Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 6

Orange Apartment Again

some day soon 

you’ll get struck 

by lightning 

you get to decide 

whether that 

is good or bad 

can either brush off 

the soot and smile 

or just lay down 

on the electric ground 

and snooze 

for many many kinds 

of forever 

your song is sung 

just now I saw 

the tiger hidden 

on the beer can 

eventually we have 

to plan our night 

of birds and bubbles 

at whatever zoo 

is releasing the animals 

so lucky that you 

and I don’t blindly 

agree with everything 

the days I love you best 

the skies are grey 

the radiators rattling.

JANT published at Monkeybicycle

Hi everybody, 

Hope your new year is going really good. I’ve been finishing up edits on my novella I’m From Electric Peak, coming out in April in paperback and for digital readers. Also been recording audio for the audio book of my last novel F 250, look for that very soon, I’m being told it’ll he out by Valentine’s Day. 

Couple things, the site Monkeybicycle just published my short story JANT, about two love birds parked out on the overpass watching for car crashes on a rainy day. 

Check it out here 

Also wanted to shout about this …

So today I was off work again, and kicking around the apartment. Doing a couple projects, half-assed but really just watching Making a Murderer on Netflix. 

2pm I finished it. Was a pretty good documenty in a please don’t arrest me and take me to a kafkaesque nightmare world if I accidentally kill someone in a backwoods dream nightmare. You know. Just thinking fuck the police fuck the police. 

I’m sitting there at 2:30 like besides, thinking fuck the police, also thinking, ‘okay world what’s next’

Then I realize that at 11am I was supposed to move my car for alternate side street sweeping in NYC. 

I walk down there to where my car is (many blocks away)

I’m expecting either, 

1. a $125 ticket 

2. To be towed away 

3. one of those giant fluorescent stickers on the windshield that you can’t remove that says THIS CAR INTERFERED WITH NYC SANITATION WORK

4. metal boot on the tire 

Instead I found my car where it was. No ticket. No problem. 

Peaceful easy feeling. 

I jumped up and touched the sun and I shouted I LOVE YOU POLICE OF THE WORLD!!

Pentagram

Hello,

I have a short story called Pentagram up on the site People Holding. Pentagram is a holiday story about two people down on their luck but still celebrating in their own screwed up way. 

The site People Holding sent me a photo prompt and I wrote the story to go along with it. They also had me do an audio recording of Pentagram. 

Check out the story and the podcast here

Tiger Blood at Hobart

Hello!

New short story “Tiger Blood” is up at Hobart. 

Check it out Here

Some Monsters I’m Friends With

Happy Halloween!

Here’s a short story to celebrate my favorite day of the year! HAIL SEITAN!

  

*Some Monsters I’m Friends With *

There was a werewolf who had a drinking problem. She wanted two things very badly, to kick the alcohol, which she felt slowly killing her; but also, to not do anything on a night with a full moon high in the sky, that’d cause her to kill anyone else. 

It was a shame when her AA meeting fell on a full moon night, and she couldn’t attend. 

The other people at the meeting survived, but she began to drink again. She had nothing but the bottle. 

There is a vampire who lives above me. Apartment 22. He came down through the ceiling in a green fog and spoke to me in Latin. 

The fog hung over my TV and I was frozen. 

Finally I said “I don’t understand Latin.”

And the vampire explained in plain English that he’d once fallen in love with a mermaid griffin and he wanted very badly to find her if there was a way. 

I said, “Did you Facebook her?”

The vampire was embarrassed, he’d changed into a more humanistic form and opened his hands to reveal ten sharp spikes where fingers should be. 

“It took me ten centuries to figure out how to use my computer and it seems I have forgotten my login password for the wifi.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. 

“You can use my wifi.”

“What’s the password?”

“BreakingBadToTheBone. Capital B breaking capital B bad capital T to capital T the Capital B bone … All one word, got that? Hold on I’ll just use my phone.”

