~

ideation

the prayerful **** continues beneath the unfinished oven psalm

~

retrospective

dollhouse
fly-paper

~

newbie

­corpse bread

~

~

paint

the heels
of saint
fetus

~

robot

sometimes when my knees touch

~

punishment

our mouths could turn food
into soap

~

~

reanimation

it is nothing

compared
to the sobbing
of worms

~

outhouse

the bathtub is full of ****

it wants to be
an egg

~

frogsong

depression

decorates
a bird

~

miracle

a bunk-bed for sister’s hair

BURNINGS

~

church

entering the body after a stroke

~

milk

my shadow made of grass

~

cow

dumbly regarding another’s art

-

radio

grandpa cursing outside
then inside
the barn

~

crow

we don’t use the crow

~

owl

pillow for which the night has long been looking

~

yawn

moaning
into mother
my father’s

swimmer’s
ear

~

high-dive

or a very private room

~

***

two
as if they fear
a third

~

suicide

might I record
this moment?

~

divination

found alone in a ******* *******

~

angels

mystique
that surrounds
a small town
search party

~

blood

******* from the reader of my palm

~

drone

I don’t believe
in being
attacked

~

chthonic

a prayer asking god to brush your teeth

the boy
there shoving
rocks
up his nose

ask him
how many pills
his father
took
at gunpoint

zero
pills

zero
the number

of clowns
the boy
has seen
give birth, one

god
to a thing
refused

medicine

our forgetful
makers

hunting
elsewhere

no longer
a god
the male
finds mother
hard
to worship

-

I am
what I imagine

eaten

-

who the eyes

undress
in Eden

playing dead
for my shadow
this
could last
longer
than that
choking
fit, *******

bone

my estranged
ghost
imagined

birth, or god’s
way
of erasing
our memory…

this
more than you
will hurt
my neighbor’s
doll

~for cousin~

I injure
on my own
my right
hand
to give
the left
I was born

with

a break

/ wonder
whose hands
does father
have

it’s a bit early
to be
reincarnated

son, this illness

it takes
our death

the hymn

in all its
cephalic
worry

has me thinking
bathrobe
while saying

statue / why

always
this dream
I join
others

to find
a small
body / death

had a spoiled
child

but for the death grip
she has
on a popcorn
necklace

the underdeveloped
character
from god’s
desert
memoir

would otherwise
stuff
her face

as if eating
above
a crow’s
grave

had ever
brought back
food

her mother
left the house
each morning
to work
inside
an animal
that was always
on the move

her father
spent the day
spitting
into toilets
for any sign
of tracking
god

why
every year
she goes
as blood?

she says
until
it’s hers

emptiness
the inexperienced
****

wouldn’t know
the body
from two
failed
twins

-

I followed my father everywhere

into the fire
he wouldn’t
set

-

mama mono
the haint
of foretouch

had three
loves
that were not

ash, sloth

-

glacier…

-

if not heaven
then a place
in its
museum

mother
as she
unrolls
a tube
of toothpaste
talks
of a crack
in the lord

these empty
things
I’d rather
they not
look it

take your father’s
drag racing
or a fork
with you
when you bathe

I was scraped, she says

your cheek
to me
a wounded
dream…

it doesn’t last
the prophet’s

grief

they are on
the same
sleep

schedule

my fingernails
and

my hair)

it has been the devil’s work but I would do it

again
to look

this

foreseen)

I want to have your babies
is this
normal)

not all of them and not all the time but

the rocking
horse
nods
like a real

horse

to the goat’s
gospel)

her body is a trick I play on my hands)

by now
they know

the fish are biting and my father is wanted.

thunder the size of a seasick dog
has crushed
again
my sister’s
baby
for crushing
pills.  for every

hunchback
goes
to heaven

there’s a shadow
passed out
in a dream.

far be it from you
to be cleared
by god
of invisibility…

part of the curse
is the lifting
of curse, the ability

to lift
home
from the house
of already
where

to save
a chicken
from its head

the boy

who once
drilled
for crow
has now
fashioned
from a license
plate

a crude
guillotine…

not now, memory, I am this close

to conjuring
the shape
of the man
whose son
pulled
from a bathroom
stall
my daughter
to ask
was she done
growing
a tail

the form
obsessed
image

-

the bad
back
of god

making book covers
in the ****

my brother
my higher
brother

is on
about
some late
film

performance
by a woman
he says

has inspired him
to take a ****
on a baby
in a pick-up
truck
and to drive

the truck and to call his route

the border
of the last
miracle

or we can call it
something else

I don’t think
he knows
really
I am just

something saddened
by sorrow, a frog

aware
of caves, as if god’s

creatures
were a result
of god
imagining
what she’d not
seen

scatter...

longhand
the syringe
of poor
colossi,

wrists
both suicide
attempt
and apologue:

I love
brother

for how

he’d split
himself
into outside

time
and inside
time

that he might
tell
a door
****-off
or a dreaming

hieroglyph
his tale

the band-aid
and the risen
ant

god
my path
to meaning
nothing

-

she had a sock drawer and a  pair of secret hands

the hardest time
with houses

-

what if the end stops coming

-

what if

from one cannibal to another

it is extra
this bone
from the horse

Moon
ate

we indeed
are deaf
from going
****

the floor is writing on the earth

it is better
than having
roaches

childbirth
comes to
in a bat
dying
in a pillowcase
for what
the weeping
flightplan
of a drunk
stork…

what tree cannot reach
mother scratches
with a broom

yarn
disappears
and blood
shows
its hand

-

homesickness
is what curls
in a mother’s
foot, her toes

-

having babies
for the color
white, this boy

-

he comes
came

-

compass
the thumbless
orphan

of the body
I would rather
be
punching bag
than funhouse

in the hour
of things
or a thing
for hours…

-

I am not silent
bud did
from my father
inherit
the alphabet
most women
use

-

we meet
the same
beginning, recall

-

memory
had its mind
made up

there is only one creature
doesn’t know
how long it had

to destroy
the world

as an uncle
can enter
any garage
and sense
the absence
of a nailgun
so
can a holy man
prepare
a meal
in the missing
church

