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JOHN SWEET
the sun, the clouds, the bottomless sky this desperation and this age of silence these corpses found with their hands tied behind their backs these nameless women and these laughing holy men and these children and if some of them are yours the world won't end if the war is won it doesn't mean it's over can you even imagine how many people don't give a shit whether you live or die? do you really believe that any of these whores you've elected would sacrifice their own lives to save yours? or this he was getting high when his girlfriend came over and he was laughing at something she'd said when the guy she was fucking shot him in the chest he was found behind the wheel of a stolen car in a bus station parking lot and i remember smiling when i heard the news and i have no use for god have no faith in poetry no patience for the sad desperate scribblings of the weak and the lame and i number myself among them i love my wife and my sons but it means nothing in the world of money and weapons it means nothing in the rape camps or in the shallow ditches where the decapitated bodies of pregnant teenage girls are dumped and no one ever told lorca this and look where it got him no one promised you salvation but you still believe it will arrive you lock your doors while the soldiers smash in your windows you run naked and burning down some pitted dirt road towards a man who wants nothing but to take your picture the war is lost without any of us ever knowing it had begun say what you want the sound of crows at six a.m. and then the filthy hands of priests your children devoured by god fucked by dogs and what i believe in is the loss of faith and what i preach is the inevitability of addiction the bleeding horse dragging himself down these sleeping streets through these back yards filled with weeds and broken toys and what matters aren't the cities and towns but the spaces between them the highways like scars through the emptiness over the bones of indians past rusting trailers and burned-out gas stations until all that's left is the point where the hills touch the sky until all that's left is the moment where your voice fades into memory dissolves from words into sound my lungs filled with the poison of it john sweet, 35 and counting, angry, bitter, etc etc, hiding in a pissant town in upstate new york, a believer in very little. a follower of the writings of j. pollock and of the words of h. frayne. too much education, and still a shit job. recent publications include the chapbook Enemy (www.pinkanarchkittypress.com), the full length collection Human Cathedrals (www.ravennapress.com) and the electronic chapbook Silence in the House of Truths (www.tmpoetry.com). |
© 2004 Underground Voices |
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