Sound is echo’s silent alarm. I close my mouth underwater and yours opens in Ohio. God overthinks a deer. I want my children to be alive all the time.
My good son Noah M Smock does his own thing and did three shirt designs incorporating lines from my poems...gods, brothers, bones, etc... ck out his TEEPUBLIC account if interested. If you send a purchase receipt to me at bartonsmock@yahoo.com, I'll send you a book of mine. Also, I set up a LINKTREE account if interested. Lastly, my most recent book is blood to bathe us in its blue past, May 2022 at 217 pages. Privately self-published and is pay what you want. can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com) or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2 or CashApp: $BartonSmock
We hear from grief that loss feels left out. Why write. Because it's hard to surprise god and even harder to avoid. Maybe. Proximity keeps eating the distance that keeps my mouth open. I am grateful. For those who believe the poor exist outside of being made. For those who believe that one can get sick and not know it and so replace their knowing with another's. For writing and for not writing. For my children who leave and come back and stay and drift off. For my brothers who are each disappearing into the darkroom to fully develop our vanishings. For my father who sends me photos of things that happened and teaches me to change how I remember. For my mother who goes from place to place understanding the needs of people who have no person. For Gen who leaves nothing and no one out and carries the near and the far to the same secret place where passwords have been put to sleep. I have some pictures. You've probably seen them. Pretend they're there.
Pain is the movie our pain can’t make. We put water in a cup where it passes out. I wanted to be when young a stickman. Walk on your brother. He swallowed a nail.
The poem about nothing. The poem about nothing lost. It’s been a long invisible day. You keep my dream god a secret. You have a mom. Our sisters take turns took turns dying.
All dark corners, crooked cartoons, and unmoved toys, Kyle Edward Ball's Skinamarink had me believing that I was watching something I shouldn't be. Eavesdropper, accomplice, whatever. To some vague but definitive evil. Not so much wavelength as undertow. Not so much point of view as earworm witness. Injury sleeps in the afterlife, it seems, and the stitches have come off. More than likely, the movie is still there, and you've gone by in a blur.
a puppet box prepared for some crucifixion, a dress the exact size of most hands, death and sleep put to touch, a blank glimpse
In the shower, I hold a plastic sword. The ways I am here are few. A neighbor kid says that god hates twins and it’s going to stick. We are years away from our daughter. After church a woman hops softly out of her shoes and walks into the high corn. To her, her shoes are missing. Silence has an extra stomach. The bird can scream if you hear it.
A hand left alive on the floor of a snow-moaned barn. The quiet ice that keeps the still death of a dark orange dog. A boy so recklessly loved that he loses an eye burying spoon’s double. Not the eye that is rain’s last egg. Not the toy car with the baby inside.
We buy mirrors instead of art. The wasps scrape and gather here then drag themselves to a higher emptiness when I hold the baby. Men lose first a button second a broom then love a dog. Everyone outside is sick. A paper cut sets fire to a ghost.
kingsoftrain 