Steven B. Smith

Steven B. Smith is an underground poet and artist from Cleveland, Ohio.

Smith published the underground art and literary zine ArtCrimes. In addition to many local poets and artists, contributors included Charles Bukowski and Jack Micheline. Guest editors included S. Judson Wilcox, Jim Lang, Ben Gulyas, Lady, Chris Franke, Beth Wolfe, Melissa Jay Craig and Daniel Thompson. ArtCrimes came in various formats such as Daniel Thompson's popcorn box, a coloring book, a video, a deck of cards, legal tablets, and a catalog for the 1989 Performance Art Festival.

Smith has been featured in underground publications such as Clevebland Rag-o-zine, Taproot, Hey Daddy-o, Generator, Brain Cell, SplitCity, The City Poetry Zine, and various creative anthologies by Green Panda Press.

In 1997 Smith formed The Church of Not Quite So Much Pain & Suffering with the premise of "Go thee, and suffer less."

http://www.agentofchaos.com

The Grasshopper's Tale
by Steven B. Smith

My life's dog food for do gooders
Hot dodgers dogging God's zone
Fur sure of itself
Per path and position
Point portion pursued

We who rise in heat from dream
Lick recollection loose
From cold fire's template
Futility's fog
We bleed in abandon
Dance dawn's dapple light

French Kiss
by Smith & Lady

You know the French Kiss?
I don't think the French invented it,
do you?

I think it was that little snake
in the Garden of Eden,

that little slither tongue.

Oh, come hither,
come hither,

that little snake,
that little snake...

Past Lies and Poverty
by Steven B. Smith

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