Curtis Jerry Smothers
Teacher . Editor . Poet . Writing Coach . Historian . Online Tutor
Here is a collection has a few poems that don't fit into any other category than miscellaneous.
A Farmer’s Prayer
O Great Planter in the sky
Please in Your wisdom answer why
I must work from sun to sun
And still my work is never done
Why must I plow, and plant and toil
While all Your rain and droughts do spoil
This year's hopes and next year's plans
With swampy mud or dry dust spans
Oh, Lord above who seeds the sky
We all know each man must die
But while we live we all must eat
Nourished by your farmer's wheat
Like fallen Adam then and yet
Bread is earned by our own sweat
And paid for twice through farmers' grind
That starts at three and ends at nine
O Great Grower in the sky
When it comes my time to die
Grant me rain and restful sun
And tell me that my work is done
Footprints
Tyrannosaurus, mastodon,
Your footprints are what we tread on.
Fossil fuels of giant truck
Our good commerce, their bad luck.
Rubber trees in jungles grow
Their feet give sap so we can go
O'er asphalt roads that stretch our sight
With Vulcan's work to commerce bright.
The diesel fumes are memories.
Blown tire shards were rubber trees.
The smells and sights of modern times
Were dinosaurs in jungle climes.
18-wheelers come and go.
They foot our goods so we can know
That tyrannosaurus, mastodon
Lived not in vain but now live on.
As Opec grins and we shell out
With aching feet and blistered snout
Brown hazes stain our pristine trees
We cough and hack that dirty breeze
Those dinosaurs in jungle climes
Cannot foot back to retro-times
As we regard the transport truck
Our bad commerce, their good luck
Fire
From ember's sleep I rise and stretch
To what is dry and prone to me
I hiss and lick the kindling's stick
And turn to char with evil glee
That which I consume will cease to be
All in my path my life's own fuel
I burn and roar with windy storm
Lascivious bent, unfeeling cruel
To those would stay my hungry tongue
I roar, defy, devour, renounce
Now alive I'm free, unbound
I jump, I spark, their efforts trounce
Till lack of fuel or water's spout
Kills me black and finds me dead
In ember's hide I peer without
Once more to rise and sweep ahead
Steam
We steam our ship on raw sea water
Born from fire, its hissing daughter
Our boilers roil, belch and scream
To run our course, the ocean's seam
We hold that fire confined inside
That stokes and churns our steam pipe's hide
And as that steam in pressure spews
It churns and turns the shafts and screws
But if that fire escapes its hold
With oily smoke to choke and scold
We rush and pump the fog foam's spew
And kill what would our steam undo
Ocean Waves
The ocean waves and laps the beach
As seagulls soar and caw and screech.
Turtle eggs expel their daughters,
Tiny minions crawl to waters.
Beneath the the roiling churning foam,
Sharks and hunters ceaseless roam,
Seeking food to feed the deep—
Where restless tides will never sleep.
Silver minnows twist and gleam,
Like scattered coins within a dream.
Dolphins leap through veils of spray,
Then slip beneath the blue-green day.
The coral gardens bloom below,
Where crimson fans and shellfish grow.
An octopus, with watchful eyes,
Inks its shape in swift disguise.
Above, the sun ignites the sea;
Below, unfolds eternity.
Each living thing, both great and small,
Must eat—or risk becoming all
That feeds another fin or shell
Within the ocean’s endless spell.
For beauty, birth, and death entwine
Beneath the ever-shifting brine.
Then evening settles on the shore;
The gulls grow still, the breakers roar.
The moon pulls silver through the night,
And wakes the waves with borrowed light.
The ocean rises, falls, and sighs—
A world beneath our watching eyes.
Ancient, savage, vast, and free,
The beating heart of mystery.
I was that tiny creature who
Crawled from the sea to salty slough,
Growing feet to walk dry land,
And reaching forth with fin-turned hand.
The ocean’s pulse remains in me—
My blood still bears that ancient sea.
Though countless ages intervene,
I dream in shades of blue and green.
The Parrot who
Could Not Sing
The parrot was perched in old Punjab
On a sizzling hot summer's day.
He begged, "Sahib, will you please buy me?"
I was stunned, didn't know what to say.
Said the parrot, "I speak more than one language.
"Spanish and a bunch of Fran-say.
"Italian, Hindi, Afghani
"And my accent's to die for, they say."
"Why, certainly!" said I, offering rupees
(The sale made the shopkeeper's day.)
