hick
lore
rabbit
hole* / poems, barton smock, October 2016

self published, available on Lulu

as always, free hard copy to any person interested in writing a review

free PDF can be requested via contacting bartonsmock@yahoo.com

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if you tell a friend, the friend you tell can be imaginary

~

some poems, from:

[no wolf]

I was a doorstep baby and brother a treehouse.

moon of the injured. moon of the blind.

~

[his impressions of the experiment]

my closest frat brother looks at the toad and says frog *******. tackles me. fact: there is a certain kind of toad that by staying still can **** a drug dog. in this country, a man can sell doves from the back of a white van. a man can run out of doves. my ghost is obsessed with caterpillars. it doesn’t matter what you say. they found that woman.

~

[her impressions of the experiment]

his animals hiccup somewhere within the contagious yawns of god. his tumor is the crow of the ocean. the foot they hope to find me with is not yet purple. I shred a tiny pillow but your baby ain’t blind.

~

[circa (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

~

[circa (**)]**

to the man whose face can do things mine cannot, I give my son.

silence has no creator. pictures

of god
don’t sell.

to you, my name is matter.  

I shoot randomly
into a universal bed-

giver
of the tattoo
some kid

becomes.

hate crime
thinks
too highly
of itself.  

my thing
for names
extends
to children.

the words have left me.  as for shaken baby
syndrome, you gave

that ****
to yourself.  

wild goose, reappear

is what I would say
to the wild goose.  

the last copy of mama’s
sacerdotal
memoir

the copy
that makes
sense.

a barber
in a swim cap

combing
the dream

for a surgeon’s
toothpick

holding a baby
as if she’d
had it thrown at her
my mother
came out of the museum-

it had stopped raining
it had also
stopped
snowing

and people
were giving me
money

a jailer
talking through bars
to a ventriloquist.

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

I will do my best to remember in order these the prayers satan has returned to the adult me...

(please help me to absorb the paranoia of my uncle who
after putting a clear piece of tape on his belly button

drinks
too much)

(please make her hair fall out)

(invisibility)

(tell god but take your time)

(a secret brother.  a brother I can beat on.)

(power over girls I want nothing to do with)

(a job my mom can turn down)

(muscles that make me high)

(pain in the useless privates of my guardian angel)

(the best birdhouse)

(a grandfather or a frog, or both, with teeth)

(a nativity scene built around a piece of spat out gum)

(comic book with ******* scarecrow)

(a baby sister
to radio
my mother’s
coma)

(messenger stones)

(a double
where my hands
can sleep)

(the last dropper
of dinosaur
woe)

(Eve whose ears have amnesia)

(you, from my past)

part
sign-language

the centaur
attends
the mermaid’s

crucifixion...

some of my hair

was cut
for being
blind

some of it
became

a scarecrow’s
purse

for Franz Wright, late*

~

the hand
I don’t wash
has never
been touched.

is the last
woman
on earth
pregnant?

the children are burning
yet

my son
is not enough
to fill
your nose.

I saw god
he was crawling
away
from a clean
diaper.  it would be my only regret

to miss
the encore
of death.

under hypnosis the boy becomes nostalgic for its opposite. we are having for the hole in your brother a funeral. at sea the haunted cage. in a fish the robot’s rib.