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Initializing Project Insomnia...
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Tracing last memory relapse...
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Subject 001 successfully terminated...
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Codename: Alpha initiated...
PROLOGUE:

“’We must stop this brain working for twenty years.’” So said Mussolini’s Grand Inquisitor, his official Fascist prosecutor addressing the judge in Antonio Gramsci’s 1928 trial; so said the Il Duce’s Torquemada, ending his peroration with this infamous demand.’”  Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Introduction, translation from Italian and publishing by Quintin ***** & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, New York, 1971.

BE IT RESOLVED: Whereas, I introduce this book with a nod of deep respect to Antonio Gramsci--an obscure but increasingly pertinent political scientist it would behoove us all to read and study today, I dedicate the book itself to my great grandfather and key family patriarch, Pietro Buonaiuto (1865-1940) of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, southern Italy.

Let it be recognized that Pete Buonaiuto may not have had Tony Gramsci’s brain, but he certainly exhibited an extreme case of what his son--my paternal grandfather, Francesco Buonaiuto--termed: Testaduro. Literally, it means Hardhead, but connotes something far beyond the merely stubborn. We’re talking way out there in the unknown, beyond that inexplicable void where hotheaded hardheads regurgitate their next move, more a function of indigestion than thought. Given any situation, a Testaduro would rather bring acid reflux and bile to the mix than exercise even a skosh of gray muscle matter.  But there’s more. It gets worse.

To truly comprehend the densely-packed granite that is the Testaduro mind, we must now sub-focus our attention on the truly obdurate, extreme examples of what my paternal grandmother—Vicenza di Maria Buonaiuto—they called her Jennie--would describe as reflexive cutta-dey-noze-a-offa-to-spite-a-dey-face-a types. I reference the truly defiant, or T.D.—obviously short for both truly defiant and Testaduro. T.D.’s—a breed apart--smiling and sneering, laughing and, finally, begging their regime-appointed torture apparatchik (a career-choice getting a great deal of attention from the certificate mills--the junior colleges and vocational specialty institutes) mocking their Guantanamo-trained torturer: “Is that what you call punishment?  Is that all you ******* got?”

If, to assist comprehension, you require a literary frame of context, might I suggest you compare the Buonaiuto mind to Paul Lazzaro, Vonnegut’s superbly drawn Italian-American WWII soldier-lunatic with a passion for revenge, who kept a list of people who ****** with him, people he would have killed someday for a thousand dollars.

Go with me, Reader, go back with me to Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .”
It is long past the Tralfamadorian abduction and his friendship with Stony Stevenson. Billy is back in Germany, one of three dingbat American G.I.s roaming around beyond enemy lines.  Another of the three is Private Lazzaro, a former car thief and undeniable psychopath from Cicero, Illinois.

Paul Lazzaro:  “Anybody touches me, he better **** me, or I’m gonna have him killed. Revenge is the sweetest thing there is. People **** with me, and Jesus Christ are they ever ******* sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States ****** around with me, I’d fix him good. Revenge is the sweetest thing in life. And nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn’t have it coming.  Anybody who ***** with me? I’m gonna have him shot after the war, after he gets home, a big ******* hero with dames climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years ‘ll go by, and then one day a knock at the door. He’ll answer the door and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so and so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, ‘Paul Lazzaro sent me.’ And then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away. Nobody ***** with Paul Lazzaro!”

(ENTER AUTHOR. HE SPEAKS: “Hey, Numb-nuts! Yes, you, my Reader. Do you want to get ****** into reading that Vonnegut blurb over and over again for the rest of the afternoon, or can I get you back into my manuscript?  That Paul Lazzaro thing was just my way of trying to give you a frame of reference, not to have you ******* drift off, walking away from me, your hand held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers. So it goes, you Ja-Bone. It was for comparison purposes.  Get it?  But, if you insist, go ahead and compare a Buonaiuto—any Buonaiuto--with the character, Paul Lazzaro. No comparison, but if you want a need a number—you quantitative ****--multiply the seating capacity of the Roman Coliseum by the gross tonnage of sheet pane glass that crystalized into small fixed puddles of glazed smoke, falling with the steel, toppling down into rubble on 9/11/2001. That’s right: multiply the number of Coliseum seats times a big, double mound of rubble, that double-smoking pile of concrete and rebar and human cadavers, formerly known as “The Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It’s a big number, Numb-nuts! And it illustrates the adamantine resistance demonstrated by the Buonaiuto strain of the Testaduro virus. Shall we return to my book?)

