Society sells beautiful lies,
Emphasis on the beautiful,
They sell you the definition of beauty in
small pictures,
small ads,
small sizes.
Spinning the world on a string,
They've got us all fooled.
Telling teens they don't need to eat,
"Skip the food today,
be beautiful tomorrow".
Selling the idea that beauty can replace sorrows.
Society sells the idea that beauty is empowerment.
Society sells the idea that if you are beautiful,
then you could have the world on a string.
These lies lead our leaders of tomorrow into disarray.
Sell us the idea that if we are beautiful
today will be better than yesterday.
But the empty promises lead us all astray,
Abandoned on street corners begging for scraps,
because we didn't think we felt empowerment.

Society sells small,
Society sells beauty,
Society sells small.
Small models,
Small manikins,
Small sizes.
Spinning the world on a string,
Society sells the idea that the size of your waist,
defines how beautiful you are.
Society sells the idea that beauty
is empowerment.
Society sells small.
Society sells the idea that if you are not small,
you are not empowered,
ugly,
waste of space.
Society sells small.
Society says beauty is empowerment.
These lies lead our leaders of tomorrow into disarray,
Too many teens today are to prone to facings their problems with razor blades,
Because today was not better than yesterday.
Then tomorrow won't be either.

Society sells small,
small pictures,
small ads,
small manikins.
Society sells protruding plastic ribs,
ribs sharp enough to cut paper.
Society sells the figures of the sick and dying.

Society sells small.
Small enough to be drop dead gorgeous,
Emphasis on the drop dead,
Society sells women who are severely underfed.
Society sells women suffering from malnutrition.
Since when did this become tradition?
Since when was fragile stature empowering?
Society sells skin and bones.
Society sells so small,
**women are literally dying to feel beautiful.

"Our cattle graze, the wind breathes." -Garcilaso *

It was my ancient voice
ignorant of thick bitter juices.
I sense it lapping my feet
beneath the fragile wet ferns.

Ay, ancient voice of my love,
ay, voice of my truth,
ay, voice of my open flank,
when all the roses flowed from my tongue
and grass knew nothing of horses' impassive teeth!

Here are you drinking my blood,
drinking my tedious childhood mood,
while in the wind my eyes are bludgeoned
by aluminum and drunken voices.

Let me pass the gates
where Eve eats ants
and Adam seeds dazzled fish.
Let me return, manikins with horns,
to the grove where I stretch
and leap with joy.

I know a rite so secret
it requires an old rusty pin
and I know the horror of open eyes
on a plate's concrete surface.

But I want neither world nor dream, nor divine voice,
I want my freedom, my human love
in the darkest corner of breeze that no oen wants.
My human love!

Those hounds of the sea chase each other
and the wind spies on careless tree trunks.
Oh ancient voice, burn with your tongue
this voice of tin and talc!

I long to weep because I want to,
as the children cry in the last row,
because I'm not man, nor poet, nor leaf,
but only a wounded pulse circling the things of the other side

I want to cry out speaking my name,
rose, child and fir-tree beside this lake,
to speak my truth as a man of blood
slay in myself teh tricks and turns of the word.

No, no. I'm not asking, I, desire,
voice, my freedom that laps my hands.
In the labyrinth of screens it's my nakedness receives
the moon of punishment and the ash-drowned clock.

Thus I was speaking.
Thus I was speaking with Saturn stopped the trains,
when the fod and Dream and Death were seeking me.
Seeking me
where the cows, with tiny pages' feet, bellow
and where my body floats between opposing fulcrums.

Around the eighties the Mumers New Year Parade in Philly
lost a bit of its tradition. It originally was made for
the average working family. But around this period
people were charged to watch them do their famous strut
and extra displays of course only at City Hall.
And so let us begin my poetic story...


Standin' among the crowd,
watchin' blue police-van-bleeders
being escorted; wearin' city-steel-wrist-braclets

And now struttin' my way,
psychopathic eclipsers
of physical freedom
seekin' potential comatose heads
to tap

And squads of finger thrusters
of back pockets for targets,
dart in and out of crowds,
quickly countin' their *****
in dark unseen places

Feet freeze
as sounds travel,
" Oh dem golden slippers"
soundin' like cheap tin toy Kazoos
and toy glockenspiels

The wind kisses
my **** end blue
as a flyin' Budweiser
kisses my right foot wet

Man made pop art
reflects the times
at the times
at Broad and Spruce
of cigarette butts,
chocolate wrappers,
and crushed beer cans
climaxin' montage
of the mountain- ****** eighties

