Mother Media,

Has strapped us to her highchair of lies,

And spoonfed us,

What she believes is best,

Despite our protestant cries.

Talent is a mime on a mountaintop* said he who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon.  He had said previously other things but this was the first to which my mother caught me listening.  She took my ear and me with it outside and shoved two cigarettes she’d been smoking in my mouth and told me to chew.  When I did not she worked my jaw herself until the tip of my tongue bled enough to give her pause.  Neither one of us cried and the cigarettes were salvageable.  The morning speaker then joined us obviously hoping for a drag.  The moment my mother hated him passed and she told him what hope was.  

He who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon would not often be seen by my mother.  He and I were late in our waking and she’d be out gathering types of dead bird from the bases of cornstalks.  I’d sit in my highchair and watch him shirtless as he prepared the tools of my art.  The hairs on his back would grow before my eyes and need bitten at the follicle.  He would turn and put his finger in the garbage disposal and pretend it was on.  On was something he never turned it because he said a mantis lived there and what would bite his follicles.  I wouldn’t be hungry then which was good for my show.  He would laugh at the misery of my scooping arms and be full of it and tired and he would ask me to rub his belly while he went to the couch on his back.  His belly the single most reason to keep him said mother.  I’d put my ear to it to feel myself kick and never did stir him from sleep.  Pretty early in this routine some of his belly hair started to grow in my ear and my dreams from then always had a banquet in their midsection.

Careful with my dreams.  Mother said they are kittens and one can bite too hard.  It is like her being stubborn and only calling me boy when most called me boy and girl in equal measure.  Sometimes when boy got the lion’s share I’d long to nurse and have to slap the ******* sound out of my teeth.  For saner things I’d walk the dog with a dog in it.  I had names for both and both were names I would’ve called my brother had I been born.  I once found a sipped at wine glass on the roof of the pharmacy mother later burned with lit stalks.  When the turkey buzzards skittered themselves nightly across the horizontal track of my looking for god I’d imagine my brother skinny enough to fit in the parched tube of his swallow.

Now that I am returning to Shudderkin, the welt left by my larger than life father whipping his belt across the tailbone of Ohio, it is clear to me that what we called a dog was correct only on certain days.  The mongrel keeping pace with my bike, the second name I have for my brother, is not the physical dog a city knows and not country loyal as country wants to, and so makes others, believe.  It is instead more like the talking when one is sped up and words get put together and then are stuck there.  Dog of Shudderkin.  Its tongue does not droop or even wag outside the mouth.  A pinkness has always gone on without me.

Splattered
Like spaghetti sauce
On a baby's white highchair-

That's your inner life.
Red, dried, this is going to stain.

You swallowed bullets, and then they shot inside you.

Like an old broken computer,
You're bigger, and you look fine,
but you whir (and hum) at the slightest touch;
overheating.

Like not wearing underwear under your clothes,
everything is scratchy and a little raw and you feel more vulnerable.

You feel everyone must know. How could they?

Only if they notice.
Or
If they lure you into taking off those "I've got it together" clothes.
Which nobody can do anymore.
Because ******, you're going to integrate that ****.

Wear that rawness like the Emperor in his new clothes.
Be your own mischievous taylor.
Laugh like a baby at the spaghetti stain.
Spit the bullet shards out
at kids so they don't do the same thing you did.

You're a sick ****** I can't take my spam cans away when I winch that I a ******* dwarf that wobbles when I pluck my pringles from the cat's ***. Fuu-huh-huck-too. I spat that kid that stole my ******* bib hurt my holler strings and caused me to chaufe. I use ecstacy are you horney. I'm so horney. will you rub my feet *****. yes or no? **** yes, you're youth reaks of fermeldahide, holla. I'd holla back straps because ******* Better still have her one tooth to crunch frozen corn off-the crop because I sold my microwave for crack ******* and hungry ***** coookurs, thier hookers bae. I love me. I love you, that's your krusty *******. Poochie ****!

A Monopoly set
A rubber ducky dressed as a hockey player
A childhood in short
A bowling ball
A samurai sword
Those awkward teenage years
A master cylinder for a 1933 truck
A lava lamp
Finding your college dorm
A boxing glove
A waffle iron
Building your family
A bed and mattress
A highchair
Having a baby
A Monopoly set
A rubber ducky dressed as a hockey player
Your child's first years

Why then,
waste all that
and throw it into the Northern California rivers?
Do you want to forget the defining moments?
The ones that made you you?

i remember being scared that my father would discover i cut myself.
i remember the day that he did.
trying to cram the screaming baby into his highchair dad saw the mark on my arm and i told him
it was from a marker
he demanded to see it again
and so dad found out that sometimes praying isn't enough.