The truth is Italian-Americans were never overzealous about WWII in the first place. Italians in America, and other places like Argentina, Canada, and Australia were never quite sure whom they were supposed to be rooting for. But that’s another story. It was during that war in 1944, however, that my father--John Felix Buonaiuto, a U.S. Army sergeant and recent Anzio combat vet decided to visit Moschiano, courtesy of a weekend pass from 5th Army Command, Naples.  In a rough-hewn, one-room hut, my father sat before a lukewarm stone fireplace with the white-haired Carmine Buonaiuto, listening to that ancient one, spouting straight **** about his grandfather—Pietro Buonaiuto--my great-grandfather’s past. Ironically, I myself, thirty yeas later, while also serving in the United States Army, found out in the same way, in the same rough-hewn, one-room hut, in front of the same lukewarm fireplace, listening to the same Carmine Buonaiuto, by now the old man and the sea all by himself. That’s how I discovered the family secret in Moschiano. It was 1972 and I was assigned to a NATO Cold War stay-behind operation. The operation, code-named GLADIO—had a really cool shield with a sword, the fasces and other symbols of its legacy and purpose. GLADIO was a clandestine anti-communist agency in Italy in the 1970s, with one specific target:  Il Brigate Rosso, the Red Brigades.  This was in my early 20s. I was back from Vietnam, and after a short stint as an FBI confidential informant targeting campus radicals at the University of Miami, I was back in uniform again. By the way, my FBI gig had a really cool codename also: COINTELPRO, which I thought at the time had something to do with tapping coin operated telephones. Years later, I found out COINTELPRO stood for counter-intelligence program.  I must have had a weakness for insignias, shields and codenames, because there I was, back in uniform, assigned to Army Intelligence, NATO, Italy, “OPERATION GLADIO.“

By the way, Buonaiuto is pronounced:

Bwone-eye-you-toe . . . you ignorant ****!

Oh yes, prepare yourself for insult, Kemosabe! I refuse to soft soap what ensues.  After all, you’re the one on trial here this time, not Gramsci and certainly not me. Capeesh?

Let’s also take a moment, to pay linguistic reverence to the language of Seneca, Ovid & Virgil. I refer, of course, to Latin. Latin is called: THE MOTHER TONGUE. Which is also what we used to call both Mary Delvecchio--kneeling down in the weeds off Atlantic Avenue--& Esther Talayumptewa --another budding, Hopi Corn Maiden like my mother—pulling trains behind the creosote bush up on Black Mesa.  But those are other stories.

LATIN: Attention must be paid!

Take the English word obdurate, for example—used in my opening paragraph, the phrase truly obdurate: {obdurate, ME, fr. L. obduratus, pp. of obdurare to harden, fr. Ob-against + durus hard –More at DURING}.

Getting hard? Of course you are. Our favorite characters are the intransigent: those who refuse to bend. Who, therefore, must be broken: Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke comes to mind. Or Paul Newman again as Fast Eddie, that cocky kid who needed his wings clipped and his thumbs broken. Or Paul Newman once more, playing Eddie Felson again; Fast Eddie now slower, a shark grown old, deliberative now, no longer cute, dimples replaced with an insidious sneer, still fighting and hustling but in shrewder, more subtle ways. (Credit: Scorsese’s brilliant homage The Color of Money.)

The Color of Money (1986) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0090863 Internet MovieDatabase Rating: 7/10 - ‎47,702 votes. Paul Newman and Helen Shaver; still photo: Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) Still of Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Full Cast & Crew - ‎Awards - ‎Trivia - ‎Plot Summary

Perhaps it was the Roman Catholic Church I rebelled against.  The Catholic Church: certainly a key factor for any Italian-American, a stinger, a real burr under the saddle, biting, setting off insurrection again and again. No. Worse: prompting Revolt! And who could blame us? Catholicism had that spooky Latin & Incense going for it, but who wouldn’t rise up and face that Kraken? The Pope and his College of Cardinals? A Vatican freak show—a red shoe, twinkle-toe, institutional anachronism; the Curia, ferreting out the good, targeting anything that felt even half-way good, classifying, pronouncing verboten, even what by any stretch of the imagination, would be deemed to be merely kind of pleasant, slamming down that peccadillo rubber-stamp. Sin: was there ever a better drug? Sin? Revolution, **** yeah!  Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to the barricades.

But I digress.
Third Eye Candy Jul 2018
This Love Song seemed like a safe place to unpack my ****.
But a safe place is where Lyrics go to die.
And this is Not a Song.

and it starts like this. all the time.


II

i fella sleep in a widdle boat and told a seagull that i was having a dream
about talking to seagulls and he was astonished to have the pleasure of meeting a boat
that had the good sense to plug the hole with a poet…. because they never wake up
and they do so with extreme prejudice. that simply screams Resident.
In Fact!