Boozers and blue
sweet puffers
wearin' smiles
outside
and within most inner thoughts
puff-buffed away from some reality
step in cadence to their
own music within themselves

And wailin' children
havin'
more sense
than adults
become early sacrifices
to the fruit of Bacchus

The marching high strutters of "Big Bird",
they strain and struggle under the weight
of heavy hernia suits;
with feathers and sparklers,
their instruments wrestle as steamy air puffs shoot forward
from their nostrils
like  red-devil-painted-dragon faces
in the bitter cold air
warmly protected by their attire and *****,
they stop seemingly for eternity,
in the suspended purgatorial
halts
one after another,
only waitin'
for the grandstand reserved section
around City Hall
Yet we wait and pray together
that perhaps like in the older days
we will get a sneak of
a nostalgic, spontaneous,
free dance-strut
that never comes

Attached, yet unattached
and cryin' inside;
always on guard
for flyin' and drunkin' fists
or flyin' articles
of all sizes
Seein'  through
the facades of we must act
like ha! ha! ha!
I cry inwardly
with anger
doin' the rat-tat-tat
of no more nonsense
of my inner-self
Strivin' and movin' to flee Freddie Kruger's bladed fingers
I sting all over,
my teeth clinch with anger,
darkness intensified
The crowd becomes uglier,
blackness
engulfs
black souls
Vehement, crazy,
hordes and hordes of frustration bellows
outward
The call of Nietzche,
The ouch under my skin

This damnable real parade
not shown in Liberace-livin'-Color

No commercial breaks of luxury cars
that drive livin' manikins
Livin' manikins that wear dial under their arms
while smilin' the brand of Crest toothpaste
but instead,
a street drunk with
broken ugly teeth
as he begs for quarters
and blows his odorous breath
beyond description

And City Hall payin'-grandstanders
with tv cameras
bein' in the spirit of "Disneyland"
presents
the overly organized narcissistic prostituted
elegance of forever, floatin', bouncy,
dancy, prancy,
skippin' to the tune
of  mom's Apple pie,
a small slice of my reality

And the applaudin' money makin'
TV grandstanders
of goody goody
look mom I can do the swan dance
while holdin' multiple
colored sparklers
wrapped in feathers
But why must I
see through the eyes of a Godless Nietzsche,
**** it!!

With your even fixed waxy smile
I'm beguiled by your looks
as you wear the latest looks
as you read the latest books
as you wear the latest fashion
in vogue

Dressed to ****,
you will soon be the center of attraction
Poised ever so
in perfect balance
you stand among the  up most glitter

A plaster of Paris soul,
you feel nothing, you see nothing,
hear nothing, know nothing

You will soon be ready for your public
Your show draws nearer
And finally you step onto
a mindless flashing disco floor
with the rest of the "MANIKINS"

I’ve become  invisible
Maybe it’s a virus and I’ve just got a touch,
The automatic shop door didn’t open so I’m left in a lurch,
Even when  I stood on the spot once blessed by the church.
Then the shop attendant missed me in the queue,
A car nearly knocked me on the footpath too.
Clearly I’m unseen.

As this progresses will my eyelids become translucent?
With my eyes shut how will I sleep?
Maybe I should wear dark glasses and not take a peek.
If I wear clothes will it be funny?
I will definitely get a job as a shop window dummy.
Is that what happens in the invisible limbos,
We become manikins in shop windows,  
Watching the world looking at them,
What we the invisible will be able to tell.

From my shop window I imagine at half past eight,
The people hang out or just walk past straight.
Starting with the kids skipping school,
Uniform tucked in schoolbag to fool,
Shopping bag used for energy joule,
Inhaling glue this hallucinatory fuel.
Each step these children take,
One step closer to heartbreak.

Then the anxious wife meeting her lover.  
Leaving behind her domestic bliss,
Sealed this morning with a husband’s watery kiss.
Waiting awkwardly in her Totoro dress,
One button behind and a zip does the rest .
Trying hard to be invisible too
This could all end in her being blue.

The rushing shop manager dressed in a suit.
Cuffs worn thin, pens in a group,
Red, blue and black,
A tick for success or none for the lack.
Mumbling along the company mantra,
“Think outside the box” there’s as good fella.
The only box he has ever known,
Are the imaginary boundaries in which he has grown.


