So many cool things to do

so many fun, and interesting things to do

so many intoxicating things to stimulate the senses

which, are always on march and parade

DOPAMINE

I stay chasing the next exciting thing

the spectacle, the stimulation, music, promise

but mostly I work my life away

and then I drink, after

Then the internet stimulates me:  Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram

Goodreads, Reddit

the next fix,

always the next fix

not where I want to be

you can only be in one place

I think my mind wants to be, in all places at once

then, you get bored

******* bored

that's there again

Then minutes, moments, seconds move fast

out of your life

Alan Watts said, "thoughts are addictive," I know what he means

he's not speaking in riddles

A lot of times, it's just best not to think

Somewhere in complete isolation

with no one talking to you, or speaking to you

eventually the voices and thoughts go away

and you can cleanse yourself

Hopefully

celine wrote some thick books
'Death On The Installment Plan'
'Journey To The End Of Night'
my plan was to read them but i never did

i got as far as the titles
then got stuck

they've been packed away in boxes
for the past 5 years,
i had no need to unpack them

maybe if they had been  thinner

what can i do
what can i do
i just don't want to
i just don't want to

everyday i feel so unheld
together

life after life

Down on the South side a
tube ride away,
out in the Borough
where some people stay and
some people say,
it's a nice place, a
well-lit place, a somewhere
to sit and deep think place.

but

there's another side, a ride back in time
when the streets were caked in
horse **** and grime and the urchins
searching for somewhere to stay,
some nicer place
on a much nicer day.

And the Stew houses
but no stew inside,
known to children and
no place to hide,
Goose, oh goose
let my children go loose,
cries far away from
the Borough today.
js

The following text is taken from 'Goodreads' reviews of John Constable's 'The Southwark Mysteries'.


'For tonight in Hell, they are tolling the bell
For the ***** that lay at The Tabard
And well we know how the carrion crow
Doth feast in our Cross Bones Graveyard.'


In 1107, the Bishop of Winchester was granted a stretch of land on Southwark Bankside, which lay outside the law of the City of London. The Bishop controlled the numerous brothels, or 'stews'in the area, but the prostitutes, known as 'Winchester Geese', who paid the Bishop licence fees, were nevertheless condemned to be buried in unhallowed ground. For some 500 years, the Bishop of Winchester exercised sole authority within Bankside's 'Liberty of The Clink', including the right to licence prostitutes under a Royal Ordinance until Cromwell and the Puritans shut down the bear-pits, theatres and stews of Bankside's pleasure quarter.

In 1996, those working on an extension to the Jubilee line of London's underground, unwittingly began to dig up the bones of the outcast dead of Southwark, extimated to number 15,000, and John Constable began writing the Southwark Mysteries and later became part of a campaign to preserve part of the cemetery as a memorial garden.

I can't resist pasting in an article from the Daily Telegraph that appeared after the performance of the Southwark Mysteries at Shakespeare's Globe and Southwark Cathedral on Easter Sunday and Shakespeare's birthday, 23rd April 2000:

The Sunday Telegraph, May 14th 2000

"DEAN REJECTS CRITICS OF 'SWEARING JESUS' MYSTERY PLAY

A religious play staged in an Anglican cathedral has provoked fury after it featured a swearing Jesus and Satan wearing a phallus.

The Southwark Mysteries was produced by Southwark Cathedral and Shakespeare’s Globe in south London as part of the capital’s 'String of Pearls' Millennium celebrations. It mixed ***** medieval scenes with modern imagery and referred to bishops engaging in homosexual *** with altar boys and priests visiting prostitutes. The character of Jesus, who rode onto stage on a bicycle, was shown apparently condoning a range of ****** activities, while Satan told scatological jokes and ordered Jesus to 'kiss my a*'. At one point Jesus was admonished by St Peter for his swearing and responded: 'In the house of the harlot, man must master the language.' At another, Satan, played by a female actor, strapped on 'a huge red phallus' before using it to beat his sidekick, Beelzebub.

