He came as a young man in a plain black suit
In the dead night how heels clicked on the side walk
In my bed I awake at someone slamming at the door
How the vibrations through the wall awakens every board
The shotgun loaded in the closet
That rests cold and heavy against my leg
I look through the peephole

I jump out of bed to the sound of my father's wake-up call. I was just playing a very important game in one of my stupid, meaningless dreams. My head spins downward in a still drug induced motion. Lora had been with me last night, which had helped me sleep. I run downstairs as Downers always tend to sustain my energy. My lunch is packed and I belch up some of my Gatorade I had already drank. I can feel a reassuring burn in my throat that tells me "Today is another day." Father asks about when I'm getting my tonsils removed and I tell him, and he says "It's good you know. Just get it over with." Yeah, that's what I'm doing; getting the **** over with and done, I get it." I come into work and I see orange foamy **** on the ground that smells like *****. What a **** job I got myself into. And the kid that works with me is a ******* four eyed *****. He stares blankly at me, never hearing what I say. "Looks like antiseptic." He responds, "What?" I walk away and get to work and think about the Fiorinal I am going eat. I go to the bathroom and take two with my Gatorade and then wash back another two. I take Franky out to the field, and he's chortling and having a real fit. I tell him to shut the **** up. I also let him know how much of a **** he is. My head feels loose and my body feels light. But it's still a mundane kind of high which is ****** to cope with such a mundane, life-******* job. So I take three more. Franky starts spinning in circles like a two ton child waiting in line for pizza day at school. Franky's nihilistic values and unruly behaviour has been a total ******* hassle to me. I've heard he's bucked and killed three people so far. So I feed him some of my Fiorinal; about 300 milligrams. I kick the ****** in his paddock and he runs off to harass the others. My head is throbbing nicely and my center is igniting with a sunlight feeling. I see Franky out there gradually falling under the spell. He then keels over; lopsided like a fat bag of flour breathing heavily with a dry cough. I give him a peanut butter sandwich as a method to resuscitate. He cranes his neck from his idle position and eats the sandwich. It turns out there was another 300 milligrams concealed within the sandwich. I walk away as I eat four more pills. I'm good but not good enough. The kid that I’m working with is still sweeping the hallway. The mundane procedure erases his reality into some meaningless nightmare. He then looks up to me and asks "What's wrong with Franky?" I tell him to shut the **** up and get back to work; "And work better while you're at it." I knew about the pills in the sandwich cause I put them in there for Franky. What I didn't know was that Franky was allergic to peanut. I see him out there, spread eagle with his belly touching the ground. I go “****!” and eat another dozen-something pills in response to the distress. The kid asks what I’m eating and I barely hear him and then I think about burning down his stupid church so there is no excuse for him to miss every other Sunday’s work when I got better **** to do. Then I think about the pain in my stomach and the blood I taste from somewhere. And as I’m running to help Franky, I think that he will be fine; he’s lying on his stomach. Usually when they are dead they are lying on their backs. When I come up close to him, his large red eyes see only death. I feel something raw and smooshy in my underpants. I must have soiled myself unknowingly. He’s still breathing, that’s good. My body and mind do not feel intact and everywhere I try to open up my closed eyes, the peephole becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. I smell like ****. Was it the pills? Was it the store-bought stuffed peppers I ate last night while playing solitaire? I think of its oily texture and merciless burn which only causes more stomachache and diarrhea. I’m now lying next to Franky. His struggle to live is sad and pathetic. I close my eyes thinking: respiratory depression. I start to cry. I hear the ambulance. I open up and I see Franky’s eyes frozen directly at me; as if he knew I killed him. He is stiff, heartless and somewhat waxy. He looks like he should be on display in the Kremlin. What separates between us now is the coagulate sandwich that smells like stomach juices. I don’t know if it’s mine or Franky’s. “Are you alright?” someone asks. I can’t respond; there is no energy. I’m sure it’s the paramedic. Now Franky’s owner races through and steps over me and onto the coagulate sandwich which goes Sshjerp! Tears stream down her puffy ***** face and starts consoling to the dead animal in a very sick, twisted kinda way. She goes back and forth from talking to him and then yelling at me. “You did this! It’s all your fault! You can go rot!” I’m half conscious and I have an oxygen mask strapped over my mouth and I’m humming one of my favourite songs, thinking about how delightful it is to be alive whilst the ***** still points her gross, fat fingers in my face. “Say goodbye to your twenty thousand dollars, sweetheart.” The twenty thousand ******* dollars you had spent every ounce of energy to maintain and keep alive.

