dan smith
dan smith is one of the deep cleveland tribe of poets. his chapbook "crooked river" was published on deep cleveland press.
Transubstantiation
I am the hooded figure at the bus stop
I am the hot rod kid cruising at midnight
I am the rock in every roll you've ever dreamed
I am the epiphany light in the museum
I am the eternal roadie in every concert hall
I am the water spout on lake's effect
I am the wrecks on every highway
I am the valley and the creek
I am the trolley and the Queen
I am zoo and arboretum
I am the poetry of every neighborhood
I am the song of every bar
I am the rust on your bridges
I am the salt that flavors your soul
I am the tower's shadow in your head
I am all your failed statuary
I am all your belching monuments to death
I am the parade of all those marching to a different drum
I am the arrhythmia of urban renewal
I am the ships the rail-yards the transport engines of your mind
I am the ying and yang where the twain do meet
I am the mystery that keeps you here against your will
I am your calloused hands and bunioned feet
I am all you've lost and all you'll never find
I am your drum your pounding poly-rhythm dance
I am a heavy metal rocker with a skin of steel
I am the pistol in the waistband the knife in every boot
I am the hoodlum heart of every blessed day
I am all your altared states in my suit of lights
I am your lover I am your son
I am Cleveland through and through.
How Fierce Our Love and Inarticulate
Clogged fat with memories
and globs of sadness
more than any broken vessel
could be imagined to hold
like a magician's torn hat
a wrecked clown car
stented I go with the flow
on a natural by bypass of mind
a muscle memory:
a black and chartreuse giraffe-like
soft toy animal and playing ball
with a golden creature on Marsol lawns
sunsets that fell on blameless days
and little there was occluded except
the weight of days that would choke our speech.
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