angel tantrum
poems, Barton Smock
171 pages
April 2025
cover image by Noah Michael Smock

Collection is pay-what-you-want. Be sure to include your name/address details in the comment section of payment type. Email bartonsmock@yahoo.com for free PDF if interested in reviewing.

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A couple short poems from the collection to convince one of nothing:

A CIGARETTE IS A STAR DE-AGED BY GOD

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.

ANGELS WANT BODIES THEY CAN LEAVE

There was a second story told where Jesus got sick quietly and died watching his mother rub her wrists together. Angels want bodies they can leave.

close by, a man is relearning how to cradle his corrected son.

my luck
the alien
I saw
was disabled

after
the talking
animals
of body
horror

and before
acolytes
anonymous-

the wrong
dying
baby

his whole life he described himself
to a dying boy

boneless angel whose love of knitting)

(the boy from the second garden takes a bath

the future?

of the world ours is based on

/

my teddy bear
doesn’t
sleep

/

birth
means the baby
on your back
can swim

if no animal
is there
describe
to me
the one
furthest
from a mind
harmed
in the making

dream is a boy dressed as his abuser sizing aquariums for the hand of a spider

body

like some use an alias. fingerprints

manna
for hand.

–

I was dreaming I guess
in the face of brevity

–

of god’s glassrabbit ocean

with some distance
god
gave suicide
to a crisis
actor

pills
minus the pills
given
by shepherd

I take every other footprint
to mom’s bedroom
she is there
pointing
a pack of cigarettes
at the television
I am still the age
of our year
together
I’ve yet
save
for the one
son
he sent
to see
god
mom says
there are others
for example
my dad’s
lonely
assailant
there is not a painting
mom
likes more
than beware
of dog
and the healthy
they were cured
to believe
in nothing

I don’t have an opening line.
The godless
Snow eaten
By a red
Dog was close.
Of the things my sadness
Notices,
Your suicide
Is second
To your second
Suicide.
My blue
Jokes
Deepen
Hair.
What I mean is
The undead
Lack
Sorrow.
Wait, ghost.
Wait, Sylvie Mix.
A guy I knew in high-school
Was shot
By his son. I don’t think
It’s great
That I know
He had a son.
Go, ghost. A cut
On a thousand
Bods.

we bid
in Ohio
on a pack
of condoms
dropped
by the invisible
man.

birth approaches its black stoplight.

in clothes
that fit
I feel
remembered.

invented as a way to impress pain

/ had to pass
through sleep

sister has to use her body to care for her body.  teacher of dolls. believer in the grenade become star.  her blood she is told could ruin her baby’s nose.  her thumb is a comma.  god’s is a crow.

Death is for the slowly dying. I ate in hell so quickly I was forgotten by salt. I’m never naked, but write for years that I am. God is killing the angel I impressed with shyness. I’ve never told any person in one sitting three things about my body. My father had drawn the crucifixion and my mother was showing me in a poem the only time sleep was caught outside with death. Stop loving me. Start.

Might a man come across the man he’s imagined, the man creates god.

My son, born sick, isn’t always.

the cricket
makes sense
because it looks
like silence

is doll
always
or never
sick

Some animals have had success dying behind god’s back.

I squeezed in an airplane
your hand until it broke.

(that toy
car
from our blue
mom)

Storks
can’t lose
blood.

There is always a mosquito on my wrist

I learned
so early
that belief
became a cat
checking
my pulse

I thought of something
the other day
mom

I don’t know if it happened
A little girl
got sick

swallowing
band-aids

That’s a weird way
for the body
to get out

of communion

I made that joke where
ever
one with
the nostalgia
of goldfish
was everyone
left

That girl was on tv
getting tickled
by a man who wanted
to still
be in Eden

Mom I saw the car
No person
it said
plainly
is here

Some boy
next
if not
for time

through the end of October, any monies I receive from the sales of my publicly and/or privately available self-published books will be sent to a poet friend of mine who was injured while clearing debris for others after Hurricane Irma.

as part of the above, I have a privately available self-published collection of selected and new that will exist for two days (10/30 and 10/31) that is titled {soft facts}, 315 pages, $10.00

it is available via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)

one cannot love the ocean
without asking an orphan
to be
specific.

I tell my words
to use
my poems.

father he quotes
echo. his shadow

a short story
by ghost.

i.

a puppet’s
glove
a gift
from the pilot
of paper
doll

ii.

a sock for the melancholy of distant hand

I don’t know what she saw
in that jar

but she’s been hours

rubbing
my head
with a balloon…

dad switches out the bag on her head
and slips something in my mouth
while saying
mouse
in the dollhouse

I doze for a moment and see a priest
pretend to fall
from a horse, and a stork

act
as it should

I see myself
a form
forged
by a twin, a reincarnation

that perhaps impressed
my photographer
son

guessing
the animal
at the end
of the chain
that’s eaten
the matchmaker’s
rib
but what
do we know
of weather
and its persons
gone to salt

A white sock
cannot pray
for the rabbit’s
stomach.

Look at stuff and die.

I am
when I drink
a birthmark
removal
expert
or an angel
privately sad
who prolongs
with a rabbit
held together
by grief
a whale’s
insomnia…

Boredom is a mirror’s god.

Pianos
in the winter
are cruel.

God was in the room that was later turned into god.

Did your loved ones get out?

Jesus wore a spoon around his neck.
It helped him sleep.

we peck
in the darkroom
at the wrist
of a fish
our body language
proofing
the baby’s
dream

A movie died and I wanted to write better.
You put a lake in a lake.
Whole childhoods
of an angel
went nowhere.
I binged
for my brother
body horror
from an invisibly
watched
loneliness.
Mom
gave us mom.

I held the puppet down
father
he cut
a deeper
ear, hunger

ours
was going

bald

a body to dry my blood.  some god

seeing me
as a person…  

how quickly birth gets old.

as if waiting
for you
to hallucinate

it is there

the sea

-

eating secrets in a dream

is the owl
with hands

-

I think we buried
darkness
wrong

I still need a mother for my action figures.  still pray for the baby in the hand-soap commercial.  still make, in dream, symbols for what died there.  still hold photography

as god’s
early love.

I had the longest dream

you were there and mom
was in your head

our pets had all gone blind

dad was bathing
a baby jesus
in the basket
of a bike

I began to forget
things, the toy

that ate
its young