from self-published collection Misreckon (December 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/misreckon/paperback/product-21954246.html




respite

history is a timeline of appetite. I have rubber bands at the ready for when my mother yawns. I cover my baby brother like a grenade. he was born without the potential for further muscle tone. father calls what I do context. I appear like a bruise into a delayed game of hot potato. my sister’s hands are an oven mitt’s dream. I know you’re a hitchhiker and your girlfriend a cannibal but here we **** our thumbs.


ward

the zero courage
it takes
to be
in pain.  or to be

for that matter

born.  it has devoured

by now
my son’s
vow
of silence.  but he had

didn’t he

a moment
while the animal

ate.


clear heads

while smoking a cigar in the shadow of a nervous minotaur, my father wrote the book on moral isolation. in it, he predicted there would be a television show about hoarders and that it would turn god into a sign from god. my mother read the book cover to cover during her fourth and fastest delivery. if there were edits, she kept them to herself and put his name beside hers on seasonally produced slim volumes of absolute shyness.


fascinations of the upright

above
a ramshackle
transmitter

is my father’s
bright
mind.  

the angel’s mouth is a mouth to feed.

a man
packs a baby
in snow.


shitstorm

he beats the mother and calls it practice. the washer breaks and he throws the clothes into a full tub and stomps on them while smoking a cigarette. he provokes my image to send him back to his rightful nose. my thick skull is high on my spit.



debut

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.




skip

the boy balances a basketball on his head outside his father’s bar. his mother is somewhere a girl set to play the moon in her school’s version of talent night. his sister is giving birth so calmly her midwife is a male blown away by the fact that it’s only her second time wearing the blindfold I wore to fish. his brother is in therapy to process the loss of others who think we’re gods when we smoke.


nuclei

my mother as a young woman once attempted

in the car of the train her father took to work

to eat her hands.

it was a story she put an end to
but not before
I lost a tooth
putting my baby
brother’s
feet
in my mouth
to keep
them warm.

my brother as a baby
was far
too small.  one might say
he had the brain

of a snake.

from  Misreckon (December 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/misreckon/paperback/product-21954246.html

untitled (v)

I do worry that this love for all things will keep from you the name of the creature dreaming


cessation psalm

     the less said about god’s addiction to brevity

as heard
by the angel
of birth


entry psalm

I can’t speak
to how
the form
my father’s
form
mimics

is able
to take
from lightning
a licking
while whaling
on the snout
of what
was born
muzzled
then sewn
for safekeeping
into the belly
of a punching
bag…

(I am not
the one
my meditation

needs) violence

is my brother’s
music


inquiry psalm

when it comes to humoring
me
by name
my memories
draw a blank.

I had a daughter
and three
sons.

my hands
could’ve been
the hands
of an umpire.

in the untouched church
of suicide
was the untouched
church
of *******.

it’s like seeing
a television
on tv. the comedians
and their failed
sisters.

do your thoughts
still take
the temperature
of god?

anterior

three sisters
old enough to date
enter a house
their father
can’t find. a bit of my mother

is seen
in this woman
going out of her way
to give satan

directions. a drug dog

on its last legs
inspects a used
vacuum cleaner, the lawnmower

of lost
men.


site*

I lasso the calf just before it makes the ocean.

overhead, a helicopter
from my past
spins.

my son says
to himself
this isn’t
your father’s
sandcastle.

luck is the stone
that marks
the dream. dream

the stone
that marks
the dead.

a copy of my brother’s hand

a dog door
beneath the feet
of christ

pieces of bread
in a broom, a false

wet
tooth

(-)

poetry and god share the same quick death.

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

from self-published collection The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake (poems, Sept 2013)

available on Lulu

auteurs

I am in your house
being you

when the boy
enters my house
with a sack of ash

to tell my wife
he has come
to avoid
a whole

personality

–

my wife is one to believe
she was carried
by child

–

listen,

a baby’s cry is the oral future of what touches the brain

individuation

in a previous imagination the boy was able to overcome his attention span. it was there he pummeled his pregnancy. I wanted a clearer image but was told to take the boy as is or not at all. I could feel his sister trapped in the same horror she was later revealed to be outside of. up until then, I was sad her whole life.

stressful events

a father and son argue outside a small town barbershop in windless ten degree weather. inside the shop, which is closed, the barber’s wife is clipping away at a wig. nearby, and quite by accident, an invisible man uncovers a fainting spell before which some will disrobe. namely, women declaring that the eye is always naked. who are these women?, ask my teeth, which are snow.

lacuna

Ohio 1976 I was given a word. a helluva word. I went unborn. a word my mother swallowed. a troublesome word. nervosa sans pretext. my father slept until his sleep became self aware. he paced. then gave me his word. stood over me.