Forbidden fruit
Ripened by the sun
Handpicked imperfections
Never to be tasted
Hungry for the wind

Sweet honey painted lips
Decadent play thing
Lover of the lost
Beautiful  chaos

Rabbit hole choices
Peephole neverland
Necessary whimsical
Carry me away honeysuckle

Watercolor visions
Wildflower dreams
Just is, just because
Cross the line

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

I am not a door mat.

You can’t just come in and out whenever you please, stepping all over me as you do so.

"Welcome home."

A home is supposed to be comfortable, and that is one thing I am not, and so you are no longer welcome.

My door is shut, locked twice, chain and ****, tight as ever.

Nothing is getting in, so you can stop banging and yelling.

Although this is the most emotion I’ve seen you express in God knows how long, and you look so handsome through the peephole.

You knock so hard it almost feels like the wood is going to crack under your fist, but I built it to endure even the most powerful storms.

I’ve created floods stronger than your knuckles, earthquakes with my wails and hurricanes with my spinning, swirling mind.

You think you can break me, but you can’t, because I’ve already tried.

And trust me when I say, no one wants to destroy me more than I do.

My eyes open in the dim light
You are not there
Old engine oil in my ears
and red tape on the walls and the
Peephole

I am in every cheap hotel across the country
Anything could be outside of my door
I could be in a small town in Idaho
An inlet on the coastal northwestern shore
Minutes from the beach on the southeastern coast
The glorious place where the plains give way to mesas
I am all those places
the ones I've been and will go to someday
Scouting
Searching
Finding my way back to you
Before the diesel fills my mind
And my thoughts leave the rest of me behind
And so at the designated hour
My movement will be swift
My stillness will be complete
Non-doing
Ever prepared

The first vernal moon
Measured one-seventh lit,
Backdropped by
A star-studded pit
Of ebony sky,
With Venus, brilliant,
By her side,
A ring of light
Outlined the disc.

A man, standing
On a ladder,
Stretches a finger
As if to flip
A peephole plate
On a galactic door.
And through the hole
Streamed pearls of light
From a well-lit room.
Did I espy eternity
Au clair de la lune.

Then conjecturing
On a whim,
I thought of one
Peeping in,
To see how ones,
Such as us,
Weathered winter's boons.

You're in a hallway with endless doors,
some are open, some are closed.
They look inviting but
you'd rather find the one that pulls you with force.
you come across my room,
and you wait there patiently like it's yours.
"You don't have a key," I said
but he ignores.

You sat out there and waited so long
I started to wonder why you did that,
and if we would get along.
I talked and whispered, through the door
I didn't open it yet, incase something went wrong.
On the days I was upset, you'd slip notes
to tell me you believed that I was strong.
Slowly, our friendship began but
still the door was shut, and I sang my song.

Two years passed before you asked if you could come in
I gave it some thought
then nodded, with a grin.
You told me that you only stuck through
because you knew you could win -
but it wasn't true, you cared so much
that I was under your skin.
Then you wondered, interrogating me,
"Do you feel the same within?"
Maybe you were still unwelcome, I wasn't sure,
you couldn't take it and your patience started to run thin.

It wasn't all my fault, but I'll share the blame.
I miss you, sometimes
even if you think time's changed
and we're not the same.
Do you remember the time I got mad when I overslept
because we stayed up to watch the game?
The time you gave in to my music,
after insisting it was lame.
The memory I'm most fond of is the one when
you offered me your last name.
I wonder if you still walk in that hallway,
and if now, you walk around without an aim.

penetralia

i.

forgive
each victor
his loss
of sin.

as a painter
of white horses

my talk is my talk.

the topmost button
corks

the wine
in my throat.

ii.

if you've blood in your mouth
you're a ******.

you've no mother
but it's her hand
lifts your shirt
to cover

that cigarette burn, that peephole
of god.

