the dog returned and the doll I’d accused of eating it was wiped down by my father who then gave it to my mother to give to me once I’d stopped being the baby I cried like while the new doll was disappeared until it could be properly hidden from the sister conceived in its absence

when reassigned, the man
oblivious to his current privacy  
calls on his few belongings
to become
the well trained animals
of his previous
transience
and is carried
sleeping
by them

to a place
far, not far

with two questions
for magic

light as an itch
in the body
of a god

whose assassin son
owns only
what he can store
as regret
in the animal
mind

my wife is opening her eyes and looking at our sleeping son and then of course she is closing them for show.  I am somewhere in my drunkenness and then I am definitely drumming my right thigh with both hands.  I tell my knees up close they are each a secret ear.  

downstairs I walk gingerly into a tower of paper cups and saving one of them I sit.  I put the rescued to my mouth and make public to my mother’s breast how its milk had a hole in it.  I can hear my wife’s hands exploring the boy’s legs for heat.  it’s not something one can usually hear but I am as quiet as a wheelchair set before a window.    

in another life my son will know great pain.

what we want / to eat / we stuff / into an opened

goat, bury the goat

on a hot day
in sand.

in my father’s body
what  
will burst, will burst
when I
swallow.

the devil has a hand in so many things

god
peeks into its mouth
for fun.

I fashion my sickness after the mother

of all dreams / dreaming / of the same

invasive
procedure.

my own mother

tries to leave
but the bomb
is all
shadow.

I am the part of you
the mother’s pill
reached.

it is why I confess to praying.

the dove went
from Noah’s hands

over white cats
and driftwood

to a second
meaner
dove

harmless
is a kind
of snake
on a child’s
backyard
slide.

a warped
sports card
is a stretcher
cigarettes
slip from.

***
is a nightlight, well,

go on…  

-

     I single out my only son for pretending to have one arm
when what I’ve said

is make sadness
from what you have.

my birdcage was a stuffed bear and my bird was a moth.  oddly the bird protected my sister from knowing she was molested and oddly its cage promised my brother he would again be gay.  oddly only because it was planned.  I was more spelled than born and consented often to being sounded out.  I carried with me a grey blanket that I held like a curtain when asked.  my eyes were peepholes I had to avoid.

rainfall as heard
on
or in
the house
of the child
sinner.

crying of lord.

the deep child.

her friends
are like rooms
actual
rooms  
with friends

in them.

as in
the discipline
of trees
a hand
goes untouched
and changes
color.

I thought I’d teach them some looking.  the well’s bucket I was careful to quietly lower.  I meant to halve the rope with my tied legs and arms, to bewilder it with hugging.  I saw myself do it twice before I gave three.  the dark above me seemed jealous of the dark below; my long hair took on a glitter of crickets but would not be led away.  I waited for my name to sound its foreign bid but instead heard only the silently local.  I could see the bucket if I closed my eyes; and it, me, in my puny dress.  when my feet began their sleep they were napped in by circus water.  how cheered I would be for slipping.

yet it was another took audience- I made the junkyard breathless; my fingers already forgetting to stay their swollen proofs.  I called her name with the others, she whose own fingers had cleared the closing of a refrigerator’s door and so would not be found in a lesser hiding place alive and ******* a knuckle.  I strayed to my brother’s punishment for inappropriate play-  a scene with his therapist saying one can’t die from nothing.  there has to be something.  my brother having his hands pinned to his knees for covering his ears.  his therapist wishing he were someone else and someone else him.

god was created to remember everything.  so says the rock to the tooth starting small.

-

there is a gallery of unfinished work and a space for the baby to crawl through.

-

her feet stick out of the mirror she’s been using to give birth.

-

lost:  frostbite.  lost:  space suit.

will work
for feeding
tube.