Ohio 2013 you ***** on my shadow in an abandoned building outside of which a pregnant woman bikes herself into a garage door and bloodies her nose between sound and horn.

recovery

I fry a single egg
in a pan.

the sound places me
in one of my mother’s
teeth

as it dissolves.

I bring mother
the egg, and she believes
I am the same son
who brought her an egg
yesterday.

she eats the egg
over and over.

her attempted suicide
is not something
I know of. she keeps it to herself

in the person she was.

youth

a jailer
talking through bars
to a ventriloquist.

youth / spent trying to yank a doll
by the ear.

the wave

we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet. we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks. the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others. we limp beside any creature that limps. the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other. our father is two mathematicians who argue. our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave. our guesses mean little because they are facts. at school we are voted on and kissable. if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket. details belong to god.

stray dog leaping

the poor are beaten
from the future

they get off work
the day is hot
it’s ungodly

as ungodly as placing a single chair in a garage

the poor get home
the chair remains in the present

the dog
can’t afford to be here
appears mid-scene
in the backyard

the poor imagine
an electric fence
scrounge together
the amount they would pay
to fix it

& smile as they would smile
at the mindless sap
whose job it would be

whose chair it is

orb

the back of my mother’s head was spotted in an Ohio movie theater by a boy whose eyes were covered or maybe closed. I received word secondhand from the boy’s stepfather whose own recollection was marred by the violence he shied from to reach me. in fact, the theater was even possibly a drive-in where the boy remains in the bathroom standing on the toilet to avoid the knowledge he is no longer deaf. like most information regarding my mother, it hasn’t aged well. she’ll set the table at noon for two and drink her coffee and I’ll join her convinced no child dies from its hair being pulled. more secret than my son is his ability to withstand miracles.

earthling

not there when your mother
cries into a poison soaked towel
to a childish god
while kneeling
before the remnant heat
of an open dryer.

not there when your father
by the sound of it
breaks your arm
pressing it into
the shrunken right sleeve
of a shirt that should fit.

not there when your brother
spooked by a deer…

not there when my body
stops the procession

that one might be held in its image.

virtuoso

mommy I am stones. I am in the blacktop river. my veins have been used to unpiss cows. like my father after me I don’t want you to be my mother but you are. the men catch me with the fish they’ve eaten. they slap at me beneath a robe to make the robe move. I recognize my photo shopped savior as airbrushed. I blind whole neighborhoods with snowplow models of their choosing. if you receive this it means there is much more you haven’t. there are ashtrays no one makes anymore and tumors we don’t call phone-shaped. I am beautiful in the baby you sing to.

notes on the saints

younger times, I’d lose some of my hair when bathing the sick. now older, I am not a private person. I foresee helping father with his winter gloves and him thinking I’ve returned his hands. if sick, one shouldn’t be grateful for the inclusion. there’s a **** son in all of us.

what is it
dissolves
in the mother’s
foreseeable
presence?

faith
a flashback
god
is having.

an orphan in and out of homes connected only by sleep.

a quiet nine months.  

your brother in the cab of a snowplow.  

a clear plastic fork carried up
     your mother’s bare calf.

sister cursing the power company.  sister spinning
     with her palm
          the ceiling fan.  her body lifted

          into the arms of the father

you’ve always had.

asleep, he was loved.  loved, also, in the margins of waking.  a hand on the head, or breakfast after payday.  he would try to keep quiet the unclosed wound of his voice; a darkened bandage, like bacon, held to his mouth.  but the morning, each morning, would leave, more so clothed than it had come.  if ever you’ve looked, at noon, for your mother, she would’ve been with his.  two sets of thumbprints, two glasses.  he would put his thumb to one, then the other.  days your mother stayed with you, his own would give him crayons.  once, that he can remember, he put the white in her cigarette box and heard about it.  it’s the kind of kid he was fully awake: bad.  his cheeks often burned.  their redness would unhinge his mother so that she would slap at the pale inquiry of his neck.  seven years old, and still drawing stick figures.  he could not keep himself from it.  three legged figures, one armed.  torsos were a problem for him, and crotches.  but there they would be, middle on middle, three lines to indicate ******, or wind.  his mother wouldn’t get sick but would say that she was.  before dinner, she would give him ice cream.  he would fall asleep without dinner and his father would come home, shower, and leave.  it made him stronger, not seeing his father eat.

