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

the dog returned and the doll I’d accused of eating it was wiped down by my father who then gave it to my mother to give to me once I’d stopped being the baby I cried like while the new doll was disappeared until it could be properly hidden from the sister conceived in its absence

history is a timeline of appetite.  I have rubber bands at the ready for when my mother yawns.  I cover my baby brother like a grenade.  he was born without the potential for further muscle tone.  father calls what I do context.  I appear like a bruise into a delayed game of hot potato.  my sister’s hands are an oven mitt’s dream.  I know you’re a hitchhiker and your girlfriend a cannibal but here we **** our thumbs.

she drinks to the image I have of myself as a naked man on roller skates who continues to have the fistfight he’s late for.  she drinks to toast the pain she says she stole from a pregnant unicorn during a longer than usual drought of immersion.  people keep us together because they are bored.  when sober, she returns to them the delirious boy who on his bedsore back carried a pair of skis throughout the only entire summer of his youth.  from her father’s memory she eats for the both of us without touching her food because her mother was the bulimic god could taste.

the room is no secret.  my native tongue is the blade of a found knife.  in the tackle-box my father left me are all the parts I need for a dove.  I am trying to make blood.  my father had a robotic arm nothing could land on.  I have for an apron an infant.  some of the room is getting on my face.  some of my face on my hands.

the boy balances a basketball on his head outside his father’s bar.  his mother is somewhere a girl set to play the moon in her school’s version of talent night.  his sister is giving birth so calmly her midwife is a male blown away by the fact that it’s only her second time wearing the blindfold I wore to fish.  his brother is in therapy to process the loss of others who think we’re gods when we smoke.

even now
I am not
convinced
that I
have formerly
tried

to cultivate
an addiction
to loss

death takes its place at the head of the table to tell the only story it knows to plates of untouched food.  upstairs, your mother puts a hole in her hair hoping the lord of the attic will take her for a tea kettle.  outside, a boy paces on his father’s land to mock the dark with what it cannot do.  trespassing, I approach two dimming flashlights set upright in cemetery mud.  in your recollection they are the horns of an empty beast.

me, reading from my self-published collection 'Choice Echo'.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuqCv_ey1-0

sample poem from collection:

fantasy

the cyclops dies having never heard you recite the last two letters of the alphabet. it’s 1983 and you’re all of seven. hearing beautifully gets you slapped for hearing things. you kick your frog legs on a swing going nowhere and try to touch your mind with your forehead. from a stolen bicycle you quote future passages written by a lover half your age. your pity has the lifespan of a voodoo doll. sound is the word of man god disobeys.

he beats the mother and calls it practice.  the washer breaks and he throws the clothes into a full tub and stomps on them while smoking a cigarette.  he provokes my image to send him back to his rightful nose.  my thick skull is high on my spit.

this my lonely tower with no one in it.  this the soup as it burns the tongue of a man on stilts.  this my boy’s breath in a cup of snow.  this the thorn of a mother’s depth.  this my patch of artificial grass.  this the melancholy itch of a traveling hand.  this my lowest number of dead.  this the high brother who cries in a satellite named for his *****.  this my drug use.  this the videocassette from god’s garage.  this my cloud of discontinued muscle.  this the pink hammer with matching nail.  this my mouth on a snake-bitten snake.  this the quote.  hell is a fire sale.

the zero courage
it takes
to be
in pain.  or to be

for that matter

born.  it has devoured

by now
my son’s
vow
of silence.  but he had

didn’t he

a moment
while the animal

ate.

they share an abyss.  gum is rare.  gum is the gum in god’s mouth.  they smoke in two places a stroller can be pushed toward.  they ask without question what is in me for it.  one hand is for writing on the other.  this is the hoot molestation can be and these the shapes the clouds obscure.

I am at the beginning of my rope.  my son has run out of nostalgia.  in photos, I look most like one who’s forgotten everything.  my son disagrees and says I look like I’ve seen a ghost.  I think this is our first fight.  we take it outside where none of our punches land.  it isn’t long before we are throwing rocks into a darkness that’s just arrived.  such rocks come back to us in birds, or as.

when brushing them, she asks god
for help
her teeth
are puking.

later, when caught
smoking,
she says
she can’t
keep
from wanting
the cigarettes
to be
shy.

because of who she isn’t
I’ve had to baptize
many
dolls.

the woman wore goggles and held a fork.  

