Poetry By Michael T. Smith

Michael T. Smith is an Assistant Professor of the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue, where he received his PhD in English in May, 2014.  He teaches classes in the digital humanities, film, business writing, and cross-disciplinary technology courses.  His work has been most recently published in Tau Poetry Journal, Taj Mahal Poetry Journal, Asahi Poetry Journal, Renascance, SONUS, Kinema, and Bright Lights Film Journal.  He has work forthcoming in Symbolism and Cinematic.  He has most recently attend the 2015 CCCC conference in Tampa as well as the 2015 PCA/ACA conference in Arizona.  He will attend the 2016 CCCC conference and 2016 NeMLA conference this year.

e.e. cummings: love poem

so-so, Rain’s soft hands scooped up the 

red dog, blue dog, green dog, Sirius fog

Sunflower’s yo-yo, MY OH MY

Words of silence ---tune so loudly 

Do

You 

Know?

XXXXXXX

Origami flowers in beds so long -

(Are you real?)

Plastic X's on a long night sky -

All newspaper particles to the One Day

A vinyl swirl of peanut butter, a love to stay.




LIFE

The story of life is depressing:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx…
And then you die.
“S/He saved…”
“S/He lied…”
“S/He tried…”
Whatever.  You know what follows 
Past the remou of tradition:
Like a bout o’ piblokto for the cold-hearted
Made of a bonsella of words.
So why narrativize it?
(Maybe life is a poem)
If not to modify the end:
To end the end by an end…




Saturday Night

I was me, which was me for you.
We watched [Censored] TV
(It’s a movie adapted from an e.e. cummings poem)
And ate caramelized fossils from a healthier age…
‘Cause every little thing is littler than a thought.
Our popcorn smelled like a weird memory,
And the couch hugged us tighter than we dared each other.



*error message* 

Gently tip-toe with the one-toothed deer                             
in hallowed halls with ghosts in night-gowns.                    
Words make love in the bed of our minds                           
into a sky of cookies and crème                             

From a melted Van Gogh (O! Angry sun)                           
a smile of thirty rungs can twist a lake                                
out of a scarf of skin, a dead Plowman                                
mourning cypress’s murdered sin un-begot.




The City in the Valley; 
Or, the Upside-Down Frown

My eight minds shine on the hollowed dark sun, 
Pushing me down to a tentacled ton.
A Leviathan green swallows me whole.
In a pit of nothing, no sleep, my toll.
I spiral down into darkness spread full:
E’ermore, E’ermore - to answer with a snore
The tapping, rapping of one with no role,
On this dusty casket’s creaking old floor
The blight keys of Sunday’s paramour’s wiles
Forever locked within fictional smiles.
Killers of another circle will write
A page on the sky’s black canvas tonight.
Why wish upon that dark, faded star’s shore
(Once bright) if I have no soul anymore?



ethics (lower case)

the wrot uf ethics is not on a black(bored)
butt is the dustk of chack- after-wards
it’s a hand-hold, post-morden 
like a dumball matching out on service




Lop-Sided Pyramid

Once,
Burnt Umber 
Carved a story
In Hieroglyphics of faith,
Including the unforgotten saviors-o’-men,
Utilizing th’ concrete personification of Fibonacci numbers
(Population architecturally distributing manufactured superstition unfathomably blueprinted).



Is this a Poem?

Poem.