He’d never even seen a boat. So there’s THAT. I offered Seagull “ The Cool -Side of The Pillow. “
So I could sit upright for a moment and jot this down. He was like “ What’s a pillow? “
And I had no idea what it was that brushed against my legs
but It was There. then It was Gone. when i stopped using the metaphor.


I was treading a fathom
of pixie dust and transgender proto-gods, all cuddling in a huddle of metaphysics
as adorable as a radioactive abrupt

stop.



III

Ah yes… someone was cooking bacon… and bacon is sleep’s kryptonite. so the dream was a wrap.
and i had a bird’s nest woven from the silk of my discarded cocoon. codename: Chrysalis.
and my mouth was dry. a stubborn dry that follows a deluge of phantasmagoria  
on a Futon that is a God to cat hair. My Futon is Oblique and Omnipotent.
Apparently.

Uber Mecca for Cat Hair. I fell asleep on that.
Daniel Farnam Sep 2010
What is a home,
if you’re not happy in it?
Sometimes you can’t change what you’ve got.
I know we’re young,
but sometimes
you’ve just gotta change where you’re at.

What is a family,
if everyone is fighting?
Most times people won’t change.
I know we’re young,
but sometimes
you can’t let things stay the same.

What is a friend,
if he’s not there for you?
Sometimes they just don’t show.
I know we’re young,
but sometimes
you have to let them go.
original
HRTsOnFyR May 2015
To lose a child is like being declared legally dead while you're still on life support.
Your chest rises and falls.
Your blood moves, your heart beats.
But you've grown cold within.
Your body is empty.
Your spirit is gone.
I once believed that a pulse was some unspoken, undeniable proof of life.
But it isn't a guarantee of anything.
Believe me. I have seen it for myself.
And it ******* killed me.
Now my chest keeps rising,
blood moving,
heart beating,
soul bleeding,
mind screaming...
Yet no one seems to notice that I am dead too.
Almost a month since you left us... My sweet little angel... I wish it had been me.
Abel Araya Aug 2013
Drawing attention to oneself is the best illustration to show that you aren't present.
That you may not be transfigured into a rabid popsicle stick.
One day, I may not there for you
to catch all of your raindrops from this clouded season you call truth.
My bones aren't as strong as they used to be,
I'm far from what I once used to be,
and the world carries me around like I'm on its backpack,
unzipping it only to when it's told to do, because in these times,
It's easy to get your backpack stolen if you don't have a key to lock it with.

This world is cruel.
The American dream comes with a reality check made in China.
We hold flowers and bricks on our dying hands,
because as humble and enlightened beings that we are,
Death will not knock on my doorstep
with his scythe hooked across the inside of my gums
without me bashing its skull and stabbing him with his crossbones
Theodore Dreiser never had to walk through the skins of black children
whose lungs had been eaten by politically justified stray bullets,
so unless Sister Carrie is codename for pleasurable manners,
then this little song-and-dance **** list we call USA has gone AWOL.
The doors have risen from the ashes of media grave sites,
and have opened its pathway to those influenced by it.
If I had to give you a codename,
I would make it steadfast.
You never back down on what you feel is right,
even if I say otherwise.
Our friendship is built on that bedrock;
no matter the earthquakes or storms
it will stay standing.
I know you’ll never leave,
and you know I’ll be there when you need me
and even when you don’t.
We don’t agree on everything,
But one thing is true.
Our lives are better since we came together.
So here’s to whatever life throws at us
because mountains and shadows
are always there when the smoke clears.
For the other person who helped make me who I am.
kalopsia Nov 2013


Candies are nostalgic
because it was my codename for you.
Whenever I see them it reminds me of you.
You’re sweet and friendly,
and kind too.

We became best friends
until the world ends.
You told me everything
even about the girl you keep on loving.

Then one day, you started ignoring me,
I asked myself “Who’s me to you?”
it hurts but you never knew.
But still my heart beats only for you.

Barton D Smock May 2016
the below is a tentatively titled and finished companion piece to my recent chapbook, infant cinema (**** Press, dinkpress.com, April 2016)

infant cinema can be purchased here: http://www.dinkpress.com/store/infant-cinema-by-barton-smock



shut-eye (in the land of the sacred commoner)

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.

~
it’s all in your head. the newborn we had on a mountaintop. the word it knew from memory. its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate. the cold our dog died from. the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers. that was never full.

~
existence is the wrong inquiry.

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.

~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.

~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.