He sat on the couch next to me and I found her, easily enough, she lived in Dusseldorf. 

In her AVI, I could see her eyes were filled with ultimate evil. 

A true world destroyer. 

The vampire who lives in apartment 22 said, “Where is Dusseldorf?”

“Lemme google map it … You want directions by car, bus or …”

“Do flights, you fool.”

“Did you instant message her?”

“No.”

“At least IM her, don’t just show up like a creep.”

There was a boy who had an alligator face. He wasn’t always like that. He woke up that way one day. 

And when he went to school, some of the other kids taunted him about it. 

So he bit another kid on the face. Ripped apart the face. 

Blood everywhere in the hall outside of the art room. 

And that is why you never make fun of a boy with an alligator face unless you are quick like lightning. 

I heard again about the alcoholic werewolf after her car accident. 

She hit a child on a bicycle right on my street. The child lay bleeding in the street. The werewolf leapt out of her Pontiac that was hissing after the side of the church stopped its path. 

The child would have died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. 

but before she did 

the werewolf got down on her knees, I saw it with my own eyes peeking out the curtains 

and she bit down on the throat of the child, bit it hard, even more blood spilled on the road. 

when the werewolf vanished into the woods 

She was in the form of a girl I recognized from the bar, think her name is Bonnie … but the EMTs when they arrived heard the wolf howling in the woods and they told the newspaper it sounded just like crying. 

The vampire upstairs did not find love in Dusseldorf. He comes down through my ceiling and he is weeping too. 

“What happened with the mermaid Frankenstein?” I ask. 

“Don’t ask!”

“Ok. I’ve got lady problems too. My girlfriend started dating my friend Paul instead.”

“Help me and I’ll kill Paul.”

“No we don’t have to do that. What happened with your mermaid?”

“She sent me an electronic telegram on the World Wide Web and when I clicked on the telegram it asked for my name, address and social security number …”

“Oh no, you didn’t enter that, did you?”

“Yes! Yes I did! Now my bank account is empty and I find out that my love in Dusseldorf is not who she say she is!”

“It’s probably a hacker in Lithuania.”

“I will go there and find them and you will come with me.”

“I can’t,” I said, “I have this cat.”

I pointed to the cat. 

The vampire pointed at the cat too and the cat exploded in a whoosh of fur and bones. 

“To Lithuania,” he said. 

The little girl from the car wreck wakes up in the morgue. 

She is covered in blood but she had no wounds. 

She is seven years old and her clothes have not been cut off. 

She would not have been cold anyway. 

She left the morgue. 

She went out across the wet lawn. 

Into the big moonlight. 

Many miles away she could hear howling coming from the trees. 

It was her new mother. 

The child began to sprint towards her cries.  

That’s how Bonnie got that kid I see her with, she’ll pretend she’s the kids aunt, that she adopted her because her parents are meth heads but i know the truth, I have gotten tanked with Bonnie and she has told me all about it. 

One last thing

The boy with the alligator face enters a pie eating contest.

And he wins. 

No one wants to sit anywhere near him. 

So he is the only one eating pie. 

And at the end, the judges pass him his blue ribbon, tied to a long pole so the boy doesn’t bit their hands off. 

There’s a prize, too. 

His prize is, a kiss from the prettiest girl in town. 

My ex girlfriend, Shannon. 

Prestone Prime

I fill the dog’s bowl with anti-freeze. The orange kind. It looks like something I could take a drink of myself.

Orange punch.

There is clawing at the door that separates the kitchen from the hallway and the rest of my apartment. Then the sound of a nose blowing air underneath the space between the door jam and the linoleum.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I say to the dog.

He can smell the wet Alpo, a can I’d opened, letting its brown slime slide into one of only two bowls I own.

And he wants into this room.

But I’m weighing three options; no, I’m weighing four options.

I stole the Alpo from Path Mark, because why does it matter? Slipped it into the folds of my dress.

