i.

to be called forth
from nothing

how perfect

/ no melancholy
is fair
to insect

ii.

would that we could be separated
later
by birth

that we might enjoy
shape

/ the darkness of being remembered

was you could wrap a wooden spoon in aluminum and press it to the tongue of an infant. was you could smoke at work. was man was an act other men would surround. was your body would make of soul a ghost. ghost in a balloon holding its breath. was every stone was the head of a stone child. impossible. was vacation would yield vision a shore spat whale or a girl your age absently wiping the blood from her finger onto the leg of a bored white horse. was a woman would know she was pregnant and by knowing would be heavy. was gender was a kind of solace.

     was you could climb a tree wearing a dress and any looking would be a gift given to kite. was a rag for worry and a rag for pain. doubling as bath towels. was we understood the Bible to be written very well. when the saying of we was more specific. we without healthcare having also said amazing things. was my mother went to prison. was tomorrow your father would visit. might she turn, be your mother, and love him.

the mechanics of the beheading begin in isolation.

exiled from what it bumps into, a form
aches
for scarecrow.  

     my mother’s dream doesn’t burn.

the Ethiopian woman
shunned
for pulling rope
from between
her legs
in a manner
suggesting
the rope
has a beginning…

whose dead newborn
has the attention span
of the sadness
we register
as patience
in the guerrilla museums
of health
we are apt
to attend
on the backs
of men
who smoke
during
so they can chat

after
the cesarean.

he is a weak signal circled by two strictly circumstantial dogs.  the dogs have this hunger I can explain in my sleep.  once there I am suffering on found footage.  he doesn’t see my dogs and continues his optimism such that his hands are often in the early stages of being hands.  such that his heart is in a job looking for a job.  such that his muscles twitch with god and are not the muscles of Adam the only man with nothing to plagiarize.

in a war
over the facts
of a previous
war

an immune system
competes
for the silence
of god
as food

runs out
of children...

I read to my son

he tries to fork
the fireworks
in the back
of his head

I’m sorry.  I don’t know what’s gone out of me.  I look around and for every person I see with a first name I am charged to produce a method.  I bore the devil.  I do the opposite of shooting anything that moves.  I need an arm like I need a distant memory.  most of my blessings can’t afford a disguise.  on a scale from one to ten I cry.

my brother apologizes for being beside himself with the worry of his split personality’s identical twin.  his hospital gown is missing a hospital.  he asks my children kindly if they are at all possible.  he maintains that pain is the best editor and unveils the knee closest to undergoing brain surgery.  my revelations pale in loneliness.  my brother says it’s because they were spanked.  he says visiting me has given him a case of racial motivation.  he lullabies what I have identified as my wife’s newest.  he wonders in his own withdrawn way if the newbie sleeps out of a fear that is homosexual in nature and ****** birth in spirit.  he sings to a bag of salt and knows it.  don’t be sick.  father is my only copy.

before it is a child
it is a ******* noise
in the muffled witchery
of a blanketed woman
who fakes sleep
beneath a pew
in a plain church.

being awake
is to be
what nothing
comes after.

I fake my mother.

the twinkle in your mother’s eyes alerts god.  my thoughts are abused.  our fathers live separately.  will we live, also, alone?  surely.  to any inquiry, I am checking for survivors.  it’s a premature periphery, but a baby just floated by in an incubator.  the townspeople look like candles on the water.  chase is a kind of following.  the upper body of the minotaur lost everything.

this house
is a disaster
in front
of the children.

when an egg breaks
we’re poor enough
to count it
before it’s hatched.

I tell my sons
to never
put a tree frog
on an escalator
at the mall

and to avoid
taking gum
from my mouth
while I’m awake.

I tell my daughter nothing.
she believes her arms
professionally broken.

my mother was the last
to be
put to sleep
in the nearby hospital
of the mind.

I couldn’t drag me away.

no trick to being poor.  

the beauty of our entire football team
sleeping
with the same

person

equals
that of mother
saying
that she can feel
god’s head
touching
every hair
on hers.  I can hear

my dreams
over

the soundman’s
perfect
fly
bursting
in my brother’s
ear.  never

did I have
an idea

come
to me.

the day you were born
you were killed
in a dream
where some
were wounded.