~
and what
would forgiveness
do?

my kids were never born. yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again. I strip

when my stomach
hurts.

~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death



god’s color has returned



the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew



first

~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…

~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet. he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.

~
the robot is a ******.

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



I want your work to matter.

~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…

~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair

~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god



had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia…

~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.

~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
book
for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love

~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ

~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…



can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double

~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.

~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover

~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born. never

far off
what crawls
her way.

~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.

~
church of intermission. church of the rolled-away church my fever follows. church of it ain’t a baby until it spits. church of the lawnmower left running. of the space you give the grieving horse. church of you when you die in my sleep. of musical suicides. church of the disinfected high chair. of the false bruise. of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.

~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys. dirt for my brother.

~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man. and we struggle to hear a father verbatim. and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace. and a starfish consoles a handprint.

~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing. how big is your family and who wears the mouth? is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****? that your mom had no baby tired of being born? that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?

/ year nine: your birthday spider is put on film for biting. your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:

~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.

~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.

~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.

~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.

~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.

~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake

~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.

~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god

~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood. inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean. a boy whose mouth

was never
here. all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.

~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark. I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.

~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between

~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return

~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.
Larada Mar 2018
I find myself desensitized
To every “it be like that sometimes” gesture
And passive-aggressive notion
That I’ve now chosen to reject
Instead of internalizing

I want nothing from you,
Because I expect nothing of  you

I just sit still, in my distant bubble

Patiently waiting for the day
That you have the ability  
To disappoint me again
Barton D Smock May 2016
15% off all print books and free mail shipping at Lulu today with coupon code of MAYMAIL15

~

some poems:

~

[raise god]

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.

[taunts]

death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.

[pathos]

our fighting
determines
which of us
is more
sonsick.  

relic child, town crier.

I take what I’m given, beating.

cerecloth, snow
on snow
before and after

it buries.

me of course
as I position
myself
to hum

above
a basket.

me as I marry homeward
and kick

ball, stone, stiff
bird

stiff bird in death
doubling as
the rat
of an angel

yes
kick
for reasons known
to another’s

pet cobra

skin to skin
in an unmarked
life.

[costume]

we’re here to ****** the head of the boy who put a clown’s red nose on the girl playing jesus for stopped traffic. if I spoke your language, I would tell you.

[poor lighting]

a plastic doll with a human right hand distracts us from the parrot’s empty cage. we have been writing in unison instead of eating. our poverty is so advanced it keeps a fake diary and a real diary but hides them in the same spot. we are dying in two of our mother’s arms. our mother is elsewhere repeating after the man who does our stunts.

[collapse]

how
on a clear day  
my father
is the face
of absence.

how what I mean
cuts the finger

my mother
sips.

how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.

how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp

says I myth
my sister
who is still

vanishing
to shoplift
god

from the thunderstorm
we gave her.

[southern treehouse]

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

[outside the body it is always procession]

I may have lied about being pregnant but I know my ******* kid.

her father quells *******.

ants are quiet.

-

his teeth make sense.

our yell is I’m gonna shoot you in the blood.

-

elsewhere
is a light dusting
of downfall.  sleepily

legal

are the sunbathing sad.

[crown]

i.

a hand towel
over the lid
of any
stubborn
jar-

a mother to a father
or less frequently
a father to a mother
I don’t know why this is
but either way
a gentle admittance

to couple

as if passing beneath
the singing voice
of statue…

ii.

that stage
where a baby
is all
head

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

below is an unpublished companion piece {shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner} to my recent chapbook, infant*cinema (**** Press, April 2016)  

