Tryin'

Run, Run Rudolph.

by

James Robert Smith.

If you can't be immortal

Be famous.

If fame is denied you

Be notorious.

Failing that

Become an asshole.

Just a nice guy?

Don't get

involved in

the race.

Travelin' Man, a Poem

Travelin’ Man

Copyright 2009 By

James Robert Smith

Travelin’ man

sales man

visions, views

sights of asphalt

trash, paper, ice

snow

blowing in vacant

car-haunted

parking lots facing

weed-choked yards on

the verges

of bad sides of towns

all along the

cancerous concrete sprawl that is

the East Coast.

Tears for Lunch, a Poem

Tears For Lunch
Copyright 2009 By
James Robert Smith

The booth in front
of me
seats a beautiful
young mother and her
toddler.
He sits, blonde
and beautiful
like his mom
and gnaws on a fried
potato.
He looks up
at his mother,
and holds a big piece
of that gnawed, delicious
potato
up to her pretty
lips
with his tiny, pink hand
and he smiles
at her
and I put my
face in
my hands
to hide
the tears.

GOD, a Poem

GOD

copyright 2009 by James Robert Smith

God

stubbed out another

cigarette.

He looked

down

at us.

He was

nauseous. So

He got

up and

went to the

head but

only

took a whiz.

Then He pulled

on his coat.

Took a turn

around the block.

When He

got back we

were still

here.

Damn!

The Party I Never Attended

The Party I Never Attended

By

James Robert Smith.

An old pal came to me.

“I just want you to know,”

he said.

“I’m going to a party.

and they’re going to be there.”

“Oh,” I said.

“That’s interesting.”

In those days I still

shared

a few

mutual friends.

But not for long.

“I just wanted to tell you,”

he told me.

“Just so’s you’d know.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Is there anything you

need

to tell me. You know.

About them.”

I thought it

over

for a minute.

“Well, I can tell you

something

she’ll do.

She’ll know you’re

a writer.

She’ll get someone to loan

her

your work.

She’ll read as much of

it

as she can before

the party.”

He nodded

again.

“And she’ll

flatter you.

That’s what she does.

She’ll flatter you and make

you think that

she thinks

you are great.”

He pondered this.

“And she might

even

critique your work.

Tell you where you

went wrong.”

He seemed to

consider

this, too.

“In a small way,”

I added. “Just to let

you

know that she was paying

attention.”

“Okay,” he said.

A few days later

I

saw him

again.

“Damn,”

he said.

“You were right on the

number.

She did

everything

you said

that she’d

do.”

I shrugged,

feigning

modesty.

“What a skank,”

he said.

We both roared.

What Ya Gonna Do, I Ask Ya?

I’m a Man

By James Robert Smith

I snore when I sleep.

I belch after I eat.

I fart often.

I live in a near-constant state

of rut.

My wife complains:

Stop snoring!

Don’t belch!

Why do you fart?

I have a headache.

But

tonight

she fed me chili.

Go figure.

Semi-functional moron.

A Parting Shot: Windows

A Poem by James Robert Smith

Go to the window and look outside.

If there are trees, there will be a day when they’ll
All
Be cut the fuck
Down.

If you look out and see
Buildings, or other
Houses, or other
Offices, then there will come a
Day
When they will all be knocked the fuck
Over.

Nothing in Man’s way will
Stand
For long.

We destroy everything
We have built.

We eat everything placed
Before us.

There is nothing too quaint to be preserved.

There is nothing too beautiful to be saved.

There is nothing too rare to be spared.

We knock down mountains.
We carve up rivers.
We shove whole forests into our guts.

We shit on the land
And piss in the oceans
And fart into the skies.

Look out the window.
Blink.
Everything you saw is gone.

My Best Friend

My Pal

By

James Robert Smith

I was relatively

happy

when I sold that first

short story

to that first

big market.

My best friend asked me

the anthology title

and said he’d buy

a copy

when it came out.

When it did come out

I asked him, smiling, proud,

“Did you buy one?”

And he said,

“Your story was what? Four pages of the book? Five?

I couldn’t justify buying

that book

for just four or five pages.”

My best friend.

What an asshole.

