for leather accrues
The miracle of the streets
The scents & smogs &
pollens of existence

Shiny blackness
so totally naked she was
Totally un-hung-up

We looked around
lights now on
Top see our fellow travellers
~~~

I am troubled
Immeasurably
By your eyes

I am struck
By the feather
of your soft
Reply

The sound of glass
Speaks quick
Disdain

And conceals
What your eyes fight
To explain
~~~

She looked so sad in sleep
Like a friendly hand
just out of reach
A candle stranded on
a beach
While the sun sinks low
an H-bomb in reverse
~~~

Everything human
is leaving
her face

Soon she will disappear
into the calm
vegetable
morass

Stay!

My Wild Love!
~~~

I get my best ideas when the
telephone rings & rings. It’s no fun
To feel like a fool-when your
baby’s gone. A new ax to my head:
Possession. I create my own sword
of Damascus. I’ve done nothing w/time.
A little tot prancing the boards playing
w/Revolution. When out there the
World awaits & abounds w/heavy gangs
of murderers & real madmen. Hanging
from windows as if to say: I’m bold-
do you love me? Just for tonight.
A One Night Stand. A dog howls & whines
at the glass sliding door (why can’t I
be in there?) A cat yowls. A car engine
revs & races against the grain- dry
rasping carbon protest. I put the book
down- & begin my own book.
Love for the fat girl.
When will SHE get here?
~~~

In the gloom
In the shady living room
where we lived & died
& laughed & cried
& the pride of our relationship
took hold that summer
What a trip
To hold your hand
& tell the cops
you’re not 16
no runaway
The wino left a little in
the old blue desert
bottle
Cattle skulls
the cliche of rats
who skim the trees
in search of fat
Hip children invade the grounds
& sleep in the wet grass
’til the dogs rush out
I’m going South!

The piper coming from far away is you
With a whitewash brush for a sporran
Wobbling round you, a kitchen chair
Upside down on your shoulder, your right arm
Pretending to tuck the bag beneath your elbow,
Your pop-eyes and big cheeks nearly bursting
With laughter, but keeping the drone going on
Interminably, between catches of breath.



The whitewash brush. An old blanched skirted thing
On the back of the byre door, biding its time
Until spring airs spelled lime in a work-bucket
And a potstick to mix it in with water.
Those smells brought tears to the eyes, we inhaled
A kind of greeny burning and thought of brimstone.
But the slop of the actual job
Of brushing walls, the watery grey
Being lashed on in broad swatches, then drying out
Whiter and whiter, all that worked like magic.
Where had we come from, what was this kingdom
We knew we'd been restored to? Our shadows
Moved on the wall and a tar border glittered
The full length of the house, a black divide
Like a freshly opened, pungent, reeking trench.



**** at the gable, the dead will congregate.
But separately. The women after dark,
Hunkering there a moment before bedtime,
The only time the soul was let alone,
The only time that face and body calmed
In the eye of heaven.

Buttermilk and *****,
The pantry, the housed beasts, the listening bedroom.
We were all together there in a foretime,
In a knowledge that might not translate beyond
Those wind-heaved midnights we still cannot be sure
Happened or not. It smelled of hill-fort clay
And cattle dung. When the thorn tree was cut down
You broke your arm. I shared the dread
When a strange bird perched for days on the byre roof.



That scene, with Macbeth helpless and desperate
In his nightmare--when he meets the hags agains
And sees the apparitions in the ***--
I felt at home with that one all right. Hearth,
Steam and ululation, the smoky hair
Curtaining a cheek. 'Don't go near bad boys
In that college that you're bound for. Do you hear me?
Do you hear me speaking to you? Don't forget!'
And then the postick quickening the gruel,
The steam crown swirled, everything intimate
And fear-swathed brightening for a moment,
Then going dull and fatal and away.



Grey matter like gruel flecked with blood
In spatters on the whitewash. A clean spot
Where his head had been, other stains subsumed
In the parched wall he leant his back against
That morning like any other morning,
Part-time reservist, toting his lunch-box.
A car came slow down Castle Street, made the halt,
Crossed the Diamond, slowed again and stopped
Level with him, although it was not his lift.
And then he saw an ordinary face
For what it was and a gun in his own face.
His right leg was hooked back, his sole and heel
Against the wall, his right knee propped up steady,
So he never moved, just pushed with all his might
Against himself, then fell past the tarred strip,
Feeding the gutter with his copious blood.

*

My dear brother, you have good stamina.
You stay on where it happens. Your big tractor
Pulls up at the Diamond, you wave at people,
You shout and laugh about the revs, you keep
old roads open by driving on the new ones.
