memory
has nothing
it remembers
making

-

I’ll know an animal when god sees one

-

the guard
I slept with
gave me
you

-

pain, indicia, Amen

the body
a saying
from birth

I am not done / I carry my son

/ from the bathroom
his mother
died in…

death
didn’t see
a thing

choose
three
to deny
shooting

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

the crow
the fine print
of nowhere.

the bomb shelter
the rumored locale
of a mother’s
laundry room.

the bare cross
the teething
toy
a baby
bypasses
for the neck
of the woman
waiting
for her junk
to fall.

the mare
the anxious
bike.

the **** came boatsick and I made to light it with the marshmallow burning at the end of my shaky stick when father pinned it at the neck with his right foot and kicked it longside in the beak with his left and then brought the left heel back to break for the second time its neck and the **** hummed and then died and then I thought it hummed again but it was my father lowing in the soul he didn’t believe in as in life he finished nothing so couldn’t on faith have something that everyday waited and I remember thinking later after learning the word rabid and of the affliction rabies that authors swan to the dying animal from the shallows of knowing that the animal mourns maybe nothing and definitely does not mourn this that happens no other way.

as I was burned
in the act
of nothing
brave

     the book of my hands
drew the flame

from my children
whose names
I mouthed and spat

for jacob*


in dark
I’d make
the bedroom
door
     and there
     pause and bless
the toy driver
of the bus
for lighting
up-

but you
would stir
at my attendance
to an absence
not yours     and I would return

before trying my lead
again

     fourth brother

I am struck by the urge to pray.

my trauma has yet to occur.

the stress my father knows

knew his hands
as he waved them in front of nothing
on a tarmac obscured by speech.

night is a ruined crow.

I see the city as possibly bombed.

the men have gathered with small boys on their backs. each hopes to be, briefly, in the shadow of a plane. the boys can only think with their hands how warm their fathers are. a shoelace or two teases tired the tongue of the devil. wind, the maker of mask, makes many. mothers at home pick blankets from the floor; fold magazines without looking. one of the men swears on the grave of his best hound he once saw a woman parachute naked. most of the men keep her there in that plane.

I repeat
I know why
the bizarre boy
stims.

to be alive is to be monitored by loss.

in this, your missing dad is like a father to me.

[mercy musics (i)]

this is where
her name
is changed

to dog, not
puppy

where her father believes
he can stab
a bird
and talk
to ladders

dear
ladder, longing

eats only
the hungry

these are my
stick, and haunted,

persons

and what’s
more, it’s mostly
female
this lost

baby

~

[mercy musics (ii)]

angel, with urn, sleepy

as a hoofprint
is not
a dreamer

of unmarked
edens, but is

of the child
eve

who buried
a mouth
to imagine
a pig

the fish are biting and my father is wanted.

thunder the size of a seasick dog
has crushed
again
my sister’s
baby
for crushing
pills.  for every

hunchback
goes
to heaven

there’s a shadow
passed out
in a dream.

she responded to her critics by word of mouth.


never utter anything more
than you can burn.


she carried baby dead to baby dead yet.
she had questions.


never be pretty when you’re sad
nor repeatedly
document.


things have been pretty killed
up in this *****.


let there be god said the heat
the baby
lost.


never is a lamp
unto the world
enough lamp.


beaten silly
this it
becomes god.

my brother is the safe environment I’ve created for the history of my lord.  political awareness, I mean, I mean, is a darkness.  my eyeglasses tell me you’ve been to see a train station.  do animals wait?  several impatient years later, two blindfolded mouth-breathers walk cheek to cheek in an Ohio fog that combs forward worms the length of a screen name on craigslist.  I am nearly pronouncing krokodil until my tongue disappears so I can pronounce it correctly for my mother’s not frostbit ear.  as for the two, they are mistaken by the disembodied poetics of local policing as the trophy nose of an odd-for-these-parts moose.  any re-enactment is my father the victim of a spirited birth.

