my son is four
plus
hours
old.

his age in Ferguson, Missouri.

his age in Cleveland, Ohio.

his age
in the church
of a mother’s
palindrome.

-

in life, I obsessed over the volume of an alien language.  luckily,

film
had the presence
of mind
to speak
to my brother’s
body.

-

son

don’t pray.  make.

-

something
that could pass
for a gun.

has this look
it’s had
before-

white wall.  snow’s double.

the lonely man holds that the mouth is god’s mark.  the lonely man announces with a blow dryer my bath bound mother.  years ago, I was caught doing two things and was sentenced while both were speaking.  nowadays, I hear for my father who listens politely to talk of never let a beast be your eyes.

I choose an icicle to be the mirror’s rifle as brother puts a cigarette behind sister’s ear and calls her transported.  father eats outside before smoking in.  mother does what she does for wind.  hangs a scarecrow’s keys.

The turtle dreams of strangulation in a green emptiness

A star is the graverobber of god

I texted the writers not all of them

Writing is sometimes being drunk while putting a mouse back together in a mountain

We can kiss here
is an eyepatch
for your moon
tattoo

I don’t know why anyone would want to see anything

What if his son
stayed put

getting on
in years

his body
weaned
of its addiction
to being
vital

the artist
begins to realize
he is one
man.

catching up
seems impossible
without god.  father

or no,
his person
proves another.

there’s a monster
at the beginning
of this book
on aversion
therapy

this book I read
to myself
under god
that I might note
ahead of time

the diminishing returns
of a son’s
departure

with a kid for each hiding spot, father thanks god while mother takes a head count.  I am back from the fair with a rendering of how I will look to my ******.  my brother is already in position and has contorted himself in a manner he thinks will convince me he can shrink his ears.  my sister is nowhere a bumblebee can’t find.  our puppy picks a new favorite because it bruises easily.  numbers game or no numbers game, loneliness is coming.

I love fake things.  the tasered clown.  the sheep my young father remembers being sliced like bread.  the paper shredder that kept some animals from entering the time machine.  the baby in riot gear.  the other baby telling itself not to move.  the blood’s blood type.

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.

on muscle detail, the clapping boy from the cult of thunder brings a wheelchair to the last rocking horse known to model swimwear for the few dolls that remain married to the same mask. the boy is weak but maybe he puts two words together. like ghost

and exodus. for the second coming of the handcuffed animal.

in a stopped
train
if you listen
you can hear
a moving
other.  any man

in your bed
is you, but

taller.

I used my nearest
sister
to strike
my brother
who’d wasted
the last tooth
of his horse
meant
for a slingshot
on a meal

for a scarecrow

-

the power
to mother
went out

-

father
compared
puppets

-

our heaven of socks and string

the child, the loneliest

reconciliation…

-

it is not quite suicide, not quite

career

-

sorrow’s racket,

as in

a deer
in the path
of an oncoming
deer

-

son I carry

no one’s
blood

when it was said
cannonball
I heard cannibal
and wondered where
was my helmet

my dad as a boy was bullied
by evocation, as a man
by the flawlessly
deaf

puppet to puppet, I only have two hands

the future
is all
you see

I am

, in the failed
body
of the creature
that swallowed
my thinking
spot

, still
a baby

I am homeless and thinking in unison.  yours is also my, beast.  I talk into my hands because I believe they chatter without me.  cold, where they go, based on the books I’ve held.  our beast can sleep without touching its thoughts.

this
is a projection
of my mother
reading aloud
to herself

she is preoccupied
with the worry
that her gift
to my son
is too big

I want to tell her
it is just
a shirt

     and
about the crowd

games like tea and fake
blood test

/ doll with a pill in a painted-on shoe

I have.

this longing
for Eve's
childhood.

my first worm
I thought
it was being
dragged

I was just a boy

it was just
worm
like

/ stillness
has it always
been
genetic

/ the context of god, the deadpan

birth
of son...

/ nowhere’s

by design
butterfly

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

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

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

in a wagon
in broad
daylight.

here is what I know:

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

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

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

confess

the devil
puts hair
on your chest
but takes it
from your head.  

mother’s mirror
catches lice.  

