Poetry: John Sweet

Bio: 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 HEATHEN TONGUE (2018 Kendra Steiner Editions) and BASTARD FAITH (2017 Scars Publications.

this country of polished chrome, these ancient ruins

made a flag from the bones

of dead soldiers, built a nation from

the skins of the natives

raped children in full sight of god

in houses of prayer

in houses of shame where the

water ran black

where the dogs ate what the

priests puked up

and we hid in alleyways

and we started fires where the

homeless slept

we were christ

we had come to stone

his lover

she said pain was better

than feeling nothing at all

st katerina, dragged against her will into a poem against poetry

you stand somewhere in
this metaphorical room

you either say
nothing is poetry
or
everything is poetry
or maybe you believe that it can
only be found and not created and
the people you call your friends
all stare at you sadly

it's the abstract bullshit we pursue
when not living our lives
and the fact that men have
been murdered for it is
a worrying thing

the fact that they have taken
their own sorry lives is almost funny
but my wife refuses to smile

she understands
the need for victims

she has measured the distance between
god and godlessness

and is there a name for
the almost imperceptible pause
after i tell her i love her
before she opens her mouth
to speak?

do the words even matter
when they've been said
a hundred thousand times before?

what frightens me is that
they might

in the season of pagan despair

 no shame in

deliberate blindness on a

rainsoaked afternoon

perfect reflection of a collapsing

building in a flooded parking lot

not poetry

not art

powerlines stretching from

this point of view

to that one

all ideas about faith and

hope lost in the fog

move closer together in a

darkening room

judge direction

with eager hands

the heart in terms of

giving and taking

what is given away with

regret should matter

the oblique 

sunlight in the

spaces between houses

map of loss

geography of both

memory and sorrow and

then what?

find the man with the

crosses carved into his palms

find the one with the head of

a crow,

with the mind of a jackal

the junkie hymns are

what matter here,

and the prayers

of murdered dreamers

gold and myrrh and that

all gifts are weapons

that all lovers

believe in resurrection

the heart betrays the body

                                    yes

but then the

body betrays the soul

ecstasy precedes despair

the desert spreads without

mercy in every direction

  

wilderness

chrome forest filled with dogs,

with the bodies of dogs,

the corpses of children, and do you

remember the ghosts of

franco’s spain?

do you remember the lullabies?

understand -

whatever song you sing will

fill your mouth like poisoned blood

whatever train you put your family on

will be blown up

in the name of something unattainable

and the fact is that god won’t

take sides in any of your wars and

the fact is that even shauna grant

will be forgotten

given time

even jesus christ will pass

out of vogue

i can only be proven right

on this

Setu, April 2019