I am at my skinniest
asleep
it wasn’t my dog
put the rabbit
shot
from its mouth
back
in its mouth
but
I was lonely
from seeing
things
I made for an action figure a family tree. my mother came apart in the doctor’s hands. my smallness entered the smallness of my god. a side effect of facial recognition.
a spider can take its home to heaven
–
it is my goal
to be sicker
than my son
–
have the baby
trying
to be had
tonight, I stole two beers from my brother
two gods
whose vexations
share
a city
I am still not sure
what I’ve requested
asylum
or sanctuary
I don’t pray
I read a book to see a man do nothing
to see a man do nothing to a woman
I volunteer
for sleep
studies
and read
this back
to the lord
speech itself is a failed translation
dreaming is a farm
a mother
makes it as far
as mailbox
bear
to fish
there’s water
in the water
is, today’s mousetrap
tomorrow’s
shoe
[notes for night owl]
a brother wets the bed
is reminded
of age, the number
of kissable
girls-
in another life, he has
this one
there is no
imagining
of his
surprise
[forgeries]
permanence is upon us.
one who paces.
predator
that I never took
for god.
–
on the inside
the predator
I attacked
personally
became the world
where the window
into the world
of hazing
opened.
–
in infancy
I possessed
a belonging.
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.
not one thing
has the devil
made a satellite
do
god’s gift to god is all boy. is doomed to repeat melancholy in real time. is punching his erection. is trying your hand at territorial absence. is not feeling it on the day of the mime’s vigil. is bombed. is local. is thought to have opened the book of sticks. is not swallowing. is eating from the angel’s dream the only fish that can stop at nothing.
from father, footrace, fistfight (poems, June 2014)
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/father-footrace-fistfight/paperback/product-21672373.html
[duologue]
we’ll start here, turtle.
this is what I say to the grey thing I’ve been talking to.
the only buffer between engagement & constant engagement
is life
during wartime.
I conceive of a dropper
but hold it empty
above my eye.
because it is the one word without a beginning
suffering
because it is the one word without a beginning
is not limited
by its
vocabulary.
we wanted a sophisticated god
but in immediate
unison
called it
god.
this is the grey cream
that gives her privacy.
I am drawn to a sort of journalism
by association, a campestral formlessness
attached
for example
to the term
carpet bombing.
how is death, here? in an orange ball of yarn
she is not ahead of?
she has to stop, turtle.
to declaw an electrocuted kitten
she didn’t
electrocute.
[isochronal character]
the theme of this person-to-be is footprint. for years I hated my figure and for years I went undetected. I had female heroes both sad and sad reboots. for a fee one told me I was fleeting. the fee included the thumbtack moon my heel had liberated from a schoolchild’s diorama. we come as babies so none can ask us what we remember. the theme of this person-as-is
is mouthpiece. her red phone has been tapped by those my blood is filming.
[impossible beast]
the whole town was in the parade. the newer babies had a float to themselves. at some point I was shot by a gunman so disoriented he mistook himself for my father. I swooned as if trying to avoid landing on a board member second-guessing her proposed location for purgatory. somewhere in the darkness the firehouse caught fire. I followed my blood but to me it seemed a celebrity’s sadness. my mother found me in her bed with a part of her heart. she was bright with the rumor that my sister’s snake-bitten neck had some takers.
kingsoftrain 