gaze upon our father
create a woman
and suddenly

know
to leave us

when I was old enough to come home from school and take a nap but young enough to be the only born, I lived with my parents in a black house on a block no longer known for the brightness of its children.  we were there for such a short time not a story burns from its recalled exile.  no, not a dog digs in the dollyard of my adult sleep.  but there are nights when the bones of my most afflicted boy are the bumps that stir his siblings to spoon each other and in the morning I tell them how their grandfather, propelled by the moth in his mind, walked three times into our door to rid his head of his god, of his wife, and of the secret knock they shared.

so be it, you’re a male.  in darkness sitting on the charred rocking thing stilled by your grandmother’s approval.  profoundly meditative.  a blessing to all who have in their future, what?  proximity?  ask any female reaching for the dark phone of your lap.  who returns to you a childhood fascination with ant
for your thoughts
on abyss.

safe passage
in deaf
snowfall
for brother
who carries
a beer
from his house
to mine.

breath is the rock I’m under.

I don’t want kids
but sing
to my belly.

a lasting image?

a unicycle on its side
beneath a suspended cross.

a temporary?

that little
self-aware
apocalypse
boxed

up
in crow.

I never thought the newborn
wasn’t
what we saw
when we saw
that hitchhiker
pulled
from an accident
vehicle
after which
my dreams
were printed
without me.

I play shepherd
with mother’s
wedding veil
and a gnarled
stick.

in some
I am alone
on a hill
sitting
in one
of three
electric chairs
thinking

madness
is too much room
to run out of.

in others
two of my friends
rub
together.

gender control
has highlighted
a single
glaring
omission
while population
control
has issued
one person
per
god.

still, she tolerates
the fetus.

though equally bright

the glow from pregnancy
and the glow
from a beating

are set apart
by their
duration.

mental age is a relic of my son’s afterlife.

when dimmest, our women
young and old

climb trees.

so plant.

his father
has taken
like medicine
to sleepwalking
as something
they can do
together.

if you see them
man and boy
sharing
a robe
keep your
car horn
safe.

your mother is a fawn.

I am my own worst departure.

my father
a rock
trapped
in the worried dream
of his contortionist
mother.

I am gentle with the baby
though it screams
his face is getting away.

whose face
I want to know
before passing my want
onto a morse code
present in most
blackbirds.

speaking of blackbirds

I hear one has been tapped
to become
the dying parrot
of a priest
who’s fashioned
from a still
moving
train car

this church
that must’ve been
torture.

as for these eyes I’m supposed to get in the back of my head, do they come in like milk?  do they hurt?  will two of my friends suicide each other first?  what does it mean that I’ve seen a boy with a broken nose and bandaged mouth?  how can I tell him it’s okay to follow me to the third floor where my father knocks icicles from the gutter into a bucket and dumps them into a hot bath while sharing again how one got away and barely missed a stroller?  what good will my seeing be if my brother in my mother’s stomach looks as they say like a piece of gum spat into jesus’ blood?

sorry, this is there.

new publication, from self and to self, full length, with theme and without. title: Stork Blood. Feb 2014, 97 pages, 9.00

for free PDF, email bartonsmock@yahoo.com

book is here and has been elsewhere:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/stork-blood/paperback/product-21447349.html;jsessionid=B705664E62077329F9C5141F5762EC50­

dear line break,
sleep
is a hoax.

the color of my skin
represents
the time
I’ve been given
to meditate
on my blackness.

in retrospect, we belong
on earth.

the son of an archivist
and the son of a librarian
meet in a shop
where both
step in
to resolve an argument
over

a nesting doll
before pursuing
separately
the same
arsonist.

all angels want to be the angel
known as the man
who smuggled
into heaven
the sacred
text.

I write nothing my tutor can’t read.

instead of goodnight, my father says he is putting away his feet.  instead of cutting my fingernails, mother has me wear her favorite gloves.  I am a child

but know we are getting by on the shelf-life of secret hands.  I don’t pray but if I loved god

I would put us here to impress him.

