /// JANUARY 17TH // 7:30 PM
MELLOW PAGES LIBRARY
Studio 1Q, 56 Bogart Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206
COME GET DRUNK WITH ME/US/ALL THAT
January 3, 2015
January 2, 2015
Story published at The Heavy Contortionists
Happy New Year! I’m back at work today at the oil refinery, taking apart some machinery, moving equipment around–but I don’t care, had a great New Year’s party with lots of NYC friends coming over and keeping me company.
Today, a new short story, “Forks, Spoons, Knives” is running at Mark Cronin’s new site, The Heavy Contortionists. You can check out the story http://www.theheavycontortionists.com/blog/forksknivesspoonssoon
Cronin is the author of the novel Gigantic Failure which you should check out. He was also a part of the now defunct HTML GIANT, so keep your eye on the Heavy Contortionists, it’ll be a site with some great content, I can feel it in my bones.
Anyways, off I go to get covered in oil. I hope you have a really good day today.
Bud
December 24, 2014
X-MAS poem and Prompt Poem
Here’s two poem. Happy holidays. Love the hell out of you. Yes, you.
-bud
X-Mas
This Christmas take me to a Chinese restaurant and I’ll buy you plum duck
Spend Christmas the opposite of alone, even if you have to walk into a church
Old Christmas, find whatever old Christmas was and revisit old Christmas
New Christmas is what you make if old Christmas is too heavy to carry around, let New Christmas kill old Christmas if old Christmas was killing you
X-Mas is fine, X was Latin for Christ or something like that. XXX Christmas is a little inappropriate. Happy X-Mas.
Drink Christmas, be tipsy by a fire
Talk Christmas to anyone alone and wobbly by a fire
Clothe Christmas, you can have my coat the snow is too cold for you
Gin rummy at a dining room table, or checkers at the convalescent home
Trouble Christmas, pick up the fucking phone
Nothing Christmas, spend days with friends who are wounded by love
Wrapped Present Christmas rot in Fake Hell
Baby Christmas, hold a baby on the couch. Listen to baby making baby noise, feel baby grab your finger with its new pink baby fist, resist the urge to fart
Winter Solstice Pagan Christmas, come over our apartment for cookies we’ve laced with drugs you’ll like
This Christmas I’ll give you my heart, don’t swallow it, last Christmas I ate yours. Here’s a million scratch off tickets, I hope you’ve forgiven me. I hope you win.
Last Christmas, visited the hospital. This Christmas, take me to a Chinese restaurant I’ll pour the tea.
Patient Christmas, listen to all the stories, the slow stories the people have to tell. They need to talk. You need to listen.
Warm Christmas, knock on the door, any door, and go in where it’s warm. Or answer a door, any door, when someone who needs you knocks.
Poem Written As Prompts
Write a poem while drinking a gallon of your own blood
Write a poem handcuffed and in the back of a police car
Write a poem about your cat, Motherfucker. That’s the cat’s name: Motherfucker. Strange cat.
Write a poem using the words bruise, Corvette, pumice, orange, debt, industrial
Write a poem in 3 seconds
Write a poem about your crippling uncertainty about anything in any direction you look
Write a poem based off a beach where you got laid
Write a poem over the course of 19 years, a letter a day or whatever
Write a poem about how Kansas is a shithead state and a waste of a wonderful sounding name for a state.
Write a poem while jumping off the roof. Make it a low roof. No more than one or two stories. Wear comfortable shoes.
Write a poem incorporating all four seasons into a list of trite over used expressions about all four stupid seasons
Write a poem in response to some explosion you’ve heard today
Write a poem incorporating these words, “I’m a garbage man but at least I don’t have debt from student loans and being a garbage man, I’m happier than most people I know, actually. I just have to wash my hands with orange scented industrial strength soap featuring pumice. Look, see that Corvette, that’s my car you pompous freak, you’re no better than me.”
Write a poem about how Motherfucker is sleeps on the hood of your car because the engine is warm
Write a poem about how your glad to not be immoral because then you’d have to outlive your friends and watch them die. Yeah, I said immoral not immortal.
Write a poem in response to getting hit in the nuts or clit, respectively.
Write a poem at a poetry reading about how much these poets are horrible and should get fantasy football teams or join dart leagues instead
Write a poem while riding an elephant into war
Write a poem while closing one eye and crushing a mountain between two fingers
Write a poem in bed while Motherfucker snores but keeps you warm
Write a poem on Christmas Eve and day “Merry Christmas, thanks for the love.”
Bud Smith
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