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

I have a new collection available on Lulu, titled [depictions of reentry]

146 pages

book preview on site is book entire

/ I am not close to any named animal.  I flicker

in two
lost

minds.

~  

feel free to share, dissolve, emanate.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/depictions-of-reentry/paperback/product-22811652.html

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…

I want to say
it’s uncooked

the body
patience

devours
and say

also
that as
a body

it belongs
to the father
whose nightmare, no...

a peeled
potato, a legless

chicken

you will know
the hoof
of satan’s
chosen
deer
by the way
it glows
when any
female
announces
from the seat
of a stilled
tractor
that she
is pregnant-

you will be the age
of your mother’s
baby bump

older than your father’s
knife

and lit
by the grape
in god’s
mouth

I am pretty like people.  to jesus on the cross this poor man brings umbrella.  he is still bringing.  still poor.  I am like his woman.  a child climbs onto my back.  my back is bitten and used to being behind me.  I drink from my shoes.  madness is an extra cup.  I know wanting all the rains is like not wanting one abusive boyfriend.  know mouth is mostly mouthpiece at a father’s funeral.  to all men a certain radius is hereditary.  I talk in cycles.

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.

if the **** thing is a boy, let it have a knot in its stomach.  if it’s not one twin, it’s another.  if a girl, find a woman who’s been to nothing and back.  

bring me a fat tick from the dog of baptism.  owl from the hair of god.

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.

she is a location
policed
by a trauma
that never
returns.

that’s a mouthful
on a first
date
but she is far
from photographing

roadkill.

still, she hears
it said
in sister
and in health…

she starts with a boy
who becomes a clown
getting
his pilot’s
license
on borrowed
time

and she loves
god is your
airstrip.

she knows it
by number
the single
highway
truck
that doesn’t
come.

her father is just
as she imagines-

a man
not making
siren
sounds
pulled over
by the man
who is.

an owl
with an owlish
disease
***** with
a bat

as an altogether
different
angel

swallows
her mother
like a sword.

hell has lost her mind

but tries again
its troubled
flashlight.

as his mother heard yesterday he was born to some nobody everyone can describe, she instructs her barber to slide a lit cigarette behind her ear.  as unimportant as the barber is, his pencil makes a subtle change in her dream to put a cricket on the witness stand.

mom would start in on god so fiercely that we became preoccupied with doors.  we got to saying and I’m taking the baby with me at the close of anything said with passion.  by the time our speaking allowed for speaking parts, you’d think a cameraman had asked to use the bathroom.  father had his moments.  being thin is an adventure.  this egg has given me an idea for a different kind of chicken.  

agewise, I was closer to my parents than most of the kids I knew of.

I have an ear for each parent I believe in and a hand for each god I don’t.  I have yet to make a body that doesn’t become bread.  in the process of comprehending the smallness of my twin’s brain, I lost the only friend I could talk to in code.  my son won’t use a spoon as he fears it distracts his food.  the fork is next and the knife, safe.  my daughter is a drunk and also a soup that gives the same nightmare to the mouths of my angel.

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.

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.

when he comes back to life
his first thought
is his first

and when

while sitting beside the bathroom sink
instinctually shaking a pregnancy stick

he hears from an air vent     what I would call
a frangible keening

he stands on the toilet
and chokes himself, his creamy hands
playing gentle theatrics
on his baby fat

neck
where I see a mark

as if he's been strangled
by the ghost of a snake
that when still
a snake

slithered
from the ashes
of a tree
the tree

it was made to love

the poor are beaten
from the future

they get off work
the day is hot
it's ungodly

as ungodly as placing a single chair in a garage

the poor get home
the chair remains in the present

the dog
can't afford to be here
appears mid-scene
in the backyard

the poor imagine
an electric fence
scrounge together
the amount they would pay
to fix it

& smile as they would smile
at the mindless sap
whose job it would be

whose chair it is

downloading
the horror movie
that shows
your *****
takes
a long time
in the city.

others
are a grief
I came alive
to miss.

you may have been a child
projecting a maze
or an adult
memorizing
the hollowness
of things.

in a condensed version
of poverty’s
obstacle course
I still hold the hammer
that works for a mirror…

with dog or with dogs, we were presented
as two examples
of how to be
family.

I love me a farm machine
and the week
you knock yourself into.

(a silo
saddens
a drunk)

my brother calls a stoplight the math brain of god.  my best friend bites the apple that once controlled the minds of sheep.  scenes from your childhood bring back mine.  her memory is all she can think about.