I am working on my tongue because father is late.  
his speech
on narcotizing
dysfunction

is longer
now that mother
wrote it.

where no surgery
is
is where

brother
has an itch.  we call it

trouble
in the garden.

there was trouble in the garden
when I filled my father’s
foot
with blood.  I had seen

a woman’s
legs

turn
inside out
as she ******
the poison

from a gas nozzle.  legs

she didn’t need.

mother in mouse slippers sees a rainbow and burns the bread.  ******* rainbow was hunger before someone tried to erase it.  I am not god but I do have insomnia.  mother can do in her madness what most can in sleep.  father hollers at a soldier suffering from memory gain.  I throw baby brother’s rattle over a moving tank.  

count for the dead their black sheep.

my father
the father
of a city
he was born
inside.

     father lit
by the soul
of his shadow.

-

city first, as in

city dark, as in

city first.

-

     his child a partial vow to be lonely
in moderation.

[war footing]

a parrot
sawed in half
by peace
or quiet

~

[ballerina]

dog whistle, nothing’s church-bell:

my mother, handcuffed

still worships
wasp

~

[mothers, acoustic]

we are maybe
inside
an Ohio
factory

childless and ready

for a refresher
on orphan
etiquette-

word is
there came
a cow
from the nothingness
that drank
nowhere’s
father

and sleep
is death’s
babysitter

~

[darker farms]

food
saved
from a house
fire

–

the cult following of nostalgic paranoids

–

a star, this deer

as it prays
for moth

~

[annihilatives]

the first murdered woman was not killed by her sister.

stop me
if you’ve not
heard

~
~

also, {name calling} is my newest self-published poetry collection

it is available on Lulu

book preview on site is book entire

free PDF is available. also, free hardy copy available for review.  both upon request.

poems, from it, are below:

~
~

[entries for listen]

mirror
to window
we’re moving
away

~

[entries for fixation]

the name of this scar
is
they couldn’t hide
the canoe

mom says there’s an oven
at the bottom of every lake

that I was born asleep
surrounded
by toe touchers

is art
world-building
for the geeks
of grief

have you crucified

starfish

~

[entries for children]

remember, it is dark and memory is god painting with the blood of those he would create

from Eating the Animal Back to Life [ poems July 2015 ]

collection is available here:  http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/eating-the-animal-back-to-life/paperback/product-22277755.html

currently, Lulu is offering a 20% discount on all print books with coupon code of SPENDLESS20



[in the beginning]

wear a cheap mask
to bed.

kid, your mama

she can’t
touch a baby
without touching
a baby

that’s hers.  

small brain,
I have less
to wash.
 
[fishing hand]

a demon with three days to live is given to my father’s body.  in this, father finds luck to be neutral.  mother is a good explosion, brother is a bad.  when the dust settles, sister can see the baby in her stomach.  it is my belief and it is also god’s that our food is the food we forgot to poison.  to pray, I am left with little more than an animal’s halo and two representations of what you were not seriously clawed by.  in your sleep, you move me into mine.  a finger shows itself to the back of my throat.


[themes for star]

in a small attic
a boy
on all fours
being weakened
by a spider’s
dream
is putting
an ear
to the roof
of his sister’s
dollhouse.  for making

the wrong
sounds
for animals
poor sister
was lowered
into the baby
you were born
to lift
by two
scarecrows
you’d think
were separated
at death
for the way
they don’t
carry on.


[race]

says poverty
someone
at this table
has nothing to hide.

says father
touching
a UFO
cures frostbite.

says mother
open
the stomach
of the winning
monster.


[cope]

no one goes to the crazyhouse
for having a hand
that repeats
itself.

in a new place
my brother
does one
of two
things:

masturbates
or says
déjà vu.  

if he didn’t tell me
I wouldn’t know
I’ve slapped myself
awake.

one of us
then one of us
will die.

before I got sick
there was a sound
my mother
could make
and a bird
perched
on the arm
of a snowman…

angels, yeah

some
grab their ears
when trapped

I snap out of dropping
my mother
on her head
while the young man
looks at his feet
as two dreams
of being
run into
by the newly pregnant
late bloomer
his father
warned him about
after filling
his backpack
in this place
paid for
by another
country’s
melancholy
where next

we share

a comb
forget
whose hair
was first
and refuse

to be sorry
for the baby
having gotten
its grandparents
down
for a nap

I see single.

a girl not hop-
scotching
behind a man
who could be my
but is her

father
dropping
what is
half smoked
for her
then right
then left
bare

shoe

(a shoe is and can be bare)

they seem okay

use a straw, hatchling

/ my behavior
in the dream

in the room of my adolescence,
my father is hurriedly scanning
the newspaper
as if
it’s the bandage
of a clumsy
arsonist.  by the light
of its burning,
my mother
closes
with a hot
iron
wounds
I wasn’t
there for.  my brothers
are like two
kinds
of darkness,
intuitively