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

My heart sunbathed in your shimmer
So lost my magical lover
When I hear a door knock
I rush with my feeble knees to unlock
Peer through the peephole
Thought my lover has found home
So expectant are my bruised eyes

I have never had much luck with love. Explanations only skim the surface of the sea. Always caught up on the hooks at the end of your line.

You tug on the spool and play with your food. Just reel me in. A wish on a dandelion, I get blown to the wind.

Piglet and Pooh, sweet is the honey we are destined to lose. I send kisses through the door you scream at me through.

Flourish and wither like the wrinkled crease down the heart of our family picture. Dice with the devil, cee-lo with evil. Paranoia through the peephole. High on her ego.

I cant be your friend anymore
it's not you it's me.
It's just that the air that you breathe.
Is so toxic and deadly.
I keep telling you to take it slow and steady.
It's not your fault it's mine.
I don't want to be the one to lead you to a life of crime.

I can't be your friend anymore.
It's not because your a bore.
In fact time with you I will forever appreciate.
My heartbeat memories of you will never disintegrate.
I don't care that you try to get approval from the wrong people.
I'm the one that let you see my soul through the peephole
It's not your fault it's mine.
I cant keep you trapped inside this box forever like a mime.

Your just a deadly, toxic substance in my veins.
That I need to get out and try to sustain.
Without you, the one that got away.
Missing you used be grey.
This time won't be the same.
I'll be honest I cant be your friend anymore.
It's your fault not mine.
You shouldn't have pushed me so far away.
There was only so much I could take.

You were fire
And I was rain
Somehow we convinced ourselves
That we were the same
Our ideas, sure, were not all that different
But our personalities
Collide in the distance

You played with my heart
And I played with yours
Did you know
I was silently keeping score
No matter how much you plead
You were never enough for me

Oh wait
I said that wrong
I was never enough for you

I'm not the only girl
In the world that feels
As if my heart is a guitar
Plucking the strings
Until they snap back
Like rubber bands
In Chemistry class
When all they boys
Use it like a toy
Whipping each other
Leaving marks
Like they do with our hearts
All they ever do
Is tear us apart

See I’m not that pretty
Funny, or small
I'm not even close to tall
My skin often gets compared to ****
But i'm suppose to sit
And pretend like I don't hear the names behind my back

Because of these things
I get no respect
Because of these things
My life is a mess
Like my bedroom floor
On a Saturday night
Because Sunday is clean day
And then we can wash
Our emotions away

Monday’s a new day to start again
We can pretend to be friends
And laugh in the halls
Fake just like my barbie dolls

Acting like someone we’re not
Hiding who we are
So we don't get shot
With words so cold
They’re basically stone
Breaking our bones
With each strenuous throw
Like dodgeball during gym class
You must be fit if you wanna pass
The games people play
To destroy everyone else
Who cares if it's not affecting their health
Just the ones with the mental illness
Because believing you don't belong
Is so very wrong

But that's why we drink
We feast
On the broken ones
Who are incomplete

We steal parts of them
To fill the caverns of our heart
Empty from the diamonds
That had been stolen inside

They say we are poor
But we have wealth
Full of depression beyond despair

The horizons we seek
Cannot be seen
Through the peephole
Of sight we are given

No
We are taught

Our actions are learned
To behave this way
To treat others like they're nothing
Much to my dismay

And in a perfect world
My words mean nothing
But we are not perfect
Nor will we ever be
All we can ever do is plea
That we treat others like we want to be treated
Like we’re in elementary school again

But don't you understand
We accept the love we think we deserve
So how can the love we give be any worse
Than the love we choose to hold for ourselves
How can we determine someone else’s wealth
When we can't even begin to describe our own

You see
I was rain
And you were fire
Flushed with desire you tried to climb higher
Tried to push yourself off the ground
You burned so high, too high
That's why I had to drown
Out your flames
Until they were no more
Until you were soaked to the core

Gone were the days
Of hot and humid
Yes I know
It was kind of stupid
But if fire took care of rain first
It might have ended much worse

You see you were fire
And I was rain
And no matter how hard we tried to convince ourselves
We will never be the same

Knock knock, who’s that?
Glance through the peephole
****, I’ve missed you and that’s a fact
Here take my money and my soul

Can I ask you what your name is?
Oh, wow what a lovely name
Tina, I remember our very first kiss
You walked out and I’ve only myself to blame

It feels as if I cannot live without you
That I wouldn’t make it out alive
There’s an explanation that’s due
You keep me alive long enough to survive

My mind has many thoughts but mainly parasites
I can’t control the want because it has now become a need
Between my mind and surroundings I don’t know what the **** is right
I wish you never would have planted that first seed.

