March 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
you are stoned
beneath
cold fluorescents
you are two hundred miles
away from lake erie in
the first summer of your
son’s tiny life and
the news isn’t
good
a tumor possibly
or a body dug up or
maybe as many as
a hundred
maybe the neighbor disappeared
and his wife found
hacked to pieces in the
basement
all of this talk of
a simpler america that
never was
and do you still dream of
the cages
your grandfather helped build?
of the women
herded into them at
gunpoint?
even here
three hundred years later
in this air-conditioned room
there is till the smell
of burning witches
is still the stench of
self-righteousness
and what the two of us hide
is the fact
that we know each other
that we number
the bleeding horse among
our friends
and at the end of the day
you lock up your desk while
i kiss your wife good-bye
we pass on the street
without a word
and two hours later
the first candle is lit on the
hill of fifteen crosses
like everything before it
it will fail to
drive the dark away
March 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
or this man i know with his
blind devotion to an
invisible god and his fear
of the niggers and the
fags and the jews
do i laugh at
what he says?
at who he is?
or maybe his hatreds are
nothing more than
a distorted reflection of my own
maybe he’s only the monster
i can see myself becoming
my father reborn
or any of his friends
drunk and laughing on a
sunday afternoon fifteen years
before the missing girl is
even born and maybe
you’re the same
i will have us all condemned
before
this day is over
February 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
standing in the
yellow light of december
trying to believe in war
casting a shadow along the edge
of whiskey hill road
i am not a ghost yet but have
been playing with
the idea of disappearing
have been considering that
what i may actually be afraid of
is happiness
that what i may actually be
in love with is fear
i spent twenty-seven years fighting
not to be my father’s son
then married a woman who wanted
only those things i was
unwilling to give
found myself in a falling house
with the need to
inflict my anger upon others
and it’s not that
i’m opposed to vengeance
and it’s not that i don’t believe
in freedom
it’s that i have walked through
the screaming crowds promoting
their own self-righteous hatred
outside of abortion clinics
and i have no faith in their god
i have no use for their dogma
i will not be branded a witch
by anyone as lost
as myself
February 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
in the empty house
where no one believes in
empty houses
truth is not an object
with any value
a man says [i]i love you[/i]
to his wife
or he doesn’t
and either way she has
already left him
a child is found murdered
in the bathroom and
then another
and then three more
the words
[i]there is something wrong here[/i]
are left unspoken
the refrigerator hums
and the clocks run backwards
and the kitten is two months old
but will have to be
given away
and why should it live
in the face of these
five drowned children?
the answer depends on
who you ask
and it’s too fucking hot today
for these abstractions
say the word five times
and get it over with
dead dead
dead dead dead
go to the kitchen to find
a cold beer
call your wife’s name and wait
the rest of your life
for an answer
January 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
ahh christ
the horse bleeds like
something you almost
remember
stumbles away from the teeth
towards the light
and by the time you arrive
it’s all over
the throat vanished
the flies beginning to gather
the song all but
forgotten
the carnage rises up
swarms against your eyes like
one of your father’s stories
from viet nam
like your mother or
even better
your sister
how many years ago?
four at least
maybe five
left arm broken
two teeth gone and still
she wouldn’t call
the police
said she loved him
said she loved
the next one too and
the one after that and
the bruises were clouds in
an autumn sky
the sky was
a pack of dogs circling
the sun
was something you
never managed to forget
and then this horse dying
in the here and now and
all you can do is
watch
all you can do is wait
your life up to this point
the small frightened
dream you always
knew it would
be
January 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
fuck this idea of
poetry reaching back to
embrace the past
i will not worship
the martyred or the immortal
it’s enough to be stuck in
this town of defeated old men
as they shuffle aimlessly
up and down anonymous streets
it’s enough to watch the
factories burn
and i have driven in every direction
and i have seen nothing but
more of the same
and i am only waiting for the news
that reagan is dead
i am only waiting to hear
from a friend
who hasn’t written in a decade
that all is forgiven
and i have a job that will never be
anything worth describing
and i have a son who will someday
want nothing more than to
escape his father
what i give you hear is a
pale blue november sky bleached to white at the edges
the drone of a plane and the
sound of wind through bare trees
and there is a house of
delicate bones in this picture
that i call my home
there is a river that holds
the body of
a fifteen year-old boy
it doesn’t bother me that i’ve
outlived him
but maybe it should
