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Kyle Kulseth Jan 2019
Cold nights
               It's always Winter here.
It seems this season's stretching on all year.
               The beers are gone
               so let's get walking.
                           Grab
    your coat and let's do some talking.
Loud, through the night.
Know our strides will crunch through old snow
beneath old street signs.

                                              Best
      ­                                   bets aside,
                                    did you gamble
                                       on my days?
                               Did I waste your time?

Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
4 blocks down the street, you're screaming,
"**** the cold and this town. I'm leaving."
                     Sheetrock walls
               and paycheck borders
                     keep us pinned,
                in line, on short order.
                              Cook
                    our­ melting brains.
                        Froze in place
and broke your heart, rinsed me down the drain.

Cold nights
               It's always Winter here.
This frigid season's stretching on all year.
               The beers are gone
               so let's get walking.
                           Grab
    your coat 'cuz them ghosts been talking.
Howling each day.
Haunting all our snowbound steps and
rattling their chains.


                                          Alarms and cars
                                        and pulsing hearts.
                                               Cheapest
                                        prices paid to make
                                                our wage.

                                         The clocks in bars
                                       count tarnished stars.
                                                 Cheapest
                                         prices paid to pave
                                                 our ways.


                                              Best
      ­                                   bets aside,
                                    did you gamble
                                       on my days?
                               Did I waste your time?


Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
2 blocks down the Ave., I'm shouting,
"**** the wind and the snow that's pounding."
                     Rent check walls
               and sheetrock borders
                     keep us pinned,
                in line, on short order.
                              Cook
                    our­ melting brains.
                        Froze in place
and broke my will, rinsed you down the drain.

                                            And I'll move

                                                4 blocks

                                              next Spring...
Kurt Schneider Jul 2015
Man needs to reconsider his place in the universe. Upon my morning awakening, while enjoying a cup of coffee(another one of man's creations although albeit simply refined and utilized by us), I closed my eyes and heard not the sounds of nature, as one might assume would be the ideal, but the sound of a pneumatic air-pressure nailgun stapling shingles on a roof. Then, in sequence following that in a crescendo of sound I heard the distant lawnmower native to this local urban habitat, feeding on grasses. This was only soon to be followed by the wind-like sound of nearby automobiles slowly passing by. All of this muffling the sounds of the morning flyers (winged creatures of an inferior design unknown to us) presenting their songs, but falling on deaf ears . That's when I realized we are a product and slave of our own creations, when we should be a slave (or close sibling rather) to creations unbeknownst to us.
Barton D Smock Aug 2016
/ my newest self-published collection of poems, [depictions of reentry], is available now on Lulu.

will send for free a hard copy to anyone interested in writing a review – make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

book preview on site is book entire

some poems from it:

[liftoff]

the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.

-

my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.

~

[attic radio]

the fattest baby in the nursing home can’t chew with its eyes open.

it’s a slow day.

looking into the future
a skeleton’s
dog
sees only
sticks.

lightning
marks
the robot’s
church.

~

[meditations on depth]

the mouth
of the thing
that eats
in fog
a doll’s
head

-

the holy spirit
high
on the bricklayer’s
toothache

-

a cat person
at death’s
door

-

poverty

a belonging
moved
by many
mirrors

~

[seeing]

bored as a slaughterhouse

crow / angel

on a skateboard

~

[depictions of reentry (xxi)]

the barn
bat
with the eyes
of a diver’s
shadow…

the dads were all digging
the nudes
were thinking
small

every chair
an electric
chair

in daylight, that motherless grief

~~

/ my first non self-published chapbook, [infant cinema], is available from **** Press.

I currently have three signed copies available for free- make request to bartonsmock@yahoo.com

excerpt, here:

my child. my diver who wets the bed. my worrier who rescues domestic scenes for animals accused of gaslighting. my swimmer. bather of grasshoppers. my lovely bird alone in an airplane.