You called the piper's sporrans whitewash brushes
And then dressed up and marched us through the kitchen,
But you cannot make the dead walk or right wrong.
I see you at the end of your tether sometimes,
In the milking parlour, holding yourself up
Between two cows until your turn goes past,
Then coming to in the smell of dung again
And wondering, is this all? As it was
In the beginning, is now and shall be?
Then rubbing your eyes and seeing our old brush
Up on the byre door, and keeping going.

Without apologies she glides... she roamed the darkest of nights
Without hesitation, she speaks whats on her mind, down to the depths of her soul
They know, you know... the eternal power she possess

She speaks words that touched, and it lasted for years
She made love out of passion, out of trust because she had to
See, when she loves, she release chemicals that revs hearts and tortured souls

She's a woman... and she's a Scorpio
She stings, she pierce the souls of everything that lived
Imagine a being, so wild and free...who endures, have been exposed but lived

Who turned herself inside out, break down her own defenses to rebuild herself
purely. She lived a thousand years... buried alive yet raised from the ashes
How immortal, yet supreme... that's the Scorpio legacy that reigns within me

**** me today, shattered me with words, I've learned
devour me with love and take me to a dream, a woman of passion is what
lays within me.

S.B

There's nothing like the Feel
Of two wheels and the power
Between your Legs, The Pounding*
Of two  Cylinders, as the engine Revs.
Wheeling through snaking roads
Surrounded by Sunlight and trees
The intense smell of fallen leaves
On a cool nights ride. Feeling free
Blasting down a two lane road.
Rolling into a small town,you
Hear the Bikes Rumble, as you
Shift down, and throttle off the gas
The roar of your bikes sound, as
It bounces off the passing buildings.
You're out of town past the Last street light
As the Stars unfold in the stark black night
The feel of the wind's a sweet taste of freedom
Content for the silence and the Bike motors hum.
As an old Biker the ride is Past, but the feel of
The wind Flowing past my face, and the pound
*Of the Motors sound, still be mine, Till my Day is Done

The revs of car engines
The footsteps of pedestrians
The laughter of children
The bark of guard dogs
The chirps of small birds

Even from in my bedroom I can hear the world I am familiar to
The world I call **home

Crystal chandeliers
shelter an aviary restaurant
just beyond our patio.

A pair of purple finches,
having heard the place well-chirped,
drop in for a hasty lunch
and flit away full and fortified.

A cardinal taxies in to sample
the black oil sunflower seeds,
then revs his engines for the flight
to a chilled Magnolia branch -
scattering  snow tufts as he lands.

Birds of every kin and feather
spread the word from branch to tree
that you just can't beat the tasty fare
at the little wire and glass café
beneath the crystal chandeliers.

*February, 2011

Behind the wheel you will soon sit
Eager, nervous and confused,
To operate the many controls
Will tax your multi-tasking.

Review the mirrors, shoulder check
Set the revs and find the bite,
Release the hand-brake and move away,
All without a bunny hop.

And once you've first done that basic skill
You'll do it again, and again, and again
Until without thought you can make it go.

Then we will get into second gear.

Drum and bass - the engine revs,
Tyres grind and squelch into the hardpan.
The cab rises with a squall of angry breath,
Lurches forward with a shudder.

Wrought iron gates heaved shut
Hinges squeal like a pig, they are a pig.
Slamming metal resonates
In secure embrace.

Ugly black rubber stains the concrete -
Mascara on a cheap *****.
If the rumbling cages are food for the beast
Then I am stood in its bowels.

The sour smell of rotting food
Mixed with washing powder and bleach pollute.
Greasy plastic, rancid fat
Makes me recoil and retch.

In a gap in the tar she grows.
Raising her head to the sun in oblivious defiance

Strawberry
blonde teen
Unexpected
staring touch
Passion -
eating us

Lust
always ruling
Words
frivolous, unheeded
Were
thrusting apart

Each desire
quenched
First hungry  
youthful season
Longing
exhausted

Moving
separate
Suddenly
acquaintanc­es
Years
in other arms

Meeting
in paddock
Smiles defeat
awkward seconds
Listening,
hearing

Third place,
revs screaming
Hit, hurtling
flying askew
Another
impact

Lifted away
torn
Crushed beauty
dead desire
Our last words
lost us

**+

The video stutters and she jitters to a halt in an intersection;
Traffic lights turn green, and the display revs up,
The Broken Egg food truck clips her heel and spark-like static fogs the screen.

His fingers, once lightly brushing over a braille textbook, freeze out.
