the people are looking for something that tells them what to show.  my father can’t hear the storm for the honey on his knees.  at birth, a blown eardrum gives the kid a way out of making friends.  a sermon about washing a mountain with a rock takes a word from my mother’s mouth.  grief is a good listener.

home sweet brain
activity.

dog door, bible.  

a brick
from the wall
of crow.

father, thunderbolt, tongues
for totem.

outing.

the light
under which
I fought.

I am never where I am left. I am in my head where my hair is long. give god nothing to pull and the devil nothing to scrub. these, are my sister’s. and this: I was born to be here for my location. her exact words are covered in body language. her seizures come in twos in the order they were named. ghost reader, passive hypnotist. she wants only what I send in my sleep. her baby to beauty’s audition.

into the artless silence
of god
they come
as buzz words
from the life
of baby.

creation’s alibi
and man.

in the oar I broke on my brother’s knee
I found
a human
tooth.

here is a lamb
floating
in the reflection
of a star.

its father tells god how it was briefly haunted by two ghosts that began to see each other.  it doesn’t mention by name the who’s who of having babies.  by the scar of milk in its belly, god accepts on cruelty the continued presence of the left handed coalition of something in the water.  a good mother burns what’s been devoured.

thing is, my eyes are rarely bigger than my stomach.  mother says I have a face for makeup.  I babysit often.  victims, mostly, of tooth on tooth violence.  my brother drinks to our father’s medicine.  water that’s been walked on.

insomnia
is the stone
I move
from the hand
that forgets it
to the hand
that remembers
nothing.

sleep’s
reactionary
phobia
of loss
comes to me
in a dream.

the distance from you to me
is still
god.  to what

your sight
has touched
I appear
visible.

as recalled, my childhood
has very little
on the illness
it took
to process

yours.

my son
has enough
light
for god’s

cheek.  in pain

I am over
the moon.

dearest ear,
god is not my fault.

I can hear the worm’s message,
the anthill’s thunder.

revelation comes
once a week
to come out

of its coma.  between us,

my ****** belongs to me.

not all of my childhood was spent in a stopped car listening to my mother wonder aloud if the monkey in the light was okay.  not all of my childhood took time.  I was the tooth my teeth chose.  my father was a magician because his hands had a terrible memory.  he touched only those things that had turned into what they were.  stone is the maker of stone.

I don’t have the temper my memory has.

skin cell, star.

a mouthful of the flood’s
haunted
soil.  an entry
made by a god
at seven
days
sober.

overseas, another ant
in the darkness…

from  Misreckon (December 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/misreckon/paperback/product-21954246.html

untitled (v)

I do worry that this love for all things will keep from you the name of the creature dreaming


cessation psalm

     the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth


entry psalm

I can’t speak
to how
the form
my father’s
form
mimics

is able
to take
from lightning
a licking
while whaling
on the snout
of what
was born
muzzled
then sewn
for safekeeping
into the belly
of a punching
bag…

(I am not
the one
my meditation

needs) violence

is my brother’s
music


inquiry psalm

when it comes to humoring
me
by name
my memories
draw a blank.

I had a daughter
and three
sons.

my hands
could’ve been
the hands
of an umpire.

in the untouched church
of suicide
was the untouched
church
of *******.

it’s like seeing
a television
on tv. the comedians
and their failed
sisters.

do your thoughts
still take
the temperature
of god?

anterior

three sisters
old enough to date
enter a house
their father
can’t find. a bit of my mother

is seen
in this woman
going out of her way
to give satan

directions. a drug dog

on its last legs
inspects a used
vacuum cleaner, the lawnmower

of lost
men.


site*

I lasso the calf just before it makes the ocean.

overhead, a helicopter
from my past
spins.

my son says
to himself
this isn’t
your father’s
sandcastle.

luck is the stone
that marks
the dream. dream

the stone
that marks
the dead.

the dream
the body
has
again
in which
the dream’s
body
seizes

with presence, the nerve

end’s
wake

the lost baby
for a moment
is doom’s
afterlife.

I don’t think I can be kind anymore.

alone time
is patience
as melodrama.  the second coming

of my father’s belief
is a memory
that talks to itself
while saying
don’t make of me
a habit.

dear godless koan,
my wheelchair has an ashtray.

wear a cheap mask
to bed.

kid, your mama

she can’t
touch a baby
without touching
a baby

that’s hers.  

small brain,
I have less
to wash.

by the time a god brings itself to bury the legless creature that in its death rises to the top of the aquarium’s dream, there are already so many things fish and fish-like, there and not, scoring

for proof
of god…

the grave of my grave is thought

suicide
writes of you
in third
person

–

if played too long
hide and seek
becomes hide
and hide

–

I crawl in one ear
and you
the other
as the name
of the insect
escapes

god

–

our love of dolphins…

a cigarette ****
misses its mark, the largest
head
the child’s
ever
had…

the shut-ins
meet their food
halfway

the angels
burn only
the books
they’ve time
to read

it snows, churchbell

snows
on the crippled glow
of an Ohio
cemetery
where later
I’ll brush
a white hand
from the arm
of a stone
cross

from The Women You Take From Your Brother (August 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-women-you-take-from-your-brother/hardcover/product-21988530.html


jeopardy

I am pushing a bike uphill, my brother
is pushing
a wheeled
horse-

we are late for the birth of my sister’s doll.
for the tea that protects us.
 
sort of grief

a sort of
human
grief

in the dog’s
mouth-

a stick man’s arm, or leg, or crutch.
something

from the world of sticks.
 
in an open field

where one can more easily
picture
the struck man
as a boy
obsessed
with walking
 

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.