Evil

He Saw Evil
By
James Robert Smith

His younger brother
married a whore.
His older brothers,
of whom he had several,
married women.
This whore, though,
was a working class
psychologist.
The Johns, the
endless line of Johns
even at her young
age
had taught her that all
she had to do
was stroke whatever made
them
feel good.
This whore,
had learned that
everyone
liked to be
stroked.
Even gay men
could be moved to
fall in temporary
love
with her when
she rubbed
what made them
emotionally tick.
And women, she’d learned,
had conceits
that could be
massaged to pleasure.
Eventually, she tried it
with him.
“You’re so smart,” she’d say, when
his kid brother was not
around.
But he already knew that.
“I admire people
who read,” she’d pout,
when his little brother was
somewhere else.
Good for you, he’d think.
“Your lips are
very pretty,” she lied,
when her husband was
not there.
He wanted to puke.
Eventually,
she gave up on him.
And then
he saw
the only true
emotion
that a whore
possesses:
HATRED.
She hated his
guts,
and showed it
at every
opportunity.
Ah.
That was much
better.
He could deal with
that.
He felt he’d
accomplished something
good
and decent,
since, as you now know,
his little brother’s wife
was
a
whore.
But,
worst of all, her husband
was
a pimp.

Bears

By
James Robert Smith

Bears
have got it
made
They sleep
all winter
and
half the summer.
They eat
berries
They get to shit
in the woods
and go fishin’
anytime they
please.
They screw for
two weeks
solid,
Then forget sex exists
the next 50
weeks.
Nobody messes
with bears.
Not even other
bears.
Not really.
Hey, bear.
I’ll trade you.
You’ll have to walk
upright.
My hands for
your paws.
We have chocolate.
Lots of
chocolate.
Whaddayasay?

Look!

Look!
By
James Robert Smith

Look how FAR
we’ve come,
they brag
(as if they’d done it themselves).
Jumbo jets!
Computers!
DVD players!
Interstate highways!
Skyscrapers!
Sewage systems!
Automobiles!
Modern medicine!
MORE computers!
Cell phones!
Satellites!
Space stations!
Planetary probes!
We’re great! We’re #1,
they say.
But do they EVER
stop to think
that we should have
achieved all that
stuff
500 years ago?
1,000 years ago?
That we should be
sitting, perhaps,
in the laps of the gods in
Paradise,
either here on Earth
or in orbit around
Betelgeuse? or Barnard’s Star?
or Proxima Centauri?
Or hauling black holes
around the Universe like tinker toys
while Yahweh kisses our ass?
No. I doubt
that ever occurs
to them.

Why?

Why?
By
James Robert Smith



That murder,
you know the one:
the latest wife
murderer
du jour.
Everyone asks why
he did it.
Why? They ask.
Why kill his
wife
and dump her
body
in the water?
I’ll tell you
why.
He wasn’t as
patient
as the rest of us.

Pulver-ized.

Wayne Pulver
By
James Robert Smith

Wayne Pulver was my best pal
in the third grade.
Wayne was a mutant.
At the age of eight he was taller
than our teacher.
He was 5 feet 6 inches, and huge,
a belly like an ape’s.
He was happy, and friendly, and smiling
and jolly.
Wayne lived one street over.
I had to go through my back yard
past the apple trees
climb the steep hill in the neighbor’s yard
to emerge on Wayne’s street
two houses up and across the road
from his place.
Wayne had a mom
who was a lousy cook,
crunchy grits!
but a sweet lady,
an absent dad claimed by divorce.
But he had an older brother who was
cool as shit;
he built all
of the models I didn’t have—
Dracula, The Creature, Godzilla, The Old Witch,
all of the Ratfink models,
the Big Daddy Roth rods,
the Weird-Ohs
and custom stuff he created from
castoff parts he got from other
kids.
Wayne and I spent a lot of
time looking at his brother’s models;
his brother didn’t mind.
One day, we were in the front yard at
my house.
A new kid in our third grade class
walked up; a jackass,
a bully
named phil.
He was a pissant next to Wayne,
but he was aggressive and mean and bound by
CRUELTY to pick a fight with smiling, kind
Wayne.
I stood by, did nothing
and watched.
Wayne tried to avoid fighting,
but the little shit phil
insisted.
Huge, heavy, unfortunate Wayne was forced
to fight.
It was a very, very short fight.
When phil picked himself up
had fled, bloody nose, bloody teeth, fat lips,
it was Wayne who was crying.
He looked at me.
“Why didn’t you do something?”
he asked.
“Why didn’t you stand up? He would have
backed off if you’d stood up
with me.”
I could have said,
“I was scared.” But
it wouldn’t have mattered, because I’d done
nothing, either way.
So Wayne left,
And other than in class,
I never saw him again. By year’s end,
they had moved
away
forever.

The descent into Scot's Gulf.

Scot’s Gulf
By
James R. Smith


Gravity
and Young Man River
conspire
to part the thighs
of Mother Earth
And, O!
Clear pools, home to
trout
and from yielding stone
there is fertile ground,
poplars and
hemlocks
And oaks and pines and
thistles and laurel
and trillium
trillium
trillium

The wilderness beckons.

Cold, clear pools.

A carpet of green ferns along the forest floor.

Virgin Falls, from a cave, down the cliff, and back to the netherworld.