     the stick figures, when he met them, were not like his drawings, but they wanted to be.  they would contort  and untangle from each other and giggle.  his mother once came upon them and they broke into many sticks at his feet.  she did not know what he was laughing at and tried to lift him but he was fat for his age and she pulled a muscle in her stomach.  he put her on his back.  she would not unstiffen.  at home, in front of the fire, she was angry.  her arm was crooked, aimed at him, and one of her eyes was trying to watch him.  he shut the door to his room and practiced becoming many.  his parts would not let.  he gave up; the fire lowered.  the noise his mother made sounded set aside; some special box opened in the house of a demon.  he had to cut her clothes from her so she could breathe.  she rose, simply; not like the dead.  something, in the second box, skittered from it.  the boy crumpled.  his head did not roll like he thought it would, but he smiled anyway.  if his mother was screaming, only his ears could hear it.

from The Women You Take From Your Brother (August 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-women-you-take-from-your-brother/hardcover/product-21988530.html


jeopardy

I am pushing a bike uphill, my brother
is pushing
a wheeled
horse-

we are late for the birth of my sister’s doll.
for the tea that protects us.
 
sort of grief

a sort of
human
grief

in the dog’s
mouth-

a stick man’s arm, or leg, or crutch.
something

from the world of sticks.
 
in an open field

where one can more easily
picture
the struck man
as a boy
obsessed
with walking
 

loss of the family dog

be alone.  enter snowfall as a heavy breather in a white dress
window shopping
for a red.  

know

     that in between heaven and hell, there is war.  hell thinks it a nightmare, heaven thinks it hell.  hell sleeps more than your sister in love.  heaven counts warriors and can’t put an angel on why the numbers keep changing.  

as increased chatter is good for morale, call your mother and say you are her appetite.    

scoop the brains of your buddies into a helmet.

from The Women You Take From Your Brother (Aug 2014)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-women-you-take-from-your-brother/hardcover/product-21988530.html



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.



in the rain

the woman she is holding an umbrella over the man she is yelling at.  the man he is blowing into the bowl he’s made of his hands.  a boy sits at their feet with his back to us and is bringing what we can guess is a toy to his mouth.  you joke he is laboring to light a cigarette.  in the rain.  



locals

the father tells his children how he is not surprised by how much they’ve grown.  they are healthy, after all, and he is not death. the mother wonders how it is common she lose the baby when she is not the last to have it.  my name is silent but no letter in my name is or the letters in my name are not silent but the word they make is.  perhaps her pain is political.  her pain is god’s.  



portals

while churched in the sounds of my brothers ******* on spaghetti, I had two words for ghetto and poverty.  I was able to crush only those beetles slowed by your father’s fleeting shame.  we found so many stones it became impossible to label a single one as oddly shaped.  logic was that if the horse hung itself it would leave a note.  I had my doubts.  

while churched in the sounds of my brothers ******* on poverty, I had two beetles mother looked for.  you were so ghetto my other friends rubbed at me as if I’d come out of my father.  logic was that if a horse hung itself it would leave a note.  

     not here:  the stone that heard my baby’s heart.



wartime

my friend approaches the microphone with a grocery bag on his head.  I don’t know how this will turn out.  not long ago he ran over a fourteen year old girl minutes after she vandalized a stop sign.  my friend has lived everyday since and everyday previous with the fact she survived.  I phoned his wife recently but she had already left him for what he calls a microcosm.  I am hopeful I can love what he’s done with his hair.  he sent me this flower for mine.



catholicon

into the wood
a man
whose daughter’s
hair
is a ghost
fighting a ghost
for her head.

whose daughter
has not slept.

such cures
the town
talks.

put the sick
every morning
on a different
porch.

use
the same
nail.

if one is awake
**** a crow
or *****
a stop sign.



empty imagery

i.

Adam had no memory of his first wife.  as created, he would look at Eve all day and feel nothing.

ii.

the vacation house was found to be owned by another family.  in it, my mother resisted arrest.      

iii.

my father was born with six fingers on his right hand and seven on his left.  he was not fond of either hand until later in life when the grandchildren asked him at different times during their visits if he had been tortured.

iv.

