Heading for Amarillo to buy an Amaryllis
on the road
Service Station
Heading for Amarillo to buy an Amaryllis,
I pulled into the station,
told gas guy to fill us.
He laughed,
“You must be old school,
from back when we sold service
and cared about the customer
until we found them clueless,
you’re now no more than number,
low down on the fool stool,
useful,
yet quite useless,
so wipe your window,
fill your tank,
and pay us as you leave
and please,
say thanks.”
– Smith, 2.20.2015
Black History Month Poems – #20
Man rests in door
at a church in
Lalibela
Solar profile
of his Adam’s apple,
generative lips, jangle
of hand, veins dangling
Dust dances lit gold,
describing three dimensions
man, thought and living rock
Woman pumps water into her jug
sloshes wet the walk back home
coffee grounds of soil, labium
that yields us, air’s pant
made thirsty
with the trickling
offering
~ Lady
master plan
life
Master Plan
Sip of coffee, toke of grass,
kiss from wife, purr of cat,
await sunrise . . .
happiness.
– Smith, 2.19.2015
life
Black History Month Poems – #19
Marcus Aurelius
sacrifices white animals
at the citadel to Jupiter,
grandeur of cloth-draped
witnesses described in
stone tableau
A shepherd rests,
anonymous thinker
at the temple on the hill
upon a kaolin plate
watermarked
Kao-ling
Columns
carved from bones
and clay
dug from marrow
of the big raw
outdoors
It’s a common denominator,
manufacturing leveraged on
material extracted from
Mother Earth’s back,
her teeth ground to dust
for our lithopaned
plates
~ Lady
Black History Month Poems #18
A coriaceous book spine narrative
given jacktars, romance of masculine flounce,
marking skin with punishment proud tattoo
on roses of muscles, scrimshaw feast
for eyes
Drinking, flogging, religion and rocking courtship
of creaking boards and shifting stances, wind whipped
sunburned toughs blooming sails, tugging feel
on rope
In actuality
there was the ladening of burden
dispensed unequally on the cast of fraternity,
the clenched taking of it, muscle taxed,
mind gritted, hollowed out until what’s left
either’s hulked husk or honed bone
body polished to an ivory knife
pushing abacus’s possibility
of mutiny
~ Lady
conversation with wife 12
Conversation with Wife 12
Lady sez I am
“Barking in an appeal to the absolute.”
A fair summation.
I am Year of Dog howling at the loons.
– Smith, 2.17.2015
Black History Month Poems – 17
Ichthyology studies stars like a mystic
traces the embossing of runes, icthys,
quintessence caught, slow bubbles
in the magnum mysterium
Water is the right of fish,
our living ancestors,
wet starshine
Ganga spreads her arms,
munificence exploding
into coruscations
of life
We’re not separate from our
Great Lakes, big heart of this continent
pumping arteries of our neighborhoods,
and the neighborhoods that are solely
the fishes’ and other, drier
wild things’
~ Lady
Life with Wife 2
Lady feeding chickadees at MetroPark
Life with Wife 2
So strange,
I’m sitting quiet in my chair
and this beautiful young woman walks by,
stops,
leans over, kisses me,
and walks on.
This has been happening for over 9 years now.
I wonder who she is,
and how she got in?
– Smith, 2.16.2015
Lady at Rufus poetry workshop
Black History Month Poems – 16
Ease my rust to work
like habitues of a roost solace
long drawn cello of a tree
round its ring of winter
season
Bustling passerines
grip and ease the branching itch,
massaging strong dry taloned
toes
Things I want to right in me,
tapping natural activity, kindling
with the green release of
sparkling spring
~ Lady
conversation with wife 11
Conversation with Wife 11
Leaning back in my chair,
Lady bends over and kisses me.
I reach up my two hands,
cradle her breasts.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m holding these up for you,
was afraid they’d fall and hurt me.”
“Oh, you’re sooo brave, and manly . . .
now can you make me some coffee.”
“Coffee for the breasts?”
“Yes, that is the price.”
“Ah, the booby price.”
– Smith, 2.15.2015
