I

in the dark starvation is real.
In dark, the emesis that fills my
cheeks is a currency I soak inside, animal
coinage, the fine
bulbous talons of Sepiidae.

Savagely, pelagically
starving made me rich when
Muskrat’s claws pull apart delicate meat.
Sad Spanish blood, I would like you
to panic about what has been lost.
No body, no crime—we are all cannibals; so the muskrat ate
flesh from the dugong-heavy remora

a parallax of sorts occurs
when I cannot find my own entrails—
perhaps they are ruminating in my gut—
boiling in my optic nerve.

But–I found little boys betting quarters for eating bowels
of goat. I was small enough to fit through
playground gates so I could swing
swing in earthquakes, and portents
ride out this day on the waves—to succeed

foothills, grasses, and bath salts
by the creek. I got my quarters.
They asked me who made me as Mountain
Dew dribbled down my chest.
Infant teeth shattered my infant

fists and I did not eat divvied livers and
Victim watchers.
I wrote on
my protruding
viscera
proverbs from my ancient days


–extraordinary porch things, depleted
Phosphorus, and, on bendable limbs
I catalogued my windscraped knees.

How does one so young
become
so fed up with
hunger.

II

Starving made me easier to tie.
easier to lift.
my ancient autopsy of starvation
made me feel gutted out
like Finished
ice-cream containers.
Made me able to hold my breath for
up to six minutes—starving
made me full of Household Gods and rickety
rosaries,

small brown globular clusters,
1 arcsecond of stress
capable of aligning me
with spring-loaded washers

I pop one nut—two—
Dental Work can be a rhizome,
ordering wee-soldiers from
its tethered nodes without
lactation, laceration, infection into
my sleep-deprived throat,
Choking on bird chirps
and x-ray bursts

below the cradle where
my android sleeps. I
have named him The Alabaster.
(Synching The Alabaster.)
The Alabaster–Allie–is a kind of boat
that I have hole-punched into; like
children of the deep I have hurled
nearby rocks into its lungs.
I have wrenched crumbs of my honeymoon
sidewalk, for a beast that panics.
I would trade
the last of the dugongs
for a muskrat’s smile–
now there exists a cult for Plastic
that the spotlights started,

and in the night it will not
end with the filter feeder sinking
to the depth of the imagined water column,
spinning in the Gyre disposal.
There isn’t a colander large enough
to sift through the pejorative waste.

I knew the night would be fraught.
It makes my fusiform body necessary for
transport. Makes Monophyletic solid consumption
trucks and ACE arms reach for
well-behaved spearfish bodies.
Makes days disappear and cold
seem like simmering.
Makes staying out of sight
a trim.

And I told them,
the Fusiforms and Balusters, that
the spearfish would devour the hero who comes
from afar bearing the gift of travel–
Tully-Fisher, with his cottonseed oil
“Manufactured in USA” in
compounding pharmacies.
He made me.
And I told him:

to Tell me to trawl for something less
plastic than my second
self–that I which exists
in Mary Poppins cannons, compact
intimacies, medical and portable–

to dig within my throat, discover a nurdle
that failed to photodegrade during the the day
the Sirenia sang,
the Muskrat gnawed off his leg and hand
fed it to the remora.
III

My mouth is parched
for diagnosis of rickets, for
my un-mineralized bones.
I need RR Lyrae, Statistical π,
population “II”s
to stand in for my night.
I need Sweetened,
Spoonfuls of BB pellets and
Spoonfuls of cepheids to help
the tetany go down,

myopathic infants and
ricket Rosary symbols only work
in sacrifice–In this sense,
I have constructed a panic
architecture–Craniotabes are too
vast. Prions and viroids have seeped
through,

Infections more than dreams,
for injured muskrats who yearn for
the last real mermaid’s smile,
or tears if that would smash open
the cluttered ocean and scatter
the unwanted hosts multiplying
in my spinal fluid.

In day there is no more starvation–
the remora bring me
Libations and admire
my six pack rings mobile.
My connective obligatory.

Under my fingernails are thin
crisps that may somehow create equilibrium.
Although I nibble them regularly
I can’t always swallow.
Surrounded by a dense fog of fleas
my tongue is itching.
My teeth are scratching, scraping
away the space that will always be there.


The antique aisle at the local international
superstore is handing out shriveled
heads of past didactic patients.
But I tell them it’s not what’s there that matters
it’s what’s not there. And in my case
there’s a surplus of nothing that
I can live without.

Jeffery Brown, reporting the news every night
Looks at the world through multiple lens, and writes
Poetry from a layer of glass glued to a layer of glass
Which has separated slightly.  Magnifications at last
Divided and shared as divvied-out treats.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365488825/

Parched, thirsting for steel -
to be cleft wholly in twain
from scalp to guts,
dissolving the tension,
silencing the pull between the sides.

Fork the tongue that it may speak
at once both dialects of the soul,
that it may sing of lust and hunger
and yet pray to the divine;

Let one pupil be misplaced,
sunk like a star in inky night
to observe the cosmos and to feed
the side of the mind that wanders,
the half that deals in watery maybe,
so that the other lot of divvied brain
may savor the grit of the earth
with the remaining eye that beholds, here,
the freckles and the needles.

