Modern poetry collection by contemporary Cleveland poets Lady & Steven B Smith
reading room 31 Lady & Smith's London Railway Pub poetry reading
Two Olde farts & A Chick - 23 August 2007
we read with Beat-inspired London poet Jazzman John Clarke under the banner
Two Olde Farts & A Chick John is 59, Lady 34, and I'm 61, so I thought that a fair title.
here's Lady's and my poems last night.
I had this dream I wrote the best poem
and in the dream I woke up and wrote something
not quite as good and then I Really woke up
and now I cannot remember the poem.
If I am a careful listener, I can tell you
something new. If I came to this New I would be
a new person. You All have the record of what
I've done against which I am compared. But a
new Person is Free to affect speech and ideas.
We expect something New but we have to come back
to the Same Room. We expect reincarnations of
our friends in other circles, other chances,
but it is used up, our best memory.
Everything is stale compared to our best memory.
I remember the best peach each time I eat a
peach. Sometimes against what I expect I am
pleasantly startled, but I have to watch the Now.
I'm always unknitting and reknitting these but
the thread remembers. If I say what is on my
mind I am not contrived in this context. This
was all given to me in a dream.
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 & back
Or tap 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
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.
- Steven B. Smith
this was my marriage proposal to my 1st wife, back in 1968,
which was 4 years before my real, current wife was born.
1st wife and i divorced when my current wife was 3.
