this time around

this time around
----------------------------------

when we could be reckless
breaking hearts, missing signals
keeping secrets meant for disclosure
making shit up &
when we had time to make
so many mistakes we had to
redefine the term
we did

and took more wrong turns
than our wheels could handle

enough to know, to remember, to learn
not to do that again
or jump into empy pools or
climb over steel walls, but

this pool: taken full, filled &
overflowing this pool is safe
and these walls did their job
enough and can now rest
because we both know
this time around is better
so much better than before
and too precious to break

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You Can Be Positive

You Can Be Positive - collage by douglas brent smith.

A Full Moon Wasn't The Half of It

A Full Moon Wasn't The Half of It -- collage by douglas brent smith, 1986

Worldview Built In A Day With Fire

Worldview Built In A Day With Fire - collage by douglas brent smith, 3 January 1988 Something about this collage causes me to page quickly past it, yet if I spend more time absorbed in it there is more to see. I pondered cropping it. I cut out dozens of pieces of pictures that could go in with it, but found it hard to obscure the central image. Worldview? Examination? Built in a day? The hints of mixed media with the pen lines were attempts to draw it all together. Did it work?

Levitating a Small Guitar

Levitating a Small Guitar - sketch by douglas brent smith (probably 1991). "Do you think that he could levitate a large guitar, that is to say, a normal sized guitar as well?" "No doubt. It might take some practice, though." "Does it come naturally?" "It comes with practice." "That is more like a ukulele than a guitar." "Nope. It has six strings. Guitar." "Small" "But he could also levitate a large guitar. Maybe one wasn't available." "Well, you've got to start someplace." "Yes." - dbS -

Worldview Built In a Day

Worldview Built In a Day - collage by douglas brent smith, 3 January 1988

What The Cats Discovered

What The Cats Discovered - digital collage by douglas brent smith, 2 March 2024 With glue and paper, once you've set the glue you either live with it, tear it off, or paste something over it. That makes the work exacting and a bit risky. With a digital collage, such as this one, you can change your mind and simply iterate. That's fun, too. There could be an endless series of versions of the same picture that is not the same picture. I don't necessarily want that, but I wasn't sure I was satisfied with the first version (above) so here are some alternatives. The What the Cats Discovered Remix, or More of What The Cats Discovered: More of What The Cats Discovered (Outside Remix) - douglas brent smith 2 March 2024 ore of What The Cats Discovered, Inside Remix, douglas brent smith 2 March 2024 What one do you like the best? I promise that I will NOT do this with every collage. Tonight, it was fun.

Face In The Crowd

Face In The Crowd - pen and marker drawing by douglas brent smith, 1989 At the buttom of the drawing you can see the effect of water on the paper. I feel lucky that my journals weren't more severely damaged or even burned completely up in the fire at Elm Street. I spent hours afterwards drying them out in the sun on a trampoline, carefully turning page by page and giving each page some drying time. This is from journal #26. I was up to journal #41 at the time. Fortunately, not all of them were drenched.

Make Waves

Make Waves - collage by douglas brent smith, 19890601 Oddities Unexplained: This collage, created June 1, 1989, appears on page 249 (with the back-side of the page simply the title) of journal #25. Communication, and the following poem, "Waves" was written on June 30, 1990 (more than a year later) and appears on page 251 of the same journal. I think how something like that happens is that there was a time when I created collages in my journals deep within the pages, long before the journal writing caught up. Plus, this particular journal took longer than usual to write. Does it matter? Not much. But, there you have it. Here's the poem: Waves everything on the surface develops a skin of its own unexamined, unrevealed, unkissed by the sun and then something falls with the unrelenting force of gravity and breaks that surface bearing a new moment which makes waves ohmyohmyohmyohmyohmy holycowholycowholycowholycow... but then the waves dissipate and the skin of the surface

Downstream Corporation

Downstream Corporation - collage by douglas brent smith, 30 August 1991. The board of directors is not in the mood for slacking. The stream must keep flowing and the product must roll. There is money to be made, but wait! That pause for fun has already begun. For most of my life, collages all came together in one day. They could take hours, but I would seldom stop working on one until it was done. Usually the radio would be playing endlessly in the background -- WMMR when I lived in NJ or PA, WXRT when I lived in Chicago. For this collage, it was WXRT all the way. - dbS -

One Spirit One Energy One World

One Spirit One Energy One World - collage by douglas brent smith, 16 November 1991

douglas brent smith

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