I say star
son says coma.

we are indoors.

shadow?
ditch

scarecrow?
footage

snow?
snows

i.

one can write
must
write

in a vacuum

but read, no.

many have this backward.

ii.

the winners
of new
essential
fiction.com
win

what is still
a bible.

iii.

the marks on my daughter’s pencil…

oh, thinking
is a pain.  I am thinking

of biting
her ears
when I am given

a branch.

iv.

be afraid.

the most horrible fish
has yet
to walk
from the ocean.

v.

time was here
when I arrived
but hadn’t
eaten

vi.

once okay
the soul was
with being
a copy

vii.

in heyday
of health
the infant
weighs
as much
as a bag
of ice.

here, a bath is drawn
for the burned
in effigy.

viii.

mother & father
if you want to help
there are two
images
left

ix.

on the playbill
I recognize
virginity
as the inheritance
of Jesus

x.

let me believe I can crush my shadow.

online I find instructions on how to make my own scarecrow.  I wake my sister and have her put on her pajamas while I take the overcoat my father is using for a blanket.  when we’re an error of a mile from home I have to push the ATV with my sister on it.  she is crying about flooding and I’m telling her what the scarecrow will look like.  she wants it to have a cape.  because my son isn’t born yet, there’s not much to like.

as it models
brief

and deformed

halos

the arthritic
hound

knows

if I blow
my brain
it will lick

my face

loneliness
is often..

loneliness is often.

personally, I touched
your food.

I brought a girl by
to see
your lost
hands-

this is when
you washed
a dish.

what one man
can do

is strike
suicide
with awe.

dismiss me, then, from the garden of ease.

pockets are fingerless gloves.

loneliness is nothing without you.
is being reincarnated
as someone
you lived with

who was given
an additional
year
by a tall
pointless

ghost.

he’s died
and envies death.

in life
he drew
what didn’t arrive
and did not
draw
the line
rumored
to separate
the heavy drunk
from the unaware
sober.

he was part
openly
gay
and joked
if he left
a will
it would be
god’s.

was it the dog
fixed
its little
house?

mom, keep your magic.

memory is a funeral-

attend
in my absence.

sinker
of water’s
heart-

spotless thought
free of bird-

weakener
of hill’s
resolve-

kisser of my enemy-

tireless swallower,
impossible drink-

who don’t
I think
I am?

be suddenness
my only possession-

heart arrested
and pulse
orphan

her father
of tame abandon
given to sayings

any such
that would
when uttered
refute the admittance
wrongfully present
in so many
confessions.

all boxes contain the same amount of silence.

he surrounded himself with boxes.
when she moved
he said nothing.

there was a night
my crow dark mouth
held a small priest
who gave his head
to be smothered…

I go as a mute to the oral history of praying hands.

closer inspection
reveals
my lover’s cigarette
to be unlit
as he waits
outside
the madhouse
I rob

father sees the doll in a striptease window.

mother touches the doll
with kid gloves
that fit.

brother hears the doll
brushing the teeth
of its newer
version.

the doll’s feet stick out
from under a hotel bed
marooned
in the ceiling’s
mirror.

thinking the doll has vomited
sister gags.

mistaken
for the order
of conjoined
hesitance

we were good
alone

warning label
error
on mattress

elicits
single use
applause

many
you could not join

ghost of snake.

an adoration
of atypical
young mother
fear.

mouse needs a toothache.

footwork
heads north.

he picks up another
heavy book.

lets himself
**** himself
all boy.

duster of crickets.

this year’s
nativity
will require
the latter
non-speaking
parts
to contact
the former-

please see my brother
to reenter
the lexicon

your chance
for a lifetime
of ***

this house
is a disaster
in front
of the children.

when an egg breaks
we’re poor enough
to count it
before it’s hatched.

I tell my sons
to never
put a tree frog
on an escalator
at the mall

and to avoid
taking gum
from my mouth
while I’m awake.

I tell my daughter nothing.
she believes her arms
professionally broken.

my mother was the last
to be
put to sleep
in the nearby hospital
of the mind.