A dog and his master trundle along.
He has been dead for years as he moves on,
Wearing a shroud of a used up life,
The dog squats down beside the tree of life.
Observing this stool in the daylight,
He compares to the Hematochezia he did last night.

A husband contemplating murdering his wife,
As the news of her lover has just come to light.  
He looks at the manikin with some delight,
Seduced by its empty invisible soul,  
Only to discover he owns that hole.

Then evening descends the lights are all up,
When work is all over it’s off to the pub.
Not for the invisible manikin though,
Who stays in the window dressed in a bride’s trousseau.
An invisible exhibitionist this poor sod,
So when you walk past it's polite to nod.
Now I’ll take two Aspirin and a cup of coco
And hope to God this invisibility will go go.

I want to runaway,
Far into the oceans.
Into the abyss of waters,
The unexplored depts of
Undiscovered species of fish
And devouring monsters.

I want to runaway,
Maybe to Africa in the forests.
Where wolves, dogs and dragons roam.
Make a tent out of straw and mud,
And all it my home.
Spend the rest of my life alone.

I want to runaway.
Maybe to the snow clad- region of
The Himalayan mountains,
Or to the frozen poles of the earth.
Stand to the highest peaks,
Without any clothes
So my limbs can freeze ,
Till they look like plastic manikins.

I want to run away,
Take up permanent residence on mars,
Or the moon,
Or maybe on the sun.
Far away from earth as possible,
Because If I stay here,
You'll just be a village away,
A city away...
A country away...
Maybe a continent and it wont be enough,
I'll still spend each night thinking of you.

I want to runaway.
Maybe to another galaxy,
Maybe here exists parallel universe
Where I can escape.
One where there are actually super heros
That wear spandex and capes.
One where happily ever after's are real,
And you know exactly how I feel.

I want to runaway.
Escape this reality to wear stars align.
I would bend and twist,
Or manipulating time.
Abuse any available strength I can find,
Just to get you out of my mind.

He was a heavenly hellion

acting the fool again

filled of dreams and adrenaline

hes mumbling with the manikins

and mocking the shenanigans

of morbid ministers dabbling with their daggers again

a hooligan

with a silencer ******* in

the machiavellian

looming beneath the luminescence of the crescent moon again

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

Violet lips touch inside her pale
Slender wrist.
From these puncture holes, draw forth
A blue-black sledge of blood.
So, Spit the poison out
Hissing on white sheets.
And lie back, now
Rest, tucked in the violent, bruised
meditations of these forever fictional
hot, wet, sweating
fevered dreams
that pseudo lovers
lived and ****** in.
cradle hopes and gropings
in the dark, so everyone can see.
Fumbling zippers, fickle-fingers
Trace up and down the one-size-fits all
Manikins of their bodies.
Choking intuition out with
Rouged lips and bruised thighs.
Somewhere, a doll cries.
Cracked ceramics, lap with tongue against
The creased spine and
Thumping mounting moans of the
Sows in the fields
Echo sorrows held in harrowed hearts.

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.



safeguards

I call this piece

the hotel room
that left
your father.

a hammer is a good bid, an unmarked
bottle of cologne
is better.

your mother stopped in
to let me know
my high school
mile time

was threatened.

she said she would’ve come sooner
but she had to work
a fork
from her thigh.

the disabled are born liars
but lie
only once.  




turnout

before the parade
I carried with me
a trombone
and entered
the high
corn-

what I played
there

was mournful
after
the fact-

a tune
for no one, for a tree’s

late
cat


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.        



On having a secret mother

the boy is lacing up his right shoe
when he sees
the string
tied
to his middle
finger
and wonders
how asleep he was
when it happened-

(being forgotten
is a lot like
being forgotten
by) harm, that purple balloon

lowered into
then surrounded
by

the inactive
construction site
of the world




On suicide

you are further than I
in your worship
of the slow
vehicle
that carries
praise
back and forth
from appearing
to reappearing

god (how else)
to bully

what would
wipe you
clean
of body

language…
 
On foreclosure

any chance, no,
of improving
upon
my impression
of god.

noises beneath a bomb or bomb
threat.

wheelbarrows, wagons.

the occasional declawed cat
past which
I make
like I am
rowing.

(in wheelbarrow)  (in wagon)  otherwise,

no cats
on cat
island.


On libido

the previous verse was a poor man’s bible.  like wildfire a fondness for appropriate discipline spreads.  one scarecrow means practice, two scarecrows mean parentage.  a third is your father’s failed garden of baby teeth.  is, by definition, is.  I are

motherless.  what mother doesn’t know doesn’t worry.  many spiders came on the wind and a few were swept into mouths briefly opened by age. what made woman did not make the disappearing girl.  flashing back to a scene that’s not there or forward to one dependent on space, pain arrives

in memoriam.  


