{"id":65681,"date":"2011-09-27T21:00:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T01:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/65681\/in-field-gray-featuring-valentine-smith-pick-apart-poetry-barbara-k-cherie\/"},"modified":"2011-09-27T21:00:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T01:00:26","slug":"in-field-gray-featuring-valentine-smith-pick-apart-poetry-barbara-k-cherie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/65681\/in-field-gray-featuring-valentine-smith-pick-apart-poetry-barbara-k-cherie\/","title":{"rendered":"“In A Field Of Gray” Featuring Valentine Smith @ Pick-Apart Poetry with Barbara K. and Cherie!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Welcome once again to Pick-Apart Poetry! We’ve got a special guest feature for <\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Our poetry challenge this month! Let’s send a warm welcome to…<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Valentine Smith<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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Please take a few moments to visit<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

His profile and send him a friend request<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

If you have not done so already<\/strong><\/font><\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.friendburst.com\/Valentime_Smith\/<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

Here is just a bit about Valentine:<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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“My interests are the Arts, Music Appreciation and Writing.”<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

“Who would I like to meet the most?…well I’ve already met her!”<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

But still on my historic short list:<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Mark Twain<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Dr. Albert Hoffman<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Owsley Stanley aka “Bear”<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Warren Zevon<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Leonard Alfred Schneider aka “Lenny Bruce”<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Jerry Garcia<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Edna St. Vincent Millay<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Jack Kerouac (Beat Generation Author)<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

William Seward Burroughs II (Beat Generation Author)<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Neal Cassady<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Francois-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

Abraham Stoker aka “Bram”
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John Lennon<\/font>
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<\/span><\/strong><\/font>~Valentine Smith<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n


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Please send Valentine Smith a greeting letting him know how much<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

We appreciate him sharing his poetry writing with us today!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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The following is our featured Prose:<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n


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In A Field Of Gray<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

By Valentine Smith<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n


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In a field of gray, cold stone just beyond the banks of a childhood lost, far removed from the here and now, my first memories hide among the autumn leaves and shadows. Coarse shocks of withered slashed pine, rusting up through dirty blankets of October snow \u2013 still life with depression, outside my morning window. The rising calm, festooned with giddy anticipations of Halloween, perks slowly to life through filters of kerosene heat, wood smoke and farm fresh eggs \u2013 crackling in bacon grease, in a cast iron skillet, on a pot bellied stove. No indoor plumbing to speak of, aside from COLD and COLDER running water to the kitchen sink. The distance of the outhouse from the back porch, suggests that it was conceived and rendered functional during the dog days of summers past. Electricity, while still holding some novelty for southern working poor \u2013 black and white, had reached every rural backwash by the time I drew my first breath.<\/span><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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Electric, oil or candle; I always remember ample light to read by after supper, though I will confess here that I could not yet decipher the tangle of consonants and vowels strewn across our family bookshelf. Rather, I was read to by Margarete \u2013 paternal grandmother, seven times removed (by divorce and remarriage) from Buck, my father\u2019s father. Time heals all wounds and vice versa; Buck never took another wife, unless you consider the ever present pint of sour mash whiskey tucked away next to a bottle of Old Spice aftershave, in his travel worn ditty bag. In later years he would visit once or twice a year; always arriving by Greyhound, twine tied around an antique leather suitcase, then leaving several months later by the same method.<\/span><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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Poor Margarete \u2013 bless her feckless lush heart \u2013 continued to practice serial monogamy, until self medicating with Seconal and Southern Comfort took her from us at 73. Ten years her senior, Buck crawled to 87 just under the wire, surviving her by four years, surrendering in the end to gangrene and diabetes in an old folk\u2019s home just east of Chattanooga, Tennessee. But enough raking the bones of the dead who\u2019ve gone on to eternity; suffice it to say I lost my own way long before I was old enough to barter for anything of true or lasting value.; though, at some point you have to scrape the shit right off your shoes and keep on struggling forward.<\/span><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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Unlike my gifted brother, Johane, school was for me was one long, miserable hash mark of failing grades, severe disciplinary measures and increasingly lowered self esteem. By 8th grade, classes ran a distant second to truant, drug heavy, skull and knuckle sessions; convened in abandoned tract houses or the seedy corpses of hobo shanties strewn along rotting railroad tracks in the middle of B.F.E. \u2026 Orange barrel, Blue smear, strawberry mescaline, Shrooms, Mexican brown, China white, Ludes, Crystal meth, White crosses, Panama Red, Vietnam Black, Thai Stick, MDA, Coke, Speedballs \u2013 pick a color, any color you like; if it was possible to snort, smoke, eat, drink or even shoot yourself into oblivion on it, I was in for a full share. Were it mine to do over, with the knowledge that by age of fifty-five I would be headed for a wheel chair due to advancing arthritis, I can honestly say I would have sampled substantially larger quantities of some items and less or none of others?<\/span><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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I would have limited myself to a single six once serving of Dewar\u2019s White label Scotch \u2013 on the rocks with a twist \u2013 at sundown every Saturday afternoon, while listening to Moonlight Mile by the Stones. I\u2019d have cultivated a manageable heroin habit by 15 as opposed to a lifetime battle with recitivism. Over the course of six weeks I would have flown to a three week high then tapered back to nothing by week six; allowing a four week cooling off period between junk junkets to end a ten week cycle. I\u2019d probably feel better and be less dependent on heroin than I am on morphine. LSD \u2013 a tough call there. I was just a teen the first time I dropped acid and though I would suffer my share of bad trips in due time, the very first time I stepped off the edge of the understood universe was nothing less than an All Access- E Ticket- Backstage Pass to the far side of the looking glass. I was simply too young to panic, as each star in a black velvet sky suddenly ventured off on individual, uncharted paths across the darkened whole of outer space \u2013 via the inner space of my fresh faced, inquisitive mind. Never mind that doom faced \u2013 gnarled oaks shook themselves free of the ground, snake roots and all or even that the graves of Sunset Memorial opened at midnight to vomit the remains of the dead and damned back to voodoo life \u2026 I was Ef-You-See-Kay-ing ENCHANTED and drawn by the unknown, in search of the limits of my own fractured mind \u2026<\/span><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

~<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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Send us a “Heart” at the top of this blog<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

As your show of support!<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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Welcome once again to Pick-Apart Poetry! We’ve got a special guest feature for Our poetry challenge this month! Let’s send a warm welcome to… Valentine Smith Please take a few moments to visit His profile and send him a friend request If you have not done so already http:\/\/www.friendburst.com\/Valentime_Smith\/ Here is just a bit about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}