I was pushed
up a hill
in a stroller
by a lover
of snow.

in her books of bookish loss
her knees

are a nightmare
had
by the fork.

her man
shovels
his madhouse
meal.

blow-up dolls, those

using drugs
to dream.

anyone
on stilts
but leave
the stilts
for god.  on that

note, any child

earmarked
for stilt
removal.  

a twin.

the pregnant
and the men
in the dark.

I am in danger of not becoming a statistic.  my heaven is a long line of people standing beside each other and stepping forward in succession to say let there be light.  touch is my sense of touch applying for a transfer.  I have lost my wife to the smallest darkness.  it tells her to surround a baby’s bottle.  my mother returns every year to the same spot as if it’s a microwave.  a water fountain from a ghost town.

in plainclothes my uncle claims he’s a disappearing clown.  says he’d take me to the park but boy god borrowed my pigeons.  we’re eating in a stalled car the grapes he’s pulled from behind the ear I didn’t get from my mom.  when my uncle was a baby, he tried to put something in his mouth but couldn’t do it.  grief is the herd my sadness trails.

the clock in my brother’s room
has a visitor
in the form
of a tattoo
artist
who believes
sleep
is a brand
of insomnia.

my brother is here
because he swallowed
an ant
with his heart.

he wants a doctor
with snow
on her knees.

mother’s inhaler is what you called the mirror mother held to size her mouth.  I was in her purse when she was taken.  I don’t know how it is I know things.  bones in the stomach of god.

they met after years of sleeping in the same bed

like two peeping toms
in a haunted
time machine

not played
it is having
a vision
you cannot
see

-

someone knows the someone

who says aloud

piano

-

into poverty’s
overthought
ear

god
puts death

-

I am
than pity
sooner

to my son

-

in every gravestone
a dog
of stone

lazes
loyally

as word
choice

skips

-

rope

-

in one

window, a shopworn
stroller
with a more
cerebral
destination
than decay

exemplifies
the seller’s
push

to mirror…

when saying her name, mother would insist the curse words were silent.  for swallowing secrets, father had his throat professionally cut.  I remember wiping my nose with a shirt darker than blood.  instead of good washrags, we had words brought about by having company.  mother ran wild through my sentences while father bent to kiss a pillow for sleeping with my stomach.  apocalypse came and came.  the act was the act’s debut.

the mechanics of the beheading begin in isolation.

exiled from what it bumps into, a form
aches
for scarecrow.  

     my mother’s dream doesn’t burn.

is it okay
to rename
a lost
dog?

above
a ramshackle
transmitter

is my father’s
bright
mind.  

the angel’s mouth is a mouth to feed.

a man
packs a baby
in snow.

he is born without stones in his hands.  she waits with him outside the mother.  the mother is their belief her history supports.  speech is a passing back and forth of names dogs don’t have.  before they desired stones, they’d egg the front of my jeans.  the pair

I wore.

I go into the garage
just before bed
and overturn
what is my version
of a rowboat.

by morning
the man on top of me
is made of dirt.

her mask is not god
but godlike
in that it has
no ears.

it is behind us, now,

the telling

that had
god
being sentenced
to heaven
for tracking
his own
paranoia.  

it is with her, now,

the little
bundle

blessing
of nerves.

up ahead
the women
are bathing
the stray
that bathed
a bullet.

it is lost, now,

the black egg
once rolled
by an unattended
populace  
to the front

of a parade
where
as a boy
I dressed as a bird, tore off

my beak
to smoke.

after the standoff, god calls me a rookie.

the injured
disperse
to form
a language
I don’t
speak.

belief
becomes a remark
I make
to a mirror.  my hymn

critiques
the immortal’s
wardrobe.  

I am alone.  my son
is from the future
his illness
promotes.

brother was fury ****** around by a pair of eyes.

god
the unsuccessfully
tortured
contortionist / was road.

bedroom was the trunk of a repossessed car.  mother
was not a single
speed bump.

hotels
were dry
land.  hotels

protested

abandonment.

silence was the liquid diet
of an orphan
whose insides

glowed
with traces
of paint
found only

in river.

father was the light that as a boy he was left in.
that as a boy
I predicted
in small amounts

by blinking.

I wake my children until there are three of them.

