these may not be my 10 best poems but
they are among my favorites to read
- smith
The Man keeps knocking
Down my front door
Wants to sell me some
Sorta social spore
Says grits & groceries
Ain’t enough
In the modern life
You need much more stuff
Made me want to crow
And flap my thing
Chase the hole
Outside wedding ring
So I cut my hair
De-furred my face
Gave the Man a chance
To show a better place
Where the air was clear
The water free
The fair folk there
Accepting me
But when they pursed my lips
To kiss an ugly place
The Man above unzipped below
I said sorry sir I gotta go
Get out of my face
You can keep your fairs
Your free fatted Fraus
The lure of your lair
Is lacking in now
I’ll take the stair
It’s quicker somehow
Cleaner too
Thanks to no you
You can unstab my back
Cuz you’ll need your knife
Rat back to the pack
That leads your life
It’s hit the road Jack
Be ass and back
Or tap taps brutal bell
I bye buy’s black burden
I lay down your load
You ain’t no at
For this gone cat
As for is
You’re due your due
You can go to Hell
Be your own fondue
Drink dropping lake
Eat rising grape
Work rolling rock returning
Dirt burning
.
The Corporate Mean
The promised land of milk and honey
Hides the men of scars and shame
Who came they say to slay their dragon
Yet slayed to stay the same
Sleep creeps like Jason's wool
Down shelf enchanted eyes
Devolved from Mammon's muse
These self selected wise
Inside their phantom rooms
In fairy tale castles
Devoid of viable dooms
As integrated assholes
They sway
Illusion's lies
end poetry agent of chaos
Grease Your Grill
I'm an oven cleaner baby
Need to scrub your grill
Yes this oven cleaning man
Mean to steam your grill
Get the heat back baby
Flame 'n fire the thrill
I'll rub your rust off lady
Get your grid to shine
Rid this mood of maybe baby
Lady let me lick your lime
Make much meat that might be
Moistened by munching lightly
Juicy, prime
Gonna grease your grill
Put the heat back baby
Then send you the bill
end poetry agent of chaos
Past Lies and Poverty
Old wonders shrink, grow tame in time
The new fear hangs on
In quiet desperation, quit of desire
Like the shadow of a crowded
Culture in which each
Declare their innocence
In straight unfocused silence
It is there
The smell of unwashed
Dishes smug in the stench of our
Unclean shame
Like a salesman's underbreath
Fishy, stale
The deep teal, the tiled resonance
Of hungers on top of hungers
end poetry agent of chaos
Now Zen
It aint age.
It ain't sex.
It ain't race, religion, height,
gender, color, class or learning.
It's path, progress and position.
The road not not taken.
Be here now.
Hear now
o eyes unseeing
o ears unearned.
We're all perfect potential
cept maybe republicans, lawyers,
the true organized crime called police
the true whores called priests.
You can walk on water IF water wants.
Just ask.
Walk willing.
There ain't no dark night's ungentle light.
Ain't nothing outside but lies.
But even lie true ain't for you.
Walk within.
Don't need no god.
No catholic pimp pushing blood feast.
My lie's mine.
Walk my own walk.
Fuck the talk.
Grasshoppers gone wrong become ants.
Bad ants cry uncle, cry wolf, cry baby.
Goats goad sacrifice to sun.
Ritual requires repetition, release.
Nothing stays river's run
but drought's dry dirt
(and river still runs).
Rub your ears together.
Start a fire.
Flesh alarm.
Let gone go.
Lock lip.
Listen.
end poetry agent of chaos
Night Fragment
As has been said
The night weighs upon the city
In tired, fat insolence. Rat scurry.
Old papers flap down empty streets.
It is an ugly season. Full.
Day slouches in, in shameless anonymity
Devoid of great chained excuses of being
A voided has been of god, notion and country.
Unfocused without, we hunt worms within
To bait further cold excretion of reason, rationale.
Refuse refusing our naked nothing.
Cautious.
Strip steal by night.
end poetry agent of chaos
Doing Time
Moon meat and Moses
Sucker song along
New lie highway
Old road alone
Need new lies
Old lie don't do
New supposes
For falling through
New excuses
And pretty parts
To hide abusive
Hollow hearts
Toys for boys
Swirls for girls
Swine to enjoy
Hurled pearls
For Babylon baby
Ain't another time
There ain't no maybe
It's this life's the crime
And I'm doing time
end poetry agent of chaos
Alone This Train
I look to pain to gain
Sleep devoid of sheep
And master's muster walk
Or talk of tinkers' conforming will
Alone this train
I see you born
To breed
To die
Infected meat
To teach to cheat
Your fly from famine
Shallow matter
Decayed in safety's slumber
You briefcased fellows
Bellow farts to follow
Hollow smells
Of high topped fashion
Passion fish not flesh
But flounder
Hurried waters sleek in sinning
Shower lies and cry forgetting
Licking compulsion's flesh
This land is long, and lost in shadow
Her sweets succinctly sour
end poetry agent of chaos
Foreplay
Freud comes tonight
To mock our mere
Reflected lives'
Refracted fear,
Shelf dependents
Miming mirror
Of every man and action.
In abstinence
Such sibilance
Through undue trade
And undulance
Calls forth
In outlawed ambulance
Emotional transaction.
These scars we horde
Until they're heard
To bargain bare
A binding word,
The players paid
And pompous lured
To daily dead transgression.
Nipples rise
Through lemon dust
Raw, red
And real in sapient lust,
Emasculant tongues
Court and musk
Mother's moist application.
end poetry agent of chaos
Marriage Proposal
December of 68 I was lying on LSD on my bed downtown Baltimore.
Walls, floor, ceiling, doors all painted flat black.
Metallic mobiles and assorted assemblages hung from the ceiling
turning at will in low green and blue light.
My future wife walked in and sat so she could see me in the mirror.
So and so just got married she said.
That's nice.
Silence.
Watch her reflection watching me.
So and somebody else also married.
More silence.
Watch her reflection evaluate my reflection's reflection.
Even through the LSD I could see she wasn't talking what she was saying
so asked.
I just want to know what's going to happen she screams
stalking into the living room.
I lie there amid my hallucinations and resentfully realize
I'm too weak not to marry her.
Another's strong needs always overrode my indifferent apprenticeship.
20 minutes later she skulks back to the bedroom.
OK I snap.
OK what? she snaps back.
We'll get married.
When?
Six months I finalize
feeling sure the artist within will wither once reduced to marriage,
suburban boxes, the upperclass hypocrisy rampant in her family and friends.
We had a rich wedding in a high Episcopal-cum-Catholic cathedral.
Reception held of course at the country club.
None of my freak friends came.
The day of the wedding
I put all the trash left from moving in the middle of the floor
smoked the last of my grass
took off all my clothes
and slowly danced naked about the trash
sprinkling it with my box of monosodium glutamate
and chanting unknown chants of sorrow.
all poems on this page are copyrighted 1960-2008 by steven b. smith