I was there / to look / at the sky

i.

to the greater sadness
and to the lesser
for agreeing
to meet
at the mall
where as kids
you and I
became
separated-

I
having seen
a boy
I thought
was you
and you
a boy
who wasn’t

ii.

to the daughter
who writes
with  

when she can find it

an invisible
pen

    stories
for her mother
who moves
in and out
of sight

for her father
when he’s not

looking

far be it from you
to be cleared
by god
of invisibility…

part of the curse
is the lifting
of curse, the ability

to lift
home
from the house
of already
where

to save
a chicken
from its head

the boy

who once
drilled
for crow
has now
fashioned
from a license
plate

a crude
guillotine…

not now, memory, I am this close

to conjuring
the shape
of the man
whose son
pulled
from a bathroom
stall
my daughter
to ask
was she done
growing
a tail

unreal as it may have been, it was a trauma only he could imagine. recovery is a prison run by fish. light’s one song

the past is bleeding

speech itself is a failed translation

dreaming is a farm

a mother
makes it as far
as mailbox

bear
to fish
there’s water
in the water

is, today’s mousetrap
tomorrow’s

shoe

ghost of snake.

an adoration
of atypical
young mother
fear.

mouse needs a toothache.

footwork
heads north.

the father touches down to draw squares for hopscotch.  every photo is a photo of silence.  the mother, for the weird kid in her sunday school class, is sewing one sock puppet to another.  it’s a lonely job but no one has to do it.  the neighbor has just borrowed a hacksaw and, earlier, a box of cake mix.  her brother is the boy all have heard explain how insects are sailboats.  as for the babies, they’ve been put on suicide watch for the actions of a single lookout.  how nearness, love.

pregnant, my wife
scraps
her report
of missing
person.

as a disenchanted
surgeon
might find
religion,

I search your face for what god kept.

i.

king of my mouth.  king of my open.  my legs

my cigarette
legs.  

the end of my arms in baby country.  

ii.

the start of my hands

their coat-hook
anxiety.

iii.

here is where the child was killed for being here.

why is a spider
not
a place?

iv.

the future, the uphill
the biked
body

most boats
dream of.

v.  

the future
an evoked
salvaging.

my father carries a prop wall into a god honest prison scene.  my mother is there with chalk.  in character, her face washes over her face.

-

I am survived by my medically fragile son.  the story of my death is told to me by his future wife.                    

-

demesne.  a word from dream number three.

I am not well liked.  no human will admit.  having a kid puts ***** on a scarecrow.  what happens after Christ stays during.  a dog’s mouth runs into my mouth and I am alerted to my preferential treatment.  phase one puts a headlight in a deer.  phase two will be there I promise I tremble.  a bad shadow of a bare tree by artist.  naked down it like a fire pole on a day I toured children.  the womb depends on where the mother points it.  she can’t just end up in heaven.

I have a new collection available on Lulu, titled [depictions of reentry]

146 pages

book preview on site is book entire

/ I am not close to any named animal.  I flicker

in two
lost

minds.

~  

feel free to share, dissolve, emanate.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/depictions-of-reentry/paperback/product-22811652.html

depictions of reentry, parts i thru iii, were published at FORAGE poetry journal on WordPress...please check them out.


~

depictions of reentry** (iv)

/ the tadpole torching my stomach in the museum of the heartless alligator

/ the spider the star in suicide’s eye

/ the crow in the devil’s purse

~

depictions of reentry (v)

/ you can work here for nine months

/ it’s not like riding a bike
it’s more
like kneeling
in the center
of a stickman’s
nightmare

/ never you mind
the bloated
baby’s
yellow
tooth

/ at least the sick

they confuse
death

~

depictions of reentry (vi)

night terror, the handwriting
of imago’s
child…

/ resurrection, a memoir

~

depictions of reentry (vii)

/ 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

~

depictions of reentry (viii)

we laugh about them now

scarecrows
the stepchildren
of apocalypse…

pregnancy as suicide prevention.

be wowed
by stuff
on earth.

~

depictions of reentry (ix)

before I got sick
there was a sound
my mother
could make
and a bird
perched
on the arm
of a snowman…

angels, yeah

some
grab their ears
when trapped

~

depictions of reentry (x)

the unlit candle

desertion’s birthday

–

the voice
is not god’s
that experiments
on children

but ask
away

–

the dog we buried
is sometimes
on fire

watched
we think
by our sister’s
cooking

~

depictions of reentry (xi)

and in dreaming
of what to use
for its body
and its blood

the devil
began

to starve / when it snowed
it snowed

on a tooth / this was in

the same
Ohio

where brothers
ruin
now

with hiccups

games
of hide-and-seek

/ anyway, sister said the crow had it coming

and I made this face we called

god
as a boy
tasting
a star…

~

depictions of reentry (xii)

mom needs a jar of jelly to call the priest. try as he might, my brother can’t seem to get his tongue stuck to the oven door. my hands are here to hide the fact I’m wearing gloves. dad snaps three pictures before passing out. the voodoo dolls of my invisible babies have passed each other underground. I am thinking of things you can do.

~

depictions of reentry (xiii)

a suicide
from my past,

a surprise
party
for death…

/ if I lose my voice long enough
will they let me
wear
the mask

~

depictions of reentry (xiv)

the newborn
yawns, reveals

god
to be
a biter

–

I don’t
in my sleep
do anything

let alone
impressions

–

it’s hell on an image

the mirror’s
alibi

~

depictions of reentry (xv)

I went outside and hid god under a rock then went inside and put a pillow over my brother’s face. don’t worry, my brother lived and god grew stronger. in fact, by morning, my mother was so at peace she finished my brother off with a cotton ball. my dad bought a boat and said the older they are the smaller the mouth. people came from a mirror called practice.