God created the world because he couldn’t do it on his own.  ah, note to self, *******.  person is place.  I might’ve killed a man had I not been poking holes in a poem by Barton Smock.  

v.

my brother says it’s part of his condition that he can only explain himself from the waist down.  he says he feels horrible in the back of his head and wants me to take a look.  he says I don’t know what darkness is.  before I can play doctor he remembers he has a story he wants me to write.  the outline of the story is off site.  in the opening scene brother recalls that a young man is blowing dust from a human skull made of plastic because it’s all the narrator can afford.
 
vi.

the head itself was an afterthought.  had god not allowed the soul to come up for air, beauty would have been spared our invention.

vii.

a single mother is a twofold mirage.  please argue above her quietly.  her legs collapse.  her child comes first.

viii.

your sister is the only person I’ve recorded to have been born without a gift.  I was told this in confidence by an angel masquerading as a small animal.  the size of which escapes me.

ix.

I am aware a sparrow exists.  not in a spiritual vacuum.  people are another hell.  

x.

excuse my friend his earlier joy in saying who do I have to **** to get ****** around here.  at age 19 a man exploded beside my friend and my friend went quiet.  to his grave thinking his own bomb malfunctioned.

the nothing
that’s out there
I keep
to myself.

my talk talks me down.
my kids laugh

in sweet tooth and funny bone.

I am not god’s father figure
but bring anyway
a nervous energy
to my own
birth scene.

it is pretty how one manages
to populate
a personal hell

and it is too pretty
to base an image
on the diary

soaked but drying

in a little house
with a kicked-in door.

some have a story and some think
the having
avoids
the generalizing
others do

to clear space
for space.

for a hobby I’d say
be stunned
by the baby
before
it inherits
separation

anxiety.

     once, beneath a storm, be a ghost.

as some things incorrectly have wings, we stamp a chicken into the hood of a cop car.  the groundskeeper on break inside the church wonders aloud how much is left of the lord.  a boy not part of our boyhood bikes over to us with his feet he’s named individually show and tell.  the cop chuckles but straightens out when he sees what I’ve made of my hand.  the boy says careful it might stay that way for good.

I was to carry my wounded dog to the crucified Jesus.  I was not to remove a single one of its teeth.  for luck, I was to touch the back of my wrist to the blowzy heel of my kneeling mother for which I would need to set my dog down excited as it might get by the man in my father’s chair.  I was to fetch my sister from the desert and I was to sole her feet with fish.  I was to find a ***** and call it by name and convince it that all would soon be burned by the bottoms of tiny soup bowls.  these bowls I would need to clay myself.  if I knew not where to begin, father said I was to ask the Lord but warned me he’d already asked him once.  father afterward would say he loved that dog too much.  which meant he loved me more.  said the Lord.

god closes the food truck and waits for his carefully chosen **** to buffer.

even
over this
a star

abortion

beneath
the highest
pop fly            
on record

divination

found myself alone
in a *******

*******

epitaph

easier
if I
imagine

you are     clothed

angels

any mystique
surrounding
  a small town
   search party

blood**

     this *******
from the reader
of my

palm

i.

one can write
must
write

in a vacuum

but read, no.

many have this backward.

ii.

the winners
of new
essential
fiction.com
win

what is still
a bible.

iii.

the marks on my daughter’s pencil…

oh, thinking
is a pain.  I am thinking

of biting
her ears
when I am given

a branch.

iv.

be afraid.

the most horrible fish
has yet
to walk
from the ocean.

v.

time was here
when I arrived
but hadn’t
eaten

vi.

once okay
the soul was
with being
a copy

vii.

in heyday
of health
the infant
weighs
as much
as a bag
of ice.

here, a bath is drawn
for the burned
in effigy.

viii.

mother & father
if you want to help
there are two
images
left

ix.

on the playbill
I recognize
virginity
as the inheritance
of Jesus

x.

let me believe I can crush my shadow.

as the sitting model
for a father

I am actual

sameness / groin

goes thumbtack

repetition is not doom
not to plant
not to animal
life

     whether gang sign or godspeak
it means my child

imagined

tell them they are nothing more than the lot the dream surrenders.  that gender is god’s eyepatch.  child abuse has its own race.  that dead or alive, god has never been sick.  to stop acting as if they were born tomorrow.

