Three by John Sweet

ambient prayer with head wreathed in flames

tells her it’s like cutting yrself to
let the poison run out of yr veins

tells her it’s like grey ice
in november sunlight

nothing that actually means anything
and so here we are again among
the weeds and the ruined kingdoms down by
the water’s edge and so here we are
again up on burnt hill road

blue sky and emptiness and
never enough gods to fill it

never enough hands to start a war and
so the soldier shoots the child instead

says orders are orders

smiles in surrenders like a
priest or a coward

smiles like flowers choked by weeds at
the edge of the desert and
it’s here with the furnace broke and
the windows boarded over,
it’s here in the neverending now,
fucking a stranger in
someone else’s room, in
someone else’s city, that one of you
calls the other by the wrong
name and no one cares

it’s later,
with the baby crying, with the
constellations inverted or
obscured, with clouds like
bruised silver, like dreams stained
with hopeless blood, and how
far away were you hoping to be
when all light finally faded?

how long did you think it would take
to reach a point in your life
where nothing mattered anymore?

the numbing weight of failure
always arrives
sooner than you’d expect

#

without hope, without desire

and then at 30
lost and falling and
then at 40

some pointless story
with an unhappy ending

some fucking poem
scribbled out quickly on the
back of a gas receipt

roomful of children just
waiting to be broken like
so many tiny gifts

nothing revealed, nothing
given away and it
seems like i had a wife
when this thought began

remember white space between us
and windows with shattered glass
and there is nothing so pure it
cannot be poisoned

there is nothing left to do in
the end but accept

#

with heartfuls of sand and of mud, with the river run dry

sick of myself at 4 in the afternoon

ice on the shadowed sides of
sleeping factories

weeds

no news from god since before
i was born
and then the death of his only son
played out for cheap entertainment

this is the world you inherit and
then it becomes
the one you pass on

these are the dreams you dream after
your lover is done with them

daughter was only 3 years old,
was filled with cancer
and the sunlight was a lie

the moment approached and
then it passed
and the fear is what remains

call whatever it is you feel
faith
and then see how far it takes you

with gasoline by John Sweet

first boy
soaks the second
with gasoline

sets him on fire
beneath
a wide open sky

and which one would you
choose for your
own

which would
you use to define
the word love

what finally
matters is how
much pain you're
willing to
endure

- originally published in Yellow Bat Review #1 (2001)

Three by John Sweet

after the age of giants

And this is not nothing, this sky, these
clouds, these hills, and it’s not the
whole story because nothing ever is,
but listen. Distance is an important thing.
Forty feet from the bridge to the tracks
below. 100 miles between the woman’s
body and her husband’s faith. And have
you ever tried defining yourself by
something other than sorrow or fear?
Will you crawl from lover to lover with
nothing to offer but fading bruises
and the promise of more?

It’s okay to pause before you answer,
to consider, to weight your options.
It’s okay to accept the fact that we’ve
never really meant anything to each other.
This is why the sunlight casts shadows.
Why time only moves in one direction.
The moment arrives one hundred
million times a day, and then it passes.
The song is forgotten. I wanted to
sing it to you, but you were married.
You were crying. It was a sound
just like any other.

#

bird trapped in a wall

flutter of wings like
god’s fading heartbeat,
like the shadows of
disappeared lovers, and
there is all the time you
waste while yr still alive
and then there is the
moment you die

there is the shape yr
bones will make when
laid out in the
desert sand

there is joy, even in
the face of sorrow

#

the din

trees in the haze, shimmer
of leaves, fist of the sun in a
bottomless white sky

don’t ask for forgiveness

don’t offer it

all of these houses will fall
down, given enough time,
and all of the poets you
hate will grow old and die

all of their mediocre poems
will be forgotten

they will be just like you

Five by John Sweet

shelter

and it’s true that i’m a coward,
and it’s true that i love
my children

find the point where
these two truths meet

consider how easy it is to treat people
with respect when they pose
no threat to you

cold rain in the morning
and then all afternoon

i read books to my youngest son
while his brother draws pictures
of imaginary planets

we listen to the beatles and then
we listen to the stones and
there is no sign of war in this house
but people everywhere are
dying against their will

