hick
lore
rabbit
hole* / poems, barton smock, October 2016

self published, available on Lulu

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free PDF can be requested via contacting bartonsmock@yahoo.com

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if you tell a friend, the friend you tell can be imaginary

~

some poems, from:

[no wolf]

I was a doorstep baby and brother a treehouse.

moon of the injured. moon of the blind.

~

[his impressions of the experiment]

my closest frat brother looks at the toad and says frog *******. tackles me. fact: there is a certain kind of toad that by staying still can **** a drug dog. in this country, a man can sell doves from the back of a white van. a man can run out of doves. my ghost is obsessed with caterpillars. it doesn’t matter what you say. they found that woman.

~

[her impressions of the experiment]

his animals hiccup somewhere within the contagious yawns of god. his tumor is the crow of the ocean. the foot they hope to find me with is not yet purple. I shred a tiny pillow but your baby ain’t blind.

~

[circa (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

~

[circa (**)]**

to the man whose face can do things mine cannot, I give my son.

silence has no creator. pictures

of god
don’t sell.

the dreamless baby of a kidnapped mime.  a god whose mirror packs light.  the hand-me-down

self harm
of the terribly
made.

from the double vision of a dead parent’s dream shiner
to reflections
on the body
art

of departure,

long live possession.

atavism

(god is someone’s calendar

-

valley

(a girl with a marble who answers to overdose

-

pulpit

(rooster ghosted by elevator  

-

subculture

(in my years with the poor, I wrote nothing down  

-

alpenglow

(the scalp will baby its grief

before he goes back to providing the radio play-by-play for an obscure sporting event, father lifts up his shirt to show me the wire jesus wore.  he is so happy to have a listener, his microphone could be the ant I lost my voice telling.

the amount of thought
given to locating
the secret
mind.

I am on count eight
of ten-

ten, the future.

I call your hiding place
water.

-

of course you dream of falling-

those toys
are the toys
of god’s
children.

-

staring contest-

the only child and the twin, then

the lonely
victor.

-

let there be
all

the light.

-

I’ve never seen

a dead body, a pair
of handcuffs-

but don’t ask
the wristcutter’s
ghost.

-

I have the words to tell you about my son.
I hate that he needs me
to take
nothing.

-

a member of my search party
is rumored to have left
the lucky gal

a one pet home.

Touch has taken every handwriting class in hell. Eden is Eden because it’s the only place god doesn’t remember. Do not worry about where I am. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down.

talk early, walk late.  

eat
for food.

hold kitten
like a rifle, your father’s head

to god.

call my / with your

premie.

a ghost
in love
with a paintbrush

this ankle
not
from memory

[entries for tone]

it learned to read by being called every name in the book and it wrote eulogies for the children of getaway drivers and it knew nail as the light bulb of a dream journal and it did not know which palm print went with which birthmark on its mother’s vision board and it had its hair pulled out in a cornfield by a boy / god was too / young to have

[entries for Ohio (ii)]

how absence is to me a bowl and to you a basket. how brothers fight over the last fish and the first snowflake. how sisters arrive whole from the museum of shortcuts. how a baby dressed like another baby is not abused. how a father slips a bear into his story of a mousetrap. how a mother points a set of wind-up teeth away from a square of wet cement. how on a soundstage I roll my ankle while you lift alone a magician’s birthweight. how ****. how it listens in a bathroom stall to the click of a viewfinder. how they horse. and ache.

