some older, some edits, some alone:
[the wave]
we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet. we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks. the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others. we limp beside any creature that limps. the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other. our father is two mathematicians who argue. our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave. our guesses mean little because they are facts. at school we are voted on and kissable. if you see us coming, sex is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket. details belong to god.
~
[the lost]
before it is dark enough to carry the television into the forest and leave it, a mother checks the oven for her loaf of black bread. her overseas child follows a dead fly to another dead fly and so on. her sensitive brother turns over in his grave to be on all fours. her wiser husband rips the cord from the base of the television and uses it to whip the basement door. when the door opens, any dog will do.
~
[cure]
the dark, the ocean.
I have two reasons to believe god
has not stopped creating.
–
our father
had this phrase
all in good time
psychic
–
my anger has gone the way of the milkman.
his doomed child
with her piece of chalk.
~
[the jailed they get ideas]
dodgeball, no one sad
–
praying mantis
eating blood
from a bowl
of dreams
15% off all print books today on Lulu with coupon code of LULU15
mine are here:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
some poems from some recent publications:
[untitled]
what seashell does for ocean
my pillow
will
for hunger.
oh dream,
insomnia’s
wiped out
city…
is this
a stone
or the mating
call
of grief?
~
[untitled]
the power
came back on
the boy
didn’t.
I had my chance
to believe
in god.
the beetle was on its back
and the woman
unable
to kill herself
ordered
online
a rowing
machine.
mother’s garden, father’s ladder.
a black cat
where nothing
grew.
~
[untitled]
church of intermission. church of the rolled-away church my fever follows. church of it ain’t a baby until it spits. church of the lawnmower left running. of the space you give the grieving horse. church of you when you die in my sleep. of musical suicides. church of the disinfected high chair. of the false bruise. of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.
after leaving its memory to the hibernating bear, the insect died. I don’t know what story you’re trying to tell. the angel has three fathers. the angel was born to blackmail a ghost. this bald motherfucker thinks I need shown how to chew my fingernails. the mask is my elevator and the pig my coffin. I have a sister was made to make an egg disappear. a father who’d shave to give the thing in the stomach time to plan its escape. the angel vomits into a pink wheelbarrow. shows affection.
the thinking was
the kids
they’d report
my disappearance
–
I saw two men trade guns
and assured
my brother
that men
differ
–
no one
today
is dead, the newborn
is letting
the lipstick
dry
–
my other movie is a fistfight
–
my other movie is the horse
my drowning
mother
drank
–
my other movie is not the dog
of my sister’s
first
hand, nor the nothing
I taste
on my way
to salt
20% off all print books at Lulu today with coupon code of LULU20
all my self-published poverties are here:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
~
most recently:
/ shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [& other poems] /
readings:
–
/ MOON tattoo /
purchase:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/moon-tattoo/paperback/product-22634440.html
review:
http://krystalsierra.blogspot.com/2016/05/between-language-and-narrative.html?m=1
reading:
~
/ from [shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner]
~
[untitled]
hell is a book.
she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.
attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.
~
[untitled]
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.
I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone
lightning
straightens.
~
[entries for giants]
not a thing born
nor a thing
howled at
no
you are not
again
these things
the baby
it continues
to purple itself
where it can
it crawls, but is mostly stunned
by its own
vocabulary
the dog has the tongue of a cat
this is new
~
[the exact]
father became the man his possession foreshadowed. mom had a purse full of spoons. brother bathed any form quiet enough to make the kitchen sink. I began to believe. I began to hear in the rock
the thorn
it spoke for. over the nest of a bird,
the nothing to eat.
~
/ from [MOON tattoo]
~
[catastrophe]
I am differently
afraid
of each
cigarette
–
thematically, father hopes
to operate
on a clown
–
compared
to his
my hunger
is having
a flashback
–
wheelchair, oh
to its dog
door
bliss
~
[moon tattoo]
birth, or god’s
way
of erasing
our memory…
this
more than you
will hurt
my neighbor’s
doll
as for the infant
he ain’t
gonna hurt
himself /
to quote
god
is that
how I sound
[in the asylum we’d sun ourselves with angels]
he crushes
a cocoon
because it has
no god
/ I have not sinned since taking an active role in my dreams
self-harm
a nostalgia
that suffers
touch…
assault?
a hobby
you’re not the twin
I thought
you were.
in looking at my life
a fuckload
of sleep
a hearse emerging from the shadow of a school bus
/ a mother
trying
to return
a baptized
mannequin
/ that poorly
lit
bait shop
star
kingsoftrain 