On memory*

for all the showing, one would think the only things born were eyes.

when lord
says
or lords
say

this is the body

I tend  
in unison
to trail
behind
my voice

as if

I could make my own
remember
the anesthesia
it underwent

to intervene.





On devastation

brother, there’s not a cigarette

on earth
that you
can surprise


On the past

my death a warped photograph of a former awe, my life

four children
drinking water
from glasses placed on either side
of my sleep-

it is on these nights
when I am sick
that I become the sound of my ears
softening
my mind’s
thoughtless position
on time, that I am ably

here, ably slow
in sight of
the aging

marksman
I’ve given
a sporting chance
 


On supervision

you may have been a child
projecting a maze
or an adult
memorizing
the hollowness
of things.

in a condensed version
of poverty’s
obstacle course
I still hold the hammer
that works for a mirror…

with dog or with dogs, we were presented
as two examples
of how to be
family.

I love me a farm machine
and the week
you knock yourself into.

(a silo
saddens
a drunk)


On phobia

before the brat kid
can repeat

this is not
the television
my father
writes for, it is my understanding

that such a child
belongs
to the itch
to have a child
disappear.  as I refuse

(to enter
the ocean)

I’m pretty sure god has put my death in a bug.  






On the need for a watchlist

if one can talk of it

one is most likely
not
poor.
    
we called you to life to give you a name.
odd imagery ensued.

a prisoner gave birth in the yard of your mouth.

god became the man men wanted to be.  god wore a dress
he could see through.  a short history
of heaven
made its way

to hell
to have its
location

shared.  

your mother developed a stutter
for which I developed
a stutter
application.  things began to click

on you
and when that
didn’t work

your fake cry
took on
a depth

of meaning
made us dip

(into
your brother)


On paternity

as his mother heard yesterday he was born to some nobody everyone can describe, she instructs her barber to slide a lit cigarette behind her ear. as unimportant as the barber is, his pencil makes a subtle change in her dream to put a cricket on the witness stand.



On contact

talk early, walk late.  

eat
for food.

hold kitten
like a rifle, your father’s head

to god.

call my / with your

premie.



On looting

we move the cemetery to confirm there is nothing outside of this town.  the ******* remains a two man show.  leash laws are for dogs and angels.  our doctor has a touch of deer worry.  exercise is for the birds.  god is the pitter patter of imagined feet.  our fathers double over in bathrooms from the shame of not calling out for paper.  our mothers have done the math.  by now, most kids have eaten a popsicle alone in a church.  I’m in it for the stick.



On my father being gay

a crow
born inside
a footstep
is passing
for dark



On having little to no vision

the amount of thought
given to locating
the secret
mind.

I am on count eight
of ten-

ten, the future.

I call your hiding place
water.

-

of course you dream of falling-

those toys
are the toys
of god’s
children.

-

staring contest-

the only child and the twin, then

the lonely
victor.

-

let there be
all

the light.

 

On decompression

the zombie movie
about buzzards.

the hungry enough horse.

the 48 hours
that go
undetected
in the parents
of special
needs
children.  

the civilian
birthday suit, the war

footage.





On the expected delays**

in this place
paid for
by another
country’s
melancholy

two dreams
of being
run into
by a newly
pregnant
late

bloomer

are had
by the one
man
we share

like a comb
to forget
whose hair
was first

my friends
are manikins,
plastic and
fake with
cold friendship in their eyes..

This body is not mine.
It belongs to another time,
it belongs to the living statues
in the rain-soaked streets,
it belongs to mute manikins
feigning beauty;
it belongs to the old faces
that line my dreams,
that elude my touch,
that fade to elements of shapes
and voices, now but passing seconds
of memories lost.

This aeon is not mine.
I belong to another time,
I belong to the mountain's edge
and paradise beach,
I belong to locked diaries
feigning secrets;
I belong to the strong women
that better my mind,
that elude my touch,
that burn to elements strong
and sentiments echoed eternally
in memories never lost.

It's not pretty . . .
the longer we go without speaking the more like a doll you are
to me
a dimming figure in my mind
that I take out of a box
for pain
or entertainment
The truth
I remember only when I feel like being free
And I put my manikins away
Yours still draws or boils blood
when I lift its plastic hands
Your real hands harmlessly work far away
Do you have a manikin of me?
A face you remember to haunt you
plastic hands you lift to scratch or stroke your face?