[no animal makes up for lost time]

toothache
come home
I’ll wear
a shirt

[untitled]

why does uncle
love baseball
and throw
so hard

what’s a city

kid I come before you
knowing full well
I won’t remember
my answers

the left hand is for pawing
at the broken
rabbits, these buildings

think god
will jump

who does memory
impress, who

can it warn

/ I left you for nobody else

if touch can end its own pregnancy

if it was
in fact
the strawman’s
earthquake
during which
I gave
as instructed
birth
to what
would repair
lightning

then yes

beware
the wary
dog

father the writer couldn’t write a character wasn’t naked.  when asked by none other than himself the writer he’d say he hadn’t time to describe the clothes being worn.  he’s like this drunk that’s been toilet-papered in a small ohio town on a former friend’s front step okay being called by boys a dumb mummy and by girls a bad bride.  son in a toppled but long since safe train car is putting bite marks on the inside of each wrist then smelling them because he doesn’t understand politics and because he wants to be found.  mother is homely and what’s left of a surgery is keeping her asleep under the newly navigated hands of ghost who’d come to fix the reception and stayed.  I am in a better place but from a room where I saw a reddened ear move high across a white wall and stop midway to become a magnet, mine, shaped like an ear.  we are currently enchanted by the rise and fall of a kite some sister flies to realize the forehead of god.

last day, 30% off all print books on Lulu with coupon code of OCTSAVE30

/

some poems:

/

[her impressions of the experiment]

his animals hiccup somewhere within the contagious yawns of god. his tumor is the crow of the ocean. the foot they hope to find me with is not yet purple. I shred a tiny pillow but your baby ain’t blind.

~

[estimations]

the hole we’re in has disappeared. we sleep on the gospel of baby mudlung. I pray mostly for people to get hurt. I don’t have a brother. he’s all alone. sister will smoke anything. a worm from the vacuum, the lice from nostalgia. I have a tv in my room that wants to play piano. I have a toy car and a turtle. it takes forever.

~

[upheaval]

a mongrel circles the stump of a tree. a spider from the angel’s dream goes on to spin a caterpillar. mom slips in and out of pregnancy. it’s my first time hearing a groundhog hate itself. you won’t crawl to anyone you haven’t seen swim.

~

[no after]

and what would you have me imagine? a change of tense in a tale of abuse. a baby licking the palm of a doll. a spoon. a robot’s broken arm. a chalk outline of a worm. hunger’s tacklebox. our allergic sister’s suicide note. a calf eating its first canary.

the angel
made to sing
the alphabet

the hummingbird’s
wolf-pack

we borrowed clothes
from the body.  food

wouldn’t fit
in our mouths

mother claimed

because

(iv)

flashcards for women in labor. predictions for memory. sheep.

the hidden breads of snow.

(v)

history is not a person. these are the kids it tried to name.

(vi)

elevator country. the hangings of nothing pregnant. baby knows a shadow that knows a shadow can tell a map what to do. can get a small library to carry books on men eating men in the right bathroom. baby is here for trying to stay. its tongue came out that way, stuck to its nose. a moral choice on behalf of its mother whose water we drank blind.

(vii)

I was having trouble remembering my dreams so I began to see someone who wasn’t. my demeanor was approachable, he said, but cerebral. he said we were in unfamiliar territory. he asked me if I’d mind looking at some pictures he’d forgotten to draw. jokes of the trade, he said. the first few dreams I think were his and were probably so by design. the two scarecrows, witch-hunt and crucifixion, came soon enough but were paired wrongly as husband and wife. their little klutz.

(viii)

I thought it was a movie about dancing and you thought it was a movie about the devil. our feet were warm. remember the alarm? worlds to which none were added.

so the dream
of my hearing
heard it
said:

the child
arsonist
is dead

and after
his lantern
of illness
dropped

what shape
his common
ear
became

(to record

the noise
of a mountain

boy) of a flame

the burning
stopped

my death a warped photograph of a former awe, 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
in sight of
the aging

marksman
I’ve given
a sporting chance

gaze upon our father
create a woman
and suddenly

know
to leave us

we do not know the exact day our son stopped aging.

by age
I mean
he has seen
the ghost
he’s envisioned.

–

by doctors I mean anyone we see on purpose.

by money I mean the money we made
in those years
that didn’t
move.

–

at forty
cutting oneself
with oneself
is not
****.