I am the photo my visions take.

high
on memorization
the mother
has to believe
in god
for god
to have
a safe
word.

the boy is dirt and noise. is hindsight’s
gospel.

loneliness, meet maker.

it crawled out of me and knew your birthday

I can hear your ears

a small fire
in the room
with all
the pigs.

a school
without
a shooting.

I can’t make heads or tails of your fervor.  I can’t make body.  I put a hole in my father and through it watch my mother eat her weight in god.  I want what my siblings have.  each other, game shows, memory.  indigenous amnesia.

to jump
the dream
of audience
that buried
my father’s
rib

I stand

on an operating table
in a circus
tent
and invite

my mother
to believe
all earthquakes
belong
to satan
and not

to the devil
my sister
was
when high
on the body, its boneless

forgetting

the give in my tooth makes me think my father has two left hands.

the give
in my brother’s
brings me
to the tree
that took
his last.  to that day

he sang
god is glove
to the hose
that broke
my mother.  I am at the end of my blood.  

there’s a rareness

to him
not many
see.

I am born
back to back…

god removes the mirror from my mother’s mirage

zookeeper reads obituary

was the fruit
made them want
teeth

I’m here for the music  

-

you can keep
your baby
I’m here
for the swing

-

I write
on the days
my son
is sick

-

if heard

I overhear

there was more
to him
in the womb

-

no dream is strong enough to put a hospital
on the map

-

in heaven

the past
is the present
that left
for earth

I feel nothing
for her
but also
nothing
but-

she is
then
a writer, partial

to now, and to now’s

book.

is
then
prayer, loyal
to the past
most

current, to the believer

who contacts
touch.

as I search
the mirror
for the size
of god’s
fingernail, a hair
of mine
goes grey

your son’s disorder
is used
by some
to draw
a straight line, a sleeping
circle…

-

my soul is eating all my food

-

agenesis
of what
of nostalgia’s

panic

sister
she bleeds
in the bath
thinking
we’ve finally
run out
of water.

of the cheering
mothers, my mean
***
mother
wants to be alone
with the two
it took
to cut a baby
in half.

myself
I take it on the nose
the baseball
my father
doesn’t
crush.

the woman who doesn’t believe in light
can fix your mouth

-

I have no double
to love
my triple

-

the man with no teeth
borrows
a ladder

while my mother
swims
in the lake
where my father
learned
to coexist
with his ability
to be
alone,

to which
my father
brought
the seashell
his father
coined
the ocean’s
bible,

I sleep
the sleep
of my hair
not the sleep
of its brush

I am too wrapped up in my own stomach
to visit the mother
who worships

mine

the nonfiction section in my father’s library of sleep
is faith

-

mother comes to me in a dream to tell me she’s thinking of pulling out

-

epilepsy isn’t something you can see.  clearly, it’s the snake
one tries to give it to

-

when people are gone, they’ve gone to ask

brother masturbates with an almost invisible dedication.

mother
yells
from the river

that all rain
is highway
robbery.  

while reciting
proverbs
for mitochondria
I pass the time
wearing
my father’s
shoes

for the footsteps
in his head.

I puke sand
into the infant’s
mouth
in low
praise
of the male
form
made

famous

by a statue
that sold
not
for its representation
of a dominant
existence
but for
the delicacy
with which
its creator
handled
the angel’s
*******

on the life of his mother

loneliness
was the spell
he could not
recall

you will not come across the alien I was molested by.

I replaced myself
like the nothing
that happened.

you can
in fact
eat your silence
forever

-

I don’t want my food
to tell a story

-

talk to me
of light, of mother’s

milk, talk

is for the hungry

-

ask my hands

-

it is always dark
in the baby
you’re having
and in the dream

I’m

I am at the truck
getting ice cream
for the overly
nostalgic
girl
who refused
to cut through
the cemetery

you will never be
a virus

-

the animal’s moment of bliss
before it is named

-

*******
as the seizure
had
by hologram

-

the cyclone
that makes a baby
you can’t
put down

the father is a one-man show
of seasonal darkness.

the mother is clockwork.

the child is the child born
wearing
a tight
shirt.

the loaf of bread is the hot heart of nightfall.

the cut is a city
attracted
to a blood drive.  the blood drive

is god’s treehouse.

as ahistoric
exit
music

plays

you leave
the beast
in the *****
of its
amnesia

-

themes for prey

-

infant cinema

dreamt
I was ****
on rice
beach

-

dreamt a mother had gone to the desert
for fish

her son’s
fish

could eat
while swimming

-

two martyrs
share a camera
both

call
touch

-

dreamt sleep
was the eye’s
blood

relative

burn the scarecrow
your mother
translates for.

make your daughter
believe
that a ******
is a nobody, that a somebody

does her own
stunts.

hire
grief’s interpreter
on a part-time
basis
to blow
your son
in your son’s
presence.

as a symbol of your absence

disappear.