As I look around me,
The room is filling with smoke,
There are people drinking, smoking,
And people snorting coke.
I guess you could say,
I ended up in the "wrong crowd" of people,
There's a banging on the door, "police, open up",
And someone looks out the peephole.
There's a cop in the doorway,
6 foot 2, brown hair, and semi-large ears,
We all scramble and scream,
"**** there's no way we're all getting out of here".
This will be fun to explain,
To my parents who thought I was studying,
"I was testing the effects of drugs,
It was ******* that I was snorting".
Come on, this isn't fair,
None of you understand me,
Lock me away in jail,
So I can plead "insanity".
I need mental help,
From a psych ward or something,
I'm willing to go, or you can baker act me,
It'd be better than doing nothing.

Long story in a brief-case. The happy end to a half a story in a split level house…

The gasp and the harps, played by June Carter and the angels just a mile above the pillow that the silkworms blessed. Draw a lead color shirt from the wardrobe. Put it in the dresser. No. Hung it in the closet… to bury it in the hamper. It’s lovely. But not for the doorbell.

Or the finger that bends on it upon contact.

Or the eye peering in reverse through the peephole.

You’d need a jury, honey, you’d need a jury. Just keep looking.

It’s a satire what you can get away with when you haven’t any intentions to get away. In fact, come on in.

Deep crimson cotton races against the infinite canvas of purple ink.
Crystal white spots the subject:
a peephole for all to see.
a vision; postponed
a dream; deterred
a painted glass,
meant for all to see, but no one to see through

At night I feel like a widow
I lay next to a shadow with my head pressed between a pillow.
For real though. I can hear the heat rise up from down beneath low.
My eyes won't shut 'til the sun comes up shinin' through my window.

I'm settin' sail, unconcerned with how the wind blows.
Disconcerting notions rhythmically pound upon the ship's bow.
Concentrating on endless oceans of electrical impulse.
My legs shake as my muscles lull, unnerved by how the terrain's thrown.


How do the waves flow?


Hunger explodes out of my chest;
Exposing all of my rib bones.
A rabid pack of salty dogs engaged in acts I wouldn't condone.
A rancid sack of sewer rats nibble at success in foster family group homes.
You'll never be alone once you cop another copy;
Always accompanied by your own clones.


Which way did I go?


**** out all the unfavorable people through the peephole.
If it looks, smells, tastes and feels, then it must be really real.
Uh-OH! We've baked another batch, but keep the lids all sealed.
We don't know what will happen if the scent is caught by the bloodhound's ego.

Sound the alarm and stretch your arms late in the afternoon.
Pass the grind down the line from teeth, to beans, to time, to you.
Hunker down that anchor now, the deadline's almost due.
It seems the sea is the majority, but man, I'm sick of bein' blue.

*I've discerned now how the waves roll.

Feelings masked
Under a boulder of
Suppression
Painted with smiles
To hide the frustration that was
Bubbling, bubbling
Inside, never escaping
Because it shouldn’t, right?
Fatality:
The consequence of a mistaken exposure of the
Achilles’ heel,
carefully veiled by
socks or such something,
Shrouded by indifference and a pretence of amnesia.

And yet, yet sometimes, sometimes
At the sight of the clear blue sky
Where two dreams had once soared together;
At the sound of the synced rhythm
Of the bell-like laughter
that still echoed
In the present silence of an absence;
At the memory of numbers,
The date of union,
The date of parting;
At the smell of small things -
Coffees and teas and wet earth and flowers
The preferences of which had been tiffs
Time and again, time and again
In a distant past;
At the taste of tears of another loved one,
That seasoned the bitter sorrow of loss
With tangy flavours
That left not ever the tongue.
Just sometimes, sometimes,
Even at the gentle
Trickling
               of
                 rain
That had once inspired a
Melodious dance of a now-truant soulfulness

Somewhere, something, sometimes
Cracks.

