your illness
dreams
a kingdom
it cannot
people

     takes
to sky
and there
meets death.

tell me
they talk.

sitting on a decorative toilet in her child’s front yard, the mother scrubs her left wrist with a dry toothbrush.  her right wrist squeals to be cut.  there’s a wet spot on the grocery bag she wears on her head and the spot spreads.  her flower print dress is optimistic.  with a crow ever so lightly on his mind, my father writes the address of the electric company on a notecard and slips it into a pocket bible.  he tells me to forget what I’ve seen and I wonder if I get to pick.  my heart feels more like a broken light bulb the more I breathe and goes to my head the less.  beneath the malformed crow my father culls, he gives me the *** talk.  he includes that most crows are manna from hell or holes in the kingdom.

enter
as if you’ve been sent to finish another’s listening.

love hushfully
the person you weren’t.

switch genders in moderation.

     for the memory of our first meeting
cling to the hand you’ve prepared.

I broke the boy on my knee because I needed a switch.  we ran around an empty crib.  I let him catch a breath and he let me kneel.  we tiptoed in a manner of mocking past private make-up to which his mother had been softly applied.  he drank tea from an eggshell and I declined.  I swatted him to let him know I was dying.  his bent sister fell asleep and the boy was kind enough to believe her hair was a nightgown.  I swatted him again to let him know I would live.  the tea was gone.  the rest is sadness.

I am looking
to be sad
whispers
who else
but the blind man
in the poem
previous

the *** machine has begun to breathe on her own.  father ***** a brown bruise into mother’s half of my cigarette.  I could be doing a handstand in a prison yard or watching as my cell is turned upside down.  brother uncurls a finger from his made fist so deliberately I know he means it to be a hard-on.  I crush my eyes with my eyes and try to remember the name my son gave to the loose tooth we hung together from a doorknob.  was my son told me the puppets need our hair.

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.

I hope it makes you sad, this poem, and here is why:

no longer are you on your way.

given a dry mop
the amateur was made
to swipe beneath
the bottom bunks

found in the barracks
of the dead

the night floor
water’s dark apprentice

the amateur
stiff neck and stung
nose, mouth a crooked
morning
horror

from bobbing for impressions of apples

could be
it’s the baptism
of the fussiest
unrecorded
drifter.

could be two trees
one threatens
to separate.

could be microwave
or box
of resurrection.

could be
it’s mine
the shoe
before I went
to prison.

could be
an austerity measure
this disabled
son of god.

could be god
had no part.

it’s the medicine
makes mother
proclaim
that what sizzles
in the pan
is the soul’s
muted
telepathy.

it’s the memory
my son’s muscle
doesn’t have
makes life
the dream
our longing, preparing,
wastes.

the boy keeps quiet about his room.  his toys gather for bully scenes.  his toys even have a graveyard.  when one goes missing, he believes in an angel.  his mother hides her applause from his father like a tracking device.  the three live together at different times in a pre-existing broken home with two chimneys.  forest the boy thinks is the forgotten back of a forest creature.  when in the room he is quiet about, the boy grooms each wall to be a window for one day and for when that one day comes.  my girlfriend grieves in public to tell me how his mother and father were not long ago so lovely and so accused.  he was the only boy who couldn’t see a crow without seeing through it.  could be he’s the blood in her voicebox.

baby, baby talk, and pilot light.

kitchens everywhere,
god is alone.

I have no word telling me if my father is good sick or bad sick.  I was put in this room to recover from being related to my son.  I am delivered women one at a time but only sporadically.  each stays just long enough for the pregnancy to take.  it is my guess the deliveries occur while I am sleeping.  the more I try to stay awake the sicker I see my father.  I am not asking for an exact location.  I am asking that you rescue my neighbor.  the fake life he is based on.

in daylight, a removed light bulb is what I have on my shadow.  I draw attention to myself with god’s health.  he or she wouldn’t think twice about holding my own child over me.  having a disabled son puts one in the position of hearing of your sister dating an undercover cop who for two weeks spoke with a lisp.  it’s a leap but it can be argued that the right eye can touch the left.  the brain is a hymn unto itself.  I arrive quickly at the fact of my other.  there is another whose ear is exile.

the men have gathered with small boys on their backs. each hopes to be, briefly, in the shadow of a plane. the boys can only think with their hands how warm their fathers are. a shoelace or two teases tired the tongue of the devil. wind, the maker of mask, makes many. mothers at home pick blankets from the floor; fold magazines without looking. one of the men swears on the grave of his best hound he once saw a woman parachute naked. most of the men keep her there in that plane.

he walks the straight line as if ghosted by a severity that could at any moment scrape the membrane world.  ahead of him a blood drawing baby floats into a small room where some poor sap must be waiting.  he is here to address the letter writing department for challenging his letter writing capabilities he recently used on behalf of his sister who has been charged with obtaining too low of a tree when in fact the rope she was issued was too long.  his father was supposed to come as well but has acquired a rare form of poet helplessness.  as for mother, she  failed to return some time ago and for all he knows is still softening the language of the animal kingdom.  seeing the baby has made me want to set aside someone to facilitate his reattachment to violence.

