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Carsyn Smith Dec 2014
I am no toymaker, I know this,
yet one day I found a small toy car
left on my doorstep with a simple note:
"Try and fix me."
I'm no toymaker, but I tried anyway.
I saw there was a wheel broken,
a door off its hinges, and an engine
that needed replacing. I am no toymaker,
but I tried my best to find these parts,
but I stopped before I switched them out
because I realized I was changing it.
I am no toymaker, but I know you shouldn't
change people; that only they can change themsleves,
and that's what I feared.
How am I to fix something, if it won't change?
I am no toymaker, so maybe I'm missing something,
but if I can not change out this broken wheel,
place new hinges on that door, or a new
engine to make it pur, how can I fix it?
I am no toymaker, I know this,
but I still battled rivers and mountains alone,
talked with Atlas to give up the Earth,
but Atlas wouldn't listen and I told myself
it was because I was trying to change him
like a little toy car I once tried to fix.
I am no toymaker, but don't say I didn't try.
nivek Feb 2015
toymaker
where
is
your
responsibility
to
innocence
gone
and
what
of
your
contribution
to
peace
Jasmine dryer Nov 2018
yes i'm sorry
all I wanted was to fix you
to fix you
but now your more broken then before
I just I wanted was for you to last longer
and be a little stronger
but I failed
I failed
but I will fail you no more
for your porcelain skin is to cracked
and your dress isn't even intact
and when I step back
and place you back on the shelf
I think of all that we've dealt with
and this toymaker
sad as i may be
have put you  away
i'm sorry
my black haired porcelain beauty
KJ Nov 2010
To step foot through the Realms of Reality,
and turn from the land of make-believe,
is to give yourself over to the wasteland of happily-never-after.

You'll find along the path of the yellow brick ruins,
A sleeping beauty, cast to the side not in sleep, but in death.
A witch shoves Mother Goose in an Iron Clad stove,
along with Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread man.
The Mad Hatter sips from his blood filled teacup,
and a mermaid's tail hangs upon the fisherman's hook.

Somewhere in the distance, a pixie's light goes out for good,
and another flying chimp is stripped of its feathered wings.
Rapunzal's golden hair lies in ashes on the grave,
along with the remnants of a tattered flying carpet.
The lost boys wander aimlessly, trying to remember how to fly,
and slice their toes on the remaining shards of a magic mirror.

The scream of a toymaker echoes through the air
As he watches his wooden boy scorch in the flames before his eyes.
The sky grows darker as the second star to the right goes out,
and a dragon lies dying because Jackie Paper was ripped to shreds.
A genie slams the walls of his prison, suffocating inside his magic lamp,
and a child, no bigger then your thumb, is carried off by a jet black raven.

A half dead Briar Rabbit, steps over the carcass of a cow from the moon
and seven shaken dwarves waste away, mourning over their stone cold maiden.
A flying elephant is shot down dead, and drops from the blood red sky
And a thin lost sheep is snatched in the jaws of the big bad wolf.
A small, shaken child stumbles out of the mist and shadow,
wondering what became of his beloved Land of Make Believe..
You were watercolor
A masterpiece soft and awe-inspired
Quite thrilling and beautiful as a mid November

I keep a ghost of you
Sealed inside of an old mason jar
At night I take you from your tucked away hiding spot
The best lullaby that I never got-
Was you in the late nights of December
When our breathes turned to frost

The night was a barrier between them and us
Until you became the toymaker and I your knickknack
But the final product couldn't live up to the blueprints
So you crumpled the papers
And threw out your knickknack so you could begin again from scratch

So I keep my manson jar-
A memory-
Perhaps a token of time
Before the canine complex I have come to know so very well
Lawrence Hall Dec 2018
You Can Tell It’s Mattel It’s Swell" (tm) 1

          -A toymaker’s slogan applied to (That Rifle) in the 1960s

(That Rifle) often fires when it should not
Its chosen function is usually to jam
But, da®n, it’s black and **** and hot -
Blows off testosterone when it goes Bam-Bam

And when it discharges, so does its owner
A little bullet from a little spout                              
With his stud piece, no longer a loner -
True love from each basement dweller and lout

Maybe it makes guys feel all hunky-hunk -
Well, they are welcome to that piece of junk

