Poetry: Selections from John Sweet

violence

last letter from the dead poet, but

none of us understands what

this means at the time

                   of course

 

last day of summer and

all you know for certain is

that you’ve wasted your life

 

found christ then

lost the fucker but there are

                    cheaper drugs

 

maybe sleep with the daughters of

men who drank with

dead presidents

and was it a good time?

 

do you seriously have

nothing better to write about?

 

listen

 

there are always reasons to breathe and

there are always reasons to kill and

there are all of us lost beneath

the poisoned sun

 

the vast emptiness between

pinochet and neruda and we are

always being dragged into the future

without weapons but with other

people’s reasons to hate

 

we are always stoned

when the bad news arrives

 

mandy gone in a car crash

down in virginia but are you

going to waste your life crying?

 

are you going to turn

self-pity into an artform?

 

this is the deal

 

you can either be your father

or your father’s son

 

can either be the victim or the ghost

 

stay hidden in plain sight long enough

and you will live to see

everything you’ve ever loved

                                     stolen

in the clear blue light of the world that exists

you are not the

dead man i dreamt of but

       you are the same and

                 he is the father

 

this is the house but

we are not the owners

 

indifferent paintings on

cracked and peeling walls

 

indifferent poet at a

chipped and scarred desk, says

he doesn’t expect you to

understand his pain

 

asks for a drink

              a cigarette

              a light

but his wife’s closet is empty

 

we are all in love with

the wrong truths

 

some clueless asshole tells you

you’re a god and you choose to

          believe him and now the

         whole weekend is fucked

 

the whole month is ruined

 

a cheap motel room at

the city’s edge

 

free hbo and a view of the

interstate and it’s here that i

finally realize what a serious

business hating yourself really is

 

poet’s wife asks for a drink

                          for a cigarette

                           or a light but

i need to get back home

 

the children no longer trust me

when i tell them I love them

 

the pictures they draw hang crooked

on smudged and faded walls,

the ghosts refuse to fade even in

                the brutal light of day

 

all i’m asking from you is

some small amount of belief and

all i’m saying is that you’re

not the dead man

 

this is his house,

but the mother is crying

 

says she lost her son in the war

 

says her daughter ran away

 

                  smell of blood and the

taste of gasoline and the windows

have all been boarded over

 

afternoon is wasted trying to

find a door that still opens

 

rest of the day

is burned to the ground

…and the heart a broken bell

says she’s tired of being dead and

what the hell am i supposed to do?

 

can’t have power without money

 

can’t have god without the devil

 

late august sunlight after

four days of rain and i kiss her

feet when she asks

 

i kiss her breasts

 

lick the tears from her cheeks and

wait for the moment to pass and

what we are is finished

but not quite yet

 

what the space between us sounds

like is an unspoken apology

 

no one wants to talk about the

future when it never amounts to

anything more than children

sleeping in a house on fire

[just a clever boy on the border]

or a silence so large it leaves

no room for lies,

or a war

 

one corpse and then another and

then another until this bottomless ocean is filled

 

until this song i’ve written for

the hopeless and the doomed shoots

to the top of the charts

 

a good beat and a catchy chorus and

and all the kids want to do is fuck

 

all they want to do is burn

 

get high behind locked doors, get

down on all fours and crawl over broken glass,

and it feels so good when the blade

slides in just below the ribs

 

feels like neon lights and polished chrome and

who fingertips are you sucking on

on the day your sister runs away?

 

whose car do you crash when

your parents are out of town?

 

nothing but good fun with the house on fire

 

man with a gun outside the burger king

waiting for just the right family

to open fire on

 

all sides equal and

all hatred learned and do you

remember the day you were born?

 

have you foreseen the

moment of your death?

 

 

 

a lot of empty hours in between,

even with the video games,

                the crystal meth,

               the internet porn

 

a season of failure, maybe,

or maybe an age

 

the only person you’ve ever truly loved

lost in a dying town in a

distant state

 

the need to breathe, even after the

air has all turned to poison,

and you open your eyes at the exact

moment the trigger is pulled

 

you watch the news and

wait for a reason

 

wait for forgiveness

 

and it’s only a matter of time before

all hope darkens, you understand,

before it twists into some bitter new shape,

and so it’s best just to take what you can

 

it’s the plague suddenly returned

in your lifetime,

10,000 dead and counting,

and if you don’t know any of them,

                      does it really matter?

 

the easy answer is no, but then

you’re the root of all evil

 

you’re the reason christ was crucified,

but the fucker came back didn’t he?

 

made some speeches and kissed some babies

 

won the election, went to disneyland,

took a bullet in the back of the head on

some endless sunfilled afternoon, and i’ve

still got his first album on vinyl

 

i’ve still got that scar from where

the knife slipped when i was nine

 

remember where i was when

cobain pulled the trigger, but not who

 

had no thoughts of outliving my father

until the moment arrived, and

then i had no one left to hate but myself

 

turned everyone i loved into

                            the enemy

and then got down to fighting the war

if fear would change your mind

so, fame or suicide or

maybe somewhere in between

 

life and not life and then

fourteen straight days of rain

 

st anthony with his thumb out

at the freeway’s edge

because anywhere is better than here

 

because any amount of pain

is better than feeling nothing at all

 

and it sounds like a lie

even before

the words have begun to fade

always approaching lost

a nation of assholes w/ guns

hoping for someone to shoot

 

a suicide’s last hit song

on the radio

 

end of winter, probably, and the

earth scraped raw,

and where do we go now?

 

the past has been wasted,

the future will get its turn

 

do you need this in writing?

 

1968, 1998, 2018,

doesn’t really matter

 

dead man on the balcony,

empty faces in the crowd, and

people will always tell you that

hope is a choice but just

saying it doesn’t make it true

 

just being alive doesn’t

make what you have a life

 

i’m thinking of myself here,

but i know i’m not alone

John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).