god had an earache and I heard thunder.  I learned to shrink into the smallness of my brain.  I associated money with my father’s funny bone.  my mother with the dual church of hide and seek.  I went on to have a son with special needs.  he cried once.  cried milk.

who have in them hypothetical warmth

who have been saddled with such predispositions
as needing
to survive

as needing to be evaluated

who have multiple
lonely
nailings

words well known

but in strange places, arranged
strangely

upon a cave wall
by which
boulders
pass...

who prefer air quotes
made by those
without fingers

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…

the two are both men.  saviors by way of remaining.  one crosses your mind when he remembers to pace.  the other keeps his distance as the private rent he pays to be stationary.  the woman is an object in a town beyond me that is, beyond that, passable.  a town mothered by darkness.  through which I roll a hula hoop.  a balm for the ache in my hips.

who wants to share
they’ve seen
but the mask
of god

I admit, I confess

as a painter
of chameleons

the art of the bruise

is lost

I step inside myself
to address
the thinning
army.

age is the only distance my body can record.

my thoughts go unsettled.
they are held
either
in an ant, or in the sewing needle
the ant
climbs.

I scratch nothing’s mark.
I kiss what’s left
of my father.

god’s nose breaks on the ankle of a peasant.
remains mother
a meditation
on the heaviness
of stars.

i.

it is my first time dying.

I have no friends.

my arms don’t feel
like your arms
when they fall
asleep.

when born, each of my thighs
took three
injections.

I will my scars to open.

tiny human fingers breach
the top
of an egg.

I yawn by vomiting.

ii.

my parents look the same in the dark.
one of them brings the other
white pebbles     in a glass.

iii.

death
surprises only
the look
on your face.

online
a photo     of a young
girl
after some
self harm    

inspires.

iv.

bottomless     you are snagged     on a bird

v.

nowadays, child free
is the term we use
to separate
ourselves     from being

kidnapped    

vi.

be heartened.  

suicide
remains
impartial.

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

(available on Lulu)

duologue

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.



isochronal character

the theme of this person-to-be is footprint.  for years I hated my figure and for years I went undetected.  I had female heroes both sad and sad reboots.  for a fee one told me I was fleeting.  the fee included the thumbtack moon my heel had liberated from a schoolchild’s diorama.  we come as babies so none can ask us what we remember.  the theme of this person-as-is

is mouthpiece.  her red phone has been tapped by those my blood is filming.


impossible beast

the whole town was in the parade. the newer babies had a float to themselves. at some point I was shot by a gunman so disoriented he mistook himself for my father. I swooned as if trying to avoid landing on a board member second-guessing her proposed location for purgatory. somewhere in the darkness the firehouse caught fire. I followed my blood but to me it seemed a celebrity’s sadness. my mother found me in her bed with a part of her heart. she was bright with the rumor that my sister’s snake-bitten neck had some takers.

he arrived from work at a normal hour and made a sound.  she called the cops by mistake.  she put the spout of the tea kettle in her mouth.  he watched her cry and went to bed.  the sound he’d made was so weak that when the time came she assumed he’d come home late.  she kept it to herself and stepped on a scale.  he joined the army and watched a soldier toss and turn.  she gained weight in her sleep while he commented sensibly on the loss of his uniform.  apart from the occasional mourner, no one went outside to ***.

other than
its ability
to lean
on a wall

and things like that

the ghost of bill murray

is wholly
ghost-like.

winter

when the snow
weeps
on a warm
arm

and red dogs     deepen

and cats
all colors
are redeemed
at a town’s

vanishment

     there will be a church
     thieved

of its folding chairs
and a man
standing

for heaven     at a time

when its crime rate
lowered

her mania
trembled not
before
but during
god-

a whole year would pass
without
an episode

     then three days
she’d widow
for jesus

i.

two boys
skipped school
to fight
in a field.

we who stayed
took sides.

I somehow became a leader

      which mattered only
when the boys
returned.

their original quarrel
ended
in that field
     where a scarecrow

interested
both-

ii.

     boys
whose names
imprison me.

father
son
I saw them ****
out of hunger
the angel
could prepare
angel

-

it is wholly birdlike
the thought
that brings oil
to god

-

the sleeping alien
is not without
its headless
astronaut  (the first thing

-

one sees
hallucinates

baby on baby
violence
continues to be
the number one
reason

daycares
across the country
do not report
the imaginary
friends

of illegals

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.

simpler, then

the seizure
that set
your father
to music

the baptized
bowl
of your mother’s
hair

the book I brought to burn
blank
as always

the pair deciding which hand
would come between us
which hand
would enter…

I caught the poor mask
sighing
on its own

I am ugly and you are not

memory selects its future and trauma stops to eat. we are in the Ohio of dieting apparitions.  oh, some cigarette made to last.  a buried joystick.

nudes
from the circus
of harm
grab
the evolved
handle
of my father’s
apocalypse
and though
I call it easy
what I’ve gone
on the doll ****
I can’t help
but bride
up
a storm
giving oral
to a corncob
from fixation’s
honeymoon

desperation
as in
desperation
in the disappeared
eye
of its least
loyal
member,  

witness
as the failure
of god
to preach
to the choir,  

and abuse
as a testament
to the animal’s
frequent
submission
to the IQ
of poverty

ice on a wrist
after scrubbing
whole sets
of knives

-

in the bed
of a truck
on a lawn
a throne

-

you were not
born today     so stop
acting out

-

for a gun, unscrew the handle of a water hose.

for a rope, find a rope.