yarn
disappears
and blood
shows
its hand

-

homesickness
is what curls
in a mother’s
foot, her toes

-

having babies
for the color
white, this boy

-

he comes
came

-

compass
the thumbless
orphan

we meet in a neutral space to exchange the boy we didn’t for the girl we did. I still feel as if I’m on the inside of something pretty. it is always on the eve of this deletion, at the end of my dual research, that I forgo the deeper waters for god’s raindrop. here, again, it falls to my thumb to rub toothpaste from the toenail she couldn’t

with me
looking

reach.

if I am still in one piece
is up
to you

-

as for ****, avoid

her
and / or
her

-

if above
some hobo
a soft
nightmare
hangs

in the balance…

what figure my father has
bends for the beauty
not of word but of word
unsaid.

as for intended use,
there are two ways
to stone
a raindrop.

some would argue
from hell
for recognition
of non
survivor’s
guilt, and from earth

for mothered

figures…

not played
it is having
a vision
you cannot
see

-

someone knows the someone

who says aloud

piano

-

into poverty’s
overthought
ear

god
puts death

-

I am
than pity
sooner

to my son

-

in every gravestone
a dog
of stone

lazes
loyally

as word
choice

skips

-

rope

-

in one

window, a shopworn
stroller
with a more
cerebral
destination
than decay

exemplifies
the seller’s
push

to mirror…

you find a man whose wife has recently passed
place him in a wide open space
and give him the supplies necessary
to build a common backyard fence

you inform the man that at points a mile north, south, east, and west
a baby just learning to crawl has been faced in his direction
and he will need to begin building the fence

you understand that the viewership will need to take on faith
that the babies will crawl in a semi-straight line
will not take up with imported wolves
and because you cannot film them
are there at all  

if god exists
the man will have time to smoke a cigarette in peace
before and after the fence is built
and the babies will become a footnote
to the reported sightings of his wife

our forgetful
makers

hunting
elsewhere

at birth, your life flashes before your eyes.  you have a brother and with him think that if one could record the exact moment of your mother’s dying, her death will disappear.  the drink in your glass is made from the skin that couldn’t bring itself to be your mouth.  some of it is crying but most of it is putting the word **** in its place.  out of necessity you create a crow that you might be warned of its crow-like replacement.  your hands stick to what they know.

afraid of its shadow in a previous life. the drowning of nothing’s

*******
child.

newborn
with back pain.

(the cigarette that takes the pulse of our ghost)

it is raining

on the feet of god

father’s warning
was be
careful
them crows
is as smart
as a whip.

mine
was for my brother
said to have
a thing or two
left
to shrink-wrap
in the ****** bin.

mother’s was
twofold
and babied
itself
as forgotten.

his whole life he described himself
to a dying boy

some mirror
waiting
for my skin
to crawl-

some noise
being made

some holy
noise-

some terrified toy

with its toy
lover

in sound’s
blindfold

a harp
is the imaginary
secret
a spider
keeps
in the clockmaker’s
eighth
dream

show me my mother’s back, and her elbows.
the faucet’s spit on neck.
eye black to eye black my brothers checking
for teeth.
show me insomnia, the pacing witch hats
of a dog’s great attention.
my father, but don’t
take sides.

have self-published a new full-length collection, 115 pages, title of Misreckon, in three parts: god had an earache / wrong about my brother / misreckon. book preview on site is the book entire.

it is, here:

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

sample poems

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.


how the still recall the poor

when saying her name, mother would insist the curse words were silent. for swallowing secrets, father had his throat professionally cut. I remember wiping my nose with a shirt darker than blood. instead of good washrags, we had words brought about by having company. mother ran wild through my sentences while father bent to kiss a pillow for sleeping with my stomach. apocalypse came and came. the act was the act’s debut.


men hermetic

the crow
the fine print
of nowhere.

the bomb shelter
the rumored locale
of a mother’s
laundry room.