as such:

~~~~~

[shut-eye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.



~
it’s all in your head.  the newborn we had on a mountaintop.  the word it knew from memory.  its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate.  the cold our dog died from.  the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers.  that was never full.



~
existence is the wrong inquiry.  

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.  

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.



~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.



~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.



~
and what
would forgiveness
do?  

my kids were never born.  yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again.  I strip

when my stomach
hurts.



~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

-

god’s color has returned

-

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

-

first



~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…



~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet.  he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.



~
the robot is a ******.

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

-

I want your work to matter.



~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…



~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair



~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...



~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.



~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
  book
  for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love



~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ



~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

-

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double




~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.



~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover



~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.



~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.



~
church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.



~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.



~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.



~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.



~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing.  how big is your family and who wears the mouth?  is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****?  that your mom had no baby tired of being born?  that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?  

/ year nine:  your birthday spider is put on film for biting.  your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:



~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.



~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.



~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.



~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.



~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.



~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake



~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.



~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god



~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood.  inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean.  a boy whose mouth

was never
here.  all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.



~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.  

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark.  I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.



~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between



~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return



~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.
nawke Jun 2018
Of the 364 un-birthdays, best occupied by your craziest , unthoughtful and refillable teaports, who rather like to celebrate year round with you, though uninvited, it would be wise you decline hosting the party too.

"Well, why not? What's wrong with a Thinking party everyday?" 
 
I hear you asking.  Is what they do best by default afterall -- one is naturally invited whether one likes it or not.  

My reply would be "Mad Unthinking does not a party make!"  

Unless you like going on hater shooting rampage.  Otherwise, battling the twinkle little tea trays hovering in your delusional sky is rather, shall I say, a pointless endeavor.  Far better you meditate on that.

Luckily too, the only day they wont be celebrating is that one day on your special birth date.   Since it's the single time of year you're more than likeliest the happiest by design, among friends and families!  

But why just limit it to a day in the entire calendar year?   You should "happily uncelebrate bad-everything " or "celebrate happily good-nothing" for the 364 days in your mind.  And all should be well.  

Just remember, lift the tall hat and check under the hood, you may discover mad party always get you plenty of room.   But they merely recycle as a visage.  Chances are, you'd love to gate-crash and bring your best butter and bread knife to spread it all over time.  There's no "while" as they "mean", so to speak.   Especially when you are hangry and you had "nothing" yet, taking less is far healthier than filling up a buffet of nutrionless bad food.    Like clouds in the sky, let them go.

About that Raven too.  They are just cryptic messenger going backward and forward with unintelligible riddles that will spin your too clever head to a nevar resting point.  The codename is analysis paralysis.  

Akin to a kite in the sky, you can break the thread.  

Otherwise, you may end up like Alice to steal time, beat time, pass time and may get lost in a treacle well with much surgarcoating and sentimentality. Only to wake up 2 hrs later than you should have, to reality around you.  

So let it be known, and shed light into, the unknown parts of the 364 unbirthdays.  If you manage to go out, have some social bake and cake among humans now and then, you'll soon forget to uncelebrate them and lose all the over-muchness anyway.  

That's my wish for you !
Mind our minds.  Nevar let the unknown parts go unnoticed.   Inspired by Alice and Anthony.