The parrot he preened and he strutted
And accents he mimicked this way:
"Do youse like my accent from Brooklyn
or mah drawl from down neah Savannah?
Y yo puedo hablar en la lengua
De Cuba y La Vieja Habana!
"But one thing I'll tell you," he confided
Please don't expect me to sing
I never took one singing lesson
I can't carry a tune, that's the thing."
Then he started to sing some Puccini
Clearly the worst I have heard
"Stop, please, and I promise I'll buy you!
"But don't sing another harsh word."
I bought him and went to the FedEx
And boxed up the parrot to send it
"You're going to Montana!" I told him.
So say nothing 'til your journey is ended."
"My old mother will certainly love you
You'll fill up her sad, empty time
So be quiet, don't chatter or flutter
Pretend you're a mute and a mime."
The next week I sent Mom a short e-mail.
"Say, Mom, did you enjoy that strange bird?"
"Why, yes, it was simply delicious!"
Came back her answer (absurd!).
"Say what?" I wrote back most insulted
You ate that one-of-a-kind bird?
Did you know that it spoke more than one language?"
A more shocking thing I never heard!
"Calm down," wrote my mother, "Don't sweat it.
The bird arrived practically dead.
You shouldn't have shipped it by FedEx
And besides, there was nothing he said.
"...to let me know he was so clever
He never said one single thing!
But it seemed to try mimicking accents
But I cooked it when I heard it sing."
Poets
Poets are people immersed in their words
Sunk in ideas, profound and absurd
With metaphors mushy and pregnant allusion
Their frequent end-product poetic delusion
Inspired by Romantics, with fire in the belly
They imitate Byron and Keats and young Shelley.
Their need to compose is forever replete
With inspiring ideas that are never complete
Poets are people who float on their words
Their lines are their lifeboats, their stanzas dull swords
With similes slashing at failure's far beaches
Their meter and rhyming somehow bridge the breaches
Uninspired by the mundane, they write selfish poems
Their muses are devils, their critics pinched gnomes
Their work is their fire; their stanzas, though flaccid
Are just what they need: a calming antacid
Smoking at the Altar of the Snake
I reach for it each morning
Light a fire to its brown end
It kick starts all the rest of them
My pauses, treats and friends
They hide beneath my coffee
Disguised as relaxation
And after each and every meal
They're another celebration
They reach for me with craving
Until the morning's break
We gather like pariahs
At the altar of the snake
That venom that flows through us
Is nicotine's cruel brood
It courses through our being
We need it more than food
We ignore the Surgeon General
And ten bucks a pack we pay
No one lives forever
I'll smoke for one more day
And just before I go to bed
I have an outside smoke
But I know I'm not addicted
It's just a habit (and a joke)
I can stop this harmful smoking
I'm awaiting calmer climes
I know that I can do it
I've done it many times
A Poem in My Pocket
I've a poem in my pocket
Not quite burning a hole.
From the glow of my muse
And the warmth of my soul.
I placed it to cool there
To hatch its idea
It nags me, it chides me
My angst's panacea
It's a poem of a poem
A tautology's mirror
Reflecting, restarting
Its beginning is clearer
There's a poem in my docket
It can't be delayed
It's written on Kleenex
All germy and flayed.
The germ's the beginning
It spreads towards its middle
It's ending not certain
And much like a riddle.
But my poem like a rocket
Has fuel from my muse
It's heading for liftoff
My soul lit the fuse
Finding My Muse
I'm seeking my muse
And inspiration's obtuse
While ideas lag so far behind.
As deadlines approach
My muse like a roach
Flees the flickering light in my mind.
But my muse speaks to me
At a quarter past three
I'm asleep without lucidity's ember.
We dance and I write
In my dreams of the night
But awake I cannot remember.
What my muse said to me
At a quarter past three
Tho' I dreamed up what seemed like a treasure.
It was lively and clever
And it would live forever
But my muse takes a devilish pleasure.
She plays hide and seek
And but gives but a peek
At the brilliance that lurks in my head.
I say, "What's the use?"
"Where are you, my muse?"
But she hums the null tune of the dead.
With my head hissing of snakes
Like Medusa it slakes
Its dry thirst on my lost, broken dreams.
Her venom by rote
As if to denote
That nightly she renews all her schemes.
With frozen synapses
My poetry lapses
As I wallow in my sad writer's block.
But, wait, she is coming!
I hear her sweet humming.