the streets of a thousand villages
whose names i’ll never know
run red with the blood of the raped
and the butchered and
outside these thin walls
the temperature drops

twilight

i listen to the furnace
kick on in the basement

i turn another page

faith by itself will
never be enough to save you

#

landscape w/ falling ghosts

like pale sunlight through
a break in the clouds

like falling snow

absence of warmth so easy
to confuse with the
absence of hope

abandoned buildings

empty parking lots

dead-end roads

solve it like a puzzle with
the taste of old metal
in the back of yr throat

mentions of god

of godlessness

smell of burning
everywhere and always

#

empire

and what would you do
with your gun besides
kill, and who would
you shoot first?

who next?

laughter of children
filling your eyes

#

ash wilderness, late november

watched the snow coming down
the valley said i have to
get going but the truth was
something more complex

the poems were all past tense

were small animals
caught in traps

dreams

said wake up but the
sky was the color of lead

said nothing because at
least it wasn’t a lie

almost believed
the future was mine

#

stacy’s laughter

awake after the storm early or
late afternoon saturday
maybe sunday
and all of the machines i own are
dying by slow degrees

you need to choose what matters

you need to write it out
then burn the pages

burn the house & then the
town & then start driving

the idea of arriving becomes
meaningless when escape is an
impossibility

Four by John Sweet

three imposters, picking over the bones of christ

not a crown of thorns, but a
field of them stretching off to an
absence of hills

my father as an old man,
which is somewhere between a
vision and a lie

dead at 49 like a million other
minor gods and the fruit was
bitter and the rain all turned to ice

the sunlight was weightless

was blinding
but it offered no heat,
and the clouds were like threats

their shadows were like cancer

slow and unstoppable and
what wasn't devoured
was forgotten

when we reached the city,
it was filled
with the dead and the dying

all any of us
could do was laugh

#

what has cost you to learn

back yard lush w/ weeds and
the sky thick w/ powerlines

blue & bottomless and
heat w/out the hope of grace

grace w/out the
need for forgiveness

woke up there in
someone else’s arms

was 20 years after chernobyl

15 after my father’s death

tasted like shit in my mouth
when i discussed the gov’t
and then it tasted like poison

felt like paralysis

had taught my children that
guns were never a solution
but i was becoming less sure

how many years of any given
life can be wasted killing
the politicians who don’t care
about you one way or
the other?

where do you cross the line
between coward and martyr?

at some point
all anger becomes religion

#

the sea of static

and it’s not much
in the end
just a nation of assholes
w/ guns
hoping to kill someone

just gaping mouths
filled w/ shit
and begging for more

#

poem for a million nameless poets

one hundred years from now with
yourself dead and
all of your precious words
forgotten

would you
do it all again?

Three by John Sweet

past and present


Someone in another room, dead or listening,
and your father on the floor where they
found him, back against the stove, cold cigarette
in an ashtray on the counter.

You tell the story or you listen to it,
and it has nothing to do with you.

you turn to the woman, a stranger's wife,
and you run your hand up the soft curve of

her stomach and then back down,
and then the phone rings.

We pretend no one's home.

A doorknob rattles, then footsteps in the
driveway, and I can't remember whether or not
I locked the back door.

I creep upstairs to tell me son that
it's okay, but his room is empty. Isn't
where I remember it being.

Only boxes here, and sunlight cutting
through dust, and a stack of books on an

unused kitchen chair.

Only someone else's past.

#

mirror


five below zero, driving into the sun,
cemetery gates stained orange and red,
the names of my children ground into
the pavement, bitter with the taste of
salt, hungry like christ on that last
morning, hung over or stoned, horny,
and the blood running into his eyes

the dogs chewing judas down to the bone,

crows at his tongue,
ramshackle apartments giving way to
empty storefronts, factories filled with
cancer, and that i am just like you

that i believe in money, and in
leaving the weak behind

that i have grown sick of this woman
telling me she loves me

that i have grown sick

#

silence


You tell them you’re a poet
and they look at you funny

You tell them you’re a killer
or a rapist

You tell them nothing

It sounds good