~

two things to do on an empty stomach are:  

hold a séance.  

follow the spider’s trail of abandoned birthmarks.  

~

in the video, the young woman is being force-fed cake by a man with a ruined tongue. my mother can’t eat and watch at the same time. your mother is holding me and wondering what happened to this thing. our fathers are veering into the realm of film criticism. where you are depends wholly on my sister’s makeup. god’s parents have no concept of time.


~~

/ also, ending tomorrow, is the goodreads giveaway for my self-published thing, [FOUR], which includes four recent titles of mine in full along with some newer poems.  

some poems from it:

[the many]

as an uncle
can enter
any garage
and sense
the absence
of a nailgun
so
can a holy man
prepare
a meal
in the missing
church

~

[purlieu]

a bruise, a school

of fish.  a caterpillar

crossing

the floor
of hell.  a thought

sick
to a son’s
stomach, a winter

glove
in spider’s
nightmare.          

~

[mouthings]

a brother
dodges
suicide
with a piece
of paper
that doesn’t
work. a mother’s
blood

goes white
at the ink
of amnesia.

bus stop, breastmilk
there was

no me.

at what would god
not
be caught
dead? speaking

is how we talk
to the words
we say.

~

[stratum]

two brothers come to blows over which sister likes fast food more.  a man we want to love is shadowboxing a snowdrift from the parable of touch.  blood is a food group.  I pray to my hair.  call my footwork by name.  take my time

with amnesia.  

baby facts include being born again in the museum you were carried to.
FRITZ Aug 2017
a transmitter roughly

                                          feed a rat or pump Mother with a nailgun

               brained easters confetti eyes and shredded vision deserts.

                                                       ­                               frosty spectacular

                          oracular suffocation push & bringing in the changes

                            hyper-faced you got crushed by this crushing rock.

heady aches binding teeth like a calf and its mother frozen in mud....

I have taken your teeth with the seeds of an orange fruit

I am ingesting your breathe like a poisoned candy sweet

I devour your voice into thick and rot

I turn you green and black and blue

you can no longer be the only you.
Bjarke May 2017
It's kinda like
Holy ****.
But at the same time it's like
Why did I do this?
It's terrible
And amazing
Lovely
And stupid
Love is dumb
Love is fun
It makes me want to shoot myself in the hand with a nailgun
Then go buy a rose to plug the wound with
Such beautiful pain
It's kind of like being in love
Barton D Smock Feb 2016
as an uncle
can enter
any garage
and sense
the absence
of a nailgun
so
can a holy man
prepare
a meal
in the missing
church
Barton D Smock Aug 2014
your sadness ran as a midday special on nailgun accidents in my area.

if I stay in one place, my mother will die of sleep.

ideally, it’s the image I have of realism.
AJ Farruco Dec 2018
Stomping on eggshells/
Cracked hardware, and crushed soul/
Laughing manically/
At all the misery you cause/

Sadclown, with a crown/
Made of black mirror/
Married to an angry headless chicken/

Trapped in a ****** birdcage/
With herds of woolly mammoth/
Heard the fourth wall shattering/
Hammerhead battleram/

Sorry for the breakthrough/
But that's... kinda the point/
Of no return; boiling finger cannon/

Automatic nailgun/
Clawing at the chalkboard/
Sonic boombox daily thunderclap/
Head explode/

Regenerate overnight/
"I Got You Babe" every morning/
Get up off the floor/
Just to hear her squawk again/

****!!!/
Still... could be worse/
My nose could be gushing blood/
And then everybody laughs/

Haha, mouthful of cartilage/
Vast facebite strictly psychological/
Moodswing kaleidoscope/
Take away one life at a time/
Bomb first/
Until they burst into a million coins/

*******/
Ice King with burning eyes/
Amplified octopus/
And yolk spills everywhere./
© + ® A.J. Farruco, 29/11/2018.
Ken Pepiton Aug 30
re reading readily past and present read
read real as a word for what we do
so steadily balancing known on known,
thinking some things at the same instance,
we knew the will to tell, and knew as well
the will to listen, to learn while thinking,

to me
this means that

losing my breath, reaching your reason,
tuning our times to the musical mathematics

all matter is dust, all thought is spirit,
all memory has a price prepaid, the flaw
we may imagine,
maya, Kabir suggests to Rumi, and I ask
might justice mean what Karma does?