Barton D Smock Apr 2016
(-)
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god
Slur pee Sep 2017
Life’s quite the show,
Got me bubble blowing and hunting rainbows;
Getting high before I explode, so I can fall lower than my woes.
Making your colors fade when I get too close,
No glittering gold exposed in exchange for my hopes.
Just something small I crave to hold
But it pushes and crawls between finger bones.
While creases scold, my visage imprinting an image of a kid who was told
Not to make funny faces but he kept it that way and it froze-
In place, I waste time watching the bell, counting its tolls
Codename: Quasimodo.
Give me a weight heavier than the world
And I’ll sling it over my hunched back, like a hermit crab gone mad and make it a home;
A proper abode to learn how to grow mold, perfect my smoke Os,
And scrape the cancer from between my toes.

-SLuR
emlyn lua Sep 2019
-recovered from the papers of codename ‘Wolf Spider’, spin doctor for the Purist resistance-

his Machinery is glitCHing: o so human
imperfect beings produce imperfect creations
yes, I believe: a jealous god creates warFull people
metal is flesh is plastic is flesh is metal –
hybrid creatures, and yet one species only

to come so far and yet still be at the basic
his steel claws are tipped with choking poison
recovered from the corpse of Socrates himself
war is fitting: slaughter of life
for the sake of stealing Death

his Eyes unfaithful to himself, he is not the only observer
the naïf does not read the Terms and Conditions
of his own (not his own) body
throughout my life I have seen the necrosis
caused by blind faith in humanity’s humanity

am I stuck in the old ways? perhaps that is true,
but in the Old Days of the Old Ways you could tell with a look
what was born and what was spawned from a factory
only the brain remains, they have not yet found
a way to binarise my soul
if anyone could tell me how im supposed to make things italic on here i would heavily appreciate it (i had an account years ago i remember it being like asterisks but that didnt seem to work?)
Seventy Three Years Since 1945
(August 6 and 9 respectively)

Robert Oppenheimer manned
"The Manhattan Project",
a top secret World War II mission
which constituted "Little Boy" codename

for a uranium gun-type atomic
bomb dropped at 0815
exploding 580 metres above civilians
with15 kiloton blast yield reduced

400 year old city to dust
Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot/ bombardier
of the Enola Gay (the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
unleashing nuclear warfare
seventy three years ago today)

gives cause for this baby boomer to revisit
mentally, the annihilation,
extermination, incineration
the first of two storied Japanese enclaves

realizes how trifling my current bout
with mania paranoia, pneumonia
(from northern exposure)
contrasted with sinister malevolent

evil tower ushering
thermonuclear age epitomizing
coup de nada so graceful means
maximum military mutilation

though unwell, this inflammation poised
to be cured unlike subsequent
generations of victims
who survived atrocious, egregious, hellacious,

judicious slaughter can only
poorly be described
by this mortal with a curable
bacterial/viral infection

aghast at such wanton killing, moreso
via weapons of mass destruction
more devastatingly grisly than
those "experimental" bombs

loosed upon the innocent population,
whereby 75,000 people killed or fatally injured
with 65% of casualties nine years
of age and younger
whence offspring of survivors

evincing excess genetic anomalies
with fiery windy surface
temperatures topping 4,000C
upon terrain hallowed by ghastly
horrible deathly dominance
amidst shadow of a mushroom cloud.
nick armbrister Feb 2018
RUFE

A late summer pacific sun burns down on this tiny coral atoll, here are three Zero floatplanes codename Rufe. They share such a common beauty that all warbirds have. Waves gently wash over the floats of the planes, resting in the cool and calm of the ocean. Delicate pastel colours colour the scene, the purple of the planes and orange of the sun, the blue of the sea.

In a few minutes a Rufe will take off, building up speed through the mirror smooth water until she is free of the blue liquid surface, she will be in flight in her sky where so much danger lurks. Hellcats and Corsairs.

Rufe has the handling of her Zero brother so she will be okay –

she is a bird of the summer sky battling her enemy.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2018
about to experiment with
48 hour insomnia with
an interlude of
  drinking and
   alien covenant,
about to be watched in the early,
earthen,
english: all too morning
morning of prior to
7am...
             could be fun...
could be like...
                 those german bits...
and...
        hmm...
         ****! ha ha!
imagine pushing it into
soviet territory
of the k.f.m.
        into 50+ hours...
that would be fun!
  come to think of it...
i might end up sounding
quiet sober...
         after this experiment...
and still sane
in the face of:
not being able to defend
the crown...
for the reasons associasted
with the year 1997...
just saying:
      pushy Charlie makes
not king charles III
without a head
in a basket chopped off...
because...
he ain't no and certainly
won't be no
louis xiv akin to charlie 2nd...
if you get my drift...
    ****... i'm happy
to experiment within a 48h
experiment...
           if i fall asleep...
wake me up and just call
me my codename:
            SLOU(GH).
Once again, I take momentary pause
to contemplate horrific event
regarding unleashing atomic warfare
activating nuclear brinkmanship,
hence time to trot out a poem
written initially some years ago
courtesy yours truly.

Robert Oppenheimer manned
"The Manhattan Project",
a top secret World War II mission                  
which constituted "Little Boy" codename
for a uranium gun-type
atomic bomb dropped at 0815

exploding 580 metres above civilians
with 15 kiloton blast yield
reduced 400 year old city to dust
Colonel Paul Tibbets,
the pilot/ bombardier
of the Enola Gay,

(the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