I couldn’t drag me away.

I want to tell you, but can’t, how obsessed god is with me

-

hears the whole
of the devil’s apology
does the man
with one ear

-

when nothing
was on fire

nothing was proudly
orchestrating
itself

based on the church fire
famously started
by two pieces     of convenience store     bread

-

I am going to zip
the tent
now

-

a chalkboard eraser
still strikes me
as useless-

a boat
in the hand
of god

-

poor speech

imperceptible narrator
of the wound
my mouth
endured

my mother steps on a wooden block
with both feet.

stepping off,
she announces
she is going
on a diet.

my father covers his ears
and gets shaving cream
on them.

he turns me in his hands
like a dish towel
then drops me
at the base of the tree.

I transport
god’s blood
on three
disposable
razors

to my neighbor
who

on a high shelf
has a microscope.

for father*

even holding
a box
in the shape
of a hatbox
no hat
ever came from

you either
go unnoticed
or go
unnoticed

for mother*

the first thought
you have for the world
beats you
to the punch.

you are so light
two people
have to be in bed
with you-
one to hold you
and one to hold a feather
(that way)
it won’t matter
who falls asleep
second.

no one is in the room
you come into.

your mother is alone
in a desert
at night
looking
for a black dot
when her water
breaks-

then, gospel singing
in your gospel-singing
voice.

her parents ask her to babysit the boy of the couple they’re going out with.  her brother knows the boy as the one who doesn’t get to read aloud in english class.  her parents want her to eat but she ate in her sleep.  the other couple has problems.  her father isn’t jealous.  her father is ugly.  the first thing the boy does he does with a pencil.  a thin line moves across the white wall that in her dream is a tooth.  food comes to her brother in small portions.

exactness
is a terrible thing
to impress.

in only words, I am sorry
your mind
works.

the image is not enough.
the image must already
contain
additional
deformities.

both hands curl
but also
turn the wheel
and thus
the whole of the car
into a dog
trying to use
a spoon.

when you are gone
you depart
the impartial
witness
and enter
witness
abuse.

I refuse to compete for those we’ve lost.

if god existed
writing about him
wouldn’t.

after the gifts are passed out
three remain
under the tree.

I wait for my mother to fall asleep,
for my father to carry her upstairs,
and for my brothers
to go outside
their fingers as horns
on the sides of their heads.

I open the gifts.

a stuffed squirrel, a nest with broken
bluish
egg, and a mitten’s
thumb.

to overcorrect
the subtitle
of touch

give him
a moment-

then
just as he
whether he’s
a him
or a her

lifts
the temporary
tattoo
of light

say

you’d stay
but your pain
needs you.

if you can, for me.

you’ve so much
to miss
doing.

the madness of the couple
is a broken
showerhead.

the slimmest volume
of collected work
is a drop of water
lands, a drop of water
lands, no memory

is erased.

in time, I’ll prominently cover
the same topic.

I slur
my saying
of moth.

I trudge
ahead of time
my dream
belongings
behind me.

god is a lantern
dropped by awe.

awe’s hand?
a sighting
none report.

when your man
sloth
of a brother
says he’s applied

for a job
in the abyss
as sentiment’s
echo-

double
your efforts.

he emerges from the driver’s side of his stalled minivan as if you’ve been given too much information.  he holds a hammer in the looseness of his stung left hand.  for a moment it seems he’ll attack windows.  instead, he cries.  his shoulders give him away.  not a car horn sounds.  this is a kindness.  someone has an egg timer.  I locate the itch thrown off course by my lover’s legs and imagine her happy.  across town a silent alarm is pressed by the anonymous smoker of wedding cigarettes.  the bomb squad arrives before the bomb squad knows it and you join

this bomb squad.

