Steve Smart, Randall Stephens. Poetry Reading 27th June 2010 with Brown Dog Saloon

Something Wrong In Bohemia

Something nagging at me,
Something about the person I intended to be,
Something about not being quite up to scratch,
Something about having behaved at times
Like a bit of a bastard,
Just can’t put my finger on it,
Think I may have done the wrong thing
Over and over and over without meaning to

I’m not a bad person,
I was trying to be Bohemian,
Trying to live up to some idea of what a poet
Is supposed to be like,
The Bacchanalian lifestyle choice
Of an ancient generation

I didn’t mean to hurt anyone,
Wasn’t trying to be cruel though
That may be how it came across,
I am not trying to be Nick Cave anymore,
I was never trying to be Charles Bukowski,
I am trying only to see some way through the fog

Some days speech is a practical impossibility,
I want to explain my position,
I want to have a position to explain,
Yet I resort as always to trivialities

If you want me to explain why I’m
So bothered by Tom Cruise,
Why movies with monkeys
Make so much sense as a political training ground,
Or which member of Motley Crue was the blonde one,
I can, it was Vince Neil, but that’s irrelevant

The point is in what kind of person you are,
What kind of artist you aspire to be,
How you live, why you live,
What you leave behind
And whether anyone forgives you in the end,
The point is understanding why you are the way you are,
Being willing to change, to be less of a shit

The point is that being a good person
And being a great artist
Are not mutually exclusive,
You can be both or one or the other,
Most days I wake up feeling like neither,
But which would you choose,
If you had to choose between?

~Steve Smart


Randall Stephens' Blog here; Tales Told By An Idiot



You can hear 'partners in rhyme Brown Dog Saloon here; Brown Dog Saloon





:)