unleashing nuclear warfare
seventy six years ago today)
gives cause for this baby boomer to revisit
mentally, the annihilation,
extermination, incineration

the first of two storied Japanese enclaves
realizes how trifling my current bout
with mania paranoia, pneumonia
(from northern exposure)
contrasted with sinister
thermonuclear reaction

malevolent evil tower ushering
thermonuclear age epitomizing
coup de nada so graceful
means maximum military mutilation
though unwell, this inflammation poised
to be cured unlike subsequent
generations of victims

who survived atrocious, egregious, hellacious,
judicious slaughter can only poorly be described
by this mortal with curable bacterial/viral infection
aghast at such wanton killing, more-so
via weapons of mass destruction
more devastatingly grisly

than those "experimental" bombs
loosed upon the innocent population,
whereby 75,000 people killed or fatally injured
with 65% of casualties
nine years of age and younger
whence offspring of survivors
evincing excess genetic anomalies

with fiery windy surface (think towering infernos)
temperatures topping 4,000°C
upon terrain hallowed by ghastly
horrible deathly dominance
amidst shadow of sinister mushroom cloud
wickedly, ominously, and eerily looming.
Given the nuclear weaponry arsenal today
August 6th, 2022, our collective ability
to lay waste major metropolitan areas
would make unleashing atomic warfare
synonymous with the ways and means
to annihilate, decimate, eliminate, et cetera
avast swath of the biosphere, nevertheless...

Once again, I take momentary pause
to contemplate horrific event
regarding unleashed atomic warfare
activating nuclear brinkmanship,
hence time to trot out a poem
written initially some years ago
courtesy yours truly.

Robert Oppenheimer manned
"The Manhattan Project", 
a top secret World War II mission,                   
which constituted "Little Boy" codename
for a uranium gun-type
atomic bomb dropped at 0815
exploded 580 metres above civilians
with 15 kiloton blast yield
reduced 400 year old city to dust
Colonel Paul Tibbets,

the pilot/ bombardier
of the Enola Gay,
(the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
unleashed nuclear warfare
seventy seven years ago today)
gives cause for this baby boomer to revisit
mentally, the annihilation,
extermination, incineration, obliteration...
when the first of two storied Japanese enclaves
pulverized vividly underscores

how trifling my current bout
with dysthymia, hysteria, melancholia...  
(from figurative northern exposure
courtesy twin peaks)
contrasted with sinister
thermonuclear reaction
malevolent evil tower ushered
thermonuclear age epitomizing
coup d'état nada so graceful
spelled maximum radiation fallout,

viz collateral military mutilation
though unwelcome vision wielded hell,
instantaneous maelstrom poised
mankind to be cured, roasted, skewered
analogous as burnt offerings
subsequent generations of victims
who survived atrocious, egregious, hellacious,
judicious slaughter can only
poorly be described
by this mortal with curable

bacterial/viral infection
aghast at such wanton killing, more-so
via weapons of mass destruction
more devastatingly grisly
than those "experimental" bombs
loosed upon the innocent population,
whereby 75,000 people killed or fatally injured
with 65% of casualties
nine years of age and younger,
whence offspring of survivors

evinced excessive genetic anomalies 
with fiery windy surface
(think towering infernos)
temperatures topping 4,000°C 
upon terrain hallowed by ghastly
horrible deathly dominance
impressing silhouettes of victims
analogous to dark shadows
amidst razed structural remnants
ground zero birthed sinister mushroom cloud
wickedly, ominously, and eerily loomed.
Robert Oppenheimer manned
"The Manhattan Project", 
a top secret World War II mission                   
which constituted "Little Boy" codename
for a uranium gun-type
atomic bomb dropped at 0815

exploding 580 metres above civilians
with 15 kiloton blast yield
reduced 400 year old city to dust
Colonel Paul Tibbets,
the pilot/ bombardier
of the Enola Gay,

(the Boeing B-29 Superfortress
unleashing nuclear warfare
seventy years years ago today)
gives cause for this baby boomer to revisit
mentally, the annihilation,
extermination, incineration

the first of two storied Japanese enclaves
realizes how trifling my current bout
with mania paranoia, pneumonia
(from northern exposure)
contrasted with sinister
thermonuclear reaction

malevolent evil tower ushering
thermonuclear age epitomizing
coup de nada so graceful
means maximum military mutilation
though unwell, this inflammation poised
to be cured unlike subsequent generations of victims

who survived atrocious, egregious, hellacious,
judicious slaughter can only poorly be described
by this mortal with curable bacterial/viral infection
aghast at such wanton killing, more-so
via weapons of mass destruction
more devastatingly grisly

than those "experimental" bombs
loosed upon the innocent population,
whereby 75,000 people killed or fatally injured
with 65% of casualties nine years of age and younger
whence offspring of survivors
evincing excess genetic anomalies 

with fiery windy surface (think towering infernos)
temperatures topping 4,000°C 
upon terrain hallowed by ghastly
horrible deathly dominance
amidst shadow of sinister mushroom cloud
wickedly, ominously, and eerily looming.
Gigi Feb 2020
When you were born
I didn't know that you would crawl into my bed at 11 years old
asking me why it was that some people were just so mean
I guess I thought you'd live a little longer in your womb-like dream

When you were 5
Mom asked me to put u to sleep because you wouldn't listen to anyone else
And so we would sit on our magic carpet which was maybe a yoga mat or perhaps an old newspaper
And dream of  places we could go to in our heads
Places we would go to together
They said I spoiled you
I just didn’t want you to grow up like anyone else
I guess I didn’t want you to grow up at all

At 6, I told you, you had superpowers
Just like the fantastical creatures you read about in books you had your own magical powers too
You believed me then, a part of you still does