The book lifts itself and scraps left to right under his palm.

Her professor speaks, and her lecture on Maxwell's equations propagate towards the classroom wall,
only the walls have fled with their chalkboards, and the standing waves have been left stranded
in the sudden infinite space. She has lost reflections; only direct, brute force remains.

The Truth: I wear petty images like a cloak.
The Truth: My gears tremor under the strain of life, stuck on
The Truth: I think

You'd think me stupid, a bust, and the truth is
I'd rather stand in traffic, frozen, mute and dumb,
than ask questions, intern, or learn the difficult stuff.

Secondary screens:
I'd rather write poems and post them online for strangers
than talk about chemical potentials or spherical wavefunctions.

I'd rather talk about chemical potentials and wavefunctions
than figure out what happened to my remote.

There's too much movement to feel good standing still.

**** Toy

Cold, clad, silicone, scraggly straggling down the street,
Twisting, bending, folding to every person they meet,
Shift its face, smile, frown, cry or moan,
Not much bothers the man of silicone,

Wrestle jovially with it till your hearts content,
Till your ego satisfied, strokes your pride,
Small stains on silicone thighs,
It bends back into shape,

Down a crowded street it walks alone,
A friend to be used, whatever for,
Rolling with whatever’s in store,
It weeps alone, as it revs into a roar,

It guesses what it’s like to truly be alive,
Maybe not have to give,
But it has no bone or blood,
Manufactured, reflected social facets of false, foul virtues,

Able to spot a mask,
Complete any given task,
Its whole body is a mask, a tool,
It lives, but it is not alive,

Down a crowded street it walks alone,
End of the day draws near, hollow to the core,
White, bruised bled stains,
It weeps alone and it revs into a roar,

Its lover covers it in kisses,
“This is what it’s like to be in love.”
Its words hollow and pseudo as sin,
The silicone man knows not of authentic feeling,

Only fingered lust that stains synthetic skin,
It has programmed thoughts, cares and worries,
Confident none belong to it,
“What is an ‘I’?” Wailing for identity,

Other then a doll for use,
The **** toy doesn’t see abuse,
Only utilitarian ways to be,
Excuse after excuse not to see,

In misery,
Under guise of pain and woe,
It tries to be alive, confused,
Under god towed sky,

He screeches to the heavens,
“I am I!”
The sky calls back with a clap of angry thunder,
Down an empty street it walks alone,

Alone, alone, it can not desire or condone,
Not much bothers the man of silicone,
Synthetic, eyes, mouth, fingers and ******* sore,
It weeps alone and it revs into a roar...

If ever the internal chatter threatens to cease
and the Clear White Light begins to encroach;
if the nail-biting, jaw-grinding, hackle-rising clamour
starts to give way to the humming tranquility of Truth,
where boundaries dissolve
and language lies in redundant, grateful sleep

Some internal reflex snaps me back into distraction,
relentlessly revs the engine
and spray-paints ugly slogans across
enlightenment's helpless face.

I used to resent this, and see it as a weakness.
Now I am profoundly grateful.
It's not the unfettered truth I couldn't bear,
it's the moral obligation to share it
when the dawn rises on another normal day
and you carry the burden alone
through careless crowds, wondering
what the hell
you're supposed to do with it.

I.

Tick, tock.
Snakes on the clock. Brains. Skin. Air. Hair. Coils of fabric, and teeth.
Oxygen reeks. Stales. Pales and contracts.
Breathe nonetheless
Pull on a dress. Pull on a vest.  Step outside. Feel the wind.
Oh, the days I’ve spent-
Instantly forget.
Put on my face
Roses in a vase
Feelings cased in the closet
Filling space

Seems sometimes we’re just filling space
What a waste

…

II.

Deep breath
Rose-scent fills her head

This could be it, she said
You’re too pretty for that, he said
Black and white embroidered with red
The cold air stung her lips as she read
This stone is where I’ll lay my head
The ground is made of bones
She’s alone

…

Steps on gravel, sounds awake the night
Jump into the abyss? She might

Memories of childhood fights
Initial dislikes
Periwinkle paint sets and tights
Once, learning to draw a rose
Once, hanging onto a hose, drenching strawberries
With brother in backyard
Family is a golden memory
At least there are pictures

…

Boy
The first one she kissed on the lips.
It was a dare. Fleeting but his eyes dripped sweetness. Twelve years young? She can’t remember. She ****** the same boy, drunk, four years later. He wasn’t the first, though.
And he still seems innocent

…

Hovering tensely
At the half-open door
She’ll never feel loved again.