****.  none worry
my wax filled
****.

I started smoking in my early thirties because I missed my brothers.  because a train is the only thing I can act like I’ve seen before.  because a claw opened and a child dropped.  because unhurt the child was a girl and injured it was a boy made of being touched.  because giant birds were ****** to give other people rain.  because all hail, as all do, location.  because riot then riot envy.  because bright spot became a cloth in a police car.  because I can’t sleep and couldn’t without thinking of sleep as a copy of a copy.  because lost the baby wasn’t getting any younger.  because nightlight and tadpole, mom and dad.

warming his hands above a baby’s crib.

massaging the lame leg of a dog at rest.

accidentally crushing the pack of cigarettes in his right shoe.

you’re not the twin
I thought
you were.

in looking at my life

a fuckload
of sleep

after many nights spent praying to my mom, gender was my only option.  by some miraculous failure of successive thought, I watched as I vanished before I could become the living proof I needed to circumvent nostalgia.  does god still control himself in front of children?  you made a robot from the parts of a peeping tom.

I know a woman whose shadow will never be the same.

–

we are eating from a bowl that wants to go home.

we are
each one of us
the smallest
person
on earth

one is never too old
for god, never

too old
to surveil
the deaf

/ I know from your palm
what your hand
will drop, mother

cooks only
meat, father

is every
nightmare
she has
of her exodus

from apologue

/ having populated

the myth
of ******

the baby is empty

I have had to tell time using only repetition.  there is a tattoo I want on a body I don’t.  I can see what you see in me.  none of my sounds echo.  I have a son.  I prepare for him past meals that leave nothing untouched hoping he’ll learn to chew on his own.  he has three rooms upstairs and three down.  when his bed can’t move, he says something to a door.

babies

gone
that were never

here, this

is the worst
we can do

in both
worlds, this

is nothing, the nothing

that nothing’s

crayon

draws on

in record
setting
heat

to hearten
the chalk

outline

of a mother’s
body, the mother

like mother’s
husband’s
coat

big

no one goes to the crazyhouse
for having a hand
that repeats
itself.

in a new place
my brother
does one
of two
things:

masturbates
or says
deja vu.

if he didn’t tell me
I wouldn’t know
I’ve slapped myself
awake.

one of us
then one of us
will die.

why, brothers, are we so angry? I’m just out of image rehab. tell mom they couldn’t get the ****, so to speak, back on the oven. I know a kid of mine won’t walk the impossible dog. I know it deep down. arsonist first, birdwatcher second. drone to stork and stork to mermaid. I feel your pain.

for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.

it took her nine months
to crave
being lifted
by baby-

his strength
worried us

and our rage
would not
blind-

I was the first
to remove my belt
the first
to become
dizzy
the only

not laughing
like a *******
girl

I am not a warm person.  different gods, none exist.  did this really happen?  the things I counted myself as a person passing were longer than I thought.  someone kissed jesus on the ear before he could get from bad fish the poisoning that took your mother from hers.  now is the act of stuffing a picnic blanket into a basket of doll grief and then is the fossil of suffering that bones invisibility for daring to redress the father of great avoidance about the loss of behavior in his boys of sudden things.  what I do I don’t when gutting a stork.

like maybe god got into your head and left her mark on a clue.  like maybe you’re the meal a father imagines he’ll make to injure an animal.  like maybe there’s the eye has mama’s strong stomach and the eye has her hypnosis.  like maybe you have one leg because it’s the leg taught baby to burn its food on a pig.  like maybe talk is the scar this language looks at while going from snow to ash.

Our nakedness had little to do with the most immediate creatures deciding not to **** us. Eating grew on the tree of loneliness. A cigarette is a star de-aged by god.

I was made
to believe
in the making
of the thing
you were made
to see

-

Q:  what is a hand?

A:  my own blood squirting out of a fish

-

it is hard to choose a coffin
when your mother
is clutching
a purse

name the baby
and then
name
what it has.

an optimistic father
who calls
its insomnia

a god
with a god

complex.

The disconnected god of blood

The wasp of loss

I don’t have your headache, kid

A cigarette looks for its teeth
Sleep
for the older
wrist

of proximity’s
nearby
ghost