October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
and i am tired of reading
all of these words i wrote as if
i thought i might actually
know something
i am tired
of these empty notebooks
like mute accusations
if you were in this room
right now
you would smell desperation
would feel a small cool breeze as
the storm pushes its way north
picture it
three years in this house
and i know none of my neighbors
ten years in this town
and i refuse to call it home
and did i pray
at my father’s bedside
in the last days before his death?
no
and does this
make me a bad person?
i’ve been told that it does
and there is a man
who returns what i send him with
a note that says
“these are not poems”
and there is the possibility that
he’s right
there are my hands
crippled with self-doubt
burned and then healed
and then burned again until
they refuse to acknowledge the
simple pain of passing days
and if i don’t call myself
an artist
then i can’t be crucified
as a witch
the logic is subtle
but it’s there
think of war
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this is the hand that
cuts the moon
in two
this is the ghost
do you
remember these myths
or are you someone who
believes in the soft
sweet purity of
childhood?
you can only be one
or the other
you can only be living
or dead
for fifteen years
i had the dream of the
burning house
and then i married
the woman who
grew up in it
i give you this as
final proof
of the lack of god and
you turn away
one of us sees
the ghost
the other a shadow
in between the two is
the desert of our pasts
and the scattered ashes
of old lovers
this is the land
where
the myths were planted
these are
the bones of lost
sailors
there are better things
to be built here
than religion
September 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
sunlight in
an empty room
changes nothing
the mirrors are all blind
the windows slowly melting
and i believe
in the burning girl
i believe in the boy
buried among the redwoods
by his father
these are the myths
my son will inherit
and this is the country
and the politics of fear are not
politics at all
what i call silence
in this house
is actually the sound of
clocks running backwards
what i call sorrow is
actually guilt
despite the fact that i have always
maintained my innocence
and on the day i give up
the last of my teenage heroes
my oldest friend writes
to tell me he won’t be
writing again
a minister’s wife from the
town i grew up in
is found naked and dead on
a stretch of railroad tracks
eighty-five miles to
the north
we are always spending
too much time
measuring distances that
can never be crossed
