Poetry: John Sweet

John Sweet

a story from the wasted years

and he wasn’t dead but

she was laughing still

1974, i think, or maybe 1992

blood on the sheets in a

late august bedroom

kissed the hollow of his heart

while he thought about

getting dressed

told him she loved him but

she couldn’t remember his name

and he’d never known hers

he’d never seen any reason to

believe in god or to

miss his father

took the right exit but in

the wrong state

pulled up to where his sister’s

house had been just before noon

but it was 1986

the fire had made the local paper

and then been forgotten

ragweed pushed up through the

ribcages of the

sleeping and the homeless

a faded plastic cross at the

highway’s edge

and a stranger’s name

blue sky and sunshine and she

sat beside him with her

hands in her lap

said she wanted to go home now

said it was best if they didn’t

see each other again

***

jul29 (2)

your wasted time your

empty years and then the

baby is born dying

and i get sick of my own

self-pity but not

enough to give it up

i believe in the

weightlessness of fear

the house

failing apart

by silent degrees

got this bastard faith in

trust and love that

cannot be shaken but

what if i’m wrong?

what if each day matters

even less than the

minutes and hours that

make it up?

the truth means nothing 

if all it ever does is

         cause us pain

***

poem in deepening blue light

and no shadows because

everything is shadow

do you see?

a tentative world of

maybes and suicides

five below zero

the fact that i love you

which i use as a shield

like walls

without doors

                     and in this room at this 

exact cracked and bleeding moment

i can look out this window and

see it reflected in a window

fifteen feet away

i can see the space i would

occupy in a better world

the blind horse and the

crippled rider

and i can hear the laughter

we are all freaks but

only some of 

us recognize this

we are all learning to die one

awkward day at a time

ends up being a life and

all we’re left with are

stories about how

easy it was to waste

***

song of the sinking man

all these hottest days of late spring spent

obsessing over the grey despair of

february, and why not?

there is only hope and hopelessness,

endlessly circling one another

this woman framed in the pale light of a

bedroom window and when you ask if

she’ll be the one who betrays you,

she laughs

says it’s not that simple, but

doesn’t this feel like a lie?

weren’t the teeth of christ filed down to

jagged points for a reason?

listen

you were told the same shit about

inheriting the earth as the rest of us,

so why would you ever think

you’re special?

why would you bow down to

anyone demanding fealty?

learn the faces of your enemies

and then learn their weaknesses

***

the brittle heart

imagine the truth as a variable

the sky as empty of

everything but the sun

let enough time crawl by and

nothing in your past

can be remembered exactly

fill in the empty spaces with

sepia-toned might-have-beens,

with hopeful possibilities,

because you can’t be

god without getting clean

can’t f**k all those fallen saints

if you’re afraid to feel their pain

look

spent a lot of time driving through

dying towns searching for

things that were no longer there

wrote a lot of suicide notes 

disguised as poems

stayed up late waiting for

all those wounds to heal

then woke up every morning

wrapped in bloodstained sheets

do you see the punchline here?

are you tired of late autumn,

of winter,

of children massacred for the

blurry concept of freedom?

what about all that time wasted

kissing the frost from your

lover’s eyes?

it has to be obvious by now

the room will be cold no

matter how many books you burn

the house will fall no matter

how many spikes you

drive through christ

we cannot hope to be anything 

but footnotes in the history 

of neverending despair

***

heretic

collision isn’t fatal but

the blood offers possibilities

tv on the wrong channel and

the president speaks of raping babies

shouts about the importance of wealth,

the need for vengeance,

the illusion of victory and

everything spoken through a

mouthful of sawdust and dogshit and

then the man with the gun laughs

says there’s no such thing

as something new

says this, and then he takes

his own life and, in a world without

safety, there can only be promises

kept or promises broken

can only be darker shades of  

grey and red

the two of us alone in a 

stranger’s room and

waiting for the first light of day

***

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 A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).

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Setu, April 2022