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.

a tacklebox in a prison yard

a wasp
from scarecrow’s
childhood, also

nostalgia

the forgetful native
indigenous
to absence

a collarless dog fetching a grounded kite

trauma’s original boredom

the search parties
wind and blood

acolytes of the short leash, light

has more
to say
than god / think of me

angel
as a hand
from a haunted
house

a smallness
that skips
a brain

a stuffed creature from god’s cage

-

sickness, the second person to forget my dream

the water here, brother, is flat. drinkable when it weeps.

what you hear is a mom moving her baby.

god / you can switch
him off
like a bug
in a coffin.

I saw yesterday
your daughter’s
eyesight.

I saw today something using its gums
to open a briefcase
and something else
its teeth
to crack
a beetle.

in more
than two
nightmares
now
I’ve been
towel dried
by a father
whose baby
was given
a brick
for sounding
/ scrapegoat

this word
at mirror’s
grave

by the time the robots believe in god, some of us want to be here. Misty keeps ripping her clothes off to make us think she’s cutting herself. I am not in love with her.

–

my son
his stomach
is a nightmare

–

Misty says making it hard is like pulling ticks from an owl. Misty says it is up to us to find the woman carrying the statue of her frozen brother.

–

a. act like a baby, not an indian
b. eat the way eating was born

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 boy
in another
language
pays
attention

light
marks again
its territory

grief beds sorrow, sorrow’s
eggs
mostly
hatch

dream only
of discovered
things

the ******, day one:  I have every photo I’ve ever been in.  mom is a wreck.  her and the dogcatcher keep mailing each other the same knife.  death worries it will be made to visit the ghost it promoted.  dad lets christ use the oven.  I can’t get over this idea I have.  an entire language to mask a word.

hunger is a clock devoured by worship

the rabbit hole
burdens
abyss

“Everyone you see
lives somewhere.
How is this done?”* - Franz Wright

I am wearing a bomb and she is wearing a bomb.  we are going to the same empty place.

alien
to spoonfed
angel

three teeth
if that
into ceremony / how early

one must be
to not
exist

we’ve had trouble conceiving an ugly child.  the stray will come back when it wants to play dead.  name the third mother in Solomon’s nightmare.  places I’ll never be

I’ll vanish
from

in the not
dream
of deserving
birth

three
beakless
creatures

open
the mother’s
mouth

more
are coming
just

to observe

I had a doll
kept me
from believing
in sunburn, ideas

for the same
church

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

for Kazim Ali*


two sons
share a pencil
then trade
ghost plate
for alien
stomach

No newborn can reach existence.
Sleep knows memory
cannot fix
an eggshell.

( into a field
  fled water
  from the spine
  of the lord )

Erections turn the stomach to salt.

made not
into a fisher
of men
my father
pushed off
in the little boat
of his wound-

so filled
the weeping bowl
of my mouth.

for Brian Dawson*  


god
to me
was any
word
my father
didn’t
know.

profess
to know.

your brother slips in the shower, and then down the drain.  friends, with other friends, get on a plane.  your mother calls.  she is angry that you’re not angry about not being made to scale.  you say into a curtain- one piece of red cake please.  today, you will make it to the top of a baseball bat.  father will make a little promise below his arthritis.  your wife will make you happy.  she will say happy birthday- it’s a model of the city you wanted to drink in.

said they had seen my father waving his arms and that he’d been eating something raw because it was on his lips and he was a different man. said that many were screaming their mouths onto the windows of the subway or dropping their heads between the legs of weak children as if they were to carry on command bowling ***** to the sober dammits. said they and said they so early my ear I had to put it on the table next to a spoon my father used quietly last week everyday of it. began god his forgiving of bears being seen downtown and began I to get very hungry to hear my father mock blowing mock broth to keep it in the bowl.