dying of young age, your brother nurses at the breast of the stage hand’s version of a mother.  the stage hand is off arguing with a lamp on the impossibility of attracting moths.  beside a tall cake, a groom with lockjaw and a stiff neck has to take life’s high point on faith.  if you remember, brother made for the groom a bible so light it could be held by a cobweb.  and then it was.

the looks my brother got when he sang seemed to say someone sold satan the wrong voice.  stories of an all-seeing god pegged my sister as the loudest person in two rooms.  to me, mystery had nothing to do with church.  if I’d survived, I had done so to wear clothes.  food and weather were the twins of a middle child.

a lover of movies sets a chair in a field. sits the pillow here then there upon it.

his daughter her new trick is to bell the head of a spoon to her nose. to move is grotesque.

up close their house looks merely bigger.

her strange shoulder he sees it same as her fall down three steps. sees it without looking.

the spasms, the dormant minutiae of curse that by their accident of suddenness have killed held mice, continue.

mice the minions of mute thunders; the exiled scars of clouds.

the deaf curvature of your knee,
the low nod behind you of a humble balloon; these I address that I have returned the lover of all things made

his chair might the monstrous pass.

before you die
take a walk
with a dying man.  try
to keep up-

     you are currently
the afterlife
your past lives
overtake.

a bruise, a school

of fish.  a caterpillar

crossing

the floor
of hell.  a thought

sick
to a son’s
stomach, a winter

glove
in spider’s
nightmare.

I call often on the disappearance of my sister.

she is the ghost in the town of my shadow’s envy.

     daily use, reading or writing: friendly fire. blind copy.

when her ball cap was given to my father he returned me this:
I think she can survive without it.

she went once from her window to the window of the neighbor boy
whose dream had him believing his parents dead
no matter what they did.

she knocked the following morning on our front door. and later
showed me the tree
which was not so high.

I marked the day she became my younger by sleeping.

     if I love women, it’s something I should’ve done
a long time ago.

a fist camouflaged as a bird, a very baby, bird
is born in a pile of bricks.

I open a door for a woman
because online a photo
has taught me
I stand
as all stand
for ******.

     home for good
with papers
she’s convinced
tell her what she’s like
in the workplace
my mother, my mother
like an artifact
of her own
paranoia

     survives.  

(I am a response to a world I’ve yet to receive)

/ my newest self-published collection of poems, [depictions of reentry], is available now on Lulu.

will send for free a hard copy to anyone interested in writing a review – make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

book preview on site is book entire

some poems from it:

[liftoff]

the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.

-

my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.

~

[attic radio]

the fattest baby in the nursing home can’t chew with its eyes open.

it’s a slow day.

looking into the future
a skeleton’s
dog
sees only
sticks.

lightning
marks
the robot’s
church.

~

[meditations on depth]

the mouth
of the thing
that eats
in fog
a doll’s
head

-

the holy spirit
high
on the bricklayer’s
toothache

-

a cat person
at death’s
door

-

poverty

a belonging
moved
by many
mirrors

~

[seeing]

bored as a slaughterhouse

crow / angel

on a skateboard

~

[depictions of reentry (xxi)]

the barn
bat
with the eyes
of a diver’s
shadow…

the dads were all digging
the nudes
were thinking
small

every chair
an electric
chair

in daylight, that motherless grief

~~

/ my first non self-published chapbook, [infant cinema], is available from **** Press.

I currently have three signed copies available for free- make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

excerpt, here:

my child. my diver who wets the bed. my worrier who rescues domestic scenes for animals accused of gaslighting. my swimmer. bather of grasshoppers. my lovely bird alone in an airplane.

~

two things to do on an empty stomach are:  

hold a séance.  

follow the spider’s trail of abandoned birthmarks.  

~

in the video, the young woman is being force-fed cake by a man with a ruined tongue. my mother can’t eat and watch at the same time. your mother is holding me and wondering what happened to this thing. our fathers are veering into the realm of film criticism. where you are depends wholly on my sister’s makeup. god’s parents have no concept of time.

~~

/ also, ending tomorrow, is the goodreads giveaway for my self-published thing, [FOUR], which includes four recent titles of mine in full along with some newer poems.  

some poems from it:

[the many]

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

~

[purlieu]

a bruise, a school

of fish.  a caterpillar

crossing

the floor
of hell.  a thought

sick
to a son’s
stomach, a winter

glove
in spider’s
nightmare.          

