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Barton D Smock  Jul 2012
seizure
Barton D Smock Jul 2012
I am driving barefoot.  my brothers are crying.  
my mother’s wake

the wake of my mother’s powdered cheeks

is over.  we pass the house my shoes are in.  they run
to one side of the house which makes it lean.  

my brothers to keep from crumbling are sharing bread.
hansel dum and hansel dee.

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into
by lightning.  

when I was a boy I sat a whole week in plain view
with a diecast car behind my teeth.

if you are one to dislike ‘in the end’ and ‘when I was a boy’,
you can hate this all you want:

a nightmare is a dream the heart is having.
Barton D Smock  Jul 2012
seizure
Barton D Smock Jul 2012
I am driving barefoot.  my brothers are crying.  
my mother’s wake

the wake of my mother’s powdered cheeks

is over.  we pass the house my shoes are in.  they run
to one side of the house which makes it lean.  

my brothers to keep from crumbling are sharing bread.
hansel dum and hansel dee.

in the end my mother was mostly an ocean dipped into
by lightning.  

when I was a boy I sat a whole week in plain view
with a diecast car behind my teeth.

if you are one to dislike ‘in the end’ and ‘when I was a boy’,
you can hate this all you want:

a nightmare is a dream the heart is having.
Kitbag of Words Feb 2014
.

(Sippy cups are for toddlers, designed to let them sip but a little sip at a time, and when it falls, the disaster is lessened.)

totally by accident is this dedicated to TL Sipple, whose introspection offers comfort to more than many.

~~~~~~~~~
who among us has not begun the
journey's poetic, by first examining the
mirror that reflects organs internal,
flipping the reversible glass over,
for all you exposed,
it's the curse, the birthing natural,

of the first poem

all your life, streams bustling, streams drying, drought dying,
leaves windy flying up, but final poisoned by gravity,
come to rest and crunched under your footfalls,
but of this did you write, scrivened or scribed?
no

our first child is of our *****, where real borning does occur.

the rest too, but now, and soon thereafter,
put aside the me, and write of he and she,
the first love, always the second child,
for this the nature of the soul and ermine robe,
you elected, when you first self-selected

I am a poet, therefore I hit send,

and the diecast, is the first of many hot rods
piercing, invading, calling out to you,
poet,
"set me free, set me free"

then when walking in September,
the leaves un-glistening, cracking and *****
like an old person who cannot care for them self

then you lift your pen, point to the sky or to the earth,
no matter which, for both are loco parents in loco,
and the truest hardest journey begins,
looking outside in, with eyes colored by
global truths

then and only then the real journey begins,
a differing agony to be learned,
to see as others see,
to write as others have before you and me,
and in doing so, this testing travail,
will earn you, could earn you, a time grade of
pass/fail

you are the only judge in this show,
the only contestant,
what grade will you assign yourself,
what standards will you set,
until you ask,
who are the poets time idolizes?


american idol, throw away your sippy cup, and drink from the river, from the sea, drink deep, until sated,
then begin your foolishness
readied, all over again
poet to please invisible gods,
that *all can see
Kurt Philip Behm Nov 2016
Memories,
  diecast in their emotion,
  —catalysts of the soul

(High Point North Carolina: October, 1977)
Onoma Nov 2020
diecast leaves sheer off

their windblown sounds,

from the concreted spans

of their cycle.

as trees roughen their

sketches for night-callers

come unexpectedly earlier

by the day.

the seductive tips of their knives

flirting with menace, who turn

on a dime to the puncture wounds

of stars.

a globular aftermath for the moon

to split her shell in.

— The End —