Sad News

[Angeline]

A great poet and friend of this forum, smithpeter, died suddenly last week. I am so sorry to bring you this awful news. I wanted to write to you privately, my friends, but realized that there are so many people here who loved his poetry that this was the best way to do it.

This is not a hoax. The information has been verified, and those of you who know me realize I would never knowingly participate in something like that.

Smithpeter had a great, visionary gift for poetry. I can tell you that as his friend--he was one of my very closest friends for the past two years. SP was unfailingly kindhearted. He was, imho, a genius, an artist in the truest sense, but at the same time just a funny down-to-earth guy with a heart of gold.

I am heartbroken. I've lost someone I love very much, who I'd hoped would be a part of my life for years to come. He'd probably hate that I started this thread--and for that I apologize to him--but the more I thought about it, the more I thought you might want to join me in honoring him and his art.

Write a poem for him or about him or read his poems and post one here that you love. These poems are his legacy, and I for one can't let go of him without somehow sharing his influence on me.

Peace to all. Think a good thought for smithpeter. He was a very good man.


Ange

 

[Angeline]

Spending Time Near Her Face
by smithpeter ©

On the porch during storms
in late afternoon
with electricity inspires poems
for mathematics and ants.
All those lines and symbols in order
of chaos. Marching.

Waking next to your pucker
is more stirring.
You look sweet and sour.
There must be a bug in your nose.
The cure for that twitch is soft kiss of cheeks
and smoothing night ruffled hair.
My breakfast of sliced pears with sorbet and candle
does not dim from streaming morn.
We share licorice end to end.

You don a pair of smiles, dimples
and all the trimmings.
Good morning my lover's, lovely face.

 

[Angeline]

Dogwood
by smithpeter ©

Not in point or concept
Would any but a fool
Attempt to sway a delicate
White pink flower to a cage

Already in custody of the
Loving branches, in turn
Possessions of the trunk
For whom she sports
A cleft between
Her luscious lower petals

Holding her to light
The slender stems bring
Nourishment, umbilicals
Of life, till the need is met
Dropped, folded, renewal

Foolish too to capture,
Cut, snap or twist her free
To die in vessel clay
Or glass, looking forlornly
Over the edge, drowning

 

[Angeline]

Brown
by smithpeter ©

Forty years ago the roads
around here were dust over dirt.
In two thousands two lanes are passable.
One for driving slow.
Another for ditching.

Front to back, east to westerly
winds flap the flags and drool.
Some small drops fall off brows,
down cans of Lager and dribble
long droppings to ground below
sport utility or flexi muscled vehicles
needed for life,
or some such thing.

A driver, no loyalist, skirts the meadows.
He is GPS enhanced and groomed for encounter
in ways his otherwise occupied bride
will never know.

If I had met him I would have asked what are
the convex dimples of your floor named?
(we'd stand in my yard, it is freshly mowed, his engine
continues to run}
Is it the Diamond Pattern?

The secret of transport is alive in his brownness, his shorts.
Another dot to dot matrix.
"in sleet and slush such no snooze nor sentiment will sustain this
delivery more than the smile that one may never witness."

All this for just a wrap of poems that
press face to face in the dark till liberated,
spread for reading and looking at each other.
A morsel of art in word. Simple thought,
soft affection from a friend up the dusty road.

Brown returns down his route unpaved
by thought.
What if words caught sight
of each other?

 

[Angeline]

(I wrote the first Poet's Lullabye for smithpeter about a year ago)

Poet's Lullabye 2

You can't be
gone. You can't because we never
had time to meet and my plan
was to just drive one day west
through all those bits of effluvia,
geography between us like fog.

Hello, you said my name is,
and I live in a fog,
and I love jazz, too.

You made me laugh
when I didn't want to
ever again, but we did
for two years, talking between
the gulps, the giggles.

Oh we understood each other,
that burn to write, make art
always a torch passed between
our hands.

Did you know how many
poems I wrote for you?
So many, sweetheart.

