September 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
the truth of
the bleeding horse is this
there is no bleeding horse
there is your sister with her
boyfriend’s hands tight around her throat
there are the children
^
what she tells you is
[i]i love him[/i]
this and that he has
disappeared again
that a woman calls at least
three times a day asking for him
what she tells you is familiar
and it tastes of pain
^
and this is not the age of saints
the addicts won’t be saved
or even remembered
and she tells you [i]i love him[/i]
tells you she has seen the bleeding horse
in the first light of day
stumbling blind towards the interstate
tells you nothing but asks for money
^
the same story repeated until
the windows shatter
the hand of god
clenched into an arthritic fist
the room cold where the moon
spills across the floor and
she is saying some thing that
is being swallowed by the wind
she is home and
she is bleeding and there
are the children
they are saying your name
but you are gone
August 2002 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
There are days
I want to sit with you
as children playing
in the dirt,
watch ants
busily working,
and listen to wind
brush aside branches
of trees the way
my hand moves
hair from my face.
The ground will reclaim
us someday,
when we can no longer
love like we are twelve.
As the ground reclaimed
Schliemann’s childhood
dream (treasure).
No, even great Achilles
mystic as he was
could not escape
reclamation.
And the ground
will reclaim our cities:
New York, Boston, Detroit,
my childhood home
in Kansas
where my friends
live their lives
on the same plot of ground
that will retake them.
Not death,
just breath–flash of light.
Acceptance,
the ground is willing
to reclaim
anyone; me
all I am
my words erased
when I no longer
have energy to speak
and I cannot hope
for more than this
day sitting
with you,
on the ground
(perhaps a sandwich
and lemonade).
What more could I hope?
except hope
our memory
will be remembered.
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
the poem starts
abruptly
something like
[i]but they came back
for him[/i]
[i]dragged him out
to the sidewalk and
beat him into a coma then
walked away[/i]
and what more do
you need?
this is the event
spelled out as
simply as possible
it happens
not for
the sake of art
and not to reveal some
deeper truth but
because violence is
as effortless as
breathing
because it needs
no reason
imagine a
rusted spike driven
through the eye
of god
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
a man buried
beneath a faded
stretch of sidewalk
another man
shot to death
by a pay phone
this is the wasteland
i’ve been looking for
crows in empty fields
and deer mangled
by the highway
your sister raped by all
of her friends
her fingers
pulled off like
flowers petals
if i were
a better person
i’d hold you
if i had the guts i’d
make you smile
twenty nine years in
the nation of addicts
and all i’ve planted
are my father’s bones
i never expected
anything to grow
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
i am defining
nothing but myself here
beneath this cold white sun
i am placing my right hand
over the eyes
of a child i never had and
only one of us casts
a shadow
it’s not an
admission of guilt
it’s an act of salvation
look at this land
a grey stretch of valley between
defeated hills
and all of these burning houses
that people call home
all of the pain stored away
but never forgotten
more than enough to bring
de chirico to his knees
and still none of us leave
i know these roads
i understand
that they all go somewhere
but i have been losing my way
for the past twenty years
i have outlived
the burning girl and the
drowning boy and any number
of anonymous women
beaten to death by the
fists of love
and there are those who
tell me that every action holds
the potential for beauty
and i give them the memory
of my father digging his
own grave with a coffee spoon
and a broken bottle
i give them
the minister’s wife raped
and thrown naked
from a bridge
and the weight isn’t in
the words
but in the events they
describe
it’s in the color of the sky
as it hangs
like a brilliant shroud
nothing is so beautiful
that it can never be
destroyed
August 2002 | back-issues, Patrick Seth Williams, poetry
[i]for Nicole[/i]
she plays the piano
but tells me not to listen
and I write her poetry
which I tell her
she can’t read
this is all we are
two individual souls
in a mundane world
where we watch TV
from different chairs
and we are both
unexplainable
but understand
one another
just the same
this normalcy
of our interactions
balancing out our lives
but when she plays
all I hear is Mozart
and when she looks
at my words
all she sees is…
