within the beating
there were smaller
beatings
–
delirium, the haunted sandbox
–
in his, my brother could taste the rib of a mosquito
in mine, I could taste
my voice
–
them kids had time to fetch
other kids
there was
no hell
sister
she yanked
her finger
from the dream
of a dollhouse
telescope
and went on
to preach
–
(Cain is a girl’s name)
–
death
it wants
your son
it wants
the patience
violence
has
when out
of ideas
she cuts
my hair
–
a man who’s been forgiven
has no past
–
my healer
is the main squeeze
of her god’s
pastoral
depravity
–
the plane is coming back
–
at my mother’s cough
the bombings
continue
–
father
retains
his orphan
clout, I lose
–
sight
–
of my hands
that they’ll know
–
what to do
nudes
from the circus
of harm
grab
the evolved
handle
of my father’s
apocalypse
and though
I call it easy
what I’ve gone
on the doll piss
I can’t help
but bride
up
a storm
giving oral
to a corncob
from fixation’s
honeymoon
[baptism]
the home’s weekend janitor placing ball caps on the elderly.
something is said, and he is fired.
his kids recall the egg he’d make of his hand. the delicate knock
of his joke. their hair, or something in it, weeping.
[orgasm]
father offers, no, we are bodies trapped in people.
he was known to be monstrous when inside a vandalized church.
if gay, he’d ask
does anyone ask
if you
were born?
yesterday, she was identified by her dentist.
she was recalled as a hunger pain.
man is a rumor
started by god.
[bread]
the baby is white guilt. is walking early.
is outside picking stones to give to loved ones.
Jesus is a moment of peace
on a skateboard.
the fish are five thousand
isolated incidents.
vandalism is vandalism.
the numb hands of a child
go rolling after
crayons.
this is you, beside a flower, in front of a mountain.
your eyes are so big
and the bread
so quiet.
[a.]
the name must be shorter than a pastoral. the baby must outlive your father’s car. asking for the possibility of good sex must not be compared to anything. the person father is underneath must be from your past, your mother. the casket must be a rumor, and open. rumor must be definitive, like eclipse, like eye patch. the door must be placed on the back of a military mom and a photograph is preferred. the doorway must become addicted to selfies. dear boy, humiliate the right dog. tether dog. eat so much my girlfriend says dear boy, dear sea, stomach. you can’t hate poetry and the world. Bob is secretly a soccer mom rubbing a lamp in public and is also sometimes Jesus trying to step on a scale.
[catharses]
increasingly violent. I have this image. it is broken. physical. like a being. ask your mother. practice. not on your mother. she will feel left out. let her be. like a mirror. I have this image. it’s blinded and has been since the moment it was. I have this father. builds to nothing. builds and builds. I have this friend you’re the uncle of. shakes his right leg as if his foot is stuck in a bucket. there’s no bucket. he’s all yours.
[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.
[loyalties]
the camera is blind. the blind
my dog
is going.
in my mother’s sleep
I am kind
to think
she lost it.
a foreign adoption, a procured act
of landfall.
I bomb my lifelong
dollish
sense
of the photogenic…
the dogs were fat, the ticks were full.
[vasectomy]
I open out from another’s dream. I think on the word deflower and the terrible way we use it. my female wife- this much is the same. I’ve been here before. nothing happens. she makes coffee with her phantom limbs in a story of yesterday’s news. this morning I’ll drive past my daughter’s daycare and my daughter will wave to a secret building. the heat that gets to others is god.
~
poems above were taken from books available here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad
as intended
we do not
immediately
know
it’s a mock
resurrection.
our fathers do not suffer
magicians
lightly
and hoard
blindfolds
as if they are low
on photographs
of women.
our mascot pig
is a shitty elephant.
a palm reader
with mouths
to feed
does
my mother’s
nails. I overhear
I love
babies
but god
they live
so long.
–
my brothers will tell you
I avoid
capitalization
eating
in front of others
threesomes
–
who was it
asked
–
from whose memory were you erased?
~
from father, footrace, fistfight (selected poems, Barton Smock, June 2014)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/father-footrace-fistfight/paperback/product-21672373.html
~
[the minimal class]
I orbit
the idea
of an animal
not thinking
of itself.
to err
is hunger.
[cipher]
aware of my body
as if my body
is on a raft.
a creaky deceit
I call
rafting in the nude.
last night in a very safe garage
I promised a friend
I’d mention
the moon
in the period following
my last
idea.
my body eats me.
god dangles the body of my son
in front of my son’s
next
memory.
some are born
born-again.
current trends include cloning.
the first person to recall dying
will be held aloft.
[patience]
the black market is a state of mind. I smoke a joint in a barn and worry I will see a barn owl that will crush my barn owl dreams. my worry walks me three miles where I meet a woman trying to sell a book in a graveyard. I trade her the memory of our previous trade for the book she tells me is shy. my other possession is a neglected baby.
[sequestration]
a person goes dark. night shifts disappear. a lone panic capsizes the anatomically correct. men fill up on mouthwash. men float. women bite their tongues in half before they can say women and children. insomnia becomes more than the over-hyped novelization of insomnia. a boy draws a cutlass in a broom closet and is told he can’t sleep. I begin to want more from a diagnosis. a kite being flown in hell by a son gone pro.
my wordless
my disabled
he was licked
at birth
by a deer
–
as a writer, the writer
wrote to me
fuck
–
writers
–
have you ever
tried to give
a stomachache
–
to a shadow?
–
it is not all graph
not all
grief, not worth
–
one’s salt
–
to speak
for any
content
that demands
form
the spider has seven legs no longer in the raccoon’s ear
–
god is from another planet
kingsoftrain 