Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 2

Interviewed at Proximity

“‘The last thing I would ever recommend you do is read a book written by a calm and collected person who is actively refusing to show you how they felt in response to the stimuli of this batshit crazy world.’ The inimitable Bud Smith (WORK, Civil Coping Mechanisms) is on TRUE today—dispensing wisdom on art, death, deserted campgrounds, and not trying to be cool.” – Dina Relles

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Read it here

Pre-Order Double Bird

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At the end of March, 2018, Maudlin House will be releasing a collection of my short stories called Double Bird. Forty stories. My best ones. All ‘killer’, no ‘filler’, hehehe. 200 plus pages. Most of the stories are something close to the tone of my story Tiger Blood. Double Bird will start out as a limited run hardcover for $23 shipped from the publisher. The pre-order page is up now. Available right here. Thank youuuuuuuu.

Interview on Otherppl w/ Brad Listi

 

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I went to CA to visit my family for Thanksgiving. On Saturday morning, my 36th birthday to be exact, we rented a car and drove up to LA, where I met with Brad Listi and did his interview podcast, Otherppl.

WORK by Bud Smith

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Oh I forgot to tell you. I had a memoir come out called WORK. Civil Coping Mechanisms put it out on September 18th. Gawd bless them. WORK is about my job working heavy construction, it’s about trying to love people, it’s about trying to make art while also working heavy construction and while also loving people.

The book has been described by reviewers as a nonlinear non-fiction novel. It jumps around in time and is kind of a greatest hits of my best anecdotes about my working life, and the good things and troubles that caused for me. Here is an excerpt.

page 70/ “The new job sends me for a drug test. I pass it. I shave my face. I look different. Younger, somehow. I go on a date with a girl who works in a ‘wild bird store’, as she vaguely explains it. Wild Birds Unlimited, it’s called. I’m high and laughing about that. Picturing these colorful birds flapping all crazy around the store, and her not laughing about it at the cash register. Then I’m bragging to her that I passed my drug test and how I’m officially a high school graduate, just got my diploma today, six years after graduation. I pull the diploma from my pocket. Unfold it. Look. She doesn’t laugh, but like I said, that’s her thing, not laughing. We have a one night stand in my pick up truck in the parking lot of St. Barnabas’ Catholic Church. It’s nice. A mutual decision to no longer continue. But I see her a few weeks later, I stop by her store because I want to see these wild birds she sells. Inside the store though, I find out that Wild Birds Unlimited only sells bird seed. Stacks of waxed paper sacks filled with safflower, millet, canary seed, hemp, thistle seed, corn, green split peas, sunflower seed, wheat, and milo. Ha, look at that. Not a single free-spirited wild bird trapped in a strip mall storefront, let’s celebrate. I get a phone call on the first day of autumn to go and weld at a chemical plant. I’ve lied to them about knowing how to weld. In hindsight, oh what a thing to say. I’m good on paper—in real life, I only know how to destroy stuff. But hey, just like you, I am trying so hard to learn some other more beautiful way.”

It’s available for purchase at Amazon and at Civil Coping Mechanisms

It’s also here at Goodreads

Here’s what some people have said about the book:

“Bud’s writing effortlessly weaves together anecdotes from his life or work into great art.”

—The Rumpus

“Bud Smith is one of the only writers I don’t mind hanging out with in real life. I’ve seen Bud Smith sober and I’ve seen Bud Smith drunk. He’s great either way.”

—Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book

“Refreshing. Bud is a good one.”

—Otherppl with Brad Listi

“Bud is the happy prophet of the stupid world. He’s Walt Whitman only married and working at an oil refinery.”

—Kevin Maloney, author of Cult of Loretta

WORK is a portrait of Bud Smith’s years working construction. It’s about his hilarious blue-collar family. It’s about growing up in a campground in NJ, skipping college, and moving to NYC on a drunken whim. It’s about making art even if that means writing a novel during 1000 consecutive lunch breaks.

91 Degrees and a Little Rented Boat

the city empties out

and the lake is still full of swans that don’t travel

but mate for life and good for them

hell yeah, swans

I keep drinking grapefruit beers

in between paddling

around lilly pads

and you are a watermelon slice

that looks good in a swimsuit

and puts joy on me

you have a bag of chips, salt and vinegar

crunch and laugh and please live thirty years longer than me because you are tonic for this sick sad earth, you know that?

look over there, someone is sailing a toy ship

making ripples on the water, making the reflected clouds, wiggle

let’s go kill it with this blunt instrument

and did you know you’ve also been singing in your sleep, accusations flying that I’ve been fucking my best friend

this friend who’s beautiful and spits death out so it burns up in the holy atmosphere, this friend with bones made of precious metal and skin that drinks up the sunshine

and I am, I am fucking my best friend

and we don’t wear a condom because swans don’t either

hell yeah, swans

my friend sings in her sleep and we do it all ways, when she wakes up

we might even do it in this boat if we can find some shade

so put down the potato chips, and never mind the people of the city that fell out a hole and appeared somewhere cooler and it’s hot here, almost the Fourth of July

and you’re smiling like a criminal that remembered there is a happiness to rob from everything

I’m smiling too, slouched and charlie horsed, and trying to pop a stubborn button and unzip a jammed fly.

I think we are about to screw under the branches of a twisted tree leaning out over the green water

a tree about to fall in the next big storm

Isn’t that a poem?