-

holy asthma
holy

crossbones

-

old hat
this human
head.

the cricket
makes sense
because it looks
like silence

is doll
always
or never
sick

my first hands with arrowhead made pentagram under hood of daddy’s truck.  then in dirt.  then tree.  he was in tree when I got there and stayed there for what I carved.  not looking up I stayed there too until the next thing which was mom bullhorning me out the window of the truck.  I could see myself running to the truck and to my mom but it was just a vision.  instead I moved to make the tree to where daddy was but I took my eyes off of him and he went.  my mom’s way of seeing had her finding me in no time and she coaxed me with the arrowhead I’d dropped.  she took me home to my brother and put our three spoons in oven.  three the count of times she’d heard me say ****.  I didn’t then and told myself I’d never curse a fourth.  when the pan was taken from oven by brother he took one for himself and winked and for the other two mom pled her milk.

film.  prayer.  kittens in a box.  serene nudes thrusting the skylight.  trinkets in a first floor gift shop lifted by a man dreaming beneath a decompression chamber.  a one use snowglobe.  ash.

hole in a rabbit.  a woman who talks once a year to firecrackers.

earth on earth.  a baby without toes applauded for having two heels.  a pregnant person who’s played on god

a simple hoax.

bible and the missing
book
of aspirin.

fast food chains.

mourners.

describe, in detail,
what it is
that turns
in the hands
of the wonderful
thing
you’re not.

yesterday, he caught
his disabled
son
trying to hit
a wheelchair
with a skipped

rock.  I still go mad

when my feet
touch the earth.

the boy
there shoving
rocks
up his nose

ask him
how many pills
his father
took
at gunpoint

zero
pills

zero
the number

of clowns
the boy
has seen
give birth, one

god
to a thing
refused

medicine

this is the holding father
bent from the weight
of his child    

ear to eardrop

a hospital tree     in aftermath
hunched to the loss
of discovery

this is day 39 of 40
observations

each day I have so many
children     to name

differently

I don’t remember the first time you were here

anymore     I am blessed
to see your toes

hear a storm
when the storm
is distant

born
there
to a sleepy
projectionist

listening
to the ear’s
brief
spider

taste of bread
in your mouth

peace
was found
in the backseat
of a cop car
where no one
was held
outside
a closed
thrift store.

when faced
with being
left behind

passed over
wins out.

I’d go fishing
if I knew
where I’d gone.

would drive, dog walk, divine

would these
our mothers

were it not
for sudden
bouts
of lucidness.

again
an illegal
pair
of dogs
has diagnosed
dad
with doll’s
ankle.

the movers

take the table
leave the cloth.  please

love our baby
like the man
they didn’t
send.

he trades his doll for her doll’s eviction story.  

I bring them tea
and hope
I have a son

I don’t know about.  

-

I was born to believe
I was born
because I’d set
my mom
on fire.

-

you call *******
on the body
belonging
to one
whose inheritance
of sorrow
can be traced
in origin
to a future

event
a father
attends
as god’s

plus one.

the two begin to talk.  I listen from a nearby table but am perhaps too deep inside my own head.  I am recently divorced from a childhood fever now living happily in my right knee.  my left knee suffers from a sameness.  the two begin to kiss but they don’t know it.  I suspect each of them has been born more than once.  I intend to keep them.  every pregnancy is different.  a kind of kidnapping.

SHUTEYE

IN THE LAND
OF THE SACRED
COMMONER

& other poems

110 pages, 7.00

self published and available today on Lulu

(book preview on site is book entire)

~

some poems, from:

~

{untitled}

the robot is a ******.

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

-

I want your work to matter.

~

{keep}

the laziness animals have, that kind of panicked longing…

and brevity, the faith
of insects

-

my shadow, of course, afraid of its borrowed blood

-

that barn
in the middle of nowhere’s haunted eyesight

-

the invisible
after-hours
birth, and the woman

who keeps the baby
despite
its perfection

-

this quiet in the redneck’s
library
of forgiveness, this thunder…

-

the agony of the boomerang’s maker

~

{******}

the cigarette
the worrier’s
flashlight

the past
a widow…

deserted childhood, electric eel.

if poor
put mouth
where mouth
is

~

{untitled}

the baby contorts as if it might become a chair

its mother is saying

wind
I will pray
for you

-

its father is fashioning

from some god’s
idea
of a stripper
pole

a dollhouse

totem

-

the baby itself is nonsense

its head
bruised
by a rattle
would brain

a parrot

sorry, this is there.

new publication, from self and to self, full length, with theme and without. title: Stork Blood. Feb 2014, 97 pages, 9.00

for free PDF, email bartonsmock@yahoo.com

book is here and has been elsewhere:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/stork-blood/paperback/product-21447349.html;jsessionid=B705664E62077329F9C5141F5762EC50­

a stillborn
is lit
by the three
teeth
since knocked
from its mother
as a life form
hangs itself
in the closet
of a nondescript
sister
spacecraft  
after imperceptibly
meditating
on the adventures
not had
by a golem

inspecting my son
after a fall

the blind
and photogenic

a father’s brain activity
charts its course.

piano hands
thrum
on the hood
of a junkyard
car.