1 Mattel has never had any connection with the manufacture of weapons
Jasmine dryer Jan 2019
dearie dearie
please inquiry
what happened to the porcelain doll

dearie dearie
send your best sincerely
for his glass skins been broken since the fall

dearie dearie
please remain cheery
for your toymaker skills are exceeding

but

dearie dearie
please remain weary
for his glass skin
leaks poison

dearie dearie
run as fast as you can
for porcelain doll
is a broken man
Jasmine dryer Jan 2019
Where should I begin
Our love was a twisted story
Of a doll
And a toymaker
Your painted tears divine
Oh how you always cried
And fall to ground and wine
Till there was cracks in your skin
But at least you were mine
But our love ran out of time
As much I tried
Oh where do I begin
Barton D Smock Jun 2018
thru June 11th, Lulu is offering 10% off all print books AND free mail shipping (or 50% off ground) with coupon code of BOOKSHIP18

poetry collections, mine, self-published, are here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

~



NOTES FROM LIFE UNDER BELL

(i)

on video my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s maybe four. I don’t know where to begin. this pond behind her, perhaps? that in my memory is the size of a fire pit. or maybe, here, in the darkening sameness of those sentences strung together by cows. or years from now, even, with the word no and her sister’s lookalike being assaulted by an only child in a library of fragile non-fiction. my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s five. a careful six. sound’s fossil. no city half-imagined. no insect obsessed with privacy. time matters to the frog we catch.

~

(ii)

there are days he is the son of muscle memory and funny bone. days his hands are gloves from a small god. poor god, he says, and grows. days he can carry a circle to any clock in the town of hours. days his past can be heard by his siblings- you’re beautiful the way you are. days his blood pushes a bread crumb through his thigh. days his scar is a raft for ear number three. nights his brain / the separation of church and church.

~

(iii)

violence is a dreamer. a boy on a stopped bus is dared to eat a worm. it feels authentic. alas, there is no worm. the devil knows to stay pregnant. word spreads about the girl without a tongue. cricket lover. and then, bulimic, when she won’t sneeze.

~

(iv)

the mother of your hand is smashing spiders with her wrist. we have a high-chair for every creature that eats its own hair. the twins in the attic have switched diapers. skeptics. voices heard by the ghost of my stomach.

~

(v)

it is snowing the first time my daughter drives alone. Ohio is cruel. stillbirth, old four-eyes. you want them to like you. the insects you save.

~

(vi)

a lawnmower starts then dies then is pushed by a noisemaker past fog’s dark church. an unprepared prophet drinks the milk meant for baby eyesore. my sister loses most of her hair putting together a puzzle of her mouth. a bomb is dropped on a bomb.

~

(vii)

the man his shadow and the woman her dream.

their child
its track
of time

~

(viii)

onstage a dog barks at an empty stroller. the mosh pit is weak. last count had three pregnant, three resembling the man who unplugged my father, and two praying for the inner life of a hole. onstage a boy is holding up a kite for another boy to punch. dog’s been tased.

~

(ix)

we put a museum on the moon. I had all my dreams at once. a mouse was wrapped in a washcloth then crushed with the songbook of baby hairless. fire treats grass like fire.

~

(x)

outside the bathroom’s designer absence, our melancholy impressed by symbolism, we form

a line

~

(xi)

tree: the unbathed statue of your screaming

shade: the folder of my clothes

~

(xii)

praying he’ll see again them cows of lake suicide, the handcuffed frog shepherd

prays he’ll see again them cows of lake suicide

~

(xiii)

a body to dry my blood. some god

seeing me
as a person…

how quickly birth gets old.

~

(xiv)

lonelier than creation, I have nothing on trauma. genetically speaking, I don’t think anybody expected us to spend so much time on one idea. this open umbrella. ghost at the keyboard.

~

(xv)

and in the spacecraft where a mother diapers the doll that makes her fat there plays the voice of god asking for a film crew none will miss

~

(xvi)

we wore clothes as an apology for being nearby. a door was a door. a ghost was a ghost and a door. the house was possible. its rooms were not. baby was a body spat from the mouth of any creature dreaming of a bathtub. I got this lifejacket from a scarecrow. said the redheaded tooth fairy.

~

(xvii)

his baby is wailing in its crib for its mother and he mans you up for a cigarette and blows on the baby’s face and somewhere you yourself have stopped crying as you are pulled from a pile of leaves by two people made of smoke

~

(xviii)

for a spine, doll prays to fork.

all kinds
of shapes
miscarry.