You were my inspiration
when so few ever reach
me really sometimes I feel
like everyone dies before I
have a chance to I don't
even know what but too soon,
it's always too soon.

I would have taught you
Shakespeare, Eliot, Blake.
I would have read with you
like we planned, like the phone
conversations--

One more poem. We'll read
one more poem together,
then hang up.

That New Year's Eve we talked
all night, and in the morning
you took the phone outside,
brushed it over grass and said
Listen, and I did. You walked
to the pond and splashed water,
and said Listen. I heard you.
I heard you always, but now
I just hear me crying. I'm not sure
you understood how much
I love you.

 

[WickedEve]

He would have hated this thread. He was very private.
He was my best friend for over 2 years.
Things were better and then I didn't hear from him. I thought he was still upset with me. I kept emailing. I thought he'd get over it. But he won't, will he?
It's always interesting to come to this board and read the threads. Never thought I'd find out that my best friend who I still love is dead. What a way to find out.
I know this thread is in his honor and it was started by Angeline, so I have no right to come here and use this moment to say I'm leaving. But there is no way I will ever return to this place. I can't do it now that he's gone. I'm closing my site too. I can't do it any of it anymore.
I'm trying to remember feeling pain like this. I feel like someone has taken something out of my insides. Oh god...
Angeline, email me or PM and tell me what happened. Tell me whatever. Tell me something to make it better. Please...

 

[Angeline]

I just pmed you Eve. Also pmed you last night right after I heard. Let me know if you didn't receive them via email or whatever. We can talk on Yahoo or the phone. I know. I am a wreck. Very little sleep and so so sad. Let me know about the pm.

 

[WickedEve]

I didn't get anything

 

[thegirlfriday11]

I pray that God brings all of his surviving friends and family much comfort and love through their time of grief

 

[Angeline]

I'm emailing it now. Apparently pms aren't working right today.

<edited>
to add:

sent to the hotmail address.

 

[Guest]

I can't think of anything to say that matters right now except that sp would not want you to go or close your site Eve. I, too, am so sad at this news.

 

[WickedEve]

Tris, that's not what's important. What's important is that smithpeter has forced us to have a smithpeter is dead thread by dying.
I want someone to make it better or give me someone to blame. Neither is likely to happen. I'm online now, writing emails, reading emails, avoiding any emails or photos of him. Maybe if I just delete it all then I can delete the pain that goes with it. It will be like he never was. That won't happen either.
And now I wonder what I tell my daughter when she does something incredibly nutty and begs me to tell him. Not tell her daddy but tell sp.
I think I'm angry with him right now. Is that horrible? I talk too much and I'm looking for answers.
I have to go to the post office now. Life goes on and it's so silly.

 

[Guest]

You have a PM, Eve.

 

[Maria2394]

I didn't know him as long or as well as most of you on here did, but he has a wonderful profound influence on me. I am so sad he is gone and that we suffer the loss of his presence. Anyone who ever read his poems would know he was a gifted, loving, very funny man, who cheered me up at times I didnt even know I was sad. I read his poems and rejoice in his life and his visions and I will miss him...

He has left Lit, he is part of us now, energy cannot be destroyed, its a fact, only changes form..feel his life, feel nature that he loved so much, feel his poems, Sunroof Naughty and State Park Toilet... he is still here, feel his spirit and smile, I am sure he is up on a roof somewhere watching the sunset shaking his head at us all , thinking we should be writing

 

[eagleyez]

2 rivers

collide in the end
and slip
into a deep blue
home.

On the shore we
dip our toes-
hang our heads-
shuffle our feet and
sniffle.

The epitomy of love-
Loss and sorrow and some vague sense of magic-
Kiss the sky, ruffle the dirt,
Watch the birds fly.

The rivers will remain.

 

[Liar]

I did not know the man, more than through his poetry. It lit, and still lights, sparks of insight, laughter, ephiphany and inspiration in me that will never fade.