She said.
Aches. Heavy ferocity ready to tumble. Dread.
Wake-up song every morning in her head.
The ground is made of bones.
She’s alone.
I’ve come this far. Revs up the car. Tears down her cheeks.
Runs over herself repeatedly in the street.

…

Why so gray?
His lips hold secrets
Autumn hay-stack drenched in dryness
Cool but bright, he’s a working man with a voice made of sunshine
Her eyes twinkled hello at his fingertips’ first brush-by
Smiled and walked away
Perhaps another day

…

III.

...

Rain soaks my skin.
I was walking, computer and books weighted on my shoulders,
Lightning crossing my path
Relax
I’m visualizing math

The air is cool. The wind rolled darkness in on its back.
The storm is roaring and strobing the sky
I’d like to derive your kind
and the rhythm of my mind
From the grains of sand left behind

,

And listen to the song of the sea

.

And float in the lingering breeze
As the storm dies down
The night’s dying down
I’m counting for now,, and "you"
Are a ghost of an idea, wispy but fresh but

Unformed
Much like the memory of yesterday’s storm

...

As I was drenched in the shower I could only think about taking pictures of my memories and tearing them into a storm
A catastrophe -
I'd laugh.
I'd call it art.

This storm is ******* beautiful.

Nerves pulled taute at an alarming rate,
Sitting on the edge of too many choices, a spate,
Leading to indecision and dizziness, changed
From horizontal, too vertical, too fast, deranged

To be awake at such an hour,
As the body tries to tap into power,
But hears this " take warning early morning"
Ahead, and a head still fuzzy while scorning,

Is there really a reason to get out of bed
at 5:19?

There are chores,
There are meals to prepare,
There is reading and meditation,
There is the routine of a morning constitutional!

There is full time employ...ment.

But all of these wait in line,
As care of a friend o'mine

Comes first,
We burst,

Into the morning,
Despite weather warnings,

And on good days too,
In the early morning,

We walk the same route,
And the same distance,

We have our pace, for instance,
My two legs keep up with her four,

She is never more excited then before
We go out the door, this is not a chore,

She pulls, she stops and drop to ***,
She is content and relaxed beside me,

She repeats as often as is necessary,
It all belongs, it is her territory,

In the early morning, I will, we will
Continue to walk, each and everyday,

We will arrive at three hundred and sixty five,
Morning jaunts
Again this year, it is a joy to move and be so alive,

With her, in the early morning,
We think not on, the mornings past,
               nor, that the mornings won't last
forever,
We only think on the present, the one we share,
In the moments found only in the early morning.

While the world around us revs its engine to a roar,
All we hear are birds,  paws with toenails on pavement or
Raindrops falling and wind calling us to stay longer, and more

Where there are no cares to wear on us,
We have each other, and it is early morning.

once upon a time,
a doctor told her that her heart was broken.
a war drum with a worn-out head,
just waiting to bust.
now her nightmares of heart-attacks haunt her at all hours;
she hates knowing that she's destined to beat herself to death.
she's never felt this worthless.
lately,
she's been wondering what drownding feels like,
she never thought it a topic to ponder,
but the water makes her feel so free.
she'd so much rather rest beneath the waves
than sit and wait for her engine to fail.
maybe she should fly more often,
tossing back tiny bottle after tiny bottle
of six dollar whiskey,
fingers crossed that they'll all fall down into the sea.
she'll sink if she tries hard enough.
a heart condition translates directly into
"incapable of loving, or ever being loved"
in her eyes,
so why ******* try.
now she burns bridges like roman candles
and shells out all her cash on any day that rent isn't due;
no point in holding on to what you can't take with you.
she stains her flesh instead.
words she only wishes you'd have whispered in her ears instead of stuffing them into envelopes,
her favorite flower,
and a hawk feather,
for whatever luck she can get.
sometimes,
during her morning cigarette,
she laces up her sneakers and bolts,
as fast as she can in any direction,
just to see if her heart can take the heat of her heavy feet skimming over the street.
the engine in her chest revs loudly,
like the car of a teenage boy.
they're all little boys-
she's a woman.
she's pretty positive that everyone cries at night-
even the dogs and the crickets and the birds.
we've all got nightmares,
hers just happen to seep out and taint the daylight.
what she needs,
is to befriend the monster under her bed.
he can feed on her inner demons and stitch up her heart with his glaring smile,
and hazle eyes.
in turn,
she'll share her bed
and now and then,
he can rest his head on her chest and translate the siren songs of her unsteady pulse.
she needs a ******* friend.
one who always cares instead of a good few who only ocasionally pretend to.
someone who's more than willing to walk a few blocks to dollar beer night,
and braid her hair for her while she yaks in the trash out back.
yeah, something like that.
it's her heart,
not yours.
or yours or yours or yours.
but her's,
and it hurts.
it races all night like nascar rednecks who pointlessly drive in circles for hours.
don't tell her how to fix it,
or not to worry,
or that everything is going to be fine.
it's not.
it's her heart,
and it hurts.