Waking from a dream,
Lingering for a few moments
Then slipping quietly into space.

Blood red mountain,
Pearly grass.
Greenish dawn
And scarlet sea.

Temptation poised elegantly,
Voluptuous and venomous.
Transparent, encased in a buoyant bubble.

Pinched skin, red from the sting.
Whether or not this is real, I know not.
I follow the stars,
Into inky oblivion.

Voices, patterns,
People like manikins.
Movie figures,
Chasing another desperately.

Without passion, drive, or desire,
They are going through the motions.
There is nothing in their way,
No obstacle to overcome.

ALVARADO
            Yes, raise the curtain of this maiden world!
            Now, shall we find the halls of El Dorado,
            Where princes make an almshouse of their mines,
            And paupers plate their lumber-shacks with gold.
            
SANDOVAL
            See where the jungle frowns against the shore:
            A burial-ground of bright, backwater wealth.
            Might there the Seven Enchanted Cities lie,
            Where opals roll like pebbles in a brook?

                                    Enter ESCUDERO.

ESCUDERO
            My failing eyes still seek the Fount of Youth.
            What waste is it to search for sixty years
            When one charmed beverage shall reset my clock?
            If I should find this spring, then- like Apollo-
            I’d shrug at heaven’s everlasting souls,
            And strut till doomsday on a deathless earth.
          
                             Enter MARÍA DE ESTRADA and GARRIDO.
            
MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            A premiere world!

GARRIDO                         The theme of long-lost songs.

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            Are there tall tribes of savage Amazons,
            Who bend their husky bows with coppery arms,
            And lop their milkless ******* to aid their aim?

GARRIDO
            Are there foul-featured men- if men they be-
            Whose ox-like trunk supports two partnered heads?
            Or, floppy-eared and dog-faced manikins,
            Who live (they say) on but the scent of blooms?
            And yet, if in this thicket dwell such men
            As dark as they who cheered me at my birth,
            We’ll call you Spanish but a schoolboy’s tale.
            And what a pretty picture that will make!

ALVARADO
            Cortés alights!

SANDOVAL                    All silent for Cortés!

In a momentary haze your mind spins
It droops and falls helpless into a vortex of
Smallness insignificant cold uncaring lonely
Smallness of the day when everything big
Either hurt, or used or didn't bother
It knocks the air out of your lungs that suddenly
Have no cause for breathing for why waste the
Precious oxygen? Yet you inhale in quick desperate gulps
And the ground slips from under your feet
It's all pointless - to save yourself, to seek help, to go on
Too small too emptied and filthy with their intentions
In tension with the needs needs needs...
The hopes that you found suitable for fire setting  
Pointless naive stupid hopes
So hatable you demolish them at once
Into waste under worthless sign
Forget the pain whatever it takes
It left you with blisters and hanging shoulders
With your chin tucked underneath your
Self-worth and you are not walking you are
Dragging yourself along the path
In the direction of pointless consumerism
And fame fame fame is all you wish, its all you hear
It's all you know of care because it's all that keeps them around
Them the faceless the soulless manikins that
Seem to have something you don't
Those hatable bodies that fill up the space
Around your black hole
And you fall and you fall and you fall
And all the things you have don't make you happy
And praise or kindness makes you paranoid
And you take all these little tablets of oblivion
Together in one gulp to forget
Just how far you still are from where you
Wish... if only you could wish to be

the manikins have walked out of the shop display
striding across the road not waiting for the traffic to stop
their eyes are unseeing and their legs are long
while their stomachs are ravenous they break into the burger shop
and then puke it all up on the pavements outside.

Words of love so often stale and
die with the lips that utter them,
And go to the wormy realm of
the bone and the root and the gem.

And yet I do not dread the sidereal
silence of the tomb
When, like the stalwart evergreen,
the legend of our love will bloom

Our stories entwined, and chiselled
into history's marble pages
Our light will blaze like all the stars
Through the dark and through the ages

For we will prosper in my art
as the rose that lives and breathes,
And tread the gleaming aisles of glory
but not as kings festooned in wreaths

Nor as Byzantine manikins
from walls of tessellated gold
Nor simulacra, cast in bronze
each from the same heroic mould

But as creatures of light and shade
with just a spark of the divine
Where, mulled by bellies full of fire,
our blood flowed rich and warm as wine