The play was written by John Constable, who said that he had deliberately wanted to challenge Christians. 'Profanity is a theme of the play', he said. 'The point of it was to explore the sacred through the profane. ' Mr Constable said he had worked closely with Mark Rylance, the Globe’s artistic director, and the Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, who conceived the idea of a joint production to mark William Shakespeare’s birthday falling on Easter Day. He said the clergy had made a number of suggestions about the content, but he had not acted on all of them. 'They did ask me to make sure that Satan did not wear the phallus in the presence of Jesus, which I did', he said.

The first section of the play, which contained much of the ***** material, was staged at the Globe, and the final part, 'The Harrowing of Hell' in the cathedral. 'Colin Slee was very robust in keeping me on the straight and narrow', Constable said. 'The play is a new version of the traditional medieval Mystery plays, which were religious in nature but accepted human imperfections and took place in a carnival atmosphere. It seemed to be well received by most people who saw it.'

But one member of the audience, Simon Fairnington, has condemned the play as 'disgustingly offensive', saying that it 'revelled in the glorification of vice'. In a letter to the Dean he complained: 'Had the play been a purely secular production, one might not have been surprised at its treatment of Christian belief. What was dismaying was that it was sponsored and performed in part within a Christian cathedral. The cynical part of me wonders whether this is simply a sign of the times, and the way the Church of England cares about its Gospel and its God.' Anthony Kilmister, chairman of the Prayer Book Society, said: 'This is not the sort of play that should be performed in God’s house. It is quite disgraceful.'

But the Dean, who was the centre of controversy a few years ago when he allowed the cathedral to be used for a Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement celebration, defended the play. The performance was in keeping with traditional Mystery plays and 'portrayed graphically the life and history of the area' which was 'where the seamier side of life was to be found', he said. 'The message was that even the worst sins are not beyond redemption', he added.

Most of the audience responded positively to the underlying message of mutual forgiveness. Like the Dean, many accepted Satan’s *****, blasphemous words and deeds as part of the Mystery Tradition. The theologian Jeffrey John was of the opinion that, despite some obvious heretical tendencies, Constable was presenting 'remarkably orthodox Christian teachings going back to the first century AD'. Constable’s Harrowing of Hell is closely modelled on a play from the medieval York Cycle. His version shows Jesus’ spirit of forgiveness triumphing over the letter of The Law. Jesus’ ultimate 'Judgement' is a verse paraphrase of Matthew 26: 35-45.

  JESUS
  My blessed children, I shall say
When your good deed was to me done.
When man or woman, night or day,
Asked for your help, your heart not stone,
Did not pass by or turn away,
You saw that, in me, they too are One.
But you that cursed them, said them nay,
Your curse did cut me to the bone.

When I had need of meat and drink,
You offered me an empty plate.
When I was clasped and chained in Clink,
You frowned, and left me to my fate.
Where I was teetering on the brink,
Did bolt and bar your iron gate.
When I was drowning, you let me sink.
When I cried for help, you came too late.

  RESPONSE
  When had you, Lord, who all things has
Hunger or thirst, or helplessness?
Had we but known God a prisoner was
We would surely have sought to ease His distress.
How could God be sick or dying? Alas!
When was He hungry, thirsty, or homeless?
How could such things come to pass?
When did we to thee such wickedness?

  JESUS
  Dead souls! When any bid
You pity them, you did but blame.
You heard them not, your heart you hid.
Your guilt told you they should be shamed.
Your thought was but the earth to rid
Of them I am now come to claim.
To the poorest wretch, whate’er you did,
To me you did the self and same.

/ my newest self-published collection of poems, [depictions of reentry], is available now on Lulu.

will send for free a hard copy to anyone interested in writing a review – make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

book preview on site is book entire

some poems from it:

[liftoff]

the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.

-

my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.

~

[attic radio]

the fattest baby in the nursing home can’t chew with its eyes open.

it’s a slow day.

looking into the future
a skeleton’s
dog
sees only
sticks.

lightning
marks
the robot’s
church.