you take photos of men and women who aren’t all there.  you post the photos while your dog barks.  you doze on a hot day.  your mom calls to tell you about the spider in her eye and while she talks you look for your dog.  your mom thinks you sound desperate though you’ve said nothing.  you go outside and see your dog in the backseat of a parked car.  the car is not yours.  your mom has the hiccups and says the first part of goodbye.

pulling on its teeth even though it’s not a baby anymore.

a sheep-dog
and its troubled
sleep.

my father
in his father
marooned.

white fish / yellow when / I shower
in salt.

their little nets are nets.

the future?

of the world ours is based on

/

my teddy bear
doesn’t
sleep

/

birth
means the baby
on your back
can swim

I bring his shoes
in from the yard
and ask my wife

is father
here  

-

my son
is a sound
that tells me
beauty
is a sound
that tells me
nothing

-

god hounds
my perfectly
childless
and too
permissive
brother
whose first
word
was password

extramural (i)

as he prepared to leave my world to the memory of a man addicted to god, my father was stung by a bee.  this matters.  bees carried the scent of absence.  bees spoke to mother.  mother was the woman it took two like my father to make.  mother swallowed to bruise the body of any dropped thing sounding itself out in a nightmare had by children new to infancy.  mother swallowed and called it singing.  there will be a god.  this matters.  perfect, now, the nothing you say.            



extramural (ii)

as acne commits my face to a memory of scripture, god worries that man’s silence is a pox upon both the crow and the crow.  on good authority, the cyclops is blind in one eye.  you were tortured, yes, but nothing stands out.  my living hand performs for my dying.  imagine my father’s dismay at the realization yours had of having done this autopsy before.            



extramural (iii)

the fireplace is on drugs. get the good rope and tie it around the wrist of the hand I want dead.

-

on a drive I’ve undertaken to see my brother, it comes to me that odd things were being sold. jesus-on-a-stick. the crown of thorns, extra. I close my eyes. I dare the brain. the brain says it’s off to be forgiven.

-

brother has one ugly foot and one beautiful. I have this disorder causes me to fully remember dreams

dreams only

-

everything happened in 1985. words don’t mean. numbers mean. tell your gay father he has nothing to do with himself.

-

the wind is asleep. it sleeps outside.



extramural (iv)

uncle has been all day figuring the teeth of his that will never touch. he has this riddle he calls code for what to get the man who has nothing. if I can get him to stop biting his wrists I might be able to chalk something won’t need moved. when I was born, I was small enough to fit in most mouths. uncle is not the tiniest bit mad. he holds babies only when they are hungry and he is not. those with angels think those without are selfish.



extramural (v)*

the people are looking for something that tells them what to show. my father can’t hear the storm for the honey on his knees. at birth, a blown eardrum gives the kid a way out of making friends. a sermon about washing a mountain with a rock takes a word from my mother’s mouth. grief is a good listener.

it’s enough to give a ghost amnesia, snow like this. we’re pretending to look for his daughter while sharing what he calls a milkman’s cigarette. throw a brick, say touchdown. I might have worked for a mirror. I don’t know where we are or how old his daughter is. lamb of the bunch. blood’s haircut.

the boy’s mother is biting off less than he can chew.  her insomnia

has put her inside a worm
her body
tries
to fill.  her milky eyed

-

husband
revs a tow truck
to death

in a heavy fog.  it is possible, humanly

-

possible

-

there’s nothing
to see here.  that her god

-

is, in a sense,
seizure activity
in the boy’s

spirit

-

animal.

the baby was found, after the fire, alive and well in the oven.  god showed his face until, again, the world made him hungry.  at the time, the painter of babies was a baby herself.  her brother had been dropped long ago by a man reaching for a foul ball.  

the sweet tooth’s bible was putting blood on a napkin.  

you want grief that is a seashell of grief.

return trips offered
for body.

some, we separate
long
after birth.

fourth baby
the first
errant.

surveyor of train car interiors.

job creation
as healer’s
refuge.

godmother
in a borrowed
copter hat.

the boy we call
egg mouth
who frees
his sister.

our meaninglessly
oral

talks.

run the disposal for the fat-handed man who’s heard himself think. worship the out-of-body mother as you would a curfew from your past. ghost for angel.

the room is no secret.  my native tongue is the blade of a found knife.  in the tackle-box my father left me are all the parts I need for a dove.  I am trying to make blood.  my father had a robotic arm nothing could land on.  I have for an apron an infant.  some of the room is getting on my face.  some of my face on my hands.

