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
June 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
not love
but fucking in a
domesticated room
where the pictures have
all been turned to
the walls
you call it religion
maybe
or maybe you’ve learned
to say nothing at all
maybe the
illusion of escape is
all that’s needed
i have bought this lie
myself
June 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
my wife
dreams of blood and
what can i do?
one a.m.
and then two
and we sit together in
the baby’s room
listen to his
tiny breathing while
insomniac poets
pray to
an indifferent god
while the newly dead
wash ashore in
california
and what is the
end result of history
but this?
five children in a
town too close to my own
who find a stray dog
in a park and decide to
torture it
decide to hang it from a
basketball hoop with
a dirty length of rope and
beat it with sticks
and at some point we
drift back to sleep
with the hope of
waking up clean
and at some point
there is nothing left
to hold onto and
so we fall
June 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
imagine the men
forgotten and dead in
fresh pits
imagine their
wives and daughters
at gunpoint
in the rape camps
no one will ever admit
or no
don’t imagine it
it’s already happening
in a country that has
nothing to do with
your own life
it’s over and done with
in the time it takes
a boot to crush a
newborn’s skull
this one small sound
alone
should be enough to
bring us all to
our knees
June 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
not quite silence in the
gentle hum of early afternoon
but maybe something softer than
the screams of crows
something more human than the
room of hanged men
and how many years now since
my last escape?
how many hours wasted staring into
dirty mirrors or
through warped panes of glass?
what i see is that at
some point in the future i will be
asking my son for forgiveness
at some point
i will speak of my own father
for the last time
will spit out his ashes while
faceless men in the towns i’ve escaped from
beat their wives and girlfriends with
the brutal fists of love
and one half of the truth
is that i never saved anyone
and the other half
is that i never knew anyone who wanted to be saved
i had nothing better to offer than
the holes that had already
been dug
this is history on a personal level
the possibility of failure
through indifference
of love turning to hate
and then hatred to suicide
and if my mother sheds any tears
over the sudden holes that
appear in her life
i make a point of looking away
if desperate acts of violents leave
any visible scars on the
ones left behind
i don’t want to know
i have already
made up my mind to run
May 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
and he hits you
then brings you flowers
or he just hits you
it’s not a story anymore
it’s a religion
and i choose not to believe
the earth will be consumed
yes
but not in my lifetime
the days will pass too quickly
and the reasons for leaving
will fade
and it’s always someone
a friend
an old lover
or a sister-in-law
and just beyond the brutality
are the sounds of children
playing in the street
the approaching scream of sirens
after a man i’ve never met
finds the brakes too late
and we call this autumn
and the sky is a brilliant blue
and without warmth
the sun is old beyond years
and we have begun
hearing rumors of its death
i have found myself standing
by my son’s bed in
a whiteknuckle rage as
his temperature hangs at 104
the list of people
i would strike dead so that
he might be spared this
is endless