The nameless suggester, be it muse, or
some detail in a day so long ago it seems

forever, onward, outward, inward fretting,
lack of knowledge, sublime serpentine bending,

folding, creasing, not snapping in rigged tension,
compliantly bending the knee, image-visualize,
meandering streams of everything,
realize our link to thinking marked taboo.

Discover why secrets are so typical of life,
in bubbles where our sapien relatives live.

All men, wombed or un, catch phrase, me
included, learn in sequence, literally faster
whosoever
than at any time in ever before, we know more,
truth, conscious use of useful knowings shared,

to our advantage, supposing us capable of leading,
while braying mindlessly like a
sotted piper, blues on a fancy Hohner, here we go

asking reception signaling the surfing analogy,
lift us as might those children we see ourselves, once,
imagine turning at the first star on the left, using
Peter Pan, then Peter Principle, from Canada,
Laurence J. Peter, appears in color,
dressed in polyester 70's gear,
as would have looked cool on TV
while McLuhan was doing his thing.

Fit the mind into the hard problem,
let it seem the spiritual force, why

imagine satisfaction while satisfied?
What a man hath, why doth he hope for?

As when Lobsters stack for social duty,
forming hierarchies, certainly,

Delphic precepts urge recalling 1, 2,  3,

know how empty you are, know how small
your little lamp, asking measure mete,

nothing spilled remains thine own, surplus
is for general consumption, evolution taxes

the comprehension of the universal conversation,

we find old rules used to form governable clusters
of us, tabula rosa versions of each of us,
mirroring imaginable completed visions,

like Google Earth, eh,
imagine, we live there, and where we see from
is this imagined plateau in nowhere, really, just
imagine, spell binding,

how newly known is all we know, each time,
the economy collapses and we are left wondering,

was the pile wrong at the bottom, first test of load
bearing Lobster pride for being most useful, calling all

come climb on my back and become the memory,
of original reasons used to do truly childish things.

Roof high stilts was one we succeeded at,
having seen it done, doing it was nothing,
couple of old two by fours, common
artifacts in growing towns out west… nailgun
misfires come to the magnet rescued
from the uncoiled motor
on the old concrete mixer. Grandpa had hammers.

Life with electricity, safe bet, you never had no choice
but to live in a world without power… industrial strength,

but the stacking order adaptations from King of the Hill,
does evolve a kind of specific survival set of reasons,
make do, make things change, to become ladders,
and then stilts, to walk along the Al Can Highway
waving at the tourists on their way to Vegas,
as society evolved around us, hiding wrecking yards,

all the weights in the bag, when balance is primary,
all the weights prove their worth, be it true to fair.

We can think we know less than we must to finish,
but that is maya talking, the cloud of unknowable's
tyrannical kind of order,
attempting to dam the flow…

first king reason, ready to speak up and say, I know.
I know, yes, just
what you mean by too much,
too much
water in your cistern, let it flow down gutters
intelligently placed to slow erosion,
leaving
first pure, mere thought bought by breathing
consistently for seventy five years, attended to
by books that my grandma read as a child,

and my grandchildren read this summer.

Presently passing on the purpose of first and last.
Godin's Practice, a lesson, learned or spurned, whose to judge...
daily musing using magic tools unthinkable except in books, since ever ago,
a good book is one you enjoyed experiencing in your youthful mind.
I recommended Stranger in a Strange Land, got a fair response.

— The End —