I’d already stolen the dog, this happy, goofy yellow Labrador; a bottle of waterless shampoo, a gallon of milk, and yeah, this jug of anti-freeze I’d use as poison.

I stand and walk to the edge of the door.

Put my hand on the crystal doorknob. Rattle the crystal doorknob.

“Bark if you can’t save the world.”

The dog barks.

“Me too,” I say.

Its bark is like a recording of America’s Perfect Companion.

I laugh so hard. One big laugh.

See, I have chosen option four.

“Okay.”

I open the door to let the dog sprint into the kitchen, where it throws its whole face into the wet dog food.

Did you know, my sister once wrote me a sixty eight page letter?

Sixty eight.

Pages.

The bowl of food wobbles, teeters and walks across the kitchen, pushed by a wall of teeth and drool and fur.

Kara’s never leaving George.

The bowl and the dog travel together out of the shadows thrown by the hemlock bushes outside the window, and come to a hard stop in the light of the east facing window above the sink. They can travel together no farther. They’re stopped by the leg of my chair.

He loves this dog. He runs with this dog every morning. He’s a volunteer fire fighter. He does a 5k every spring to raise money for breast cancer research.

The letters have stopped.

I’ve taken the dog off his clothesline. Perfect autumn day.

One alternate plan was to drug George and set his car on fire, with him in it.

But here we are with this.

And dog was so happy in my car. Head out the window the whole time. Over an hour.

But this almost didn’t happen. I did drive right up to the hospital doors, you know. They’d even opened— automatic, the way they do. The desk girl looking up.

But I put the car back in gear, finished the loop, finished the drive here.

With my other foot, I push the drinking bowl beside the animal.

I can tell when my sister is getting beaten. I can feel it myself.

I get bruises, only they are on the inside of my body.

I don’t need to see photos of the broken nose on Facebook.

You don’t have to Pinterest your cracked ribs to me.

Or Instagram tag me in any one of a zillion burst capillaries.

What kind of person can do this?

I shiver for your shock.

The dog wags its tail, and then in a rush of memory I feel horrible because I remember its name.

Walter. Walter the dog.

He sucks the last of the Alpo up, pivots and takes a drink from the bowl with the anti-freeze. Just a little sip. But I can tell he likes it.

Then back to the food. Licking. Licking.

The thing that’d given me this idea was a sign I’d seen here in my neighborhood. $2500 for information leading to arrest of person who planted poison meatballs in this dog park.

I thought, what kind of person could do that?

I reach down and pet Walter.

He’s drained the liquid.

His pink tongue reaching for the sweetness stuck in his whiskered muzzle.

He’s looking up at me with a smile.

Panting. Panting. Panting.

I fill the bowl again.

Last Night on the Q Train

The poet gets on the subway and starts to yell at me, “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen! I am a poet!”

The train groans. People sink farther into their paperback books, cellphones, even just stare at the floor extra hard. But the man goes on, “I am here today to perform a poem for you that is both focused and brief and I hope you do not meet it with indifference because there is enough of that in this world! Do not meet my poem or the art you encounter in the world with indifference.”

I’m torn on this one. He starts to yell a cliched wall of rhymes at us. The poem takes about thirty seconds, and when it’s done, he says, “Thank you for your time! I am raising money for the production of my first book of poetry!”

I give him a dollar. People all around me give the man a dollar. He is maybe forty years old. He is wearing a derby cap. He is dirty like he just got off of work somewhere. The subway stops. The door opens.

The poet gets off into a sea of faces. I stay on the Q train. Can you believe it, I’m on my way to a poetry reading as it is. The subway poet probably just made eight bucks for that one poem. He’s the highest paid poet I can think of.

Nothing else happens on the train. Just a lot of dinging cellphone games. 

Erv’s bar, I’m the third reader at the event. This is Prospect Park, Brooklyn. The bar is small, about as large as my living room. The girl running the event squeezes her way through the people waiting in line for the bathroom and standing at the bar trying to order drinks.