I see god so I can say I’ve seen god
without
his gas mask.

on leave from pregnancy,
my wife
admires
how well
I project
concealment.

our baby
slept
coiled
in the bucket
we saved
from the well.

my knowledge of dolphins
includes
how long
their offspring
can survive
in a tank
of my father’s
blood.

I once thought
my ****
was sobbing.

so did you.

when on hold

she draw a mean

mini

jesus

pictures
before and after
of nothing.

morality ****.

brushstroke, breast, blackmail.

     a dressing down
of ******
beings.

when set, the alarm
disappears.  

dear kid, not twice
did I lose
myself
during.

dear ******, it was hardest
to keep
with me
the word

degenerative.    

she once sent a car
for her son’s
carseat.  the car

was so
mad.

the wounded cursive of the boy who thinks himself chicken

I find the boy’s name on a list in another boy’s diary.  a gun goes off in a dream I don’t have anymore.  the animal gets between my son and my son’s imaginary friend.  the root of its insomnia is not man but the fear of personification.  god’s gone when the story starts.  to war, to war.

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.

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?

I live in a world where saying something is preferred. After selecting poems from my previous fourteen full length collections and placing them in my recent The Women You Take From Your Brother, there was bound to be some wreckage. My newest collection, Choice Echo, is that wreckage. I’m behind it, and bound for aftermath. Self published, 141 pages.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/choice-echo/paperback/product-21852599.html


sample poems, from:

forgeries

permanence is upon us.

one who paces.

predator
that I never took
for god.

-

on the inside
the predator
I attacked
personally

became the world
where the window
into the world
of hazing
opened.

-

in infancy
I possessed
a belonging.


humanitarian pause

not as common
is the dream
stuck
in the man.

not all wounds
report back.

I’d look for my father
if I knew where
to begin.

with my mother
it’s like my mother never happened.

I am the man whose missing woman
was bedridden
first.

I depend on my safety.
I worship a sleep that worships.

my brother feels no pain. a characteristic
he blames
on my sister’s
begging
to be interrogated.

not on speaking terms with a former self,
the dream is god.

exit music for stop-motion departures.

a son
a dying breed
of circle.

can light
perfect
a shadow?

the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth

the only vandal
the town
has

has just
welcomed
into the world

a baby’s
broken
ankle.

the people of the town
though not diverse

rejoice.

the wind
tortures
with a trash bag
its shadow.

the vandal’s dog
allows
a darker animal
to nose its way
between the knees
of nothing
clipped
to a clothesline.

god is the sighting
such tantrums
begin.

pregnant, she was killed during a game of hide and seek.  a man passing through popped the trunk of his car going over a pothole.  disparate images of war took root in the photographic amnesia of crows.  brother smuggled a pillow into the meeting of the minds.  never much to look at, mother made a skirt from the executioner’s mask.

I saw
my son’s
muscle
spinning
in the web
of a spiderless
god.

it seemed
only fair...

the crow
the fine print
of nowhere.

the bomb shelter
the rumored locale
of a mother’s
laundry room.

the bare cross
the teething
toy
a baby
bypasses
for the neck
of the woman
waiting
for her junk
to fall.

the mare
the anxious
bike.

I took shape
at the sound
of my father’s
whistle-

when well
rested
my mother
was the sense
god
left me-

here is how
I stole
mail:  I pulled my little brother

in a wagon
in broad
daylight.

here is what I know:

you’re not hungry
if you can’t recall
the last time
you ate.

a man dialing his palm
with a knife
from atop
a moving
train
may have
the aesthetic
dignity

you’re looking for
but it’s not
something
the anointed

confess

what small apologies
to my father
my children

are.  headless father

his many acts
of embodiment

     his book of two
quotes:

money
doesn’t know
you don’t
have it

you can buy

sadness

the imposing figure read silently from a magazine of immature fictions.

an amulet predicted itself grey.

a symptom presented my sister to a non-speaking heroine who by all accounts had been only mildly *****.

a boy, having recently written to the head of the household about dirt clods being mysteriously removed from the backs of toy trucks, could be heard sizzling as he dissolved into the memory of his father’s cooking.

a trophy room made trophy sense.

in bed with the animal, after choice cuts of echo, the man calls on the peace of having a third wish.  at a sleepover, his son falls from a top bunk.  as he waits for his bones to return unbroken, the boy imagines he is paralyzed.  the  paralyzed boy with the ******* of a woman.