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February 25, 2024 / barton smock

foregone machine

I can be sick in two dreams at once.

Eating is a violence.

You can't
hear the bomb
if you listen.

I die and still

god is closer
to death.
February 25, 2024 / barton smock

{ void doc }

okay so it's Sunday afternoon and I got gone a little early and this next week at work is gonna be A THING but I have some thoughts on thoughts that are inner and outer and they are about death and grandparents and marriages but I'm not sure that is going to be enough or even apparent BUT here I go...today I was trying to pick with my daughter a father/daughter song for her wedding in June and I KNOW it is a strange and gendered and traditionally odd thing bc we should ALL BE DANCING WHEN THOSE WE LOVE ARE LOVED but also fuck all that I just want to be face to face with my daughter while a cool song plays and that isn't wrong BUT anyway back to my original post point etc etc etc I lost sooooo much time last year and my daughter was in Ireland and I didn't want her to worry so I didn't really check in with her while I was sick bc I thought correctly she needed to be someone outside of her parents or something oh lord I am not being very progressive in my wording but STAY WITH ME so in thinking of a song I had Timmy on me last night and he was trying to fall asleep without having issues breathing and I somehow got on a strange groove of TikTok marriage toasts and I got sad bc everyone is rich and did alot of great shit with their daughters in other places and me and my daughter were always kind of in the same place doing the same things and that meant alot of toys and set-ups and battles and folk songs and me reading The Nation and The Weekly Standard to find some sort of median and GUESS WHAT there isn't one except to be an actual progressive and actual helpless progressive BUT ANYWAY it got me thinking about time and how time doesn't change except to say it's time to change and anyway our father/daughter song will be by Josh Ritter and I have to say something about me being sick last year and about Gen being sick this year and that thing is this...we are two different people who learn differently and have seen death on both sides and on the same side and she was there for me when I was sick LIKE REALLY FUCKING THERE and I will be there differently for her this year and I think that's why my grandfather died right after my grandmother bc they were there for every difference and worked really hard to make it the same for each other or something or something and after that my aunt died suddenly and she was if anything A DEFENDER OF FAMILY and I think she kept my grandparents alive long enough for them to be seen and that is an immortal thing how did this get here but also I know how this got here and am going to call it a place
February 24, 2024 / barton smock

writing machine

Thought
god
would
notice
February 23, 2024 / barton smock

a child falls out of god

The glow
brushed pain
of skin's
one
man show
and the lost

sob
faking sleep
in the erections
of underused

(dream sequence
(crucifixion

extras

for the absent
tattoo
of touch's
forgetful
scar
February 22, 2024 / barton smock

perfect machine

Lightning's
last
roach

near god's
overdose
February 22, 2024 / barton smock

a child falls out of god

My half
of soon
for mine

of soon
February 21, 2024 / barton smock

early machine

I weigh four pounds and scream like a hand. My mother dreams of a fly and my father dreams of a fly made from teeth and hair. An Ohio frog is crying over my legs. Nothing hurts, but I can’t unbring myself. Angels haze the ghost of god. 
February 18, 2024 / barton smock

words toward Saba Keramati’s ‘Self-Mythology’

Self-Mythology
poems, Saba Keramati
The University of Arkansas Press, 2024

~

Alive to the moment, but also beautifully dying in the perceived past of passage, Saba Keramati’s Self-Mythology is an adult prayer of verse offered to the childish angel’s extra ghost. By which I mean it knows the black speech of plenty is lacking, and that language is a body no god can cut in half. If it left me speechless, it also silenced me in the looking. Keramati has an eye that interrogates vision with both image and with the after that image denies hallucinating within. Tanks carry the same indifference everywhere, and violence makes a glistening listener of the unheard weapon. It’s a very born thing. And a thing that hatches in the space the egg dreams it has reserved. It hurts, heals. Blood turns to blood from seeing salt.

~

reflection by Barton Smock
February 17, 2024 / barton smock

a child etc falls out of god wtf

dying
in a simulation

we bounce

pianos
off
February 17, 2024 / barton smock

a child falls out of god

My alcohol
moon
hosanna
songs

for the tornado's
amen
swan