Poems
by John Sweet
ill fall
sleeping in yr fathers house, early
afternoon, middle of august, and all
true heroes are dead
all gods taste the same once the
meats been stripped from the bone and
what im looking for her is forgiveness but
not from anyone ive ever known
small miracles in the suburbs, maybe
car on fire in the walmart parking lot and
any number of anonymous children
locked inside it
ninety degrees in the shade but
rain moving down from the north
gazing globes and rainbow spinners and
all of the roads that take us back to
the nowhere towns we were born in
this waitress from my dreams who
keeps insisting shes my wife
tree in the back yard crashing
down by slow, heavy degrees
only a matter of time before one of
us wakes up to the news that
the other is gone
youre not safe, you never will be
but what the fuck is this,
this man who calls on the grace of god while
raping teenage girls in a nation of
like-minded heretics,
and why would we not drive him from the city,
crucify him,
put out his eyes w/ junkies needles?
why would we not set fire to
the mansions of tyrants and demagogues,
warm our hands at their ruin?
why would i fight wars in other countries
when the one true enemy has always
been just outside my door?
who will be the first to die
for what i believe in?
eating the bones of the poem
suicide factory,
6 a.m.,
and rothko is always waiting at the door
has his pills and his
ideas about transcendence
wants to paint you
in shades of black and grey
wants me to listen to the sound of
razor blades through bare flesh
calls it music and he calls it holy and
what matters here is that i am
less than i was
when you and i were together
what matters here is the possibility
that the pale blurred sunlight
of my childhood might return
that the dead lawns up and
down this bitter street are
nothing more than premonitions
after fifteen years of february
i am ready to start breathing again
poem for when you need to understand
or maybe the stench of christ
burning like a witch
maybe the idea of true faith
held up in the harsh light of wisdom
and found wanting
look
all joy is a delicate thing
all songs mean something,
somewhere,
to someone
and i am not dead yet, but i
wont presume to speak for the rest of you
i wills scratch out my own
bitter interpretations of the truth on
the delicate flesh of younger
sisters everywhere
this is my gift
this is my age
let me be dead by morning
if im wrong
redon, obliquely
afraid all afternoon,
grey shadow on a white page,
flat grey sky over flat grey houses and then
dig deeper,
past suicide and down to buried cities,
hidden churches,
the bones of saints
lie on the couch with a mouthful of
poison and dream of empty severed hands
in waterlogged back yards
dream of rust
but without falling asleep
this is the trick to being christ
this is the weight of despair
everyone wants to breathe and
everyone wants to be stoned but
the baby is crying
rain turns to snow and
the future falls into ruin
the trees that line the streets here are
all dead and rotting and
the streets themselves go nowhere
escape is an illusion
and so dig deeper
the obvious atrocities
the drowning season
a desert full of empty hands
pushing up through the sand and
what will you give them to carry?
how deep are you willing to dig into
the frozen earth to find pure joy?
hit just one vein of sugared blood
and all the pain
becomes worthwhile
briefly, and in flames
a week of luminous
grey skies and damp heat
a lifetime of inadequate saviors
starlings and grackles and
dingy laundry refusing to dry in
overrun back yards
are you still here?
are you still expecting mercy?
absolution?
no one wants to know about love
when the house is on fire
no one cares about an indifferent god
but thats all youve ever had,
fucker
four walls and a door and your
life seen through dirty windows
the ruined bodies of nuns buried in
the sandy soil between
one starving country and the next and
how much could we get for
their bones?
who puts these prices on
human misery?
we have been lying to each other
for so long now that
anything less feels obscene
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