-

brothers     sitting

back to back
in an outside
bath

-

no, no whisper
to speak of    

     they are far off

     they curse

-

any foot
a dead bird

blue

-

     think a finger    
reviving
a finger

puppet

-

think hard    
on nothing
on a farm
machine

for father


two men in their mid-fifties take turns cooking for each other in a country house.  a bucolic tiredness flattens the land.  one man says aloud *I’ll sleep when you sleep.  when the end of a thick rope appears on the doorstep the men tug at it and decide the chore is no burden.  they reel the rope into the house for three days and nights before nodding off.  once awake, the men can’t piece why the front door is propped open with a rifle they rarely use or why this or that vase is broken or why the piano bench has been moved.  neither speak it but it’s a helluva rifle.

the woman she is holding an umbrella over the man she is yelling at.  the man he is blowing into the bowl he’s made of his hands.  a boy sits at their feet with his back to us and is bringing what we can guess is a toy to his mouth.  you joke he is laboring to light a cigarette.  in the rain.

it is hard not to do what I’m accused of. have self published a collection of poems, most recent, titled ‘we stole not the same bread’. don’t mean to implicate. it’s 105 pages. link below.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/we-stole-not-the-same-bread/paperback/product-21626878.html

a beetle in a sack of eyelashes

a dishwasher’s ice-cube

a costume party
for those
no longer
pregnant

a birdfeeder
weighed
by a church, a fingerprint

carried nowhere

by milk

a crookedness within a white cat.  a naked boy on crutches.  a girl in a pink jumpsuit jogging in place beside a man rolling a tire.  all of this says I’ve witnessed my father by himself on a child’s swing ******* two unlit cigarettes.  we don’t exist until god begins to worry.  our neighbor is an old woman with a gun.  she is afraid her color will suddenly change.  when she chases my father home I understand the riddle of his cigarettes.  around him I pretend to be asleep.  I hear him watering a rag and wait for him to press it to my nose and tell me my dreams are bleeding.  when a kitten, the head of our white cat would stick to the refrigerator door.

i.

to turn one cheek, then another
of the dead
it’s necessary
that they take the chin
roughly.  

ii.

I wish I could tell you of a bird
and from there
follow it
to the edge
of a puddle.  

we could turn from them
and loiter.  open a shave shop
and swivel
the slow times
away.

iii.

I wish I could tell you mother
I am not dead.  that I am another’s son.  

     as you would say

he’s disappeared
again
into himself.  

that I’ve been identified
as being my father
all the way through.

iv.

or tell you I was merely guarding
the post
of self
    from which none
are relieved.

I will step
from the long line
of fledgling
historians

to join
the performance art
that sustains
our most
crowdfunded
sister

and such a stance
will reveal
gentleness
towards women

my silence     will stutter…

     brother,

my oldest son
pauses when speaking
like in your youth
you paused
when speaking

I know now it’s because
people flicker-

     that my son resumes
when they reappear.

be suddenness
my only possession-

heart arrested
and pulse
orphan

for all I know it’s your father’s job to come home too sober to lift your mother’s fingers from the piano keys.  I fell asleep on a heater vent once and with my acne won a phantom game of tic tac toe.  when people ask me my name and I tell them they ask my whole and I tell them I have only a middle.  my own father was a figure others cut from their work.  my mother was made of money.  if being provided for is the same as being loved we’d all be christian.  by people I mean whole sections of the population.

the father touches down to draw squares for hopscotch.  every photo is a photo of silence.  the mother, for the weird kid in her sunday school class, is sewing one sock puppet to another.  it’s a lonely job but no one has to do it.  the neighbor has just borrowed a hacksaw and, earlier, a box of cake mix.  her brother is the boy all have heard explain how insects are sailboats.  as for the babies, they’ve been put on suicide watch for the actions of a single lookout.  how nearness, love.

I bring
to city
a pen light
that this time
works.

earlier
in mock
fit
I shook
my head
for the blood
in my ear
and listened
to an ant.

her last words
were oil spill
or so I thought.

she went on to say
very daughter-like
poor bird, so small.

I want god overwhelmed.

my boy’s mouth
couldn’t be
anywhere.

I am in your house
being you

when the boy
enters my house
with a sack of ash

to tell my wife
he has come
to avoid
a whole

personality

-

my wife is one to believe
she was carried
by child

-

listen,

a baby’s cry is the oral future of what touches the brain