~

[mouthings]

a brother
dodges
suicide
with a piece
of paper
that doesn’t
work. a mother’s
blood

goes white
at the ink
of amnesia.

bus stop, breastmilk
there was

no me.

at what would god
not
be caught
dead? speaking

is how we talk
to the words
we say.

~

[stratum]

two brothers come to blows over which sister likes fast food more.  a man we want to love is shadowboxing a snowdrift from the parable of touch.  blood is a food group.  I pray to my hair.  call my footwork by name.  take my time

with amnesia.  

baby facts include being born again in the museum you were carried to.

I tied my bike to a tree and placed a water bowl
beside a food bowl
and kept the bowls
in mind.

she had entered a phase of absolute transparency.

she called it suicide and said so repeatedly.  

any was a reason she would not be around for.

he thought of his mother and father, how they avoided
being together
around the dog.

-

she was okay not being believed.  she chose both

the **** and the mythical beast John.

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.

what brings you
to this untitled poem
is not real.

food
prepares
in me
a faith

-

a wasp attends its own crucifixion

-

in an area known for being receptive to memory

the boy
drops
****

-

any advance
on god
please praise
remotely

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

     showerhead
is spotlight

     he argues often
with sister
about
the staircase

two times
of three
she pushes
him

but today
she is tired
and agrees
by saying

silly
backward
staircase

     and I, as ever
unable
to break
the heart
of either

sleep
for both
as they watch
me

eat

fang
in the dull
tooth
of my womb

this sadness

I did not
inherit, that I

cannot
pass on,
does not

make me
human

but some

     third, fourth

     incurious
beast

loitering
in the belly

     of a ruined, or half built

ark

/ had this hairbrush could halt hearing loss in hallucinations.  this theory that eve was adam’s mother and that god was born in eden for refusing to study virgins.  she had her facts straight and a dog would tell my son otherwise.  a way of coaxing both ****** and suicide to breastfeed death.  this bird that would go

like a showerhead
south.  a goldfish, a brainless calf…

she kneels
and she kiss

grasshopper

she fight
to be

fluent
in longstanding

interruptions

she father
the skirted
issue

she make for mother
no baby
but tends
an entry
in

its travelogue

she not wear
anything
under
her clothes, tells me

she pray

to headcase

wrapped in a sheet from my mother’s bed, I make my way to the outhouse to show my brother there is a future in smuggling the skin of god.  my father is scraping leaves into an empty pool and the earth with a rake.  if death speaks briefly, I am in two places that cannot exist without exposure.  gone long, it spoke once on the loss of loss.

brother wants to know if we are on suicide watch together or if one of us is oblivious.  I keep with me a military secret but here’s the catch:  once I tell it, I lose the memory I have of being told.  I have a hunch he keeps the same secret.  a nagging feeling I’ll be given my own bed.

it is hard
for my father
to be seen
in public-

of my invisible
birthmark
he says
you know
there’s a tattoo
for that-

ghost,

a sign of sickness.  a brush painting of invisibility’s decay.  a nearly beautiful woman mouthing the words of an abusively future

verbose
partner.

I think of god
stopping by
the storage unit
the home
of his son’s
cross
and I try
to remember
for god
the four
digit
code
that he might
better
follow
a different
melancholy
thought-

for example,
how he
will not
in his
lifetime
see

in snow
his footprint

but alas
I am
as unable
to remember
something
I’ve never
known
as I am
unable
to be sick
like my son
is sick, yet

there are times
I pinch
myself
in front
of my kids
as if my body
has its own
family
I’m not allowed
to meet

after a child drowns in a child, the church bathroom is scrubbed

     in full view
of the elderly.

provided they have gestural transportation

a second class
on image crafting
is held     off site.

a baby appears onstage in a kick drum.  the more I think of time travel the more it can do.  when I ask about the fresh blood you say I should see the ear muffs.  you say they are behind the snowy tv screen we made into a blanket for a dying robot and stared at to avoid the sight of your father the walking anthill.  my privates move in my sleep.  my privates are outside the governance of worship.  you can have me from the waist up.  my ******* are alone.  the devil shares a history with god.  in Ohio I am not a girl chewing the corner of a baseball card.

at the end of light, more light.
it is why I have been walking.
since you’ve known me
I have walked.

