Storm Front
—Poems and Photos by Smith
(Steven B. Smith), Cleveland, OH
TRUTH DU JOUR
Get the truth
Get your red hot truths
Truths du jour
Truths of the day
Today's truth today
Your style of while
Your version emergin’
Too truths
Truce truths
Which truth you want
We got ‘em all
Today’s truth at today’s price
For today’s people
Step right up
Step right in it
Kleenex xtra
(remember,
we are the fine print)
The Dark Divide
FLESH
Like love and money
We weave about the focus
A melody of maybe
In silent forest ritual
Growth duration flesh essence
We stand in the snow
Embrace the cold
And leave no tracks
Though we stumble
Frosted amidst redemption
I need a dollar like a dead man
Needs a coffin
Old women stare at my crotch
Suck sun in summer
Seek sin in fall
Rainbow Coffee
ALCHEMY, INC.
Kenneth Rexroth found his muse
a floating petal in slow stream
running gentle Asian arc
between his woman's thighs.
Wallace Stevens rose unwilling
from unloving woman
to actuarial tables, champagne,
painting philosopher dust.
Bob Dylan mixed amphetamine,
coal dust, winter cold
lean and mean and bold.
Leonard Cohen went for love,
Zen guitar, droll wine women
in funeral parlor tone.
William Carlos Williams' prescription:
red wheelbarrow, dusky attic,
dancing daily in the dark.
Lady K slipstreams with All,
glad book in hand,
flux and flows with glow.
I take when and what and why I get,
grateful for any voice at all,
scramble for the word.
Proof of Purchase
ONE-MORE SMITH
My younger brother called me One-more Smith
He said
"Every time we get ready to leave
You say
One more toke
One more line
One more glass of wine."
Now I'm 25 years sober
And he's 29 years dead.
_____________________
A BRIDGE NOT FAR
This skeleton—
a bridge which carries flesh
from birth to death
Safety Net
WAIL SONG
The lone train wail going somewhere whistle call
once filled my want with anywhere but here
anyone but me
This was in my youth
before military
before marriage
before prison
before divorce
before death and death and death
before sobriety and travel
and Lady and marriage
and bright sun adventure in far shadowed land
filled me with fuel and fed me with fine
made me meld me mold me mine
So now rail wail six decade down the line
no call of yearning but passing hail
from one going to done been gone
The Man in Me
SLAVE AND MASTURBATION
An old plow hand, I play acoustic
foreskin, hairy palms, white cane
puberty, the fish and the fingers.
Old acids etch anew my brain.
The old wants? They still imply
unoffered breasts, often rejected.
Original sin is condition given
so the knee bores say.
Yet dark ripples still unstill light.
Small deaths linger lightly on sheets
no longer washed nor nightly scented
with reason wrinkled or raw.
X-ray Gogs Smith
I O U I O ME
They say there's closure in the hole
but until I take that crossing
there're cobwebs in the closet
with catching flies their goal,
fine print's corrosive hint
of lies within the towers,
power's hour decaying slow
with the whole thing going sour.
Cobwebs in the closet
No closure in the hole
Past sins should first be offset
Before we slave our soul
So please soul say it isn't so
provide a more positive posit
give heart a chance to sing
eye a ruddy red rose
and ayes deeper development.
For as my wife disclosed
"Now is the flower."
We each our own self owe.
(hear “werewolf rock” by “Mutant” Smith at
www.reverbnation.com/mutantsmith/song/8051077-i-o-u-i-o-me)
____________________
Many thanks to Super-Chef Smith (Steven B. Smith) for serving us this fine poetry breakfast this morning!
Note that Himalayan Poet and Translator Yuyutsu RD Sharma will take part in a series of readings here and in the Bay Area next week. Yuyutsu Sharma is currently the Visiting Poet at Columbia University in New York, and he recently visited Argentina to participate in the Indian Poetry Festival in Buenos Aires (indianewengland.com/2016/06/buenos-aires-readying-indian-poetry-festival). In our area, he will read with Arturo Mantecón at Sac. Poetry Center on June 27, with Allegra Silberstein at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis on June 28, San Francisco and Berkeley on June 29-30, with Dr. Andy Jones, Allegra Silberstein at Avid Reader at the Tower in Sacramento on July 1, and with Jassi Bassi, Rhony Bhopal, Meera Klein, Heera Kulkarni at “Asian Diaspora” at the Sac. Poetry Center on Sat., July 2. For more info on Sharma and on these readings (and to read some of his poems), go to yuyutsurdsharma.blogspot.com/. See also niralapublications.com/nirala-authors/yuyutsu-rd-sharma/.
Interested in Int’l Poetry Festivals? Check out this list at the interesting site, World Poetry Movement: www.wpm2011.org/node/8
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
WORKWORK
I blacken the paper
with smoke
take broken twig
scratch letters in line
hold to sun
let poem through
___________________
—Medusa
And celebrate poetry!
—Photo by Smith
—Photo by Smith
Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.