She’s kind to me for a reason that’s not a reason. She’s just kind. She hugs me and thanks me for coming. I have a backpack full of paperback books, I don’t sell many of them at readings. I give her a copy of my second novel, and she tells me that I’ll get a few free drinks for coming to this thing.

The bartender is a dick. I see that almost immediately. He’s smashing things around. Ice whacked in the sink. Slamming glasses. Stirriing spoons richocheting off the wall.

I say hello, I say, “Can I get an old fashioned?”

“Rye or bourbon?”

“Rye. Thanks.”

He starts to make my drink, and he takes it real serious. It probably takes him five minutes to make this one drink. All kinds of artisans ice cubes and special ice hammers and mixing it in three nitrogen chilled glasses, dumping it in here and dumping it in there and I’m waiting and waiting, and it takes me forty seconds to make this drink at home.

A woman has come in off the street though, she’s wearing purple nursing scrubs, and she’s in tears.

She wedges herself past the entrance and its pink neon sign and falls against the bar. The bartender is still shaking my drink in some magic metal cup thing. He’s been shaking the stupid drink now for six months.

She says, “Excuse me.” But he doesn’t hear. She says, “EXCUSE ME!”

The bartender slams down the cup with my stupid drink and he screams, “WHAT! I’M WORKING HERE!”

“Can’t you see I’m in tears? All I want is a napkin, have some decency as a person. Don’t speak to me that way.”

The nurse leaves in even more tears and the bartender says to us, “Fuck this shit! Everyone comes in here with their problems, I didn’t cheat on her, I didn’t get her pregnant and not call—stay the fuck out of here with that shit.”

Finally he pours my drink into a goddamn glass and hands it to me.

The first reader gets up on the stage and reads some poems, but they are different from the ones I heard on the Q train. She doesn’t need to tell everyone not to be indifferent. People are packed in the place, and they are all leaning forward and they are all listening to every word, they travel here for this, they are happy to hear her talk.

The second reader, does a short story about a building that burns down every night. It’s a love story not so much about people who fall in love but of one woman figuring out the dark indifference of the universe. Out on the street there are children screaming and it goes perfect with her story. The fire burns the building down floor by floor and the children in Prospect Park on this dead end street scream and throw a basketball around at 10pm on a Sunday night.

During the drink break, I get a can of beer because it’ll be faster. The bartender has his shirt off now and he’s pointing at himself saying how great he is. “I got my shirt off! Look at this, shirtless!”

My backpack is sitting one of the chairs, open, books sticking out a little bit. And when I get up to read, I’m loud and more like a standup comedian than a guy reading a section of a novel.

I’m reading this thing from my novel F 250 about all the car crashes I’ve been in, well caused, really, when I lived in NJ in 2003.

I’m not reading off a piece of paper, I’ve got the paper in my right hand and the mic in my left and as I’m telling my story, direct to the audience. The bartender is right in front of me, making motions with his arms.

I’m being motherfucking heckled.

Haha. It’s the funniest thing ever, you can get heckled at a literary reading by a psycho bartender? Had no idea.

I call him out on it with the mic, and he hands me a free shot of whiskey in the middle of the reading, as like apology thing.

I go back to telling my story. Everyone in the bar is there to see the literary event.

And now the bartender is mocking the way I talk, because I’m from New Jersey.

When it’s all over, my car crash story, I say, “How about this guy, huh? Everybody make sure you tip your bartender well.”

Some people come up right after and seem worried that I’m gonna beat the guy up, but it’s all good.

I talk to the girls that read before me, and someone comes back with another beer for me. The girl running the event takes some polaroids of the readers, sitting there, a group hug shot dealy.

When I look up at the bar, behind the bar, though, I see the craziest thing.

A copy of my novel is hidden up in the alcohol bottles. Slid facing out in front of the whiskey.

