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25% off all print books on LULU with coupon code of AUG2016 /

/ my Lulu self-publication, FOUR, is a gathering, in full, of these works:

earth is part earth and there’s a hole in the sound I made you from
MOON tattoo
infant*cinema
shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [and other poems]

it’s available here:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/four/paperback/product-22756947.html

some poems, from:

[malaise]

how far we are
from soup
when mother
burns her tongue
trying
to convince
god
they had

the mime and the mute
the same
childhood.

we love her so much
we use our brains
as often
as baby
spoons.

first base is a landmine.

there’s nothing to say
we weren’t
here.

~

[iota]

if the poor could keep to themselves, they’d have superheroes. hey man, hey beast, them aliens already know what it means to be human. abduction is the fingerprint of loneliness.

–

what I teach my blood is grow up. I put everything I had into ruin. watch as my mother becomes your mother trying to be two people god can use to carry tug-of-war from a fossil.

–

my dream house is language. you say it to my face how there are beheadings that have made a wish. before my son was a giant, he’d somersault. cigarette in mouth he would.

~

[mob vision]

soon
is a baby
studied
by the scholars
of now
who
in their prime
predicted
that jesus
would be
in the scarecrow’s
future
the darkest
bird

~

[footfall]

a newborn wants to be a hand.

there’s the dream I have of heaven
and the dream
god lets me
bring.

my boy
has a crow
for a backpack.

~

[the knife]

it is for my ears that god gave me a stomach full of cotton. my mother’s fingers are made of bread. her blood she says is dieting for the blank book of beauty sleep. I have an inside animal unable to move on from the rained out magic show. its only joy is to bring me shoelaces. after building houses, my father shakes himself barefoot in the railroad car of a train his angel plans to swallow. I have nothing for my throat.