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.

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

brother
I fear
we've made
such a deal
of Cain

he believes
he threw
but a pebble.

the knee of hers I don’t kiss

this region
long
on religion

/ the house
she’d have robbed
had her insides
changed

repetition
is never
more
than one
poem.

there’s no future
in this pill.

my mother’s head
is full of heads.

I haven’t a volleyball
in a pond
to **** on.

in the words of my son
a sailor     is lost at me.

I go on correcting oddities
in the brain and in the muscle
of a jack
in the box

as a cyclist
champions
hunting mourners

to keep their numbers down.

when in poetry she is referred to as mother she uses it to show others her fatalism has regressed.  on par with such beliefs as voice recognition and voice recognition technology.  she knows a dream is a good reminder of how someone looked.  when detoured from the road they’re filming on she manually rolls up the driver’s side window to say curse words.  a tire rolls by.  then a second tire called ahead by a bus on fire.  adventures in adoption.  her diary keeps a brother.

15% off all print books and free mail shipping at Lulu today with coupon code of MAYMAIL15

~

some poems:

~

[raise god]

it’s a nice enough baby with an inability to emit. the adult world worries but no more than than it does for the television’s volume during bouts of ceasefire. parents divorce or parents agree on the same support group. siblings form a circle around a one trick pony. some believe the jack-in-the-box is broken while others believe it’s patient.

[taunts]

death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.

[pathos]

our fighting
determines
which of us
is more
sonsick.  

relic child, town crier.

I take what I’m given, beating.

cerecloth, snow
on snow
before and after

it buries.

me of course
as I position
myself
to hum

above
a basket.

me as I marry homeward
and kick

ball, stone, stiff
bird

stiff bird in death
doubling as
the rat
of an angel

yes
kick
for reasons known
to another’s

pet cobra

skin to skin
in an unmarked
life.

[costume]

we’re here to ****** the head of the boy who put a clown’s red nose on the girl playing jesus for stopped traffic. if I spoke your language, I would tell you.

[poor lighting]

a plastic doll with a human right hand distracts us from the parrot’s empty cage. we have been writing in unison instead of eating. our poverty is so advanced it keeps a fake diary and a real diary but hides them in the same spot. we are dying in two of our mother’s arms. our mother is elsewhere repeating after the man who does our stunts.

[collapse]

how
on a clear day  
my father
is the face
of absence.

how what I mean
cuts the finger

my mother
sips.

how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.

how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp

says I myth
my sister
who is still

vanishing
to shoplift
god

from the thunderstorm
we gave her.

[southern treehouse]

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

[outside the body it is always procession]

I may have lied about being pregnant but I know my ******* kid.

her father quells *******.

ants are quiet.

-

his teeth make sense.

our yell is I’m gonna shoot you in the blood.

-

elsewhere
is a light dusting
of downfall.  sleepily

legal

are the sunbathing sad.

[crown]

i.

a hand towel
over the lid
of any
stubborn
jar-

a mother to a father
or less frequently
a father to a mother
I don’t know why this is
but either way
a gentle admittance

to couple

as if passing beneath
the singing voice
of statue…

ii.

that stage
where a baby
is all
head

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

below is an unpublished companion piece {shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner} to my recent chapbook, infant*cinema (**** Press, April 2016)  