With wishes for strength to friends and family,



to wit
to warmth
to smith of soul fuel
and will

stand
let words in
be what you will
do what you can
raise a glass
in three silent cheers

remember



#L                                    

 

[Tathagata]

I post this knowing that it won't help today
or tomorrow
or next week
I post it because years after I lost my best friend and his mother , murdered by his father, her husband, a man I considered a father, I found comfort in these few words.
Nothing will make it better
The pain will never go away
but you will achieve, at some point an acceptance of things as they are.
I promise.

I am sorry for the loss you all bear
I am here if anyone needs or wants to talk

____________________________________________________

And a woman spoke, saying, "Tell us of Pain."

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

____________________________________________________

Something inside you dies when you bear the unbearable. It is only in the dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and love as God loves....Your rational minds will never understand what has happened. But your hearts, if you can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way."




( and GOD is however you define it......)

 

[Linbido]

Tried and tried to get this right.
Tried and tried words of hope
of comfort somehow.

Profound, balanced, just the right size.

But one semantitc slip
and all...
composture, tears, hearts
...just might
come crashing down.

So no, I end this now
before I break a dam.

So only this:

Hugs to all.
A tissue for tears.

And an upwards wave
to a kind man,
dangling his legs
over the event horizon.

 

[jthserra]

I knew him only

though his poems and a few, very gracious thank yous he sent when I commented on his poems. What I saw in his words was a very gifted poet who had a way of seeing deep into whatever he wrote about. I first read his poetry on Eve's site, and then here. I will miss the poetry and am saddened I never got the opportunity to know him better.

jim

 

[champagne1982]

Adieu smithpeter.

I only pray that a poet's heaven,
Is simpler than here on earth.
Where joy in beauty, trust and faith
Is all that measures worth.

A poet walks but a short time,
Upon the worldly shore,
But if his words are meaningful,
He'll be remembered evermore.

************************

He is immortal in the memories of his friends.

Angeline, I weep for your heartbreak.

Anna, I cry tears of empathy felt in the passing of a friend.

Eve, your sorrow moves me most of all. Never let the dying of a teacher make you forget the lessons that they taught.

Keep making poetry my friends. Without it, the world would be just another ugly planet.

 

[Cordelia]

I am at a loss for words.
I definitely won't be back for a while.



Cordelia.

 

[minsue]

I've no words

http://www.angelfire.com/la3/maryshome/miscwhiteroselge.gif

 

[Guest]

Re: I've no words

minsue... the image host is not stable for your image. Here it is on one that is... I feel the same
http://img41.photobucket.com/albums/v127/neonurotic/stuff/minsuerose.gif

 

[BooMerengue]

I've been reading since I heard. I didn't realize SmithPeter was so young. What a range of talent!! I picked this one out- I really love it...

Ghosts and Souls
by smithpeter ©

by laying next to each other
we violated each others spirit space
the places around and in each of our auras
where bits of old love and sex dwell

No Cry Zones below,
we rise above to eye leveling
curiosity, our purest push
of query and peck

rolling with the chandelier sway,
Is that one of yours?
Our lost ghosts find us.
We hide below the covers

Great Grand’s quilt
all hex and charm, horses
rune and three tine forked
chicken ching tracks, salsa

We sweat below, it weighs on us
our skin crawls all over each other,
we flesh it out for the voyeur past-
be gone or stay, just be quiet

like a polite, vanishing memory

Go read

SmithPeter

You will surely find something you love!

Thank you, SmithPeter.

 

[denis hale]

:=(

I am shocked and saddened by this news.

SmithPeter was, and remains still, an inspiration for me.

I was in awe of his talent, and the incredible body of work he showcased on this site. I don't think I ever read a SmithPeter poem I did not like. A truly unique voice.

I always hoped to meet the man; I should have just introduced myself. Now I'm feeling very bad that I did not. I'm saddened by this loss. I truly am.

God bless and keep you sp!


dh