I am so much! Take but half.
Two of everything is one too many.
Name me once and for all an animal
or disentangle thought from flesh
and let the vapors in my lungs
mix their mists among the clouds.

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 when we could drunk jocks who sat beside train tracks reading love notes after baling hay.  we bought the gloves and held them until winter because our logic had us waiting.  by then we were not friends and hell was the handbasket.  we divvied the gloves in a sad scene we couldn’t countrify.  today I photocopied my privates and printed two-hundred sheets by accident in a hellish place made special by hell.

You always said “I’ll love you always.”
But always didn’t last.
Your memories are a bulldozer
Just plowing through my past.

We stripped away the barren soil
And got down to the lode.
It wasn’t what we thought was there
There wasn’t any gold.

Now the ground lays cold and bare.
There’s nothing left of us to share.
We’ve divvied up what’s left of us
And left the ground to turn to dust.

We wanted gold
To free our souls and wash away the tears
But the gears of time kept grinding on
Churning up the years.

So I hold the gems we found back then
Closely to my beating chest
To recollect, to not forget.
**At least for you, I’ll do my best.

(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.

Each is given their canvas
Open air along the brief respective flashes of time
We whittle gasping attempts at a connection

With only any placeable frames that we’ve collected
Hammer dissonance to Xanadu

Feather in the contrast as a method of description

or discretion.
____

Building a context

heft upon a quickly fading gust
Just a divvied introduction of trust as a reflection.

Left as signal threading the reverence into message

Let me bury symbols in code and seed a weapon.
____
_____

Let me choose a frame and build a picture growing out to the edges
Filling seconds with deference
Knowing breath is the setting, for where the grey areas are

Levy loosening gaze, and form a tinctured impression of the glimpse I’ve incepted, though the lesson I’m guessing won’t fare to carry the cadences very far.

Tarry not for fear of ones inept reflection, bury not thy fierce direction.

Into the void.
Into the depths.
To build the frame.
To will the question.

lighter, on balance or noise? I imagine
minds must be spirit first. I maximise… diffusion

or do I surmise? I promise, a maxim,
I do not know, but may
I say to my self who has the keys,
and find
qwerty guy, let us pull the thread, I said
- inner self ware SDK-ith {Writ in LISP}
- Soft-ware Deployment Kick-in-the-head
Okeh, says my eye listening to BBC 4,
from everhowlong ago,
Auden and Turing, lauded by geeks
and the per-ifery of no-repro-models, idividuating.

Laughing I hear it said, College Students
believe every thing they read, is known
you belive, for a second
all of this is true, or may, could, be maybe
to all who read things they read right.
- or do they believe the things they read? Critical point.
---------------------------
True story, on the trail to Admah, from Zeboiim,

-later, maybe

Change from good enough,
to best imaginable, actual
heaven ahead of schedule.

Let us literally agree, literally means:
since the 1530s,
"in a literal sense,
according to the exact meaning
of the word or words used,"

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=literally>

According to knowledge,
as my granddaughter, Delaney, has noticed.
Knowledge, itself, per se,
is the ultimate authority. She was seven.

To go into the garden, we must love each other or die.
The Daisy ad, played to boomer voters, reared
in public schools
with current events mandated
tested ala spelling bees, current events champs,
all aspiring Jeopardy champs, after retiring from…

That was the grey flannel mind, reset-
Total War, the 1965 one-off comic,
Musgrove ran away and joined the army.
- scattered brains far better than none
- -----------
I was away in 1968.

And when I returned,
I hid in here,
undermining reality, souldout.
- as conjecture has it I was expected
- to go into the ministry.
- It seems a deal was made,
- for my sister Peggy's unbaptized soul.
- I was sould to the Child Buyer… 1951
------ jump cut-
I escaped the historical 1970's

but for the mind virus common to cults.
--- my world furled tritest tricolor flat real.
TV Ad… in passing 1972… ALERT… no
repair called for, idle threat redeemed
in time, though, you know,
- hell, what if, Jesus is a Sadist?
idle threat, you
better believe, I am
gonna vote for good.
JBS library, and the KJV
Meldau's The Messiah,
in Both Testaments.

Phreak me out. This is that Neal Young trip.
Journey Through the Past,
Handel's Messiah, live from the Alamo Cult.
- we elected our own Mayor.
- So, sit on your bayonet
- Mr. Cahill from Rolling Stone…