A hint of sheer pressed down sorrow
Visible in the gradually extinguishing eye
Heard in the reluctantly cracking voice
As one breaks
Shard by jagged shard
Falling out of a patched up soul
Like petals of a flower, counting:
Missing him, missing him not…
Missing him.
And a now porous wall
Leaves a gaping peephole to expose
A separate world full of hidden memories,
The reminder of which still always
leads to such an
Unprecedented
Moment of weakness.

Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/31/2019

The Night rose, all in white and fog,
and she shrouded the capital with silver breath,
and she lit up lightning bolts of diamond sparks
in the bedding of snows.
And who had a fireplace and loving arms,
that awaited him in his home,
was saying to this night "Be blessed! "
and who did not have, "Cursed be you! ",
And there were, ah! thousands of such voices...
And all shivering with cold and doubt,
and all strangely terrifying in silence...
Stars, stars on the sky! Does God hear them?
You look from up above, pale, and I'm also looking;
The wind is rising, and the snow is covering the road...
Stars, stars on the sky! if one of you responds,
I can't hear your soft and distant voice! ...

*

Oh, silvery Night! Fearsome queen!
You carry the iron scepter for the poor...
And misty hoarfrost veil overhead
you pin with a pearl of frozen tears.
Oh, silvery Night! is it your bright stars from heaven
they want, this crowd motionless and pale?
Have mercy, listen! All they're dreaming of is a little piece of bread -
and to warm themselves just a bit!
If I only were you, ice-hearted queen!
The largest diamond that shines in the azure skies,
I'd give to the poor into this snowstorm
for bread and fire for children...
And I know the sky wouldn't get paler
if for one of those beautiful stars in blue,
bright eyes, in which life then would have been ignited anew,
were shining with tears of joy into the air...
Oh, Night! You walk quietly, ice-cold,
upon your head snow crown glitters;
and your silver, heavy, long robe,
for a million - will be a shroud.

*

In front of the gate, where street lamps were burning,
the child stood, his teeth chattering.
Poor boy! he thought that the wall would protect him,
that the stones would warm him!
But the landlord has looked through the peephole
and quickly locked the door. And all at once hot child's tears,
like pearls, started to flow...
- "Tell him to go some other place! He'll drag us all into big trouble!
If he'll die outside from cold, things can get ugly,
police, investigation... maybe even jail! ".
Finally, the boy left crying. In the distance
granite walls of the temple were rising in the dark...
Above them - the fog of pale opals, and higher - grey ice clouds.
And a cross. The orphan - has knelt at the threshold.
Diamond snowflakes flew in the air...
He wanted to enter, but the church was shut tight
together with mercy and Almighty God.
If only Christ were here with us,
I know that every dark night he would walk
and gather the hungry and the poor
And he would feed them at his altars,
filling their hearts with faith and hope.

*

Chilled to the bone, child with glass eyes
was looking at the sky, at the Milky Way:
he wanted to complain, but his mother was dead,
so he whispered quietly through tears:
- "Our father, who art in heaven..." How it is possible, o son of God!
All nations call your father a Universal Sovereign
and you - staring at this blue palace -
are dying without a roof in front of a closed door?
"Our father, who art..." you say... and whose brother are you?
Those who with their dead souls in luxury anointed
with goblets full of wine in their hands
with loud cheers are drowning your dying moans?
"Our father, who art! ..." Lord God! do you hear this child
that speaks quietly with mouth pale with misery?
He deeply believes that you are a father to him,
and with this faith on his frozen lips, dies he!

*

The child started to pray... silvery fog
with a breath of his mouth has slightly dispelled,
at first hotter and blue-white,
later - cold and strangely transparent.
Finally, it disappeared... half open lips
stopped whispering prayers and complaints...
With dark silent edifice as only witness,
the child has died without a roof.

Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)

You’re nothing but a rose
I stepped on the thorn
and came out
to be your nightingale.
It’s all yours all in all
just give me a call!

