notes from a man who has given up on sleep

August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry

a headache
just after midnight
as i try to remember why
i ever started writing
at all

a day spent walking
empty streets from a
forgotten part of my life

and i am tired of the past
and of my job like an
impossible weight
and i am tired

the house is old
the windows distorted
and i’m afraid of the day
my son begins to build a wall
between us

i’m afraid he will not be
able to
escape being my son

and this scorched taste
in my mouth is all i’ve kept of
the five thousand wasted days
spent trying to save the
woman who loved pain
from herself

or maybe i can finally
be honest
in this dark room
and admit that i was
worried about no one
but me

maybe i should mention
how i walked away
without hesitation when
her needs threatened
to smother the person
i was hoping to
become

maybe all of the
drowning
can still be saved

Survivor

July 2002 | back-issues, Michael W. Giberson, poetry

[i]for Brent Stalker[/i]

If the dead could rise
To take your part,

And you lie
Bleeding in their stead,

The silent covenant
Between you bred

Of comradeship
Would not falter.

Do not rage your solvent heart.
Do not rue God’s bleeding altar.

Memorial Day 2002

July 2002 | back-issues, Bill Wunder, poetry

I’d nearly forgotten that room
but lately, things appear
in the narrow, dark space
between door and linoleum:

Fingertips of palm fronds;
fragments of jungle fatigues;
love beads we wore under them.

Acrid, burning wreckage
of a helicopter delivering mail
and Christmas dinners to a hot LZ.

Foul, strange aroma
of mama-san improvising
meals out of fish heads and rice.

Thunderous roar of F-4 Phantoms
climbing in tandem, urgency in their contrails,
distant varumpf of bombs in mountains.

Sing-song complaints
of mothers moved
from ancestral villages,
their children clinging
to them like jungle vines.

Startled starlings erupt
into the safety of an empty sky
at my best friend’s funeral.

Rifle reports from the gleaming
honor guard, me on my way to war,
him, on his way to a cold permanence.

His mother’s sobs in the frozen air,
my exhaled breath in January sunlight.

Today is memorial day.
There are picnics, parades,
Wal-Mart is having one of their biggest sales,
and the car dealer in town is offering double rebates.

My hand is on the doorknob, and I hesitate,
wondering if whatever lives in this room
is tame enough now, the pain lessened
enough for me to bear.

small self-portrait against a bitter landscape

July 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry

the boy is possibly
dead already and almost
certainly dying and still
the box that holds his body
is thrown into the water

ten years old
you understand
and drugged and bound and raped
and i am spitting in the
face of god

i am sitting next to my son’s bed
and listening to his
gentle breathing

i am finding the point
at which i would
kill without regret

final psalm in the book of rusted chrome

July 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry

in the crush of
early morning fog
in this country of
missing fathers i am
waiting for myself

the dead have
all been born as
birdsong here and the
god of starving dogs
paces my street with a
young girl’s blood
staining his
smile

i let the curtain
fall back quietly

let the light
of the poem flicker
and gutter out
but always a half-beat
too late

the house is on fire
without warning

the baby is awake and
screaming
and all the doors are
locked from the
other side

this is the story i
remember
you telling

the final psalm in the
book of rusted chrome
and i never asked
to sing it

never asked to
have it sung
to me

there is still
so much silence i
am hoping to hear