I am hard to look at
because I thought my head
a burn box.

the sound of a microwave
has a short time
to spend
with the blue
puppy’s
whine.

the theatrics
need a mother.

a mother needs
to populate
or to paint
a factory.

we are less and less particular
about the nowhere we come out of.

mother, factory.

god’s
untouchable
childhood.

a bruise, a school

of fish.  a caterpillar

crossing

the floor
of hell.  a thought

sick
to a son’s
stomach, a winter

glove
in spider’s
nightmare.

memory selects its future and trauma stops to eat. we are in the Ohio of dieting apparitions.  oh, some cigarette made to last.  a buried joystick.

jesus frost.

dog attack.

sold bible
to bible
salesman.

made me sick
did the weakness
of mass
mailbox.

would be
bloodbrothers
instead I witness
them take
separate
*******
photos.

I am not smart about it.
it lives alone.

or dies maybe
surrounded by
those who
were not there
the man’s
men.

I want to capitalize
***, capitalize
on your two
ruined
entries.

jehovabeast & throng-
ophile.

want go
unheralded
as misanthrope’s
diary
of winter.

**** if
both sides
of the nose
don’t marry
while the mouth
is on
location.

lose a hand
swatting the neck
to get the swatting
done with.

then it’s church
the hotel
for church
goers.

some dads
get they
insides
bit
to bite down
on god.

I’ve been outside
and I’ve been outside
women.

don’t have a clue, army.

we may not have invented god
but surely     we invented

god’s
silence-

he must
hear us
think

one mother
beside him
pulls disease
like ivy
from the wall.  

he puts his glove
where her breast
should be.

with a finger
of hers
she traces
the moustache
drawn
on his visor.

I like this scene
because I have kids.

the mother beside him pulls disease like ivy from the wall.  he puts his glove where her breast should be.  with a finger of hers she traces the moustache drawn on his visor.  I like this scene because I have kids.

I am not a warm person.  different gods, none exist.  did this really happen?  the things I counted myself as a person passing were longer than I thought.  someone kissed jesus on the ear before he could get from bad fish the poisoning that took your mother from hers.  now is the act of stuffing a picnic blanket into a basket of doll grief and then is the fossil of suffering that bones invisibility for daring to redress the father of great avoidance about the loss of behavior in his boys of sudden things.  what I do I don’t when gutting a stork.

we will not be having the grey child.  

word is
it is nothing
if not
an embarrassment
of imagery.  

with god-given whale sounds
it consoles
description.

god
as spotlight

unmanned
or not

sinker
of water’s
heart-

spotless thought
free of bird-

weakener
of hill’s
resolve-

kisser of my enemy-

tireless swallower,
impossible drink-

who don’t
I think
I am?

my wife and I
we walked
in our sleep
with Jesus
on the water

my wife knew
instantly
but I had to ask
his name
which woke

the kids

the past
the one
event
a life
is known for

says poverty
someone
at this table
has nothing to hide.

says father
touching
a UFO
cures frostbite.

says mother
open
the stomach
of the winning
monster.

the night vet drawn into a field by the pink glow of a housebroken piglet.  when the piglet blows, the vet may want to rethink his face.  forgiveness works alone.  I have never seen an attractive god.

sing they

god
can I get
your suitcase

I am homeless and thinking in unison.  yours is also my, beast.  I talk into my hands because I believe they chatter without me.  cold, where they go, based on the books I’ve held.  our beast can sleep without touching its thoughts.

we are not here
to enshroud
the myth
of the woman
who swims
naked-

we are here
might our sons
mourn
the stickman’s
belief
     that his wife
went to pieces

rain notes

I go through a whole pack of candy cigarettes while listening to my father shower with his clothes on. the bedroom window is stuck and sister is on the roof. I can’t move. mom is my dream of suicide

skipping
a generation. thunder my gutted church.

model

scarecrow
the shrinking
man’s
nest

–

the ugliness
of horse
corrected
by deer

overture

curfew, pregnancy, dream-

this plan
to stop
talking

secret**

I occur only to the animal that wants to die

I mouth mother’s lullaby
to a skateboard.

my brother moans
into what he believes
was kept
from my sister.

we underdose
in a gutted place.

we take our foreheads
to women
like fevers
to god’s washcloth.

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.