~

depictions of reentry (xvi)

with a sock in its mouth

suicide
the birthday
ghost

/ having heard
of the shadow
animal’s
ear
for the hand
puppet’s
collapse /

passes through
a wall
into a room
where a balloon
eating out
a prophet
stops not

to hiss

/ the tadpole torching my stomach in the museum of the heartless alligator  

/ the spider the star in suicide’s eye

/ the crow in the devil’s  purse

before I got sick
there was a sound
my mother
could make
and a bird
perched
on the arm
of a snowman…

angels, yeah

some
grab their ears
when trapped

/ you can work here for nine months

/ it’s not like riding a bike
it’s more
like kneeling
in the center
of a stickman’s
nightmare

/ never you mind
the bloated
baby’s
yellow
tooth

/ at least the sick

they confuse
death

night terror, the handwriting
of imago’s
child…

/ resurrection, a memoir

/ 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

we laugh about them now

scarecrows
the stepchildren
of apocalypse…

pregnancy as suicide prevention.

be wowed
by stuff
on earth.

the unlit candle

desertion’s birthday

-

the voice
is not god’s
that experiments
on children

but ask
away

-

the dog we buried
is sometimes
on fire

watched
we think
by our sister’s
cooking

and in dreaming
of what to use
for its body
and its blood

the devil
began

to starve / when it snowed
it snowed

on a tooth / this was in

the same
Ohio

where brothers
ruin
now

with hiccups

games
of hide-and-seek

/ anyway, sister said the crow had it coming

and I made this face we called

god
as a boy
tasting
a star...

mom needs a jar of jelly to call the priest.  try as he might, my brother can’t seem to get his tongue stuck to the oven door.  my hands are here to hide the fact I’m wearing gloves.  dad snaps three pictures before passing out.  the voodoo dolls of my invisible babies have passed each other underground.  I am thinking of things you can do.

a suicide
from my past,

a surprise
party
for death…

/ if I lose my voice long enough
will they let me
wear
the mask

the newborn
yawns, reveals

god
to be
a biter  

-

I don’t
in my sleep
do anything

let alone
impressions

-

it’s hell on an image

the mirror’s
alibi

a woman places my hand in the stomach of god

as fire
the stickman’s
barber
betrays
my hair

I went outside and hid god under a rock then went inside and put a pillow over my brother’s face.  don’t worry, my brother lived and god grew stronger.  in fact, by morning, my mother was so at peace she finished my brother off with a cotton ball.  my dad bought a boat and said the older they are the smaller the mouth.  people came from a mirror called practice.

with a sock in its mouth

suicide
the birthday
ghost

/ having heard
of the shadow
animal’s
ear
for the hand
puppet’s
collapse /

passes through
a wall
into a room
where a balloon
eating out
a prophet
stops not

to hiss

the sisters compare how many months they’ve stayed pregnant  

/ nearby,

a boy
believes
he’s guessed

from no more
than the image
of a swollen
fish

which alien
showed interest
in our
despair /  

(I am looking for a place to whip my brother that is not a bathroom)

/ my father
he is waiting
for the price
to come down
on a thing
he says
will prove

theft
has no mother
and forgiveness
no god / as a dentist  

dreams
it’s all
in the legs

surely the boy should have seen by now his father hit a man.  a girl walk in on a television.  a bite mark on a baseball.  a bug-eyed nurse.  a dog on two legs.  a god on four.  a scarecrow on a diving board.  himself as a baby.  the band-aid

my dream’s
blindfold.

it’s my turn with the body

/ I was thinking church
but meant
museum

/ brother is horrified

/ he’s made
this face
before

/ I was saying
in the oven
of the observable
crow
this hologram
is the butcher’s
pajamas

/ I was thinking
fork
that’s not
how telepathy
works

the barn
bat
with the eyes
of a diver’s
shadow…

the dads were all digging
the nudes
were thinking
small

every chair
an electric
chair

in daylight, that motherless grief

I was
for desperation
a woman
crawling away
from her walker.

I still, gender, have
your raincloud.

/ nothing whispered is a language.

the mouth chews on its ghost.

it is allowed one diaper per ******-on anthill.  its mother gets everything on the first guess.  it only leaves its body to interrupt god.  it eats a stork.  you’re eating dove.

I love fake things.  the tasered clown.  the sheep my young father remembers being sliced like bread.  the paper shredder that kept some animals from entering the time machine.  the baby in riot gear.  the other baby telling itself not to move.  the blood’s blood type.

at a costume party thrown by starvation

kissing the baby of the creature
that taught
Judas

I have a better word
we can use
to abbreviate
your dying
language

seeing mountain
then moth
gave god
a mouth