the bare cross
the teething
toy
a baby
bypasses
for the neck
of the woman
waiting
for her junk
to fall.

the mare
the anxious
bike.

sister
she wore
one white sock-

a night light
in that hotel’s
dark.

eventually, I was asked to write about a dog.
there was a letter, and a man above it.
in my own letter, I asked for the woman behind him.
she arrived with the very little I came to know.
I could’ve been a room she sat sewing in.  
her one hand nibbling the other, the foster door
of her back.  my whole life in front of me
on another’s fours.

soon
is a baby
studied
by the scholars
of now
who
in their prime
predicted
that jesus
would be
in the scarecrow’s
future
the darkest
bird

I don’t think I was born to see my face. my father looks like he’s about to say nothing. her vocabulary comes and goes.

the child
saint
of separation
anxiety
eats

so little
that when
he
or she
chews
open

mouthed

a ghost
gets
a birthmark

you’re part of a story you don’t have to tell.

the animals that took your feet are dead now.

my boy
pushed your boy
into something
we thought
we’d outgrow.  

mittens on

it’s time
to eat.

I was raised by wolves on nothing but stork worship.

on the day of the shooting
I was sent from school
for wearing a blindfold.

you were born
brained
from afar.

the disabled inherit
all but
private moments, former
selves.

god is looking at your dead body right now
sad you are somewhere
moving.

in a photograph
taken
by television
the boy
was hidden
from children
whose madness
gathered
eggs
for the animal
in tail’s
dream

I’m going to let this **** me.

I’ve hired two frail boys
to roll away the stone.

my father is the man
with his pant legs
rolled to the knees
standing in the mall
fountain’s
waters.

my mother the woman
bewildered by the boy
in the food court
typing on a keyboard
attached to nothing.

some meals for which I would use the word exquisite; these are some of the meals I had.
online, I pretended to be writing a very long obituary.
in house, I matched socks and when I could not I became accusatory.
worry was everywhere- I would, here, like to subtract the time I spent in the bathroom
and add to that
choosing an avatar.

what I called a proverb I would tell my children was the proverb of the right hand’s ring finger.
it made them laugh.

in hell, I thought I was in hell. I dreamt not of my wife, but of a grape being rolled by a palm.
gently toward a grape the dream could not see.

as it is in heaven, I was not all there.

if more than once
the brilliant thing
you’ve said
gets you laid

oh and honey, look, it’s the same scarecrow the lightning could not wholly take.  it is telling me, oh gosh, about the suicide of our neighbors last year.  says they kept it a secret from each other.  the man got to himself quietly in the bathroom and the woman took a shotgun into the basement.  time of death had the man going first.  you think it was them on the left or them on the right?  them on the right had a kid, a little boy, I think.  what age would our son be?  their boy was about his age because I remember taking our balloons down and the man asking me should he take his down.  they didn’t give the boy a middle name, he said.  out of the hour or so we talked, I couldn’t file that one.  was the main thing scared me off.

I want to sit around and do nothing and I want to have a handful of kids that sit around and do nothing.  I will call myself the end of god and ask women inappropriate questions by way of populating obituaries with written code.  you will want to argue and I will have to get up and we will try together to save the child I crushed parts of.  the face of the child will be our slideshow.  I don’t know who you are but I know who you think.

a father remembers making dinner and whistles at the sober. his death nudges a turtle in the direction of some absent creature chewing gently on its tongue beneath a poster of a missing dog. lightning prays wheelchair and preaches lawnmower. there is a woman here said to live on hair. on whose mouth we survive. birth thinks only of itself. not a day goes by in the grocery of touch.

I clip her nails
whose doll collects
cereal boxes

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

disappearance, firecracker
you never
get past it.

in the angel’s book on animal visitation

a deaf clown
bombs
a flower.

it is beyond me
why you’d want
to be more
than your illness.

where does one go
when gone
three days?