Nothing can hurt me more
then when your shadow
isn’t in the shadow of mine.
Without you my rainbow
has no colour.
But if you come back you will  
find the earth in bloom
You will see the sun is in a dew
Come back, like you do
smelling of rose.
Just give me a call.

I heard you say
the sun is out basking
down on the blue sea.
I wonder what more
I am missing
with my limited vision!
But when you ring
the bell on my door
I can see the sunrise
in the little peephole.
Come now, just give me a call.

Hurt people hurt people
It's all that we seem to do.
Sometimes I wonder
Will we ever learn people?
Because there are way too many
Hurt people.

As strong as love is
We say we love people.
Things change and get
rough and tough
Then we abandon people.
Instead of working it out
to become better people.
We get lost in our
Emotions and thoughts
And become bitter people.

We seek out other people
To feel loved again
Hoping for a redo
Something like a sequel
only to realize
When it's over that we've
Become more scared
And tainted people.
And the cycle continues.
Until we can no longer
Trust people

I have no idea why
Hurt people hurt people
The very act is oh so feeble
To love each other equal?
I doubt we ever will
As long as hurt people
hurt people.

Even religious people
can hurt people
they find God's love
and think they can judge people
Like there isn't any evil
Going on inside that cathedral
Like they've forgotten what it's like
To be amongst the struggling people
Yeah, prayer changes and helps but
We are all the same people
sane people
Living in an insane world
Filled with unanswered questions.
Which is probably why
We can't be peaceful.

I will never know why
Hurt people hurt people
The very act is oh so feeble
To love each other equal?
I doubt we ever will
As long as hurt people
hurt people

So as I sit at home alone
And peer out of my peephole
I wonder what has caused
All this evil
That makes these hurt people
hurt people.

Small talk is much more of the former than the latter,
small, definitely,
but I've rarely, ever, talked.

My favourite?
"How Are You?"
As if the true gauge of such a complex question
can be summed up in a random stop and chat.

My response?
"not bad",
or something similar no doubt,
but sometimes,
I feel like being honest...

honestly...

i feel like boo radley in a town full of atticus,
feel like i deserve no more than the back of the bus,
feel like every single word that i say,
is another cliche, just another cliche,

feel completely silent, scream with no effect,
hope to find a true meaning, it still hasn't happened yet,
feel divided, from this joke we partake in,
where every single victory, is simply, a fake win,

why is nostalgia the only feeling that's appealing?
back when inadequacies weren't worth concealing,
that's all i cherish, that's all i want now,
and instead i'm standing here, and you're wondering how...
am i?

“...How Are You?!”

when fate's gentle whisper turns into a scream,
and crashing down come all of your dreams,
a roaring tide from what once was a stream,
tell me, is everything as lost as it seems?

"when one door closes, another one opens!",
that's nonsense,
i'm staring at a one-sided peephole, hoping,  
that the people that said they would help,
and forgot,
truly feel how the hell i've felt.

...that's how i am.

where is my country going…
I remember thinking it was silly to say the pledge
standing behind my desk
hand over heart
mindlessly repeating phrases that had no real meaning
to an eight year old sensibility.
It is easy to recall the small logging town
with its white population
shaking angry fists at the owl people
bearded and free in their environmental fervor
chained to trees
where we liked to fish.
Those blessed with political mindedness
have sold their moral and ethical compasses
to the corporate welfare and personhood gang
giving the populace the shaft
without **** or sweet kisses.
I watch my country fall apart….helpless –
Long lines surround the peephole
and the citizens of America clamor
near riotous
to see what the celebrity flavor of the day
is wearing, doing, being,
and having
subjugating themselves to emotional slavery
for the sake of a starlit.
Gone are the communities
in which a child is spoken kindly too
by a stranger diligently working his or her
plot of ground;
today he is accused or premeditating *******
for being personable.
Feelings of discontent rise like bile
burning my throat, and giving the back of my mouth
hot spit…a precursor to *****
as I watch another liar
step up to the pulpit of power
and spout propaganda
designed to manipulate my personality
into a more malleable pawn
in this nation of despair.

I looked through a peephole
and I saw a pair's son.
They saw me roar.