Another dab of red on her lip
A final spray of fragrance
Baubles cuffing her dainty wrists
And a spring in her step

She steps out and steps into the car
Their eyes meet, a sparkle across one of her 32
He nods with a giggle, "Finally, the day has arrived..."
Zestful fingers turn the key, the engine revs up

And like always, she completes his sentence
With a bright one across her face
"Yes, the day we set each other free."
And together they burst

While little Macy and Phillip
Make promises, young in love
From afar, below the cliff,
They see light shine so bright, like fire burst

And perhaps, they were only firecrackers
Thinks Phillip, his innocent mind
Unable to tell a blast from a burst
But Macy knows, for she caused the brakes to fail

Im not one for romance but

Her hair, all of the beauty leftover from a palette after a masterpiece is created, who said brown was the colour of ****?
Her eyes, the green of mother nature that gives my heart a buzz to infinity and beyond.
Her nose, the reason I need to smell good.
Her lips, the cushions that keep me up at night.
Her smile, a capital U, the bliss that eclipses my own and blacks out my thoughts whilst it revs my heartbeat.
Her voice, it can babble on like early civilisations but im happy I met-her, for I have so much love to give.
Her words, have magnitude to dig holes which would make the sea sunk and send waters to hell to drown my demons, my own revelation.
Her jokes, they're pretty bad actually however
Her laugh, a record stuck on repeat of all the things I want to hear, the perfect rhythm that sets my soul ablaze and makes me laugh back senselessly.
Her hugs, a second home that has everything right with the world inside.
Her love, the warmth that sinks its way into every crevice of my heart, with the heat to break bedrock and boil Satan to the heavens, a heatwave of affection that I could surf like a beach ***. I love her, I love

You.
Until time is forgotten or matter and anti-matter stop fighting.

I will think about you.
The reason I'm still writing...a silly love poem.

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

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.

Birds sing sweetly
as darkness descends.
A dog barks in the distance,
talking to a friend.
A car engine revs loudly,
as folks are off to a  Summer party.
And then...
And then...
The sounds of a Summer evening grow still.
The moon comes out to glow.
Shining down on the silence.
Of night below.
I sit in the moonlight.
And enjoy the silence.
At rest in my soul.

A lone thought in the wind
Spark blinking in mind
a Tesla snap across the great synaptic perhaps,
A momentary lapse in the carefully constructed meditative

emptiness.


The birdsong stops as the engine revs
And the spinning starts
Mental handbrake turns in the snow of scattered crystallized drops of frozen liquid memory,
My face is distorted in the turning.

I.

I am a ragdoll with loose stitching.
I am a cat with no whiskers.
I am adrift without course,
and my tongue is lost at sea.

It vows to ****.

****.



Say exactly what you mean.

Say you liked me more in retrograde.
Say I'm unbalanced.
Say that last laugh carried a bit too far.
Say I'm finished.
Say I've been had.

Say the voyage has ended.

Say it.


Say it.
**** it.

And I'll scream over and over,
and over again,
until every last drop of the sea
knows the answer-

"What did I do,
what did I do?"

II.

This mask-
I do not want it.
I need everyone to know
I do not want it.

But, oh-
how it craves me.

This face is haunting,
stealing light, fire,
and the ability to stand,
and the means to say I will,
I will not.

What we all desperately desire-
is it what keeps us at arms length,
away from the center?
The whole?
The home?

How does a heart admit itself
to strangers?
When is a heart permitted
to stop?

III.

Does the pain I carry make me a monster?
Can one grow from a curse?

Many times I've scanned my past for deserving signs and scars.
A curse traps victims under it wheels,
and revs silently.
And there is so much of it.

It manifests stupidly,
yet wholly and confounding.
It sticks.

When you say it's no one's fault,
it must be my fault.

Is it a blight others fear catching?
I don't want to share this with anyone,
but how else will the world know
it's (not) my fault?

I want to pull it all out of me,
those dark, old splinters.
I do not know how.

IV.

There is a world outside of it,
glowing with morning dew and a softer sun.
And all is gentle, waiting, listening.