April 2003 | John Sweet, poetry
the moment when
you find out how useless
you really are
when you realize that
you will never save anyone
a sunday afternoon
possibly
with your wife and children asleep
and late winter snow falling from
a tarnished silver sky
a war somewhere
which is nothing new
dead babies and suicide bombers
and all of the reasons
you should support the killing
all of the poets who
want you to join their causes
to sign their petitions and
praise their hollow words and
christ
it’ll take more than a river
full of corpses to stop the bills
from arriving
listen
nothing you own has
any value
nothing you touch will
retain any warmth
even faith in these
small bitter truths is better
than no faith at all
April 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
snow again
without warning
the idea of tombs
of trailers along
the side of the highway and
the lives trapped
inside them
the distance between
[i]home[/i] and [i]lost[/i]
do you remember
how far we drove?
200 miles only to find
the front door open and
the bathroom floor smeared
with blood
200 miles only to
leave again
only to come back to these
few simple rooms
without light or warmth
all of that time spent
going nowhere
April 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
asleep maybe
or awake and crying
with the dream still
bright and bleeding in
your mind
my words at 2 a.m.
which are cold
and without comfort
this woman gone missing
for three months now
with her unborn child
the fact that
neither of them will be
seen alive again
we believe
in monsters for
obvious reasons
April 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
and your sister’s lover
smiles
tells her to crawl
and she does
tells her to roll over
says
[i]good girl[/i]
holds out his hand
lets her taste her
children’s blood
waits for her
to beg for more
April 2003 | back-issues, poetry
[b]FIREGARDEN[/b]
[b](TRIPTYCH 3)[/b]
[b]I. CHILD[/b]
Child
Flesh trophy
For so many nights, I breathed out your name
I breathed out life, and you flew out on the slide…
Now you’re here
like an oxcart is here – plumped with harvest
and, before you focus, I wrap
the smoky cloak around me.
We go forth, planting crucifixes in the neighborhood, you and I –
we trade stares. Your eyes immense and bold
and your skin a miracle of profit and galvanism
but the measures of doubt you foment in me,
oh, I take them like cake
and lick the umbilicus for the blessings…
Build you up – I am the waterwheel
Bearer of casks and night tidings
The flowering you’ve brought to this Garden is my every hope
and convinces me of the secret you’ll be hiding
Dress you down – I am the cannibal
Performer of ritual and drag dressings
I’ll paint you proud of the bloodsong in your veins
but the melody will have you confessing
Now, listen close, my little spawn
to all that I may say
before I package,
lick you thin
and mail you away
[b]II. A DEAD MAP[/b]
There is the map
There is the tower where my fraudulent claims were called on
to be rent apart by kings and their sycophants and then
thrust out the open windows
I know very little beyond that,
beyond the dead map
There is the name that is always on the tip of my tongue
that pounds through the waves at high tides
and sings through the suns
There is the silhouette of a woman upon a cross
with her legs exquisitely matched and
my heart in a kindergarten chair
beneath her
I know very little beyond that,
those nails and those suns
There is a crying out in the backwater tombs in
the middle of the night, from the whippoorwill haunts –
a craven, bewildered shrieking that strikes V’s of birdflight
from the treelines out into the skies
I know the sound of my little boy dying
for his voice is like mine
…but I know very little beyond that
[b]III. THE CYCLE BEGINS[/b]
The cycle begins with the red seeds of warfare
the apostles and their blankets wet with dew
in the Garden where he made his peace
and they made him stew
The cycle begins
with the aspect of wasps taut with no-mind eyes
running with dust up the chimneys in the boroughs
where the maids ladle cream and
rub salt into their thighs
The cycle begins
with the essence of sanctuary bought by a traveler for a song
it costs ten years of hard labor to you or I and our delusions
but for a swallow-hearted Orpheus and his three-dollar bills
it doesn’t take that long
The cycle begins with the unfolding of the ocean
each day of our love with the dawn
comes a hurricane to empty it of baleen and our briny transfixions
then we’ll passover to you
what cards we’ve been drawn
by Barclay Kenyon (c)2003
([email]bt***@*****il.com[/email])
[b]Author’s Note[/b] Barclay Kenyon is a psychiatric worker and poet who lives by the water.