I am leery
of your sadness- you’ve mock deer
on your lawn.

you bird watch.

you rake a single leaf, give up.

sadness is your gut is
tamped properly. when I recall

on highway of abandoned upkeep

pipe tobacco
and knowhow

my hands
make visor.

a car slowly passes
other cars. I call this car
my death, and then revise.

[baptism]

the home’s weekend janitor placing ball caps on the elderly.
something is said, and he is fired.
his kids recall the egg he’d make of his hand.  the delicate knock
of his joke.  their hair, or something in it, weeping.


[******]

father offers, no, we are bodies trapped in people.

he was known to be monstrous when inside a vandalized church.

if gay, he’d ask
does anyone ask
if you
were born?

yesterday, she was identified by her dentist.
she was recalled as a hunger pain.

man is a rumor
started by god.


[bread]

the baby is white guilt. is walking early.
is outside picking stones to give to loved ones.

Jesus is a moment of peace
on a skateboard.

the fish are five thousand
isolated incidents.

vandalism is vandalism.

the numb hands of a child
go rolling after
crayons.

this is you, beside a flower, in front of a mountain.
your eyes are so big

and the bread
so quiet.


[a.]

the name must be shorter than a pastoral.  the baby must outlive your father’s car.  asking for the possibility of good *** must not be compared to anything.  the person father is underneath must be from your past, your mother.  the casket must be a rumor, and open.  rumor must be definitive, like eclipse, like eye patch.  the door must be placed on the back of a military mom and a photograph is preferred.  the doorway must become addicted to selfies.  dear boy, humiliate the right dog.  tether dog.  eat so much my girlfriend says dear boy, dear sea, stomach.  you can’t hate poetry and the world.   Bob is secretly a soccer mom rubbing a lamp in public and is also sometimes Jesus trying to step on a scale.  


[catharses]

increasingly violent.  I have this image.  it is broken.  physical.  like a being.  ask your mother.  practice.  not on your mother.  she will feel left out.  let her be.  like a mirror.  I have this image.  it’s blinded and has been since the moment it was.  I have this father.  builds to nothing.  builds and builds.  I have this friend you’re the uncle of.  shakes his right leg as if his foot is stuck in a bucket.  there’s no bucket.  he’s all yours.          

[the lost]

before it is dark enough to carry the television into the forest and leave it, a mother checks the oven for her loaf of black bread. her overseas child follows a dead fly to another dead fly and so on. her sensitive brother turns over in his grave to be on all fours. her wiser husband rips the cord from the base of the television and uses it to whip the basement door. when the door opens, any dog will do.


[loyalties]

the camera is blind.  the blind

my dog
is going.  

in my mother’s sleep
I am kind
to think
she lost it.

a foreign adoption, a procured act
of landfall.

I bomb my lifelong
dollish
sense

of the photogenic…

the dogs were fat, the ticks were full.


[vasectomy]

I open out from another’s dream. I think on the word deflower and the terrible way we use it. my female wife- this much is the same. I’ve been here before. nothing happens. she makes coffee with her phantom limbs in a story of yesterday’s news. this morning I’ll drive past my daughter’s daycare and my daughter will wave to a secret building. the heat that gets to others is god.

~


poems above were taken from books available here:  http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

you don’t want to buy a bunny but you’ve already told your ex-wife you’re doing fine and now she’s requested a photo of something you love.  pet stores make you claustrophobic and you wonder if this is the same everywhere.  you decide to borrow your neighbor’s good camera but when you get to his door you hear him mowing your lawn.  a car going too fast makes to turn around in his driveway but blows a tire on the curb, backs up, and continues on its much sadder way.  you’ve seen your neighbor’s adult daughter without a shirt but at the time your dad was in the hospital and it was the beginning of not being turned on.  you don’t remember who but some odd duck sent him a snowglobe instead of flowers.

my mother and father cower under the kitchen table and my brothers are dead.  my father has clammed up since asking me to tell him something he can take to his grave.  this last week I’ve mastered placing my ear on the table in such a way I hear what I am supposed to do.  impossible things that are no longer terrible.  dispatches from a simpler region.  for example, hack your roommate’s youtube account.  also, poison the non-pregnant.  my baby sister laughs with me when I say some of these aloud.  she believes the table is possessed by the devil’s ghost.  her beliefs are clear and specific.  the ghost thinks itself the actual devil, and will need a good amount of therapy.

by his friends
my uncle was known
as uncle
****
because he curled the word
as if his mouth
came before it
and waited.

he took me to a meeting once
because he wanted me to have
real coffee.

he winked as if to say
I know a paper cup
when I hold
a paper
cup.

he said as if to say
*******
it’s not like you’re watching
someone else
live your life
it’s like you’re someone else
not helping.

uncle **** didn’t believe in oversleeping.  
he believed in making a blindfold
for the blind.