Someone has either gone in my bag and taken it out or someone else brought it to the event … but anyways, there’s my book sticking up there by the booze.

I figure that the bartender did it.

But I don’t say anything because I give a lot of books away for free and I could care less if someone legit stole a book from me.

Matter of fact, if you want a book, just say you want a book. I’ll give you a book. For like, all time.

I have another beer outside of the bar on the sidewalk and I make a new friend. This kid from California who tells me all about this time he was driving around the cliffs and his buddy Johnny drove off a cliff and his car tumbled end over end like 12 times. And my new friend from California and a bunch of girls slid down the cliff and got to where the wreck was—in someones’s back yard actually.

The home owners called the police and the way the story ended, was Johnny getting interviewed on TV saying, “Man, I just miss my car.” And in the news footage, a crane is lifting the vehicle up over the fence and into the street, onto a wrecker.

I get back on the Q train, leaving Brooklyn, going into Manhatten. It’s midnight, still Sunday to me but really Monday morning now.

My wife and her friend are texting that they are going to go to Pyramid club, this funny 80s dance club place that’s dusty and run down and full of strange people. Meet them there they say.

I get off at Union Square.

14th Street and 5th ave.

I’m walking towards fourth ave going east because I need to get to Avenue A and 10th street, but there’s something strange going on up ahead.

The sprinklers are on, they are these little black plastic heads popping out of the grass.

A woman is hiding behind a tree, crouched down, and she is manipulating the sprinklers, by moving them with her fingers, so when people walk by, she sprays them with the water.

This isn’t a homeless person. She’s in her forties. Thick framed glasses, stylishly dressed.

She’s just nuts.

I see her soak two women walking out of a cab and through the park, but they have no idea of the prankster.

Then I see the woman’s boyfriend or husband and he’s crazy as fuck too.

He’s got a big pile of cardboard boxes wrapped in twine and he’s trying to light the boxes on fire by using the twine as like a fuse, but the twine just burns off and the boxes fall apart.

The sprinkler lady says to her man, “Just light the boxes themselves.”

And he starts to do that, and she continues to crouch and wait to soak the next person coming by. I’m just standing there watching this like I’m at at the movies and they see me watching them and it’s no big deal.

But the boxes won’t light.

And the sprinklers turn off.

I keep walking.

I find my wife at a bar in a basement. Down below the street. It feels like we’re in Bavaria.

Pyramid is closed. No new wave 80s dance night.

Culture Club is closed for good. Can I fucking believe that? We’re in this Bavaria bar instead.

I buy her friend Karen a beer and my wife a beer and a beer for myself and they ask how the event thing in Brooklyn went and I tell them the same story that I just told all of you. The nurse off the street. The heckling bartender. The stolen book in the booze bottles. The sprinkler psycho and the box burner.

They laugh because they’re drunk and I laugh too because when drunk people laugh I laugh with them.

They say, “You’ve gotta write this down!”

So here I am Monday morning, 10 am writing this down.

But something else funny happened in the Bavaria bar. There is a jukebox in the back of the bar, and there was a group of people in there with us at this table, only other customers.

Maybe seven of them.

But then the jukebox comes on, and the jukebox plays songs for like a half hour straight and all the songs are Beatles songs.

“So weird. Another Beatles song? Who plays Beatles songs?”

I say, “Remember when you were sixteen and you loved the Beatles?”

“Yeah, everyone on earth loves the Beatles when they’re sixteen.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard people play the Beatles at a bar …”

We look over at the customers, they’re kids, I look even harder now. And they all look so young. Little kids.

What the fuck.

We talk about it, we joke around amongst ourselves about it.

The song changes and it’s Why Don’t We Do It In The Road and all the kids are swaying back and forth with their beers and bopping their heads.

I stand up and walk over.

“Bud Smith, NYPD, let me see some identification.”

They all get white faced. Then green faced.