The old forests clothe the yielding slopes.

And, along the way, one is never alone...

...never alone...



...never alone.

Only One Question.

One Question
By
James Robert Smith

I’d perc’d my own coffee,
put it in a mug
and left
for work
the insulated mug on my
right
I took a hard turn
too quickly, perhaps
and the mug spilled
hot coffee
on my thigh.
IT HURT!
Driving on, more slowly,
I dabbed at the
coffee
with a handy towel.
I had only one question:
“Who would I sue?”

At Seven

At Seven
By
James Robert Smith

At seven years old
Your room is full of comic books
And Famous Monsters
And Creepy and Eerie
Magazines.

You gaze in wonder at
Creatures
Wrought by
Ditko
And Wood
And Frazetta
And Torres
And Crandall.

You wait for
Films from
Hammer,
RKO,
Universal.
Creatures that dwell
In darkness
From lost islands
Strange places
Other days.

And then.
At night.
Things come out.
October Country things.
That slither like
Fine silk
In the closet.
That crinkle like
Old pulp
On the shelves.
That blow
Not quite silently
Across your brow.

But there are rules
That keep you
Safe
You Seven-year-old.

Cover your eyes
And that which you
Cannot see cannot see
You.

Keep your fingers
And feet
From hanging over the
Abyss below your mattress
For they cannot
Invade that cotton
Territory.

And whatever
Whatever
Whatever you do.
Do not get up
In the night
In the dark
In the silence
Until first light
Brings dawn.

Only then is it safe
To read again
Tales by Archie Goodwin
Stories introduced by grinning
Ghouls and smiling zombies.
Only then is time
To watch
Wolfmen
And vampires
And Creatures from
Black Lagoons and
Things from Another World.
And time enough
For October Country
And tales etched on an
Illustrated Man.

A Real Pro

A Real Pro
By
James Robert Smith

He went slowly
to the coffee table and began
to carefully lift each bottle of beer.
Goddamn.
Some of them were still half full.
He was going to have to drink a lot of beer before
tossing those bottles.
Fuck.
He hated drinking with people who
weren’t alcoholics.
They wasted too much of
his beer, and it didn’t matter if they’d brought it.
It was his house and they came
to see him, so it was his beer.

Now he was going to have to swill
it all
before he could clear the bottles
out.
Warm beer.
Feh.
He’d have to watch for cigarette butts,
he realized,
raising the first bottle to
his lips.

Corroboration

Corroboration
By
James Robert Smith


My father told me
that our government
had been wrong.
That it has committed
vast crimes:
Murders, genocides,
destruction without
equal.
Men and women and
babies
slaughtered because they
lived here first.
Men and women and
babies
enslaved and tortured
because they were
not white.
Forests cut, leveled,
slashed and burned.
Rivers dammed,
dirtied, polluted to death.
Creatures of wood,
and hill, desert and plain,
laid waste.
All these things he
told me,
while schools
and radio
and television
and comic books
told me America
is good, and great,
and beloved of God.
I grew,
pulled by two
versions of America;
one dark and bloody,
one bright and gaudy.
I grew,
and read,
and watched,
and listened,
and compared.
And I tell you,
you who will
hear:
Mark Smith
was right.
America murdered
men, and women, and babies
because they were here
first.
America enslaved
and tortured
men, and women, and babies
because they were not
white.
America did, indeed, level vast
forests,
polluted great, clear, clean
rivers and lakes;
gutted the forests and plains
and hills of our
wild heritage.
America, listen:
My father,
your son,
knew you well.

DMZ

DMZ
By
James Robert Smith

Between North and South Korea
tigers and cranes thrive
where everywhere else they are
extinct.

Chernobyl:
There, the moose and boar and brown
bear live in
great numbers
where men no longer
should.

The western warlord stood before
the cameras, commenting on how,
from space,
the absence of nighttime illumination
marks the backward nation as something
dark and evil.

But if there were no lights
scarring the night sky
you could see the stars
as we could
once upon a time.

No lights, at night
is not a bad thing.
It’s good.
And so I implore
Mother Nature:
Turn out the lights
for us all.

Ray Bradbury Said It.

Ray Bradbury Said It
By
James Robert Smith

Ray Bradbury once said,
“The most horrible thing in the world is
a twelve-year-old boy.”
I don’t agree.
Not quite.
Twelve-year-old boys get
bigger
and stronger
and more clever.
And they learn to shoot guns
and fire missiles
and splash napalm.
And they foul
the water and air,
and despoil the land,
and they kill the animals
for food,
and for fur,
and ivory,
and their blubber,
or just
for fun.
Then they find women
to beat
and children
to abuse,
and sometimes they kill
each other (HAW!).
But they never
grow up.
They’re always
twelve-year-old
boys.Only worse.