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

my luck
the alien
I saw
was disabled

invented as a way to impress pain

/ had to pass
through sleep

his whole life he described himself
to a dying boy

sound’s shy historian, digger

of a hole
for the mouth

Shape is the shape I must become to receive the world. There is no bomb called grief. No bomb child. The bells were rung I held my son. You can love your brothers forever. Thunder misgenders echo no more than once. Oh no Ohio forgiveness forgave forgiveness. What if you can’t stop writing this poem. My mother and father have the same password. Sometimes when I’m touching you I’m not. Touch tombstone for the mourning cosmos.

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

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.

pills
minus the pills
given
by shepherd

boneless angel whose love of knitting)

(the boy from the second garden takes a bath

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.

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

ours
was going

bald

i.

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

ii.

a sock for the melancholy of distant hand

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

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

Driving home from my mother’s shattered arm and mirage-eaten back, I convince myself I’ve taken a wrong turn. I’ve only been on this earth twice. My body doesn’t look different in the dark. I could be living in a man who's lost his loved ones. Behold I see the deer deformed in the same spot that it was last week and know I can twist my shadow toward those deer in the nowhere I’d be.

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

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.

no luck
at the inn
the couple
entered
the garden

god
he mourned
the lizard’s
tail

they, the death

their distracted
baby

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

Look at stuff and die.

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)

the cricket
makes sense
because it looks
like silence

is doll
always
or never
sick

a body to dry my blood.  some god

seeing me
as a person…  

how quickly birth gets old.

to it that hawks the mirror’s television, eating is the oldest trick in the book.

the ghost of my clone

/ does death
get the message

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

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 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

Acne is the only intimacy that god allows the lonely.

Face
is the star
nearest
to death.

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.

Sleep’s house is a debt that denies three dawns. I changed my mind about ghosts. They are the tombstones of angels. My mind seduced a star that was alive. Sound can’t **** its brother if I am ******* on my cuts in a cornfield. Today I wrote a resignation letter in invisible blood and the wind ****-shamed touch. Sound has a shy daughter. Two sisters named Cain asked me to dream.