I am naked and wearing a football helmet.  in many ways, I am the memory my son has of taking a bath.  a picture doesn’t last any longer than it takes me to look at it.  when it’s my sister I can hear her pointing out

assaulted
places.  poor places, poor puppy.  I don’t know why I am a child.  my sister has no problem listening to herself.  her last blank book had only a title, a running joke she quoted from and called shower days.  to date, my son has had one seizure.  he shook the provided angel.  my body was at a press conference.

normally invisible, the husk
of vibrancy
has been outed
by recent
snowfall.

if you have a father
he is probably
shoveling
as if it’s the one thing
he has to do
before leaving.

it’s not, but it will do
until he has to shovel
again.

my daughter isn’t married yet
so I can safely say
she isn’t married
to a man
whose job it is
to inspect
poles
for tongues.

ice takes children from the horror film
of an everyday car.

accumulation is the only word
Ohio has
for hollowing.

headlights enter a snowbank
the way my eyes
enter a second
nightmare
wanting to see
what saw me
first.

in any weather
some of us
imagine the homeless
but can’t.

the twinkle in your mother’s eyes alerts god.  my thoughts are abused.  our fathers live separately.  will we live, also, alone?  surely.  to any inquiry, I am checking for survivors.  it’s a premature periphery, but a baby just floated by in an incubator.  the townspeople look like candles on the water.  chase is a kind of following.  the upper body of the minotaur lost everything.

a woman with nothing appears beside a horse as one of us recalls our failure to give her anything to keep from it.  we watch her as if she were a documentary on the tunnel vision of our blood.  our hearing of the riddle we mistake for a language.  if a child has time to squawk, a child has time to pout about how it’s been portrayed to the world.  thus far, the world is a dark wall said to have donkeys pinned to it.  I’m starving, but only on the outside.

i.

I watch my cigarette make the water and step from the dock onto my father’s boat.  a large fish moves from beneath it and I sense the fish is of a tearful species of fish and sense that to it my father’s boat was a shadow.  alas, fish, I am trying to know the first thing about boats.  

ii.

my father makes it hard for the cops because he isn’t hurting anyone.  he avails himself of the dense novel and uses his ***** to camouflage the riding horse.  he goes headlong up the slide and enters a realm where he is embraced for blowing a tooth from his nose.  by the time he’s using the seesaw as a surfboard, he feels the cops haven’t had enough.

iii.

my father is asleep on his back with a book across his chest and my sister nudges me like it’s never happened.  I ask her what she sees and she sees a man missing his glasses because they are on his face.  for me, it takes two fathers to begin the long process of choosing an epitaph.

iv.

I cannot mention my brother without mentioning how in that old farmhouse he saw a ghost leaning over the bathtub wearing nothing but a yellow rain slicker and how he used ten of his eleven years to push my father down the stairs while screaming don’t look don’t look

enough to make ****** mary jealous.  also how brother denied it later and called it a joke but I knew better because after the sighting I began to see my brother everywhere which made it easy for me to be there for my mother.

v.

presence is a petition.

it is not unheard of,

the composing
of a suicide attempt
note.

mine says

that the identity of the last one born
will be known
only

to those works of art
god failed
to revise.

we’ll start here, turtle.

this is what I say to the grey thing I’ve been talking to.

the only buffer between engagement & constant engagement
is life
during wartime.

I conceive of a dropper
but hold it empty
above my eye.

because it is the one word without a beginning

suffering
because it is the one word without a beginning
is not limited
by its
vocabulary.

we wanted a sophisticated god
but in immediate
unison
called it
god.

this is the grey cream  
that gives her privacy.

I am drawn to a sort of journalism
by association, a campestral formlessness
attached
for example
to the term

carpet bombing.  

how is death, here?  in an orange ball of yarn

she is not ahead of?

she has to stop, turtle.

to declaw an electrocuted kitten
she didn’t
electrocute.

thought clouds exist.
as does the advice
god
took.

I love your stick figures.
I love what you’ve done
with your hair.

I live in a hotel.  it has
one room
and maybe
the room it was.

two things you can do at once
are a brief
pause.

it is so
never suddenly
late.

as a filmmaker
I’d bury
the permanence
of my son
the magnifying
glass
in full
dress
of the shadow
lurking behind
the crudest
of surveillance
systems