and what else might I be
gonna vote for?
You can do anything with bayonets,
it is said, Napoleon said.
better believer, raises the ***,
_ there are two kinds of knowledge
------------ jump cut from the cover
of Rolling Stone. Bet me…
Genesis. Call, I raise you M-DNA.
good and evil, who told you she was naked?
-- is this poker or Go?
I thought it was truth or consequences,
from yes,
-oh, yeh, same…
They let anybody in this spirit realm.
------------- garden of LBJ's inaugural vision
Only evil knowing, no evil doing.
You never forget that.
--- the wedom I was
Divvied up to be.
Eretz
Persona. We ache
at evil's constant threat, gonna
gitchagitchagitcha
rub you raw
itchy ear, you hear,
have you never read,
-- SYTFiction formally,
some things one learns,
there comes a state… as
minds conform to standards.
-Same Yesterday Today Forever,
wake up.
face the music, pass water and cess.
Get the act together,
put the show on the air.
-Radioman remincing
-how he helped Sisyphus try once
more,  to activate the effectual
fervent mode
on purpose, roll on,
a job, from Truth, per said.
-----------
All the gangs I ever was near,
as an eligibility tech,
in the war
on poverty,
during the crack baby scare-
scare that was viral at the time.
-- those grew from wild boys,
corralled in the system,
susceptible to spiritual advisory
boredom
resulting in, yep,
the legendary wasted mind,
-time in mind, time may be deemed.
Used, not wasted…
made idle instead of being made
an idle mind's workshop,
fabricating confabulated reasons
for war, on call, pull the trigger,
ryhmes in y'mind, you know
- whatcheworth, y'little devil?

workshop… an idled mind, kick starts.
-New reality, a first whatifier glimpse.
May, I nod, may is your word in my wedom.

Look around, all these stupid
crack babies we was warning
don't you dare be born,
boy… you'd be better off dead.

-- what are we up to, wh'sgwanon?

We were born with a sense of common,
we know, without the filters emotions use,
we see through the glass at UHD and beyond

on wifi-only cellphones unupgraded years ago,
we are the world-
on the internet from McDonald's,
Persona Eretz,
we who read this line, we are attached
in context at the time, we are aware we are
in formed
ware, words in congress with progress,
pining to say, I think, Jerry Pournelle said:

Pens with motors are more powerful
than swords with motors.

Ai say, Intelligence twisted to defend oaths,
is powerless when opposing basic ethical I
Ai Go, win, causing no shame,
win by least possible point, of course,
through human events,
living history doxology. Sign off,

Three key salute.

My mother would often tell me, “don’t let a moment ruin any more moments. That is time wasted you will never get back so why waste it.”
So with that and sidelined pride I learned apologies are more believable if you smile and that people are easily tricked by false confidence
Moments spent to buy moments better lived I suppose, maybe I was only chasing a concept
A metaphor mistakenly taken seriously but who will ever know for my moments won’t be divvied out to the explanation for more than these few breaths
So may similes often feel like physicalities and moments be no more than moments
Since why would you want to let the past hold onto the future for more than you allow ?

I politely ask for uncontested support
campaign contribution promoting me
an aging sexagenarian baby boomer
groveling by (and supporting the Frau
royal highness, (heretofore known as
the missus) solely courtesy social sic
(an abbreviation of the Latin phrase
"sic erat scriptum" - which means
"thus was it written)" security disability
which unearned and untaxed income
divvied up to pay Consumer Cellular,
Verizon FIOS, Hyundai Elantra auto
loan to Ally Bank, PECO, Apple Cloud
services, splurging on indulgences
Netflix, SiriusXM for commercial free
radio while we drive to and fro hither
and yon, plus my own valuable worth
the while to read (cover to cover) small
number of reliable socially progressive
publications such as TIME Magazine,
The Week, The Nation, Smithsonian,
and Mother Jones buzzfeeding yours
truly valuably indubitably reliable, and
currently, locally, and globally notable
events to keep abreast of impossible
mission characterizing changing mean
drama (nail biting action) played out
across the webbed, wide world stage
speculating how willing the average
Tom, ****, or Harry blithely gives
money to the political candidate of
their choice, but if I matter of factly
asked for money (even a measly one
dollar bill), a hooting and hollering
would ensue, nevertheless experiment
prompted me to broadcast an honest to
dog communiqué greatly beseeching an
anonymous reader to support your local
******, whose nest egg whipsawed by
egregious thieving unscrupulous fraudsters
posing as (fake) Apple technicians after
hacking into my MacBook Pro (Retina,
15-inch, Mid 2015) essentially hitting me
with a double whammy initially locking
access to become linkedin to stored data
unless I called a toll free number only to
unwittingly fork over a large sum of money
after being blindsided that Citizen Bank imp
ploy ease colluding to siphon every red cent
constituting checking and saving accounts to
this day approximately seventeen plus months
after I got royally bilked, fleeced, scammed,
et cetera, and no success after posting a blurb
on Gofundme, an idea got hatched just today
to adopt the guise of a political nowhere man
shaking figurative tin cup on the cusp of holly
days trying to elicit altruistic responsiveness
from any pair of eyes that peruse the contents
of my poetic plea gently plucking heartstrings
to finance life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
for one mortal male who shortchanged himself
more'n his halflife ago socially withdrawn from
the countless opportunities to risk saying hello
to a pretty little thang, which painful shyness
predated availability of powder milk biscuits
made from whole wheat raised in the rich
bottomlands of the Lake Wobegon river valley
by Norwegian bachelor farmers; so you know
they're not only good for you, but pure... mostly.