I soften
eternity
with hands
on loan.

acquaint myself
with death
by being here
the whole time.

I marry.
I father.

keep my body
equidistant
from kite
and ****.

hide the boy from settled places.

think of the child
the adult
Jesus
how both
could not

imagine.

I pretended once to lose my memory-

the same day

you

ghost,

a sign of sickness.  a brush painting of invisibility’s decay.  a nearly beautiful woman mouthing the words of an abusively future

verbose
partner.

insects have imaginary insects.

if you listen lightly
the lit match
becomes a match
again.

you were ahead of your time and I was distant.

strangers have more grief than candy.

the doll learned it would be buried
with its clothes on
the moment
mother
used her inside voice.

I thank god in my sleep
for respecting
my privacy.

a reading from the book
of letting the dog
dig in the yard
you take it from:

have your father’s eyes
looked at
by your smartest
child.  have

boys.

the bomb
went off
moved
and went off
again
mom

-

at birth
a mouth
is born
mom

-

I keep
popping up
in their pictures
mom

the shadows men think we are

we take
as lovers.

at one with a lonesome populace

dream small, god…

about death
death
was a baby

shortly after 5pm
an amiably
grey
spider
pauses
on a piece
of copy paper
in the lap drawer
of a man
behind
on sadness

all of nine, ******* skates
with bucket.

I once had power
and at thirty three
could easily ****.

avoided parks, happiness, and socks

eraser pink

I woke up in the tree again

the house itself
had left
run
once more
the crucifixion
on tv

father held the infant
its brain
concocting

slow motion
for widows

after the gifts are passed out
three remain
under the tree.

I wait for my mother to fall asleep,
for my father to carry her upstairs,
and for my brothers
to go outside
their fingers as horns
on the sides of their heads.

I open the gifts.

a stuffed squirrel, a nest with broken
bluish
egg, and a mitten’s
thumb.

i.

eating is done fast and alone.  teeth
chatter
in the corner,
     a rabbit
muscles
in the mouth.  sister
visits
     naked
save the sheet
she learned
to wrap     in college

     while

haunting
tents.

ii.

dogs at the door.
father
shoeless     in the basement
negotiating
claw
&
cigarette.
 
iii.

grasshoppers press the palm, spit.
mother swats
her magazine
at hard
boys     hits

the wall, these pictures
that have
her smiling, shrug.

iv.

     sleepwalking like something brother won at the fair.  

we nudge it.  put the bread

back of the mouth.  injured

deer, slanted

mailbox.  wife

a gown
ghosting
her legs

     keeps
taut
the clothesline
from hospital
to home.

under the cover
of white sheets

from the docked
and burning
boat

our children
downhill

     (like rabbits
      from a recently
      humbled

      tree)

      leave us
when we
drink

because time has to remind itself to be invented

the holy spirit
still calls
it a rubber…

movies, mental illness....

(arms

twisted
by children
of the blind

you write like a tricycle that hasn’t been touched in thirteen years.*  as an infant, you were no more than a dot denoting an absurdist birth.  adolescence was in the blood left to your mother.  self harm is the gateway wound to pilgrimage.  you can’t say god is everywhere in the presence of god.  factual events have ruined the world.  you are here because hating you is forbidden.

naked, the father
pours two cups
of coffee
in the kitchen-

     lowers one
into the cupped hands
of a statue, and takes the other
to the equally
bare
woman
coming to
on the lawn.

similar persons
of colder weather
gather elsewhere
and disrobe.

all await
the dog of evening.

its blindfolded boy.

the two are both men.  saviors by way of remaining.  one crosses your mind when he remembers to pace.  the other keeps his distance as the private rent he pays to be stationary.  the woman is an object in a town beyond me that is, beyond that, passable.  a town mothered by darkness.  through which I roll a hula hoop.  a balm for the ache in my hips.

exactness
is a terrible thing
to impress.

in only words, I am sorry
your mind
works.

the image is not enough.
the image must already
contain
additional
deformities.

both hands curl
but also
turn the wheel
and thus
the whole of the car
into a dog
trying to use
a spoon.

when you are gone
you depart
the impartial
witness
and enter
witness
abuse.

I refuse to compete for those we’ve lost.

if god existed
writing about him
wouldn’t.