Skip to content
September 1, 2025 / barton smock

listening to my son breathe

I'm not
close
to anyone
August 31, 2025 / barton smock

a toy raccoon finds a hole in the extra

Without Jesus I don’t think God recovers the password of every angel. I’m poor and I yell at people. Melancholy nonsense. It’s the blue comes inside the blue. A dove is bitten by a moth. A baby cries for a baby out. Language won’t tell you what to say. My cigarette has two dreams 

plastic
and arthritis)

I eat until food touches food.
A real gun

should do more.
August 28, 2025 / barton smock

end heaven

Your mother sleeps to mourn the secret ghost of your death

Horse
has its blurry
life
August 27, 2025 / barton smock

god’s dream, too small

The killing, the movies, the drinking. A spotlight stolen by a man in a deer costume. My son saying he wants to live at home until his brother dies. God’s dream, too small.
August 19, 2025 / barton smock

hey buy my books from me who I am




/

rocks have the softest shadows, 237 pages
poems, Dec 2020
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages
poems, Sept 2021
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages
poems new and selected, May 2022
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

apartures, 125 pages
poems, January 2023
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

deer as permission to die in ohio, 43 poems
chapbook, April 2023
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

naked in dog years, 55 pages
April 2024
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo: @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp: $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

57
Letters to Ethan Hawke, or I wanted to stop saying god
letters 1-57
August 2024
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

The Crow's Book of Wrists, 193 pages
August 2024
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com

angel tantrum, 171 pages
April 2025
can be purchased via paypal (bartsmock@gmail.com)
or Venmo @Barton-Smock-2
or CashApp $BartonSmock
or Zelle bartonsmock@yahoo.com
August 16, 2025 / barton smock

empties

Eden created time so Eve could end god’s suffering. I only worry about my son’s death because I can’t leave his dying to others. That’s the alcohol being silent. Watching is just seeing a cyclops cry. Fuck that kid, is what you’re saying. Skin is the real winner. The bone has a bone’s name. 
August 15, 2025 / barton smock

now we’re here thing

There is no god left for god to impress. At night I grow in my arm an arm for my son. My dream lasts for three days. An animal forgetting to drink. A perfect stick crying itself white in a hell of dog heads. Sex doesn’t know what this poem is about. Eating is a shape death knows to eat around. Heaven only looks abandoned. Imagine a shooting range. Not that one. 
August 13, 2025 / barton smock

devastation thing

A deer
helps lightning
run
from a ghost

A deer helps lightning run from a ghost

I have a gun
but the world is empty

I am still smaller than the god of my aim
Wait

Regret
has a moth
to bury
August 12, 2025 / barton smock

final thing

In an emptiness designed by no one

tried
to print
touch

August 11, 2025 / barton smock

the surreal absurd : an anthology of contemporary surrealist and absurdist poetry

Not always sure where I am once I get there but have to say am super grateful to be in 'The Surreal-Absurd: An Anthology of Contemporary Surrealist and Absurdist Poetry' with so many I've mapped out and wandered into in the here and there of this anti-present thereness.