Steven B. Smith outside Cleveland’s Brandt Gallery, July 2008
photo by Jesus Crisis
Dada Greybeard
A lady poet followed me home
And asked if I could keep her
I replied
It must be denied
For I had no room in my freezer
She engineered her stay
Of relocation with play
Charm and elocution
Praised this and that
Allowed a wee pat
Counted on evolution
I may be cheap
And easy too
But for female I’m hard-wired
And too
It’s sort of cool
This once being the one that’s desired
Though I question her taste
Her need of rat waste
A too hasty fade
Will shatter shades
I cannot replace
Best to see
What she reweaves
What treasure in her trundle
Though it fracture my plan
I am but man
And man is meant to bundle
[© by Steven B. Smith]
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Smith’s poems used with his permission.
For more, visit Smith’s renowned art and poetry website at www.agentofchaos.com
Follow his and his wife Lady’s excellent adventures at www.walkingthinice.com
Contact Smith on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/smithcrimes
Get over 44 years of poetry and collages by Smith in Zen Over Zero (http://www.lulu.com/content/4265160)
Smith and Lady will be featured poets at Lix and Kix in Cleveland on 19 May 2009
Read a Jesus Crisis blog about Smith at S is for Smith (my favorite poets from A to Z – volume 19)
that’s the second poem i wrote Lady. here’s the first:Pulp LustYour “you do with me as you want”Popped plans of white slave trades And long slow humid caravans On large lumbering cockroaches Thru jungle green into my brain.9.17.2005
Whoa! Don’t think I’ve seen that one before….9.17.2005 was my 39th birthday, the day the police made me move because I lived too close to a school (my case had nothing to do with children or a school – but this was a blanket law that applied to all so-called “sex offenders,” incuding the guy who got busted for pissing behind a bar dumpster, “indecent exposure,” at 2 a.m.) The law’s been ruled unconstitutional since (or at least the retroactive application of it, as in my case); but at the time I was afraid to fight it because I was still on parole with the potential of 14 more years in prison hanging over me. Didn’t wanna make waves, so I just moved….. All this has nothing to do with your poem except the date you wrote your first poem to Lady was the exact date I first set up “house” with (my now wife) Geri.
9-17-2005 I believe I was in Stratford at the Shakespeare Festival. Smith’s poem makes me wonder about cockroaches lumbering through green jungles to his brain. What a thought!! I hope there weren’t any cockroaches on 9-17-2005 in your house, John!! lol
I love the rhythm of the rhyme in this… and like the story it tells.Makes me wonder how Smith is coming along on getting his book in print. Anyone know anything?