as such:

~~~~~

[shut-eye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.



~
it’s all in your head.  the newborn we had on a mountaintop.  the word it knew from memory.  its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate.  the cold our dog died from.  the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers.  that was never full.



~
existence is the wrong inquiry.  

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.  

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.



~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.



~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.



~
and what
would forgiveness
do?  

my kids were never born.  yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again.  I strip

when my stomach
hurts.



~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

-

god’s color has returned

-

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

-

first



~
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…



~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet.  he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.



~
the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

-

I want your work to matter.



~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…



~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair



~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...



~
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.



~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
  book
  for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love



~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ



~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

-

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double




~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.



~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover



~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.



~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.



~
church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.



~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.



~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.



~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.



~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing.  how big is your family and who wears the mouth?  is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****?  that your mom had no baby tired of being born?  that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?  

/ year nine:  your birthday spider is put on film for biting.  your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:



~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.



~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.



~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.



~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.



~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.



~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake



~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.



~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god



~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood.  inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean.  a boy whose mouth

was never
here.  all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.



~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.  

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark.  I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.



~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between



~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return



~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

off duty
lifeguard
with cigarette
his nerves
shot
reading
an obnoxiously
cursive
letter
about
how a baby
moves
in its very
still
mother

the house knows I’ve been sleeping in my car. my son opens an empty fridge. no one in the book has turned on a light. I am dying. I never got to make a habit

of this. I love more

her adopted
clock.

the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth

death
with its collection
of misfit
bookends
has an ear
for birth
if birth
is speaking
on the loss
of an empty
headed
photo

-

is god going to **** it up

the addict’s
spotless
campsite

yes

in the dream
I hadn’t been
using

brother drinks water enough to shock the devil.  on the inside, he’s all doll.  I shake him for show might our sisters travel in pairs.  I used to talk but had to close my mouth when the soft spot on his head kept my mother from her toes.  it’s the second stone that really lands.

i.

satan is livid.  says the hamster wheel was a gift and asks you not to be fat on account of his nervous energy.  


ii.

     dear puberty,

the body of this letter confirms the messenger
is god.


iii.

thing is
I thought I’d never
see it again

     (I thought I’d sent it into her belly)      

even I made a hamster
noise

following a dry spell of imagery

my decoy at the gates of heaven

your illness
dreams
a kingdom
it cannot
people

     takes
to sky
and there
meets death.

tell me
they talk.

my friend is a cemetery.  his broken fingers are testaments to the boredom of wind.  do you write to yourself in prison?  your kid cannot scribble.  he tries and it makes him fierce.  I make heads or tails of him no matter.  your mother came to me in a bowling ball.  whispered about the dryer opening and out came a burning in your sister’s ear.  things are tense.  your father still cleans the sounds you make.

that none
should endure.

[childhood (i)]

the body of jesus
pulled from the sea

~

[childhood (ii)]

I am, in the dark of an unwashed submarine, kissing his head

like it had
a message.

~

[lost priest]

I come from a place where a school bus hits a dog and the bus driver barks and all her kids play dead

~

[poem]

remember to rub them, the hands of the slow learner.

and to say their prayer

the one for the bald princess

& her child’s
perfect
somersault

~

[each ear is an only child]

shaped
by a scarecrow
barber
known
to cut straws
for quiet
angels

I am made mostly of trying to find my way back to bread

i.

one helpless, one permissive
I made quickly
equal cuts

in the newborn-

     deep that they’d honor

my witness.

ii.

to pre-empt déjà vu
I tailored the newborn’s gown

to the debt of its body
with such fabric
I could not afford.

iii.

that it could sound check
the echo

     I named it child.

iv.

     renamed it whistle

for how the wind
picks up
forgetting.

for father


two men in their mid-fifties take turns cooking for each other in a country house.  a bucolic tiredness flattens the land.  one man says aloud *I’ll sleep when you sleep.  when the end of a thick rope appears on the doorstep the men tug at it and decide the chore is no burden.  they reel the rope into the house for three days and nights before nodding off.  once awake, the men can’t piece why the front door is propped open with a rifle they rarely use or why this or that vase is broken or why the piano bench has been moved.  neither speak it but it’s a helluva rifle.

some
having occurred
from natural
childbirth

others
