the animals
out of earshot
come back
as phones.
you have a son
who like your father
holds a mirror
up
to some
nobody’s
paranoia, a daughter
who steps on crickets
as part
of god’s plan.
the wax baby
isn’t my thing
but appetite
is.
licking its wounds it is still an animal.
what does it mourn?
the lack reach of my tongue?
me / me I have
lost my sense of a peopled earth.
a sucker
for anything
can’t come back
to haunt her
my mother
(like a genie
rubbing
for no
luck
the arms
of my father’s
electric
chair) is aging
as it had not been afforded the opportunity to go mad, we called it woman. its baby wasn’t getting any older. our plan was to use its house blindness to burn the oven but its baby got underfoot and its dog whistled our cat to a boil. my guess is we were trying to be men without blood. everything we hungered for began to taste the same.
[the omens]
to the rabbit
he can’t bring himself
to shoot
in the foot
the boy
with a sore thumb
whose mother
wrote the book
on book
burnings, whose father
baptized
a scarecrow
as scarce
crow
whispers
in hindsight
of course
the omens
are coming
[you]
are now’s
nostalgia
[bridge]
god has gathered the disabled to make his case against reincarnation
–
unable to sleep, I become an alcoholic
–
I prefer
like my father
my insects
noncommittal
–
insomnia is the insect my scar becomes
–
noggin, mouth-hole, skinflick
–
a ghost
when I study
angels
[wolf, wolf, god]
her plane is in the air. she is showing late signs of believing she’s left an octopus in the oven. the man she is with knows nothing about paper. on the ground, in awe of the bee stings on a sister’s bare back, a brother carries orphanhood to term. everything I touch belongs to the same alarm clock.
[bygone]
I started smoking in my early thirties because I missed my brothers. because a train is the only thing I can act like I’ve seen before. because a claw opened and a child dropped. because unhurt the child was a girl and injured it was a boy made of being touched. because giant birds were stoned to give other people rain. because all hail, as all do, location. because riot then riot envy. because bright spot became a cloth in a police car. because I can’t sleep and couldn’t without thinking of sleep as a copy of a copy. because lost the baby wasn’t getting any younger. because nightlight and tadpole, mom and dad.
[nigh]
don’t talk to babies. write. write to be the first one there. the frostbitten woman sucking her thumb has all her teeth. walk once a week into the wrong bathroom. worry. bump around the house at night, noisemaker. a depressed elephant in a walrus graveyard. pull. pull from your habit forming past. be the bomb god’s yet to wear. surround with others the baseball bat signed by the last woman to mourn sleeping beauty. open your mouth then look at your son. call it photography. if spotted, be a monster.
[indwell]
I either have to kill my father or keep loving him. a friend of my brother’s says she can get me cigarettes, a knife, and two cans of beer. says her own father was a doctor up until he delivered a baby with a serial number tattooed on its arm. she doesn’t know what her father does now. her mother is in the dark. her mother is obsessed with the three the disciple lied to. people want me to back up but a man is never the same sadness. define people.
~
from Drone & Chickenhouse
84 pages, poems, Barton Smock, Oct 2015, 6.00
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/drone-chickenhouse/paperback/product-22390933.html
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
downloading
the horror movie
that shows
your penis
takes
a long time
in the city.
others
are a grief
I came alive
to miss.
to punish my brother
for no reason
I told him
I could see
his stomach’s
shadow
but because
my visions
never
work
I vomited
what my sister
ate
wherein
the white soup
of thought
that could not
sustain
the brainless
pilot
of paper
airplanes
was drawn
from my son’s
unheard
ear
might memory
attend
foresight
the church
of loss
we couldn’t get a horse because we had this one dog would fake sick. had this nurse would sleep with her shoes on. I don’t know how many of us there were. I had more fevers than god had footprints to follow. had an insect to offer worry. we were poor and perfect when pretending to be. father had a hat that remembered our names and mother a kite she called the birthday of a ghost. I wanted to be a girl but my sorrow was too southern. had a sister and she asked her baby what do angels have. I never saw for myself the ransom note from hell we couldn’t touch. parts came in pairs so both would answer.
kingsoftrain 