I was at my best
letting him think
he gave me
my first
cigarette.

everything you’ve heard was read by me.

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.

I will have my own brand of insignificance.

-

to prepare for this character, I meant to gather household items I thought would together be helpful in making the sound of a strange woman saddled with an abundance of me time spanking the daughter of her distant but as yet unrevealed relative in a toy store but instead I was overcome by a pain much like the pain a man compares to childbirth and as such I slowed myself long enough to fashion from three sons a triangle with which I woke my wife.

-

you shoot yourself, it doesn’t matter where, but only if you see a homeless person, it doesn’t matter where.  

if you have a job, you’re issued a gun.

I can see with my heart a mouse tortured by the seedy youth of my disengaged elders.  my hands curl into the great relief of knowing they’ve lived in the stomach.  any walking exiles the feet from their genius.  I see for myself the man with a flower who enters the professional building to announce he’s witnessed the hospital nursery by word of mouth.  those first twins two black eyes god gave an angel.

soft pilot
she lands
open field
in a chopper-

it is
not as loud
as chewing
on a leaf-

could
minutes ago
have touched
the bald heaven

head of a boy
naked, in a low
tree, the white

socks
of his feet
dipped
in ghost deer.

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.

to a baby’s swing
or to a fine horse
with one
good
ear
or to the weary
haymakers
that are now
my mother’s
unkissable
arms

my father
his head full
of hot soup
but not a minnow
burned
recites
the toy
gospel

as I begin
to take
my intelligence
personally
here among

the floored laundry, the raised unawareness

of the powerless mad

of the four children, three are spies.  their father was put on this earth to look for the fourth.  their mother is the amateur photographer I am a one-sided representation of.  harder lives like yours continue.  statistically and in person.

brother
I fear
we've made
such a deal
of Cain

he believes
he threw
but a pebble.

of course
young letters
of dear
crow and holy
scare

had to
survive

and the
papering
of my insides

with smoke

that, too,

and these: (a paw print she sponged from tile) (a cup the size
of devil hoof) (wrists
of clay colossus) (who giggled in us poorly)

for love

sisters,

I am standing in my dream house with a fork from my real.  my best friend is overseas shooting lame the animals of those who eat his religion.  on the lam from white flight, my brother is holed up in an apartment blocking for a staged photograph of a fake baby that shrieks as if it’s on location.

I was listening
to my father
tell a story
about two men
with one
outfit
between them
when I noticed
my brother
had been touched
by sleep
and my father
saw him too
and began
a second
story
about the face
of a ghost
that had seen
a woman
undress
and both
stories
made me miss
my mom
for you

nostalgia’s book of mug shots.

murderers mistaking boredom for regret.

the dwindling league of hesitant fathers
struggling to stay
in formation.

paroled amnesiacs
last seen
by this
photo.

paint
with fire
the funny bone

the fence…

stray thing
from dog’s
ashtray

it’s the same in every model.  the cat is first, then the dog, then the baby the cat eats in a dream.  while I can’t speak for his cough, I can say my son doesn’t belong to god.  my fear of water snakes, though vaguely tied to my father’s shaved belly, began with a bike that was given to my brother with no one on it.

the owl-headed man
what
can he do
in the crocodile’s
dream
of disappearing
lamb
but watch
the egging
of a hearse…

Ohio
a woman
found dead
in a cake

from ~The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake~ selected poems (September 2013)

[multitudes]

oh, here they are.  the interested persons we will find later.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat of exodus.  if my mother is watching it is because she long ago dropped birds from a single passenger plane.  if instead she is privately seen by god, then the whole bird thing was a bit of a stretch.  in memory alone I am alone.

[another ****]

in such times, it is constantly 2am.  a friend pulls carefully at your ear.  a friend’s thumb is a hologram of a thumb.  you are being told that what you’re about to be told is highly confidential.  because it’s dark, and because your bed is the prize winning bed of a formerly dethroned insomniac, you are nothing if not empowered to listen.  your friend’s tongue redacts the parts of your body that have been marked.  this is done in secret.  what you’re hearing right now was scored some time ago.  when things were the same.      