conceived
by two
dissimilar
thoughts

     and still others
whose first memory
is not

departure

to watch the fire I make my way to a hay bale.
a certain misshapen bale I first called

scarecrow’s womb
but now

jesus hill.

this is the kind of time I have.

-

my sister believes her left eye doesn’t exist.
that it is the shadow of her right.

because of her many beliefs,
my father has placed himself
inside
a pacing
man

where he curses like a censored linguist
made to collect
a tower’s
rubble.

-

in my dreams I am charged with a notch of black tape
and the sloth
agony
of a woman’s
******.

-

I pass a finished tree with some color left in its leaves
and recall my uncle swallowing his ribbons

from the heyday of flame
     at the height of what mother called

*intake

have mostly boys and then have one of them need god.  stop the spread of suicide by not only creating an angel but by creating an angel that knows to cover its mouth.  kiss any person who says it’s your daughter’s height that keeps her from landing the role of jesus.  assume you are bait for touch.  dedicate yourself to men populations bore.  put the male in male ****.  ice your knuckles.  give death a day here and there with crow.  switch crows.  the past can’t leave itself alone.

I live in a world where saying something is preferred. After selecting poems from my previous fourteen full length collections and placing them in my recent The Women You Take From Your Brother, there was bound to be some wreckage. My newest collection, Choice Echo, is that wreckage. I’m behind it, and bound for aftermath. Self published, 141 pages.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/choice-echo/paperback/product-21852599.html


sample poems, from:

forgeries

permanence is upon us.

one who paces.

predator
that I never took
for god.

-

on the inside
the predator
I attacked
personally

became the world
where the window
into the world
of hazing
opened.

-

in infancy
I possessed
a belonging.


humanitarian pause

not as common
is the dream
stuck
in the man.

not all wounds
report back.

I’d look for my father
if I knew where
to begin.

with my mother
it’s like my mother never happened.

I am the man whose missing woman
was bedridden
first.

I depend on my safety.
I worship a sleep that worships.

my brother feels no pain. a characteristic
he blames
on my sister’s
begging
to be interrogated.

not on speaking terms with a former self,
the dream is god.

she remembered
not
his suicide
but her brother’s
cough, how it ruined

not
the scarecrow’s
silence

but the etiquette
of the crucified

like failed
bookshelves
or crushed
steps

the hill houses
of poorer
classmates

worry me like weather
and put in me
visions
of large
men
called away
to feed

at a trough
maintained

by a family
of flat chested
asthmatics
who sell
magnets

one can later
dot with glue
and give
to the mother
who has
everything

quote unquote

crucifix

in his shorter
life
the father
accepts
a remembered
total
of two
persons:

the dry humper of the drowned.  

the maker
of astronaut
oars.

I have no word telling me if my father is good sick or bad sick.  I was put in this room to recover from being related to my son.  I am delivered women one at a time but only sporadically.  each stays just long enough for the pregnancy to take.  it is my guess the deliveries occur while I am sleeping.  the more I try to stay awake the sicker I see my father.  I am not asking for an exact location.  I am asking that you rescue my neighbor.  the fake life he is based on.

I have gone without god to see the hands of my hands.  

I tell you they were there.  

I tell you
I am the same
distance
from

my eyes.  

christ, kid.  

the present
alone
takes three
ghosts.

the part of a boy
that is most like
a dishrag
from the last
supper

the laundromat
where one
gives birth
to a ball
of sleep
or learns
to somersault

the handicap space
where on
your bike
you breathe…

the flower, the grave, the clown
car’s

driver / her nose

the call
to blood

the windows
of my pastor’s
home

I thought them
spotless

his wife brought me lemonade
and washrags

then sat with him
inside

the waters recede and god

good for him
saves

with the carcass
of a deer

mama’s
parking spot

/

unrelated, I have begun to see

the fat kid we surrounded for pulling a knife on a bird

yeah madness had a motorcycle
for every
drive-thru

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

the fly
has a bed
and cat
was declawed
by snow

kiwi fruit
can be held
in the mouth
for minutes
at a time
without
causing one

to gag
     I know this
because my mother
is looking for me
in this short
poem

I know
she is a quitter
     she knows I am
asthmatic

fragile

a thief

on a stage
in a beaten
field
a man
new to walking
is opening
with his hands
the belly
of a shark
that’s eaten
by word of mouth
a local
priest
whose fingernails
miss teeth
like an angel

the second
to last
man
on earth
sets a gas can
by a hissing
tire
and struggles
a box
from his pocket

     not knowing

how many
are left.

when as a father
one arrives early

one is lonesome

and given
by no one
the task

of remembering
the empty lot
roped off

and daughter
needing both hands
for the rock

aware of my body
as if my body
is on a raft.

a creaky deceit
I call
rafting in the ****.

     last night in a very safe garage
I promised a friend
I’d mention
the moon
in the period following
my last
idea.

my body eats me.
god dangles the body of my son
in front of my son’s
next
memory.

some are born
born-again.

     current trends include cloning.
the first person to recall dying
will be held aloft.

on holiday, privately
asking
if autism
is a trend

a sister
can be seen
beside herself
as one

whose turn
it wasn’t
to feed

the water

dream’s oldest pig. stork’s

bucket
of footprints. god

the signal
it sent

I went through a period of sticking things in my ear. not too far except this one time mom said it sounded human but also like all sound had lost its memory.

being poor is a myth.

myth
a fact
with self
esteem.

a father was running circles around a baby.

our prayers go only so far
in marking
hypnosis

we say infant when two things at once warn a symbol

we call it bird
what was done
to the bird

we plate crows from black market microwaves

burn a wheelchair
to mow
the lawn

(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

I don’t know how to feel bad for people no more.  I’m 40 now but grew old near some woods that had in them a creature whose name came outta nowhere.  it brought babies to those close to me to have them raised on stories of missing children and by the one movie we were allowed to watch.  not since stone number three have I been a spitter.

I watched television for three hours then went outside for what seemed like three more.

I’ve been feeding the kid in different areas of the house.

falling asleep is forgetting to eat.

the naked mailman
he didn’t die
after all.

the church has begun to remember the world.  

melancholy has its own mosquito.

yesterday, the kid wheeled himself in front of the fan and opened his mouth.

things burn where they land.

I wasn’t born but have to see for myself.