Modern poetry collection by the contemporary Cleveland poet Steven B. Smith
Smith - contemporary poet

Reading Room #4
11 poems


The Grasshopper's Tale

My life's dog food for do gooders
Hot dodgers dogging God's zone
Fur sure of itself
Per path and position
Point portion pursued

We who rise in heat from dream
Lick recollection loose
From cold fire's template
Futility's fog
We bleed in abandon
Dance dawn's dapple light


end    poetry


Smith 2004
9 March 1946 / Wallace Idaho / 6' 3" / 173

1950s
farm boy cow milker chicken/rabbit/hog waste remover
hod carrier

1960s
paper boy
car thief
sailor
electronics technician
poet
USNA midshipman
artist
hippie
life insurance salesman
husband

1970s
chemist
prison cook
bankrupt
graphic arts salesman
avant-garde theatre manager
bethlehem steel extraman
college graduate
newspaper film/music critic
milkman
women's shoe salesman
divorced
computer operator
dealer
carnival laborer
adulterer
church janitor

1980s
programmer analyst
drunk
condo owner
publisher/editor
celibate

1990s
near dead
sober
european traveler

2000s
unemployed
agent of chaos


end    poetry


Confessions of a Conservative

Let others munch spare frogslegs and things
Or their mother's tidbits so fine.
Not me.
I prefer wee bumblebee wings
With a pipe of blueberry wine.
I've no desire for porcupine stew
Aunts coated in chocolate yea thick
Fried crocodile
Ala flayed caribou
Or some other chef's table trick.
A simple table whenever I dine.
Not mine all these modern cuisines.
I'm quite satisfied with blueberry wine
And old fashioned bumblebee wings.


end    poetry


Pablo Picasso, Died

It pays to heed occasional squirrel whiles

Poor castle cast off
My heart does not knead for you
Your warped eye whispering
Spawns demon shadows only
Alone
Within your hairy benobbed frame
Need not be
Repeat
Need not be

Red napped realities abound
Need not abide
Squirrels imply


end    poetry


The Heart as Arsonist

Sure the kindling.
But as well the wood.
The place as such
And substance
Of the matter.
Time.
Amounts of time to flicker.
Flame in bright arrogance.
Become fuel to continuity,
Faded maturation.

It is not wonder
Yet is
Why wolves, weres and lovers
Lie dreaming before fires
Fire places
Emotions.
It is the melancholy
Of the cycle calling.
Warmed atavisms
Consumed in life
In love of rebirth.
The remembrance
Of werewolves wanting wings.

All these
The core past caring
Belonging
The fire is, is love.
The spark
To kindle the passion
Then human the substance
To weather completion
This this is love.


end    poetry


Cannibal Saliva

Marijuana and Mozart on a Sunday morn
Plethora of complacencies
Of tongue, beard, bush.

Poets fall down.
Dream.
Drown.

origin of Cannibal Saliva

end    poetry


Fungu Stew

Old piano roll's wrong.
Slime can't slide.
Hot crotch coffee time's
Limited clearance
For the effluent affluent,
The halfway whores,
The herd nerd cud kulchur,
And the old ass versus mass.

Psycho servitudes feed the fever,
Fodder optional.
Prime apes ape pre ape.
Mom's ashes my dust.
People getting fat.
Soft.
Old.
Luxury cushioned
Nurture negating nature.
Easy pickings.
Easy meat.
Easy feeding easy street.

Women leak.
Men bleed.
My country 'tis of greed.
Cleveland cop corruptus.
Onion nation bent
On killing shame.
Sodom insane.


end    poetry


Three Faces of Eve

Moroi, Moroi
We meet where
The cuckoo does not sing
The dog does not bark
The sacred yew my flesh
The warming gone

Though hidden behind
Paths in the park
I in my city
Am amphetamine hot
And see
Clean Grecian face
In crumpled wrap
Of excrement
On flesh

None descending the stair
Dare call patrons
Matrons of questionable ease
Strip tease
Sand not withstanding
For each beach is the same
Same lame game
Where neither retribution
Nor love of institution
Dare descend dissembled daze
In this garbage of Eden

Bring back the snake

definitions of moroi
origins of vampires

end    poetry


Eco Syphilis

This earth rolls old through fading sun
As all partake of all
Yet few return from feeder's lure or feathered palm
Interest on said sin
Let others' purse our sloth rehearse
Refresh without refrain
For fascists flee from failed fight
To worshipped imagery
Which doubted doubles pain
When tables turn
Most mock concern
And ramble on in shackles
Dogs of dust neglecting trust
Entranced by past disasters
Since truth be known by no known tome
Until enhanced and factored
Let's be done with rough rerun
Membrane's sour remorse
Pre-paid replies
De facto lies
Return our lives to act / or


end    poetry


Stormy Whether

Whether for wonder bred or welfare bread
Flesh is ego manifest in the palm of paradigm


end    poetry


Light Lucifer Lost

O listen now thou mad, thou meek
Receive and mourn these words oblique
Hear me - for I, Lucifer, speak

God's impotent envy me from heaven hurled
Manwards toward this god forsaken world
Where you in reward were Eden expelled
And I once majestic upon my belly felled

So I reigned in hell in favor a god
Forever, until upon me science trod
Then even from hell was I disbelieved
And from formal evil my duty relieved

Now no heaven holds atomic aplomb
Nor profits in neutered gamma ray tomb
Knowing crucified wish is unworkable womb

· Excerpts from 's interview with Mark Weber
·A smattering of Visitor Comments
· Free Times Magazine Article
· Poetry reading room #5
·Check out Artcrimes


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