You used to whisper our codename in my ear once in a while
Superpowers you'd say and smile; it was our secret
A Secret no one else knew but you and I

At 6 and a half Tally died
You didn't sleep for a few days
You cried more that week then when Grandpa died
I didn’t know until then that someone could be so deeply connected to a turtle
In the way that you were
But I learnt that you'll always be able to speak to animals
More than any of us ever could

When you were 7, you wrote little notes to your teachers in the margins of your homework
They were painfully sweet and childlike in their innocence
Probably ended up in the trash
Once someone made a comment about it
They said you weren't supposed to do that and that was you wrote was babyish
You shrank inward a little... I know it hurt
I'm not sure you wrote that much after

Then at 7 and a half, you understood how school kills every Childs soul  
But still, Mom made you go
You were petrified of becoming a boring adult
So I sat you down and taught you to brush off what your teachers said
To just doodle in the corners of your notebook and dream
I bought you an ideas book, told you to create worlds
Your teachers called worried
They said you were spacing out a lot
But I smiled inside when I heard

At 8, I used to sneak into your room past bedtime
Mom hated that I did that
She said I wasn't your parent
But you never liked to go to bed
And so we cuddled late at night, in the quiet
Although I never could put my arm around you, only by your side
It was just one of your things
Like the way my kisses were just too slobbery
So we started doing butterfly ones

When you turned 9, I left home
But mom would still call me in the mornings when you were in bed
screaming and refusing to go to school
She would ask me to try and calm you down
7:45 AM...mom screaming and everyone flustered
They never knew our secret
We didn't talk for long but I reminded you of your superpowers
And you usually got up

In the next year I was away, we invented imagination hugs
In fields of tulips and over the clouds
Newly discovered planets and underwater worlds
So many places we went to in our minds together
You always closed your eyes and you might not have believed me
but I also did every time
When we got to the part when I hugged you, I felt your love envelope me
My little one, my innocent

I came home when you were 10, heard you made friends
With girls you later told me you didn't really like
You could never be friends with girls your age because they did mean things
Like waste food and step on ants
And the adults you didn’t like either
Because they always made fun of your dreams
So you started daydreaming all the time
Like in the car and in your third grade history class
You daydreamed when there was business talk at the dinner table
You hated it
I know you never said it out loud
But once you whispered in my ear that you wished they didn't talk so much about that stuff
You said adults were boring
And that adults gave up on their dreams
You were right

You got real big and so I took you shopping for your first bra
But I made sure to tell you that even though you were growing ******* you didn’t have to be an adult quite yet
Suddenly, you had bigger thoughts and wondered a lot
About why people threw out their old carboard boxes
Instead of turning them into houses for the crickets or models for people's dreams
About what we got out of light pollution that made it worth erasing the stars
You wondered why people didn’t just sew their own clothes
And asked if it was possible for you to go to one of those other schools you found online
Instead of sitting in a stiff row of desks every day
As the world let you down, you grow more and more quiet
your eyes opened, your throat closed and your words dried up

Then you were 11, almost a women, and the world had even more rules
And so you locked your bedroom door
I hoped you still wondered, still had dreams
But we only spoke about real things once in a while
You were a little girl soul with big girl ideas and big girl problems
You watched adults cry and scream about things that didn’t matter
And so you stopped crying about things that did
You slept with your cousin when she was too scared to sleep alone
And woke up to comfort your big sister
You even gave me with hugs when I needed them

That same year, you made a friend you actually liked, she was my friend
You loved her because she saw you
And would talk to you about your dreams
And when I didn't have the time to cherish your innocence. She did
On the night she was in the hospital and I thought she died
You came and comforted me. You were the only one I let in my room
No one knew really how connected you and her were
You said nothing, but looked at me with these beautiful sad eyes
I'm not sure you really knew much
But we always spoke in shmush language anyways

At 11 and a half, you cried to me about the girls in your class
How they once called a black man awful names and how you ran out to the bathroom and cried
I still saw a soft little girl
But now you read biographies of black people in front of their faces, to teach them loving kindness
You still get mad at adults for being boring and always thinking about money
And still don’t get what money really is anyway
You still ask me why countries go to war and why some people **** other people
Why grown ups scream and argue and choose to live sad
Now you watch videos of Greta Thumberg and learn about climate change
And yet, you still get mad at people for not recycling

Your eyes are still sparkling
You hold the caterpillars in hand
And build worlds with old tree stumps
Your heart is on fire
But you're growing more silent with time
More soft and delicate about your words
You never shout what's on your mind anymore
I guess you've learnt that people don't hear your dreams
Your eleven now, though
My beautiful soul of a sister
Your eleven now almost 12
And then 13…
And 14…
And 15…
My little girl- I'll always believe in your dreams
Please, though, grow a little stronger, and get a little louder
Your innocence is your beauty, your pulsing heart
But this broken world doesn’t need your quiet
It needs your voice

— The End —