I stab my father with a carrot so I can say he lives to the pacifist who broke the television we were called to witness.  I run after my children because they think they are chasing nothing down the street.  god blows two bubbles that become the eyes of a crucified man.  the last arm in the world will be a prosthetic arm made for the toddler who will die in the meat of the dying.  your father has an apple in one hand and a tomato in the other.  everyone is poor.  everyone is responsible for how it is portrayed to the bun in the oven.  the softness we reserve for women has gone to our teeth.

I went outside and hid god under a rock then went inside and put a pillow over my brother’s face.  don’t worry, my brother lived and god grew stronger.  in fact, by morning, my mother was so at peace she finished my brother off with a cotton ball.  my dad bought a boat and said the older they are the smaller the mouth.  people came from a mirror called practice.

the condition of false
remembrance
in regards to
experiencing
another’s

déjà vu-

     once mine,

had I planned
for the past

**** these white staffs that draw smoke from the body
**** the lost tiny ******-off messiahs they belong to

**** nine pillows
bedding nine sweaty heads
cramped
with housing
worries

     under one is one ******* tooth

would that we couldn’t speak
until our bodies
began to fail.

the healthy want me to clarify
what I mean
by fail.

what I mean by speak.

recalls
its fingers
offhand

the bawling
gift
apple

muffled by a pillow
stolen
from some
honeymoon
destination
for third

wheels- the penny

in the horse
father hurries
me from…

bothered
by the parting
and not
by the red
of the sea

my mind goes
to the same place
to be unique.  

it is here
I worship your son
even as he models
disguises
for the father
I’m not.

as for my own
son

I am his memory

of where he put
the earth.

…this is god, this could be
god
gaslighting
his mother’s
online
presence

/ I never
see
the right
cricket

godless
balloon
animal

now father
I scale
your mountain

like an apparition

while mother
gathers
what might
shorten

the prayer
my safety
accompanies

to an image-based
business
model

introduced
by the one
god

hopped-up
on ghost

adrenaline

in a war
over the facts
of a previous
war

an immune system
competes
for the silence
of god
as food

runs out
of children...

I read to my son

he tries to fork
the fireworks
in the back
of his head

the television in front of my murderous father is a city placed on outside arrest.  further coverage is dedicated to a new unharmed person from a race of desert people that materialized with her inside.  I join in spirit the manhunt for the victim who’s made off with the right to disappear.  I am holding a book I mean to worship and I hold it with two kinds of innocence.  my brothers cross shadows in the brightness of kitchen.  I have many brothers.  their teacups fill with god-taken tea and remain teacups.  the book is first a false god then tells me which of my hands.

whose only obstacle was god
the dying woman
returned our baseball
to another’s yard

where it stayed
where it might
still be

a rolling
baseball
is stopped
by a shoeless
father.

clap
if you hate
your handwriting.

the players
are on their knees.

it’s not your nose
it’s not mine
that is broken.

eat ice cream
like an orphan.

he regards his ice cream cone as if he’s the lone yearly visitor of a grave.  because I cannot remember his name, we are together two men home from war.  it’s how I’m struck

just as my son
might be     on some

hot day
when life
shortens
fame.

(ix)

at a therapy session
for those
unable
to dream
I am handcuffed
to my mother
whose imaginary
lover
has lice

a baby born with a wig
rattles on
about sleep

death’s eyepatch

(x)

on these bikes these boys are beautiful

/ passing men under spell of god, the order

maybe dissolved

of the bent
cigarette

/ I will not miss art

five-thousand fathers
to burn
a fish

but ease, but hunger

a girl putting all her pain in a turtle
or in anything
lifted
from the hood
of her sister’s
coat

/ a firecracker
read
by a bone

(xi)

what a ghost knows about giving birth
powers on
a mechanical bull

father says there is nothing
like it
in Ohio
this giving

god

to a jack-in-the-box

there is a word my mom makes
from a word
she can’t

/ orbituary

/ brings it all
home

(xii)

the human dream

god’s attempt at a short story

the animal
works

miracles

/ the elephant
in its ruin
takes up
for whale

yeah, it rains here
rains
glue

adult diapers
are fishhook
rare…

/ tell your sister
nothing happened
to mine

(xiii)

imagine how long god must’ve been left alone to be named after the first person whose name he said. how hungry the mother to swallow hair.  how bored her baby to remember.  how small the television that spitballed hell.  hidden the horse to keep its church.  black the water to transport fish.

(xiv)

the black eye
given
to the moth-catcher’s
most attractive
child…

what a woman predicts
becomes false

subtraction
the plus side
of trauma

her mother’s
babied
past

the demon ***** a child in the dream of yours where it first appeared  

the mother gets less and less attention for being born

the baby uncrosses its eyes

at a lone ******, I lose hours to the handstand
the occupiers
of my city
worship

proof a mosquito in the gravedigger’s ear

we laugh about them now

scarecrows
the stepchildren
of apocalypse…

pregnancy as suicide prevention.

be wowed
by stuff
on earth.

my mother I made her
black

so I would be humble.

