kingsoftrain

from The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake (Sept 2013)

http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/the-blood-you-dont-see-is-fake/paperback/product-21966942.html

assimilation

the boy tugs your arm in public. his panic so local his gut could be yours. verbatim you confront the misquote children from abusive studio apartments inherit warehouse jobs from problem immigrants. a bruise of urine darkens the front of your jeans.

another nude

in such times, it is constantly 2am. a friend pulls carefully at your ear. a friend’s thumb is a hologram of a thumb. you are being told that what you’re about to be told is highly confidential. because it’s dark, and because your bed is the prize winning bed of a formerly dethroned insomniac, you are nothing if not empowered to listen. your friend’s tongue redacts the parts of your body that have been marked. this is done in secret. what you’re hearing right now was scored some time ago. when things were the same.

assistance

from the boy

(on the soon to be
exact
date
our poverty
matures)

this ballpark
statement:

I did not ask to be born.

he wants the names
of those
I’ve told.

from a notebook while I slept

it occurs to me that my brother’s intermittent addiction to waiting caused him this insight: your real life comes true. it occurs to me he remains a telepath. a telepath whether or not I write as beautifully as he remembers. he sleeps without a pillow claiming it gives his ear nothing to do. he scratches his cheeks and says look at these they are the ribs of a pup I am caged in.

the future of war is war.

demesne

my father carries a prop wall into a god honest prison scene. my mother is there with chalk. in character, her face washes over her face.

–

I am survived by my medically fragile son. the story of my death is told to me by his future wife.

–

demesne. a word from dream number three.

radio silence

I am homeless and thinking in unison. yours is also my, beast. I talk into my hands because I believe they chatter without me. cold, where they go, based on the books I’ve held. our beast can sleep without touching its thoughts.

dream logic

on her fiftieth birthday our alleged mother hires a driver to remain parked outside an abandoned warehouse. she promises to pay the driver extra if he sees more than two stray beasts and promises further employment if he consciously brings the uglier of the two or more home to his children. we hear offhandedly these things and others

as if we are hidden inside a very large cake.

the driver is an hour deep into the assignment when he notices a barefoot woman flat on her belly scooting across a puddle of oil near the warehouse entrance. the woman is swallowed by the puddle before the driver can call to her or commit her outfit to memory. he says aloud she was feral and her breasts had to be, by then, bleeding. it’s christmas morning when the driver comes to and his wife’s sister has this look like she could suck the red from a childhood firehouse. his kids are crying over invisible toys. invisible because our mother touches the future without looking.

beeline

you are born in a great house and given to a great man. your birth is the earliest predictor of forward thinking. your servants spend their days believing the great man’s thoughts of suicide are contagious. on your fifth birthday, at the age of ten, you are kidnapped by a woman who says the sack is for show. who says be loud. you are taken to a river where you meet your brother who seems happiest when holding his breath. he tells you the woman is your sister but good luck seeing her again.

luck is for the naked.

within hail

the flashlight works if you shake it. this tree is the tree you should use. every other home is broken. every other window has in it my house arrested father. the dog run off, the dog come back. back with a beauty I will bed to babysit my brother. the crow is empty. a plaything, a part of the show. crow can be blindfold, camera. can censor among other things an exposed breast. the fence wasn’t here when we got here so it’s not here now. an uncle says there is a dog only he can hear. will say anything to get laid. in all fairness I’ve failed more than once to insert myself into the loneliness of my person.

aurae

on the day they were born
I murdered my brothers
in reverse order
to teach them
about sticks

more specifically
about my love
for what can break
easily
on the knee

for what gets smaller
the more
it is shared

–

premonition?

the delayed seizure of our mother’s countenance.

she could recall the brokenness of a toy car
but not the location of the shop
it drove itself
to.

she needed two people.

one to smooth the map before her
and one to laugh
when she’d blow

playfully
from her palm
the ants the car’s tires had become.

–

to remain
brothers

brothers
keep silent
within
earshot.

distance?

the hole
god leaves
by not
existing.

confession?

the seashell comfort of a woman’s hips.

–

in baseball
one could bloody
the pastor’s
nose

wipe the ball
on a white shirt

and transfer
worry
to the tick
heavy
dog

lazing
in the rabbit blackness
of its ongoing
joy

–

as an inner child searching for its twin

the loneliness
of our sister
is twofold.

jesus on the cross

my sister is sometimes obese. she has mild heart attacks in cramped third floor apartments. she gets beaten by schoolmates who impersonate hospital staff. I am always going to see her it seems when she is in someone else’s bed. it is to this thought she has recently clung.

steganography

every day is a scar’s birthday. this is how I am able to start most of your sentences. I praise your god, you worry, and worry keeps him from finding out. on the day you started talking the rooms were horrified. the termites fled your blood. a cold stone appeared outside beside a stick. the home’s most loved dog died without spatial awareness. your mother began to compose a series of poems by Franz Wright. for inspiration she put her hands in the dog and in doing so dropped a sack of black groceries. a thing that changed over time rolled into your father’s mouth.