No--It's the buzzing of my alarm clock
Water--A Free-Verse Poem
Giver of life, bringer of death,
Ingredient of primordial soup
Whence the first tadpole emerged,
Half in and half out,
Knowing that I was its past, present, and future.
Fallen from the sky,
I bring sustenance to what lives.
Desiccation becomes green;
Green becomes lush with lichens and moss.
I pool in creeks and drain like tears
To rivers, then to salty oceans.
Watch me from the Moon
And see my blueness.
Sail over me in your ships and boats
And see my denizens
Staring fish-eyed back at you.
Dam me and name me Hoover or Aswan.
Watch me turn your turbines
To shocking electrical effect.
Channel me through levees and aqueducts,
Around and into your cities.
But never be so arrogant
As to pretend I am controllable.
You cannot always stanch my fearsome flow,
For I am the inexhaustible product of everything—
The air, the clouds, the mountains.
When my cloud-parents turn dark,
I can inundate and suffocate
The very earth to which I give sustenance.
I drive hurricanes and floods.
My chauffeurs are the winds,
My highways the warm oceans.
The Aztecs called me Tlaloc.
They prayed and sacrificed to me.
They knew I made things grow
In the Valley of Mexico.
They also knew I could raise Lake Texcoco
And ruin everything.
New Orleans thought it could hold me back with levees,
But my daughter Katrina laughed and surged.
I rose into the streets
And quieted the parades and celebrations.
I can also withhold life
Through my alter ego, drought,
Leaving dry earth, desiccation, and starvation.
I can watch from afar
As you and your earth shrivel.
My stepsister Sahara can be seen from the Moon,
A yellow blight against my blue.
Giver of life, bringer of death,
I am the main ingredient of all living things
Even proud humans.
More than half your physical substance is me.
You came from life sustained by me.
I give it.
I withhold it.
I fall gently from your skies
And rage across your shores.
You may drink me, dam me, channel me,
Sail upon me and name me.
But never forget:
You are made of me.
You cannot live without me.
And you will never command me.
Wild About Horses
Genghis the Khan and Cortés the Hidalgo
Rode roughshod over the land,
Mounted on backs of their eager war horses
Pikes, lances and sharp swords in hand.
Their horses’ descendants ran wild on the prairie
Where wind swept the grasses in waves;
Natives who tamed them became expert horsemen
Painted ponies, young warriors, fierce braves.
They hunted the herds of American bison,
Where dust met the sun-golden sky;
With thundering hooves on unending grasslands
Beneath the bald eagle’s sharp eye.
Fast-forward to Topper and Silver and Trigger,
We watched on the big and small screen;
Silver carried Lone Ranger through thrilling adventures
The finest horse hero we’d seen.
In a less wild tradition our own British cousins
Come out to horse showings each night;
To watch elegant prancing and high stepping jumping,
Over crossbars cleared in full flight.
Great Britain takes pride in its own mounted Horse Guards,
Famous the whole world around;
In scarlet decked out on magnificent chargers,
Their pomp and their grandeur abound.
But horses are more than tales of past glory,
More than heroes who ride off to war;
They are velvet-soft noses and bright, knowing eyes,
Waiting patiently near yonder barn door.
They are freedom contained in a galloping heartbeat,
They are strength with a spirit so kind;
They can gallop you past your own mundane sadness
To leave all your worries behind.
So here’s to the cowboys and our British cousins
Who love every mare, every steed;
And here’s to the loyal brave mares and the stallions
Whose courage is matched by their speed.
One Drink is One Too Many
One drink is one too many
A dozen not enough
To quell this constant craving
Of this awful poison stuff
I wish I had the power
Bill Wilson knows that it's true
Yet, I still must have it
This harmful, hateful brew
Without its sweet, calm numbing
Small holes become big cracks
The shakes begin their shaking
The cravings become attacks
To dampen this cruel craving
I drink this calming stew
It damns me to sweet numbness
And harms my loved ones, too
I lack determination
To fight off this bleak thirst
It pulls me with dry urgency
To drink that fateful first
And, yes, that first’s too many
It leads me down the hill
Where this craving it lurks always
Beyond my sad weak will
I admit that I lack power
And my life has come undone
Should I be a friend of Bill Wilson?
I’ve completed his Step One
The problem is I’m agnostic
But I believe the Higher Power
Is the friends who add encouragement
To avoid next happy hour
The main thing I depend on
When the craving gets too rough
I remember that one’s too many
And a dozen’s not enough