–

three years in, our daughter lies about what she is eating. asks

that we read to her
as she has
forgotten.

when pregnant, she says she has something to tell us.

–

I am not the life I wanted.

–

by tell I mean she says nothing.

–

we recognize the toy soldier as the last gift

meant our son
was normal.

–

the soldier has gotten older
and is obviously
sick. from the same set

we look for the medic.

–

no.

–

I take the soldier in my hands then pass him, alien bird, to my wife. he coughs once and tries to raise his hand but the weight of the gun is too much. my wife says: how sweet.

this night, our old bodies, our coughing soldier on the nightstand. we kiss and the sounds come from our teeth. I think about the tooth fairy, about not being rich. how we can afford

but probably not find
a coffin
that small.

after passing many dogs
with more skin
than fur, that seem to be
the starving men
of my dreams
if the starving men
of my dreams
had been brought
to the same place
to die
if that place
were me,

the man who sold
my brother
a gun

goes

as a father
praying over
a solitary
son

to his knees
in front
of a larger cage
and I see
the smallest elephant
and I keep
seeing it
as if I’m the only
one who can
though I know
it’s there, the sound it makes

like nothing sick, nothing animal-

I am not the brother
I’m the size of.

there is only one creature
doesn’t know
how long it had

to destroy
the world

when drought came
to my brother
I left
for the city
where I found myself
blanketing
manhole covers
with my coat
for women
who gathered
on rooftops
with men
whose daughters
had been killed
for jumping
rope

the wounded cursive of the boy who thinks himself chicken

the *** of the first person in hell

the number of animals
giving birth
in a field
where emptiness
burns

the logic of
if ax to tree, then scissors
to kite

[two koans]

deader
than his animals
that could speak
to language?


[roof love]

alien
to me

were the ashtrays

failed boats
of teeth

for my angry
quiet
brother


[rattle]

forget, sorrow
your anniversary

in case
you’re not
alone


[firsthand]

are they gone

the cats of the doll-faced arsonist

how does one
earn
loneliness, or slip

from an overlong

baptism


[doll traffic]

it is not a darkness to call it the demon’s untouchable telephone

I’ve referred
to worse
and anyway
time is the gospel
of disappearance

in stories, my brother has a tail
and speaks
mailman

perhaps there’s not enough to do

the tree has horns

a newborn wants to be a hand.  

there’s the dream I have of heaven
and the dream
god lets me
bring.  

my boy
has a crow
for a backpack.

it is coming to an end but I am still very proud to have kept my hands from my eyes for so long.  as for my ears, he hits me for letting them ring.  I hear by example.  I hear your father doesn’t need to look to know he’s been caught by his reflection.  as a last act, I hold this baby over a rain puddle, the devil’s television.

[airways]

I move
tonight
(while he’s
asleep)
my son’s
finger

across
my throat
/ everyone

wants to publish
my sister’s
ghost  

~

[confetti, glitter, sadness.]

to get news
in heaven
from other parts
of heaven
do you know
what it’s like
god’s blood
has fleas

~

[gulf musics]

two bodies of loneliness separated by the same beauty

(sea)

the eardrums of extra mothers

~

[soon musics]

i.

loss is lucky
to hear once
from absence

ii.

pregnant / reading fiction / to god

~

[aster musics]

i.

a god / whose god / has only / just died

that we understand
but cannot
by it
be understood

ii.

a deleted infant’s blank thirst

iii.

I thought it lost, a meal

our language
finished

iv.

or

v.

a ghosted

grasshopper’s
thumb / the sole / possession

of the brainless
calf

~

[a scene based on the need for such]

boy

(whose blood
is a fairy tale
kept
in his brain)

(who sees himself
reciting
for threesomes
the denial
of peter)

has his mother
cut the gum
from his hair

~

[vacancy musics]

how priest-like
my father is, the biter
of his own
breast, in the church
of my sister’s

bluer
moon

~

[on peacelessness]

no jump
scare
this losing
of child
to sheepish
math

~

[drift musics]

you won’t
drink it
but ask
anyway
for a glass
of milk.

vigil.

that bone you broke
while swimming.