[word of the devil’s death]

     my mother and father cower under the kitchen table and my brothers are dead.  my father has clammed up since asking me to tell him something he can take to his grave.  this last week I’ve mastered placing my ear on the table in such a way I hear what I am supposed to do.  impossible things that are no longer terrible.  dispatches from a simpler region.  for example, hack your roommate’s youtube account.  also, poison the non-pregnant.  my baby sister laughs with me when I say some of these aloud.  she believes the table is possessed by the devil’s ghost.  her beliefs are clear and specific.  the ghost thinks itself the actual devil, and will need a good amount of therapy.                    

[men statuesque]

I am struck by the urge to pray.

my trauma has yet to occur.

the stress my father knows

knew his hands
as he waved them in front of nothing
on a tarmac obscured by speech.

night is a ruined crow.

I see the city as possibly bombed.

[steganography]

every day is a scar’s birthday.  this is how I am able to start most of your sentences.  I praise your god, you worry, and worry keeps him from finding out.  on the day you started talking the rooms were horrified.  the termites fled your blood.  a cold stone appeared outside beside a stick.  the home’s most loved dog died without spatial awareness.  your mother began to compose a series of poems by Franz Wright.  for inspiration she put her hands in the dog and in doing so dropped a sack of black groceries.  a thing that changed over time rolled into your father’s mouth.


[the wave]

we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet.  we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks.  the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others.  we limp beside any creature that limps.  the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other.  our father is two mathematicians who argue.  our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave.  our guesses mean little because they are facts.  at school we are voted on and kissable.  if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket.  details belong to god.      

[fixture]

dying of young age, your brother nurses at the breast of the stage hand’s version of a mother.  the stage hand is off arguing with a lamp on the impossibility of attracting moths.  beside a tall cake, a groom with lockjaw and a stiff neck has to take life’s high point on faith.  if you remember, brother made for the groom a bible so light it could be held by a cobweb.  and then it was.      

~~~~~~~~~~

from ~father, footrace, fistfight~ selected poems (June 2014)

[future stabbings]

you take photos of men and women who aren’t all there. you post the photos while your dog barks. you doze on a hot day. your mom calls to tell you about the spider in her eye and while she talks you look for your dog. your mom thinks you sound desperate though you’ve said nothing. you go outside and see your dog in the backseat of a parked car. the car is not yours. your mom has the hiccups and says the first part of goodbye.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from ~Eating the Animal Back to Life~ full length poetry collection (July 2015)

[uppers]

god gets ******-up about which hair to harm on your head. in some, this goes on for years. I have a lucky razor, a father who’s blind in one hand, and a suicidal thought that scares me to death in front of cops. my last meal came to me on a toothbrush.

[themes for orphan]

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


[accession]

starvation
is the invisible
cannibal’s
birthmark.

water
is nothing’s
blood.

15% off all print books and free mail shipping at Lulu today with coupon code of MAYMAIL15

~

some poems:

~

[raise god]

it’s a nice enough baby with an inability to emit. the adult world worries but no more than than it does for the television’s volume during bouts of ceasefire. parents divorce or parents agree on the same support group. siblings form a circle around a one trick pony. some believe the jack-in-the-box is broken while others believe it’s patient.

[taunts]

death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.

[pathos]

our fighting
determines
which of us
is more
sonsick.  

relic child, town crier.

I take what I’m given, beating.

cerecloth, snow
on snow
before and after

it buries.

me of course
as I position
myself
to hum

above
a basket.

me as I marry homeward
and kick

ball, stone, stiff
bird

stiff bird in death
doubling as
the rat
of an angel

yes
kick
for reasons known
to another’s

pet cobra

skin to skin
in an unmarked
life.

[costume]

we’re here to ****** the head of the boy who put a clown’s red nose on the girl playing jesus for stopped traffic. if I spoke your language, I would tell you.

[poor lighting]

a plastic doll with a human right hand distracts us from the parrot’s empty cage. we have been writing in unison instead of eating. our poverty is so advanced it keeps a fake diary and a real diary but hides them in the same spot. we are dying in two of our mother’s arms. our mother is elsewhere repeating after the man who does our stunts.

[collapse]

how
on a clear day  
my father
is the face
of absence.

how what I mean
cuts the finger

my mother
sips.

how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.

how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp

says I myth
my sister
who is still

vanishing
to shoplift
god

from the thunderstorm
we gave her.

[southern treehouse]

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

[outside the body it is always procession]

I may have lied about being pregnant but I know my ******* kid.

her father quells *******.

ants are quiet.

-

his teeth make sense.

our yell is I’m gonna shoot you in the blood.

-

elsewhere
is a light dusting
of downfall.  sleepily

legal

are the sunbathing sad.

[crown]

i.

a hand towel
over the lid
of any
stubborn
jar-

a mother to a father
or less frequently
a father to a mother
I don’t know why this is
but either way
a gentle admittance

to couple

as if passing beneath
the singing voice
of statue…

ii.

that stage
where a baby
is all
head

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

below is an unpublished companion piece {shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner} to my recent chapbook, infant*cinema (**** Press, April 2016)  

as such:

~~~~~

[shut-eye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.



~
it’s all in your head.  the newborn we had on a mountaintop.  the word it knew from memory.  its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate.  the cold our dog died from.  the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers.  that was never full.



~
existence is the wrong inquiry.  

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.  

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.



~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.



~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.



~
and what
would forgiveness
do?  

my kids were never born.  yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again.  I strip

when my stomach
hurts.



~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

-

god’s color has returned

-

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

-

first



~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…



~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet.  he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.



~
the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

-

I want your work to matter.



~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…



~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair



~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...



~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.



~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
  book
  for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love



~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ



~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

-

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double




~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.



~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover



~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.



~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.



~
church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.



~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.



~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.



~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.



~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing.  how big is your family and who wears the mouth?  is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****?  that your mom had no baby tired of being born?  that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?  

/ year nine:  your birthday spider is put on film for biting.  your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:



~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.



~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.



~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.



~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.



~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.



~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake



~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.



~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god



~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood.  inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean.  a boy whose mouth

was never
here.  all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.



~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.  

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark.  I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.



~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between



~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return



~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

my age, father paints an abstract jesus.
mother has the kitchen to herself and sits.
mother watches my brother lift a chair and leave.

my sister lets the train pass and bites at the shoulder strap
of her bra.

not my age, I draw a violinist. draw a dog at the neck
of its owner.

there are those who would forgive our debt.
there are those who would not.

I prefer god’s early work.
at my age, apple. apple and rope.

~ youth ~

holding a baby
as if she’d
had it thrown at her
my mother
came out of the museum-

it had stopped raining
it had also
stopped
snowing

and people
were giving me
money
 
~ to message ~

to be somewhere without a book on my person. hard word this, hard word that, for the never arriving marble of grief. to rename fish from the lobby window of a submerged hotel. to let the water from my mother’s body but not before telling her god lives in me as long as my son is outside. to have nothing but the mewing compositions of rooftop strays to keep me from becoming the devil your pen pal was fed to. to die well. die punctuated. by imagery the drowning cull from years on land spent openly preparing the eaten, subliminal beast.

~ disburden ~

god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist.  renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city.  the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves.  I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman.  my only tool is comfort.  in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.

~ apace ~

after a child drowns in a child, the church bathroom is scrubbed

     in full view
of the elderly.

provided they have gestural transportation

a second class
on image crafting
is held     off site.


~ clotheshorse ~

     a father shepherds his family from the storm cellar as his own father prepares to lose the orchard.  

your life is a boy
looking for signs
made by women.  

your mother is a vow of silence
you were born     to second.

I am nobody I speak of.  those alive to nuance, those seeing

a necklace     in a grandmother’s     clotted leg.

     god is not silent.  god is forgiven.


~

from - father, footrace, fistfight -  (June 2014)

jesus on the cross

my sister is sometimes obese.  she has mild heart attacks in cramped third floor apartments.  she gets beaten by schoolmates who impersonate hospital staff.  I am always going to see her it seems when she is in someone else’s bed.  it is to this thought she has recently clung.              



jesus in the tomb

my sister keeps me from sleepwalking.  she says I am her dream of being skinny.  she has lost so much weight already I am almost too happy for her.



scripture that may one day represent scripture**

we are able to buy food, but here’s the catch: we eat it.

the dove went
from Noah’s hands

over white cats
and driftwood

to a second
meaner
dove

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.