~

[meditations on depth]

the mouth
of the thing
that eats
in fog
a doll’s
head

-

the holy spirit
high
on the bricklayer’s
toothache

-

a cat person
at death’s
door

-

poverty

a belonging
moved
by many
mirrors

~

[seeing]

bored as a slaughterhouse

crow / angel

on a skateboard

~

[depictions of reentry (xxi)]

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

~~

/ my first non self-published chapbook, [infant cinema], is available from **** Press.

I currently have three signed copies available for free- make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

excerpt, here:

my child. my diver who wets the bed. my worrier who rescues domestic scenes for animals accused of gaslighting. my swimmer. bather of grasshoppers. my lovely bird alone in an airplane.

~

two things to do on an empty stomach are:  

hold a séance.  

follow the spider’s trail of abandoned birthmarks.  

~

in the video, the young woman is being force-fed cake by a man with a ruined tongue. my mother can’t eat and watch at the same time. your mother is holding me and wondering what happened to this thing. our fathers are veering into the realm of film criticism. where you are depends wholly on my sister’s makeup. god’s parents have no concept of time.

~~

/ also, ending tomorrow, is the goodreads giveaway for my self-published thing, [FOUR], which includes four recent titles of mine in full along with some newer poems.  

some poems from it:

[the many]

as an uncle
can enter
any garage
and sense
the absence
of a nailgun
so
can a holy man
prepare
a meal
in the missing
church

~

[purlieu]

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.          

~

[mouthings]

a brother
dodges
suicide
with a piece
of paper
that doesn’t
work. a mother’s
blood

goes white
at the ink
of amnesia.

bus stop, breastmilk
there was

no me.

at what would god
not
be caught
dead? speaking

is how we talk
to the words
we say.

~

[stratum]

two brothers come to blows over which sister likes fast food more.  a man we want to love is shadowboxing a snowdrift from the parable of touch.  blood is a food group.  I pray to my hair.  call my footwork by name.  take my time

with amnesia.  

baby facts include being born again in the museum you were carried to.

In
Dream
I was reading a book
And could feel the process
in my brain
Stepped in
found my read book are
converted into trees..

(someone won this collection via a Goodreads giveaway and posted how much they hated it on Tumblr because Tumblr is not attached to their name.  also, I assume, because they hated it.  my name is Barton Smock.  I, too, am a coward.)

~

[earshot]

you were a white male and I was a white male and we were young and even if one put us together we were young.  our idea was to give winter gloves to those whose teeth chattered and we knew the sound had come to us both.  we mowed lawns all summer and mugged a drunk **** who sat reading love notes after baling hay.  we bought the gloves and held them until winter but by then we were not friends and song was the retroactive vocal of a father’s forgetting.  we divvied the gloves in a sad scene no mother would countrify.  

~

[eulogy]

when stalking
the unmanned
spotlight
of your own
death, drink

heavily

with
your takers / you

are nowhere’s
only
sponsor

~

[not monstrous]

a group of boys beats my son for beating my daughter.  when I carry my kids, my kids relax.  the group of boys are uneducated and think god has promoted a number of them to shave me.  my ***** looks as if left by an angel to grow alone after not being placed on an infant.  there is nothing to be said but one of the boys mutters away that he is set to star in the film version of your father’s suicide and that if all goes well he’ll **** himself for real.

~

[tract]

the television in front of my murderous father is the city his house misses.  further coverage is dedicated to a new unharmed person from a race of desert people whose mother materialized without feeling.  as my brothers cross shadows in the brightness of kitchen, I join in spirit the manhunt for the victim who’s made off with the right to disappear.  

~

[incubation period]

I flatten my father’s tin foil hat to hear farmland again.  I am the astronaut god commands me to pinch.  my babies are tossed in the general direction of trampolines.  

~

[non-event]

I was reading beyond my years to childlike fathers in a house named for the woman whose hair was brought to her by boys her sons had wronged.  I was eating what I could of the horse said to have eaten hospital flowers.          
~

[locals]

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.  her pain is god’s.  

~

[monster]

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.

~

[light touch]

she imagined herself pregnant.  she fell behind her best years which became predictions.  she asked me about the men in my friendships.  candle-makers, a few with toddlers

a football
knocks over.    

~

[straw piece]

I was an entire baby and then a picture of me as a baby.  I had as part of the **** shaming process a mother wheeled in and out of the sun.  here is a boy with a red brick looking for an anthill.  here he was brushing from a woman’s bare back a piece of straw and here it is sticking to my leg.  in the barn the eater of stones is missing the privacy of an outhouse.  I lie to her face and then to nostalgia’s outlook.  I lose blood to the mosquito known for the collapse of my favorite cow.

~

[insult stage]

the very sadness.  the very sadness of the intruder who brings his own plate to drop.  the very ecstasy of telling a classmate he or she is ugly alongside a finger he or she must choose.  the unintended ecstasy of the sadness I use to *** cobwebs while waiting for something you’ll do nothing with.  the cutting of the fingers to scale.

~

[stirrings]

being operated on
helps me sleep.

I was your age
when nothing
had been done.

the turtle in my father’s backpack,
the turtle loose
on a moving
school bus.

gods
from a previous
marriage.

I crawled into my mother’s bed
and waited
for my nose to bleed.

you find the cut
like you find
where your daughter
is cut.

a sister ties
knot after knot
and opens
a window
only to *****
in a downstairs bathroom
from a fear
of heights.

American Cosmic at the Jesuit School
Red Pine as credulous?  No, he is no fool.
Now is the time for Stubborn the Mule.

                             Goodreads!

One-click shopping,
instant payment –  
so convenient;
so ******* easy
to cross over
from being a shopper
to a low-key hoarder.

I don’t buy expensive stuff.
No, nothing excessive.

Just read about a new book,
must-read of the season,
rave reviews on Goodreads.
Available on Amazon?
Yes, it also has a Kindle version.
(See,
even though there is no comparison
between the warmth of a paperback
and the cool efficiency of e-books,
I prefer my Kindle simply because  
it’s easier to carry multiple books.)
So I click – buy – get it.
Now it sits
in merry company  
of all the books I bought
so ******* conveniently
while I keep rereading the books
I’ve already read.  

Don’t get me started  
on my obsession with stationery.
Is there any feeling better
than writing on blank paper?
Seeing your busy thoughts
fall in neat lines,
march in formation,
until they reveal the idea underneath.
I keep browsing through the section
of notebooks, journals, diaries,
pencils, pens – oh, there are so many kinds!
I click – buy – get it.
A moment of ecstasy
when the I get the delivery
even though I mostly jot down
any sudden flash of inspiration  
on my phone because it’s always handy.

Getting bigger?  
Get larger jeans.
No need to stand trial  
before judgemental eyes
of the “helpful” salesperson.
Sidestep the self-esteem crisis,
just click – buy – get it.
Easy return policy;
quick refund if it does not fit.

Idly scrolling on social media
and I’m bombarded
with some choice targeted marketing.
How can I refuse
such a customised bait?
Hook, line, click on the link –
there – it’s not that expensive,
nothing too excessive.
I’ll buy that yellow dress,
those cute strappy sandals,
the quirky socks,
ooh a new mascara!
Wear the dress once and chuck it aside,
then go back to cycle the same five outfits.
Put on the mascara,
bat my eyes in jubilation,
then banish it to the drawer
because it gets on my contacts
and causes irritation.

I can go on and on and wax poetic
about the wonders of window-shopping
from the comfort of my couch.
I swear it’s such a great feeling
coming home to find my package waiting.

am a book lover
a process in purchasing books
first the title selected in Goodreads
check the reviews
then browse through Amazon
Find and open
See the content
Read first page
If it's okay..... Go to Wikipedia
check author profile and
his prominent books
if the  book was selected
Check the price and discount
compare it with other online store
and call my favourite book store
and check price
am a regular buyer 20% flat discount
If available
Can feel the book
smell it to find the aroma of invitation
then bill it.... Or
Order in online
Saving on purchase
Will be used for further
Purchase of books...