July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
what you want is
nothing less
than everything
this is not uncommon
the history books are
filled with murdered tyrants
the ground with forgotten
suicides
i sit at this desk
too often
obsessing over unpaid bills
i lose sleep
i yell at the baby
i watch my right hand
chop off the left
there is the day job
and the night job
and my pocket full of change
for the pay phone
i am the voice my wife
hates to hear through
fifteen miles of wire
the man my friends
speak badly of
i have no use for poets
for poetry
or for the bones dug up by
beaten dogs
anger is a fuel
and self-pity a drug
but this you already knew
if there is money
to be made in selling
your fear
i will do it
nothing is so dirty it
can never be spent
July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this is
further west
away from the drowning girl’s
blackened bones
away from my son’s
beautiful smile
a motel room in
a pointless town
afternoon sunlight through
half-open drapes
and a partial view of
the interstate
in the bathroom a young mother
twenty-two or -three
naked in the tub and with
her wrists cut
wide open
the postcards in
the nightstand drawer left
blank
the bible stolen or
possibly
never there at all
every poem a man might
ever hope to write
hung unspoken and
just out of reach in
the shimmering
air
July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
we are safe in
this cheap motel room
we are
approaching drunk
and we are mostly silent
mostly in love
i am still
in the early stages of being
a failed writer
your sister’s miscarriage
is still
four years away
with any luck
we will find other ways
to measure these weightless
spans of time