I went as a soldier
into the silence of women

and found it lacked the peace
afforded hell.

I gave my only word
to my son, and he went off

with his sister.

I returned from the war
(took up with a man)

I was born with.

I had
all year
one
idea

-

the infant is forever in the infancy of immediate hearsay

-

I was online / had a nosebleed  

-

I was with your mother when she safely evacuated
many

from nothing’s
installation

-

you may

in event
of god

instill in my sons

the all
clear

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.

you are born in a great house and given to a great man.  your birth is the earliest predictor of forward thinking.  your servants spend their days believing the great man’s thoughts of suicide are contagious.  on your fifth birthday, at the age of ten, you are kidnapped by a woman who says the sack is for show.  who says be loud.  you are taken to a river where you meet your brother who seems happiest when holding his breath.  he tells you the woman is your sister but good luck seeing her again.

luck is for the naked.

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.

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.

the stomach remains dumb.
the way she finds this out
inside a school bus.

the way her father with a hot towel on his head will swoon.
the way her mother after losing a child.

father bumps around the house.

-

at night, the night is naked.

-

before one can say
decorate
the interior

she powers on
the television.

-

if twice,

pinpoint poverty’s illness

and

aim a pop-gun.

-

mealtimes
I cough
and the pups
congregate.

-

our bloodied hero’s
shoes

burst.

-

if I am not with shovel
I am had
by a vision.

the stones
die
and turn
ghost.

I ask them
to mention
my throwing
arm.

traditionally, one sings
when around
water.

     I walked early-

two to four weeks
before my mother
began

her lifelong
affair / with baseball.

a donated pillowcase
made into seven washrags
one for each
church window

~

[On mother, father, god, dog, *****]

what if the eyes in the back of my head

hallucinate

what if
the eyes in the back of my head

during surgery

during

a haircut

~

[On foreclosure]

the occasional declawed cat
past which
I make
like I
am rowing

(in wheelbarrow)  (in wagon)  otherwise,

noises beneath a bomb or bomb
threat

~

[On the past]

my life

four children
drinking water
from glasses placed on either side
of my sleep-

it is on these nights
when I am sick
that I become the sound of my ears
softening
my mind’s
thoughtless position
on time, that I am ably

here, ably slow

full view
of the aging

marksman

~

[On phobia]

as I refuse

(to enter
the ocean)

I’m pretty sure god has put my death in a bug  

~

[On the need for a watchlist]

if one can talk of it, one is most likely not poor.  we called you to life to give you a name.  god became the man men wanted to be.  god wore a dress he could see through.  a short history of heaven made its way to hell to have its location shared.  your mother developed a stutter.  your fake cry took on a depth of meaning made us dip

(psalm
for satellite)

into your brother.

~

[On paternity]

as his mother has heard only yesterday how he was born to some nobody that everyone can describe, she instructs her barber to slide a lit cigarette behind her ear.  as unimportant as the barber is, his pencil makes a subtle change in her dream of putting a cricket on the witness stand.

~

[On my son having little to no vision]

I am on count eight of ten-

ten, the future.

I call you raindrop,
your hiding place

water

-

staring contest-

the only child and the twin, then

the lonely
victor

~

[On decompression]

the zombie movie about buzzards.  the hours that go undetected in the parents of forty-eight special needs children.  

~

[On lore]

I have two dreams of running into the newly pregnant late bloomer.  in the first and most recurrent, I am operating a remote control car I’ve lost while worrying about a brother’s closeness to a certain pilot.  in the second, my mother is talking lights out to nostalgia’s previous owner who agrees with her that the roofs of buildings need to be smaller.  in both, I get the sense my father has already hit the pop fly under which he collapsed muttering baseball, baseball, ghost of a baseball.

~

[On suicide]

I was here long before you guessed my age  

-

(our proverbial sister dons again the birthday suit of body language)

-

the dog won’t eat.  might it know

we come from the family of sitting and dying?

~

[On contact]

hold kitten
like a rifle.  pop

a paper sack
at your father’s

ear.  ah, your father

who was made to kneel

for two
maybe three
things

(god, shrapnel) a flying saucer

from the wreckage of his church

~

[On writing]

my sense of place is a person.  *** is odd,

right?  this thing that auditions

for what it has.

memory proves god
in that it proves
god
is lazy.  

she oversees bathroom breaks for the crucified.  

I was born without a twin.