“Licenses, hand them over,” I say.

The kids are frozen, all of them.

“How old are you guys?”

No one says jack.

I say, “Don’t play the Beatles at a bar if you’re gonna drink underage. That’s a dead give away. And I’m not a cop.”

“We knew that.”

“What should we play?”

“If you’re going to act 17 play Led Zeppelin, if you’re going to act 18 play Pink Floyd, if you’re going to act 19 or 20 play Velvet Underground, if you want to pass for 21 probably play T Rex.”

“Cool, cool, thanks.”

One of them shakes my hand.

I tap him on the shoulder and say, “Here to help.”

My wife is in the bathroom when I walk back over. Her friend is smiling, she’s looking all over at the inside of the bar.

I realize why she’s happy.

New York City is a strange place, beautiful as it transitions from Sunday night, into Monday morning, and none of us going to work. No apparent reason.

Some Upcoming Readings

Hey there,

Lots of good things going on these days. The weather has cooled down, and that makes it easier for me and my wife to bar hop around NYC. Haha. Wanted to post some things here, as a shout from 173rd street, to say hello …

I’ve got all my books back in stock, the novel F 250, the novel Tollbooth, the short story collection Or Something Like That, the poetry collection Everything Neon and the split book with Brian Alan Ellis Tables Without Chairs #1, which has my story cycle Calm Face in it. If you’re interested in picking up any of those paperbacks, click here, and write which book you’d like in the notes section, along with your address.
If you’d like to buy all the books together as a bundle, click here
The press I run, Unknown Press, has been working hard on some upcoming titles .. Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish’s RIFT, Meg Tuite, David Tomaloff and Keith Higginbotham’s GRACE NOTES, as well as the debut short story collection from Erin Parker called THE SECRET AND THE SCARED. If you would like to review any of those titles, please contact me at budsmithwrites@gmail.com and I will get you an ARC.
Below, are some upcoming readings in NYC and one in Philly on South Street at Tattooed Moms … come hang out

10/11/ 15      Sunday at Erv’s

Erv’s

2122 Beekman Pl

Brooklyn, New York

11225

6:30 pm

10/14/15                 An Beal Bocht

An Beal Bocht

W 238th St at Greystone Ave

Bronx, New York

10463

8pm

10/22/15                      Tire Fire Series 

Tattooed Mom

530 South St

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

19147

11/5                           KGB Bar / Comedy on Ice Series 

85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003

(212) 505-3360

7pm

11/14                      KGB Bar / Trumpet Series

KGB

85 E 4th St

New York, NY

10003

7pm

11/17                            Mental Marginalia Series

The West BK






379 Union Ave, Brooklyn

New York

112117pm

Feature at KGB

Alright, thrilled to be a featured reader tonight KGB bar’s Monday Night Poetry Series! 

So that’s Tonight, Monday October 5th 7:30 pm. NYC. 

this is tonight and it’d be cool to see you if you’re free.     

Amy King and Iris Cushing and this guy, reading poems at KGB in that little red room with the podium and the Twin Peaks vibage. Come hang. 

I’ve got off of work tomorrow. Oh man, I’ll probably try to drag you all over Metropolis. 


https://www.facebook.com/events/1163428833672811/

New short story at People Holding

People Holding sent a photograph and I wrote a story to it. 

Here’s a story “E-A-D-G-B-E” about a stolen guitar, a chase across the world, and a tree struck by lightning. 

Thank you to Morgan Beatty at People Holding for the fine editing on this one. 

“Note said: ‘Tell all wimpy happy-on-the-farm pursuant parties I’m bye bye … shadow-style slipped into blooming dusk, everywhere and nowhere, me and this sweet six string.’

“To where?” I asked the tall woman.

She studied the note. “Hmmm. Is Bye Bye a town in Tennessee?””

http://www.peopleholding.com/2015/10/05/e-a-d-g-b-e-by-bud-smith/