I can dream my son’s weight in birdseed

bird
the swimmer’s
bread

on the day
you were, I felt
I’d been born
far enough
away
to bring you
this moment.

it existed, briefly, as a fly.  as my want to be
not on the wall
overhearing

from my son’s brain
all about
the five, six
months without

disorders
of muscle, and cell, and.  the five, six

months
an insectless
time
of the word
****…

terminology is exactly this fog.  is knowing
he will not be lost, but will
be referred to
as here.

her nightmare
from the era
of hibernation
revolves around
a baseball
made
by her husband
from the cobwebs
found
soaking
in the mouths
of babes

(mouths)

dry
from dreaming
of the sponge
bathed
by god
in the egg
of a spotless
crow

to my most disabled boy-

the girl’s name
we couldn’t
decide on.

to the curled woman
smoking her last
in the photo
she’s brushed from-

baby yours, or baby mine, how important
it is
we focus.

with their whimsy, their lifetime
of human
limb
syndrome, their pseudo

humble
origins
in the mind
which knows
first

of their want
to flee-

hands
are enough
trouble.

a rattlesnake is my kind of dog.  it takes a phrase like this for my father to start talking.  his hammer misses his finger and hits a nail.  **** gets done.  his many wives run into each other so he can hear them being deaf.  if the dog becomes ill, my father has it all worked out how I’ll have to explain to some know nothing the right way to put it down.  sleep is satan without god.

I find the boy’s name on a list in another boy’s diary.  a gun goes off in a dream I don’t have anymore.  the animal gets between my son and my son’s imaginary friend.  the root of its insomnia is not man but the fear of personification.  god’s gone when the story starts.  to war, to war.

I was healed twice
by a transient
woman

(once when I was a child
and once when I was
younger than
that child)

in the same life
the transient
doubled  
as a touched

man
who taught me
to be
brief

/ the hands and the crushed mind they crawl from

/ god of the briefly ugly

/ the homeless child of nostalgia’s native

/ graveyard
our game
of telephone

I trace my stutter to the narrative delay that uprooted my father who broke his foot in his sleep trying to kick his mother’s television.  I limp circles around those who’ve gone quietly.  grandfather, from heaven, I see my body as a surplus of irretrievable peace.

I saw you pretending to be part of that family as they made their way across.  I saw you put that doll’s mouth to your breast and enter a tent.  I saw a white van mock the pace of a white horse while you slept.  I saw your mother bite the hand because it was empty and I saw its emptiness wake you.  I saw you eating the password to eat.  I saw you at auction and thought for all I know you could be your father whose stillness was my address.

the holder
of stomachs

licking
clean
the doll
of a depressed
ventriloquist

~for cousin~

I injure
on my own
my right
hand
to give
the left
I was born

with

a break

/ wonder
whose hands
does father
have

being
that you know
how my mind
works,

revelation
is suspect.

one needn’t have a baby to leave it alone.

better to brush
the combs
from my hair.

dogs don’t run off, dogs find
the twins of other dogs
and are
home.

I heard the couch was dragged
outside
with sister
on it.

this from one
who smokes
in her sleep.

dreamt
I was ****
on rice
beach

-

dreamt a mother had gone to the desert
for fish

her son’s
fish

could eat
while swimming

-

two martyrs
share a camera
both

call
touch

-

dreamt sleep
was the eye’s
blood

relative

seashell as failure. bread my raincloud.

touching my face in a clueless dream

on sorrow’s
blank
horse.

I kiss her stomach and god sets a seashell on fire.
Angels fake amnesia.

a week ago, sister bled to death on a rocking horse. today is the short memory of our pig farming father and the suicide of the knife-thrower’s surgeon.

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream