Alien’s heaven

poems

Barton Smock
June 2015
 

 
pilot light

baby, baby talk, and pilot light.

kitchens everywhere,
god is alone.
 
no brain

father smokes to make something disappear. he says he’s no brain but can pass for touched each time the bug is resurrected. when he rolls out of a blanket and into the side of a building, I believe again in the man mistaken for god’s pencil. mother can’t leave him anymore than she can leave her ears. terrify no one your childhood knows.
 
son

it was born in a bath of milk when there was milk to burn.  it drew with daylight.  when asked for details, it pulled a shadow’s tooth.  we took it to a movie, a war movie, where it made its first noise.  its pain went everywhere.  it sold, it sold until it ran out of clothes.  its mothers had fight.      
 
knees

visiting hours are set by a god who knows I smoke.  leaving my mark means I’ve pressed the barrel of a cap gun into my brother’s temple because the ****** keeps scooping into his ballcap the same toad.  my two fathers are here to bounce things off my mother when she prays.  sit long enough and ***** will dry them together.        
 
yearly

our collective identity is a sick child. some say fever, some say welcome to the loop of the biblically speechless. people are for others. are for making eyes at the gender of the god as it oversleeps in the coma we slip from. the child prays. the child causes a stir in the pastoral urgency of a moral imagination. we pray. we miss yearly the showdown between the town drunk and the town ghost. I trace a finger to put my finger on. the television belonging to our lady of snowy reception has fallen on our little angel more than once. nothing in the world is the world.
 
boy and gun

it entered my heart
to take a bird
from the world.
I felt nothing.    

the recent absence
of nothing.  
 
vernal

when you begin
to show
say
instead
you’ve a soft

spot
for god
 
race

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.
 
area

somewhere, the mostly boy body pretends to be explored.  we are not we.  my mother ruins a sketch of my mother.  my father smokes two packs a day because online he was called prematurely haunted.  the name of your existence

is

priest retires to make umbrella for jack-in-the-box.  (her bus

is rain)
 
barbaric terms

each twin
slower
than the last, she spits

over my dead body

baby
after baby
out.

as news
of the massacre
spreads, the young
call it mother
by word

of mouth.
 
longing*     *for Gen

the baby boy stiffens at the sight of unrolled dough.  we say he is pointing the way to god.  crippled by the sadness in her hand, his mother keeps a claw mark like one keeps diary.
 
closings

trespassers
shoot themselves.

your son gets hired
by city

to illustrate
a book on mirrors
for households
with one
adult.

my son
dies
before the machine
that keeps him
alive

turns on.

a doll in doll country
burns its nose
trying to enter
the future
museum
of racist
oddities.

my hand tries my hand at forming
firstborn
erasures
using only
redactions.

god is exiled
for bringing
the animal
its childlike
behavior.

I am far too animated.

your body is the notice
eyes

give.
 
ins

night
the land
of a single
unseen
settler  

-

father
half eye, half oil    

-

self, self panic
 
bloodless     for Noah

my brother was blinded by a crow.

I’d tell you the story
but know
you hate it.

*******.

brother’s darkroom
became
the crow’s.
 
breathing spells

I chased only
the brother
I’d dreamed
of beating.

I told my sister
she didn’t have
a tail. told mother
it’s not suicide

unless you ask
to be born. I had a hand
for the year
father

went quiet
a hand
for the year
father

went quiet
for good. had dolls
over which

dying
out of character
held sway.
 
intelligence

magic amplifies in my loneliness a single flaw.

a bird, a high window. sound of a brain cell.

hunger and its unremarkable kitchen.

as a doctor I hammered the baby’s knee.

bio, and the undisclosed location of god’s recovery.

harm is harm’s audience.
 
disability jargon

i.

when it opens the bomb
it knows
like my brain knows
what it sees

ii.

homicide grief
is a recording
god’s message
speaks to

iii.

eight years old
she leaves the trampoline
in her body’s
fearful
accounting
of self
 
concord

cap gun.  swag from an uncle’s suicide.  

the daughter
the ghost
cartoonist.

voodoo dolls
in isolation.  isolation

in its prime.    
 
altar

the baby is too light.  its mother puts it on a scale that reminds her of a plate her empty childhood couldn’t break.  its mother invites neighbor boys to punch her in the stomach.  some of the boys bail.  some don’t.  the mother’s nickname doubles as her real.  the baby is not called bricks.


 
zero

when I couldn’t get my head around the surrender of my body to the flotation device of an immaculate conception, I’d simply swallow a baby that had swallowed a pill.  years go by and I am zero.  the number arrested for suicide.        



 
basics

because he is asleep, he does not find himself sleeping in the tub.  something slides from his belly and becomes wedged.  his dream business goes under even in dream.  he makes eyes at CPR manikins.  his son, his life, pushes for legs.
 
preparedness

you look like you’ve just been given permission to sleep in your clothes.

it’s a **** whistle only crows can hear.

it’ll put sheep
on the moon.
 
outlet

depression is a non-starter.  depression is depression unknowingly cured.  it is like I have this shirt because it exists and not because it invites everyone whose shirt it’s not to enjoy joy.  I don’t want to hear you say you’re sad to say.  I ******* to reappear and think it might be why my father vanished.  it’s enough during foreplay to flicker.

 
viewership

my youth spent trying to see the devil as a young man.  my motherly youth.  my **** scene a return to form.  cut from yours, you have your baby’s eyes.  I went unborn.  I went beaten.  we went together in broad daylight when broad daylight was god’s elevator.


 
pressure

the original thought in my head was to be postdated by god until god learned he had a baby on the way.  I had children until I could only have four.  what I say to self-harm is pay attention.  my daughter raises her hand on the off chance she buried something in her teacher’s body.  (we have stopped talking

but I can squeeze her anorexia into a phone booth)  poverty myth:  I groom my sons with the beak of bird abandoned.  real time I tell my tongue it’s ******* curtains for the mouth I’m getting.  full circle my daughter surrounds those brothers of hers that mine clone.        
 
high

mother, in the early stages of her food fight with god.

father, I can’t bury
my face.

in lieu    
of the lord’s
dog, raise

the lord’s
bone.
 
the mice

the conditions for mentally composing a suicide note for his sister are less than perfect. she’s sitting on his bed with a cigarette in one hand and his baseball glove on the other. both hear three traps snap shut in the kitchen. sister gags and it makes him think about gagging. now no more, these were the heart of the note.
 
signal

as my face
will one day
correct
my body
I expose

the elements
to my
ugliness  

-

my son is my search

history

-

headlights
when headlights
emerge
emerge
from a period
of non
worship

-

(wave your arms
long enough
you’ll have sticks
for arms)

-

they don’t  
happen
in my
lifetime
the terrible
things
I’ve done  
 
observance

when drought came
to my brother
I left
for the city
where I found myself
blanketing
manhole covers
with my coat
for women
who gathered
on rooftops
with men
whose daughters
had been killed
for jumping
rope
 
peril

I bit my tongue
when my tongue
was a cloud.

take cover, bones,
says my daughter
dancing.

I crushed my son
like a gift
and offered
god
my tactile
outlook.

stay small, future.  

persuade
a peephole
to show
some blood.      
 
no devil

the knock knock joke in need of my father’s skull is all that’s left of the outside world. hell was always the preparing of hell.
 
inseparable

mother is watching a show that keeps her from picturing the gods who portray us.  father is choosing an ice cube to bury.  myself I am very close to stripping for the cigarette my sister rescued from a baby’s crayon box in a dream that smelled like her clothes.      
 
masters

I have just had it written down for me how I am not classically racist. I am alone. I am brief stay of bullet. god is using each hair on my head to scribble on my son’s thought process. when I think of crab legs I think in color of the lightning bolt it snows inside. I miss mom. gospel, gospel that I hang these rags for invisible crows.
 
was

ask now my father if it still believes the present to be the future of a past life.  

ask then if it unscrewed one day each inessential light bulb that my party would have balloons.  

-

violence in movies.  also, food.  my mistake.  I glue myself

to nothing.  my shyness

-

is kind of
my angel.  

-

the body invents the soul it recalls.
 
gauze

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.  
 
image

and do not
believe, as such, that yours
is a body

leads god
to inquire
 
godless

godless
balloon
animal
 
root effects     for Miles J. Bell

like he’s laying
yellow
on his road
out of grief
brother
takes a drag
and keeps it
until his head
is underwater
is what they call
with apples.

his eyes
have always been
two poverties
unexplored.  he is old, alien’s

heaven
he is old
but not before
he knows it.
 
the alien wept but was not heard weeping

not all
drones
dream
of you

The bells tolling and gallow stools
Carved by a crisp knife sharpened by a stone flint-shaped among the garden tools
The molded and weak rose like the solid and stolid coveting
The dolorous limelight seekers were sure about the fun settling
The call-in your wake is sure to make you disagree, subversively
Pretentious till it leads me into ruinous states, with each verse
Troubled and telling about the stoic salacious dread, of your *******
The sins and arresting rebels brought you minister and spirit
The apologetic and shrieking in their walls their apologies
Am I the only one, who thinks
They don't change their disposition
Time I'm tearing you up into fragments
My stories are getting caught up in their endings
Caught by the hook of standing on the ceiling, rear-ended
The knee-deep hell, mountain high harp, what the ****!
Reelin' and rockin' in heaven, indeed purgatory calls your bulls and porgies
Greed and corporeal blood and recipe for dreadful disaster, and luck you yammer about out-and-out too
It's in your flesh and bones, ****** vain too
Feels like time is slipping and sliding out of my oval face and hateful hands
The friends you seek to hold you when you're ready?
Blows, busy days, France in its hey-day had some passion rather saints who come marching in
Are you ready to read your death in the newspapers, when your stomach lurches like holes in the air
Or here from storytellers like a burnt legacy, in the papers that herald flying guns and leveraging politics
And hate, rising with the ashes, the education burning blue like a phoenix
Apogee, really, after so many a doubt and clusterfuck of redactions, I'm ready to learn about counted visage among the many faces on a business street
About my attraction to nature and fantastic reality, I'm jumping with joy
But, smaller than the cosmic bubble that keeps us from dying
I can tell no one, this is our one and only time with faded humor
You're breeding and you're dying with famished and frayed daughters of petulant sons believing hilarious rumors
I am dismembered much to my won't, the stentorious frolicking reeks around astute anecdotes of my pain of having a name
Even it's a fake one and adopted by pretty old me
The antidote of all this, love and peace, it must be the end of fashion and integrity
Peace and love cradling the waves wandering in mystery
Walking among the feet of trembling rage hungry for power, our love is just an island, but, not the little flower that just matured
If I engender myself, I will be free from being prematurely always on
Smidges and shakes for the collared contingent of successful women
For the one, surreptitiously resting under the invisible sun, sticking out their necks for none
Smack her flesh across till light turns still
The center light pops in expectation of blue days and flooring her money on her mind
On the reeling hail, tying the wrong laces and pushing wrong buttons
I left the hall crazed and surprisingly fully-dressed
Snake-like heads facing away from each other with their smothering hands around my neck
I unhand my royal touch and my license for the cream-crop
Not sure about my violence and clammy hands, but, my old man didn't like it all that much
Handing the trembling papers of my record for another dispensary
The errands that I have to run, I would recommend this to no one
Watching movie reruns and playing my new dreams in my trailer park, every time she was the one
Tea and teeming, brink and livid feeling, reelin' with the great high upstart
Cosmopolitans and Neapolitans, I'm probably going play to Jupiter jazz for another meridian of Earth
Red rain splaying like the sand Andalusian like, waving my hands care-free, only to slam my self down easily
Into another speakeasy with a wake-up call and nightcap, dusk till dawn
The day seems brighter and the sun scintillating like the queenie-eyes on the resting sunshine on the iridescent soil
Ecstasy open miles ahead, the eyes lay in peace and capacious lamps full of soul food and meals
Like lamps and little lintels, the coruscating fire makes the colors of the day seem much more real
The tears in Heaven are adjusted for a place in my salvation
Vitriolic, but, mellifluous in it's surmise, you're sure about the music you're hearing
Crouching upon old times like washed memories
Or is it the waters of the ocean afar from snake-like repellent waves of the oceanic dreams
The snake passes by, in the time of your lifeless soul
You were just pacing yourself, the motto is "Always look your prime and best"
They are your true reflection, this is the one and only reflective surface I will attest to, lest I sound sanctimonious
Bo vine and in vino veritas, you're ecstatic about auriferous objects
Sheep and tipping civilization with the conquest of the times, and the same sundial from Eratosthenes that made citadels
The conquest of Troy is any different from the present oligarchy
Librarian of Alexandria, and the Trojan horse of cursed hands mixed with the opportunity
A couplet for a couple of composite numbers is enough to tempt the prime number
In showing up in your  classes brimming with achievers, some students among them
Eratosthenes' sieve is diligent work on simplicity, so yes, whoever reads this, the wake-up call is not a snake bite
This is Stoicism, and poetry is stoic writing cannot be duplicated
The moral could be looking at hopeless dreams, helplessly
Just passing by without shedding any of it on your probity

Humpty Trumpy promised the wall,
Humpty Trumpy's in a free fall:
His base reactions
To blackened redactions,
Gave Trumpy just cause
For more infractions.

trespassers
shoot themselves.

your son gets hired
by city

to illustrate
a book on mirrors
for households
with one
adult.

my son
dies
before the machine
that keeps him
alive

turns on.

a doll in doll country
burns its nose
trying to enter
the future
museum
of racist
oddities.

my hand tries my hand at forming
firstborn
erasures

using only
redactions.

god is exiled
for bringing
the animal
its childlike
behavior.

I am far too animated.

your body is the notice
eyes

give.

What nobody else sees
Or can know about me
I divulge to the shadows
Unreservedly
An unvarnished self-portrait
Devoid of redactions
An honest account
Of my crooked transactions
A pact with the demons
To spare me from their
Maledictive libations
And impish fanfare
That befall me
Involuntary
When I try
To ask god why we die
And receive no reply
Only silence do I
Spy with my little eye
When I lie awake
Counting the ghosts
I descry

By: Cedric McClester

You say you want diversity

At your elite university

But your thirst for tuition

Places you in an awkward position

Because when your recruiter makes a call

Wealth will usually trump it all

And most likely it’s exclusive

Or should I say, non-inclusive?


So admission tends to be

Limited to the same folks I always see

In the line ahead of me

And, you won’t let me in for free

So never mind Affirmative Action

Which has undergone some redactions

Because of the adverse reactions

Of those expressing their dissatisfactions


It’s not a matter of superior intellect

As some of you might suspect

It’s the turf that you seek to protect

Like the monuments you *****

Attempts to level the playing field

Lack the same kind of appeal

I’m just trying to keep it real

But, you already know the deal

Despite how it makes me feel



And it’s not like we’re not driven

How many years of free labor have we given

You’re surprised that we’re still living

Or, that the past is not forgiven

But after all is said and done

The sins of the father will visit the son

So if you happen to be the one

Are my chances still slim to none?















Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2019.  All rights reserved.

The poets in the digital age
hunger for constant approval.
As cowards, they hide in fear
behind the mob's outrage.
In a constant search for validation
within shallow mud puddles,
every penned word betrays
the pursuit of truth in art.
Lost in a fog of redactions,
I just don't know
if these poets will ever find
truth again.

-Ron Gavalik

By: Cedric McClester

Follow that car!
Riding shotgun is William Barr
On another ******
With an Oval Office agenda
Carrying the President’s water
Let’s declare him out of order
And turn on your recorder
His time is growing shorter

His flagrant impropriety
Is there for us to see
He’s called Attorney General
But we shouldn’t take it literal
We’ve watched him on his journey
As the President’s attorney
See he’s there to do his bidding
Which he doesn’t keep hidden

Look! he just turned the corner,
And I’m thinking that he’s gonna
Defend the President’s actions
Devoid of any redactions
Though they’re undefendable
He’ll still give us an ear-full
And I don’t mean to be snarky
It’s what Biden calls malarky

So, as for his legacy?
Let’s just say, search me?
I guess in time we’ll know
What history will show
Because even those who have a sequel
Should be serving the American people
But that hasn’t been the case
Since they put him back in place




Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2019.  All rights reserved.