~

(xix)

one day my son is dying, the next he is not, and the next he is. day four: prayer is dismissive, but welcome. whose past is how we left it? body is delivered twice. beginning and end. nostalgia and wardrobe. middle eats everything. it snowed and I thought my blood was melting. could be the way you reason that happens for a reason. I was a kid when mouse was a kid. there’s no hope and I hope.



my son’s weight is a cricket on a piano key. it’s more than I can handle that god gave us god.



aside: we don’t come out faking our death, but are born because birth can’t sleep



aside:

I study lullaby
and lullaby
bruise



it takes four juveniles to recruit his thumb. his fist has been called: hitchhiker practicing yoga in a junkyard. I cannot visit the instant ruin that forgiveness creates.



sickness in the young is god’s way of preventing nostalgia from becoming the god I remember



I was beautiful but now I’m ugly. (now) being the most recognizable symbol of the present. this is the silence I speak of. my son says (more ball) and you hear (moon bone). he is very sick. his moon has bones.



the disappearance surrounding said event. a horse belly-up in water’s blood. see telescope. also, cane of the blind ghost. magician, maybe, on a rabbitless moon- oh cure.

oh silence afraid to start a sentence.



in the photograph a fist is cut from, a kneeling family of five is putting to bed

the unremembered
present.



traced, perhaps, for a terrible circle-

today was mostly your hand.





WE BROUGHT HOME THE WRONG DYING BABY



I ain’t been talked to in so long my wife’s kid thinks I have amnesia. ain’t been touched since Ohio’s ramshackle symbolism swallowed up some ***** donor’s shadow. I went yesterday to a funeral for a woman’s ear. told people what I was wearing was a bedsheet belonged to the man in the moon. told myself I had this microscope could see a ghost and that I’ve only ever lost an empty house. I don’t know how old I am but I know what year I want it to be. before dying I saw it flash how I should have died. low creature. tugboat.

~~~

father an optometrist inspecting a replica of a totem pole and mother an eel collapsing at the thought of a play performed in a stone.

and there, at the bottom of grief, a cup of dirt with nothing to bury.

~~~

mother is chewing gum like something fell asleep in my mouth. I say dog for both dog and puppy. pray for things I know will happen. a rooster through a windshield. a dried-up toad in a deep footprint.

~~~

mother and father give their word that all narrators are orphans. that blood is a short leash. sometimes, a fence. be, they say, the symbol your god remembers you by. tell your brother to act like a chicken. your stickmen to share a toothache.

~~~

I saw a cigarette with its mouth open. today was hard. hate is amazing.

god will die with his ear on my stomach.

~~~

the darkness has many stomachs and we’ve no one to tell my son he’s lonely.

seller of the disappearing stone, the mouth names everything and is born after eating a blindfold.

~~~

for desperation, boy puts a bird in a hand puppet. here a finger and there a worm, sadness has no family. oh fetus my moth of many colors. oh mosquito that bit an angel. time with my son

in scenario’s territory.

~~~

atavism
(god is someone’s calendar



valley
(a girl with a marble who answers to overdose



pulpit
(rooster ghosted by elevator



subculture
(in my years with the poor, I wrote nothing down



alpenglow
(the scalp will baby its grief

~~~

on muscle detail, the clapping boy from the cult of thunder brings a wheelchair to the last rocking horse known to model swimwear for the few dolls that remain married to the same mask. the boy is weak but maybe he puts two words together. like ghost

and exodus. for the second coming of the handcuffed animal.

~~~

the boy picking flowers for my shadow loves no one. everything I touch remembers being my hand. the world has ended, or started early. god’s heartbeat. sound’s watermark.

~~~

because her son can see the future, she is not yet born. god matters to the discovered.

~~~

overtook no cigarette. surprised no sleep. keyed the car

of a minor
toymaker.

radar is getting possessive.

~~~

for the gone and for the nearly, brother has the same stick.

I call belly
what he calls
eye
what answers
to limb

~~~

to speak
it needs gum
from the invisible
purse.

comes with everything. cries like me.

~~~

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream

~~~

there’s a comb
in my narrative, a goldfish

coming to
in a beheaded
angel
Barton D Smock Aug 2017
overtook no cigarette. surprised no sleep. keyed the car

of a minor
toymaker.

radar is getting possessive.
I like the way our words align
Make sense of a natural law
We lose ourselves in the hotline
And each comes back with a new flaw

Any time you get lost in the cold inside
You could put new shivers on the blank
For each new arrow in your hyde
Let out a bit more of your flank

A patch on the costume of dawn
A medal on the chest of sin
Some toymaker and a new pawn
We're going all out in a spin
You misheard me.

— The End —