I came back
from the dead
my handwriting
changed

god
is for tying
the tongue
in the blank
face

it passes
for meaning

kissing
is how we kiss
the nail’s
brain

I am waiting to have the one dream
belongs
to my ghost

-

in heaven
the story
of my emptiness
has only
a middle

-

what I teach my dying son
is be good
to god
now

-

here are a few words
on context
and here
its haunted
postage

-

the past
is lonely
if someone
arrives

-

between birth and death

the gospel
of aftertaste

-

grief
has its own
cat

-

grief
has its own
cat

because I wanted the poem
to feel
as rare
as my father’s
anger, and because

a pigeon
is
what it eats, and because

mad with bread
the oven
my brother
buried
took a snapshot
of our dog
bigfoot
sleeping
in hell, and because

my son is not a pattern
his body
can resume:  the alien was impressed

but my mother
god love her
was bored

satan began possessing squirrels

he did so
in the name
of footprints

my sister
the poor girl
was pregnant
with a people
person, she waited

with me

for my hands
to look
like mittens

stupid
but as a kid
he feared
whatever
he didn’t
eat
would know
he left it
outside

–

hey kid
that man
there
he took a pill
to make
himself
smaller
but it only worked
on his hands
now his wife
has to give
the baby
its bottle

–

try missing
god

the coloring books, the angel

wardrobe, the maternal

scoliosis

do not open
until
I am born
this love letter
to the unreadable
child
who spoke
for god
to god
in poem
the lesser
pity

do
tell my brother
if he has not
yet

wrapped himself

in police
tape

that lightning
above a snowplow
puts a creature
on the roof

keeper
of fields, clean

destroyer
of rooms
where the boys
of murdered
women
single out
a spirit
for doll

crisis…

-

the world of the reminiscing
earth

it wasn’t
that he’d been
in a terrible
accident
but that
the image
I had of him
hadn’t

sight has a single trick

show me a food
can keep
itself
from being
eaten, one of these

is older
than the other (the hands)

the parents
of touch

you can have it
the inside
of my mouth
a mirror’s
hell

-

it’s a toothbrush
lamb-dust

not
a moth killer

-

saint of consensus

god
a toy
that doesn’t
share, mosquito

-

the dream’s
church bell

a deformed salesman
with dog

worries
that maybe
god
has burned
again
her paw

on the cauldron
of rubber
hands, worries

more
that god
will publish

mother’s
books, the two

on gestural
dieting

the one
my absence
ceases
to amaze

who eats
the eaten
way

who cares the same
for bird, for gum

the god of where
the chewing’s
done

I was made
to believe
in the making
of the thing
you were made
to see

-

Q:  what is a hand?

A:  my own blood squirting out of a fish

-

it is hard to choose a coffin
when your mother
is clutching
a purse

so the dream
of my hearing
heard it
said:

the child
arsonist
is dead

and after
his lantern
of illness
dropped

what shape
his common
ear
became

(to record

the noise
of a mountain

boy) of a flame

the burning
stopped

after punching me in the stomach
my brother
would put his hands
behind his back
and ask
the fish
in the bowl
under my shirt
to forgive
little miss
handcuffs
for making
god

comb sick
in the dunce
cap
dark

my son
means
to impress
his hair

the abandoned books of women

hurry, grief, your mice
to a nearby
field.

close, silence, your mouth
in the ****** scar
of mine.

distill, wind, the river
your ****
fiction.

scarecrow
if I am worn, let me help you

undress.

loss of the family dog

be alone. enter snowfall as a heavy breather in a white dress
window shopping
for a red.

know

that in between heaven and hell, there is war. hell thinks it a nightmare, heaven thinks it hell. hell sleeps more than your sister in love. heaven counts warriors and can’t put an angel on why the numbers keep changing.

as increased chatter is good for morale, call your mother and say you are her appetite.

scoop the brains of your buddies into a helmet.

annotations for daughter*

the second coming of self harm has entered a town called Both.

having a baby is a mouthful.

–

think of yourself as a journal death keeps.

.....

also:

for those interested, I have 15 signed copies of my full length poetry collection *‘earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from’ (Dec 2015, 98 pages) and 8 signed copies of my full length poetry collection ‘eating the animal back to life’ (July 2015, 316 pages) that I’d love to mail, free of charge, for sharing and/or for burning. send me a message with a physical address along with the collection desired if this is something one hand or two of yours would like.

( Barton)

and the glacial
pace
of god

for Katherine Osborne*

falsehoods
I was sure
to say
to a horse, things like
god is sending
his middle
child
to collect
a drop
of my daughter’s
blood, or

it’s a sin
to be
1989, things I felt

I owed
the horse, that were
horse-like
in their stillness, that went
nowhere
when nowhere
was

come fly
or flat
earth

the dark’s
*****

death
with its collection
of misfit
bookends
has an ear
for birth
if birth
is speaking
on the loss
of an empty
headed
photo

-

is god going to **** it up

the addict’s
spotless
campsite

yes

in the dream
I hadn’t been
using

a ghost
in love
with a paintbrush

this ankle
not
from memory

when father heard
it said
that god
reads only
to children

he began
talking to himself
behind
his mother’s
back.

a poor person
sad
about pillows, a stick person

sad
for a match.