Five Poems at Hobart but don’t tell anybody

Hello 

Today I have five poems up on Hobart. One of the poems, “Postcard from the Corner Bodega” is from the book Dust Bunny City. The rest of them, I just cobbled together from my Twitter draft trash can folder. Yay. Thanks for reading. Don’t tell anyone about these poems, okay? I want it to be a big secret. Is that creepy? 

New Story at Fluland, “Gling Gling Gling”

Hello. Two things:

Yesterday my short story “Gling Gling Gling” was published at Fluland. It’s a story about a man who is crushed by a car but still needs to run some errands around town. 

I like Fluland a lot, they’ve had some  really dope things on their site lately from Sam Pink, Blake Butler, Shane Jones, and Joeseph Grantham (the publisher of my new book, Dust Bunny City). You should read Joey’s story, Trash. 

Gling Gling Gling is here 

Also yesterday, I was interviewed at the new site, Rabble Lit. They are focused on putting out work by writers who are blue collar who write/represent that in some way. My favorite part of the interview was when the editor put up a picture of Pablo Picasso and underneath it the caption said, “Fuck you Pablo, nobody cares.” Check out the interview here. 

Hope you’re good. Hope you wake up covered in magic money. 

Dust Bunny City is Owwwt + New Stories

Hello, 

This morning when I got home from work, there was a car parked on the street outside my place and someone had stolen the rims, and with the rims, the tires on the rims. The car was balanced on a lone cinderblock. The lug nuts were scattered all on the road. Things happen so fast. 

My book Dust Bunny City just came out. Well it’s not just my book. It’s a book with Rae Buleri. It’s a novel in words and images. Words from me, line drawings from Rae. A paperback can be ordered from this link

There is a party in NYC next Sunday for the release of Dust Bunny City. You should come if you aren’t busy. 

Also, I forgot to tell you about a couple stories that came out because I’ve been on night shift and doing nothing but going to work and coming home and sleeping for a little bit and then going back to work . 

Everybody’s Darlin’ from Potluck Magazine  

Wolves – from Smokelong 

The Lost Girls – from WhiskeyPaper

3 Poems – from Drunk in a Midnight Choir

Thank you for being in this weird world with me. I’d be lonely without ya all. 

– Bud

 

 

For the Statue of Liberty

Every day I drive past the Statue of Liberty on my way to work. I pass by the Statue of Liberty on my way home. 

In the morning, in the darkness right before the sun comes up, the Statue of Liberty is lit up with a glow projected up, and that glow is one of the only things I can see through the blackened trees. 

In the evening, when I return home and the sun is just about to set, there is that amber glow of sunset hitting the buildings in NYC and hitting the Statue of Liberty, too. 

The whole world is a great big junkyard. America is a great big junkyard. Entire world is. Everywhere you look, every single country, a magnificent junkyard. Some of those junkyards have beaches or mountains or better art museums than others, some of those junkyards are dusty, some of them are hardly anything but lush jungle that humans can’t cut down fast enough. 

The reason America is my favorite junkyard, the junkyard I love best, is because of the Statue of Liberty. We have this idea that anybody can come to our junkyard and anybody can leave our junkyard. But every once in a while some dummy goes and messes up the Liberty part of the Statue of Liberty. 

Our junkyard might need a different statue, instead.

A statue for each town. The Statue of Xenophobia. Each town gets one. 

So then we can take our children to the center of town. Make it a custom. 4th birthday, take the kid to the center of town and explain the town’s Statue of Xenophobia. 

“This statue is here because everyone in this town should be afraid of everyone that lives outside of this town. Learn it now. Be afraid of everyone outside of this town.”

If that doesn’t work, how about a Statue of Xenophobia for individual blocks? 

Just the other day I was in Paris and looking at the Statue of Liberty replica that was put on an artificial island on the river Seine to protect their harbor. The Île aux Cygnes, the replica is called. 

The Statue of Liberty was of course a gift from the French, and placed at our Ellis Island to welcome immigrants. But hey guess what, we gave France back a replica of the same statue. A gift. 

How about that? There is another version of the Statue of Liberty and it is on the other side of the world. Just chillin’. It’s sitting on the river, and the sun hits it too.

A few days before I left for my trip to Paris I ran into someone I haven’t seen in a long time and while catching up, I mentioned I had my bags packed and was headed to Paris for the week to check it out with my wife. 

This is what they said, “Are you out of your mind? You can’t go over there? Isis! Terrorists are all over that place. World has changed.”

But the world hasn’t changed. Ever since civilization popped up, it’s been a series of junkyards closing in on each other. Some of the junkyards have better jazz than others, some of the junkyards you can get the best food you’ve ever eaten on any corner. Some of these junkyards, you can walk up a set of marble steps and learn anything about civilization you’d ever want to know. Other junkyards aren’t as well stocked. 

I believe in America and I believe in the Statue of Liberty. And as any student of the past will know, this country has done its fair share of severely screwing up in concern to people who aren’t white skinned, and well, looky looky here, we’re doing it again. 

Take your children to the center of town and explain, this town isn’t the end of the world. Point in any direction. Say, the world is vast, the world is sprawling. Do not be afraid of people beyond this town. This state. This country. This junkyard.

Go Cross Country Tomorow

This here is a rough map of the USA. Most citizens do not even have the means to leave their own county for more than a couple hours. If you have the means, it’d be a nice thing to see your neighbors away from the Atlantic or Pacific coasts, the middle shore or the Gulf of Mexico … it’d be a nice thing to keep an eye on what America really is by traveling through America and talking to Americans, when you can, as you can, rather than always aiming for a resort in the Caribbean or equal to. 

“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger. – John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America”