i don't remember being afraid that dad would find out about the things moose did to me
...i guess i can't say that
i guess i have to say the things we did together
(but i will always lay the blame at his feet
for beginning things
that first night.)
even now, i am not afraid
even now when i truly believe that dad knows what happened
even now when dad gently pats me before he goes up to bed
and says don't forget
to
repent
i am not afraid.
i am ashamed.

town crier

poems March 2014
99 pages
pocketbook style publication
8.50

preview of book is book entire on lulu site. the spine of said book has title. front cover, back cover, are purposely blank.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/town-crier/paperback/product-21548368.html

---

Talent is a mime on a mountaintop said he who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon.  He had said previously other things but this was the first to which my mother caught me listening.  She took my ear and me with it outside and shoved two cigarettes she’d been smoking in my mouth and told me to chew.  When I did not she worked my jaw herself until the tip of my tongue bled enough to give her pause.  Neither one of us cried and the cigarettes were salvageable.  The morning speaker then joined us obviously hoping for a drag.  The moment my mother hated him passed and she told him what hope was.  

He who gave me each morning a fork and a spoon would not often be seen by my mother.  He and I were late in our waking and she’d be out gathering types of dead bird from the bases of cornstalks.  I’d sit in my highchair and watch him shirtless as he prepared the tools of my art.  The hairs on his back would grow before my eyes and need bitten at the follicle.  He would turn and put his finger in the garbage disposal and pretend it was on.  On was something he never turned it because he said a mantis lived there and what would bite his follicles.  I wouldn’t be hungry then which was good for my show.  He would laugh at the misery of my scooping arms and be full of it and tired and he would ask me to rub his belly while he went to the couch on his back.  His belly the single most reason to keep him said mother.  I’d put my ear to it to feel myself kick and never did stir him from sleep.  Pretty early in this routine some of his belly hair started to grow in my ear and my dreams from then always had a banquet in their midsection.

Careful with my dreams.  Mother said they are kittens and one can bite too hard.  It is like her being stubborn and only calling me boy when most called me boy and girl in equal measure.  Sometimes when boy got the lion’s share I’d long to nurse and have to slap the ******* sound out of my teeth.  For saner things I’d walk the dog with a dog in it.  I had names for both and both were names I would’ve called my brother had I been born.  I once found a sipped at wine glass on the roof of the pharmacy mother later burned with lit stalks.  When the turkey buzzards skittered themselves nightly across the horizontal track of my looking for god I’d imagine my brother skinny enough to fit in the parched tube of his swallow.

Now that I am returning to Shudderkin, the welt left by my larger than life father whipping his belt across the tailbone of Ohio, it is clear to me that what we called a dog was correct only on certain days.  The mongrel keeping pace with my bike, the second name I have for my brother, is not the physical dog a city knows and not country loyal as country wants to, and so makes others, believe.  It is instead more like the talking when one is sped up and words get put together and then are stuck there.  Dog of Shudderkin.  Its tongue does not droop or even wag outside the mouth.  A pinkness has always gone on without me.

a tacky canvas that
pitcher-dribble reaped,
like an infant in the highchair,
no cherrios to eat.

mundane messes like
blood on your knee,
gravel in between;
bend, but grit your teeth.

white was so boring, though
color cannot be undone,
until a final draw ends,
and entropy starts to run.

watercolor, was it?
the dye won’t wash away.
don’t you see me,
****** by graffiti

like the coffee stains on
my tie, the ink at the
top of my naked sleeve;
leading edges that bleed.

if you shudder at the unholy
messes, the incongruent seams,
i took too much of your time
already, ask once, i’ll let you be.

I have for appetite a pair of scissors and for despair a silent vase. I have a louse like a flower and a crush on a doll. I take my meals with a three-shouldered angel. the head of my abstract dog is highchair real. food is a ghost. I rake the hair.

Picture galleries of motion
beamed against orbital screens
jump from side to side.

Tethered to groping slobs
fast-food fed flesh spills like slush
under the *** crack
of a sleeping ramshackle booth
a flickering grey bulb
advertising escalator rides
at the rear
of a carnival for stiffs.

Gimme the Fun house.

Along this pass,
there shuffle I
treadmill somnambulant
stuck between why and why not
my donated skin, patched
worn past expiration
toss a softball
swing a hammer
shoot a clown in the mouth
skipping around fuchsia puddles of
puked up cotton candy and beer
riding the highchair
a baby belly full of popcorn.

Eddy drops a neon mannequin
strums his black flamingo strung with steamed tripe,
shoplifted
Dim Sum Sundays
sweats custard ****
opens his mouth to sing
exhales moths and hummingbirds...
fighting to the death over what's left
of caramelized nuts
spilled from my guts

A link left undone.