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UNDERGROUND VOICES: POETRY
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JOHN SWEET
in a room, blindly Not lies, really, but truths that can't be proven. The ghosts of Aztecs, of lncas. Parking lots. Palaces. Man rolls the dice to see which of the children will starve, and then the bomb goes off. Seventeen dead, blood everywhere, the pews of the church on fire. The runoff from the mill dumped into the river. Close your eyes and picture it. The first time we met and then, two years later, the first time we made love. Oceans on every side of us, wars to the south, to the east, and I told you you were beautiful. Had no words beyond that, only abstractions. Only need. Thirty seven years old and suddenly no longer blind and, in the mountains, the killers were making new plans. In town, the streetlights were coming on. It seemed almost possible we would find our way home. Indigenous poem this place that we call the age of beliefs these days that push and pull that bleed into one another until all i can remember is the silent glare of sunlight on chrome the shadows of trees as they stutter across the windshield not lost but never quite anywhere and then the simple fact of this poet found dead behind the wheel of a borrowed car these streets that begin to resemble de chirico's doors locked against our arrival and children locked in cages their tentative smiles or their useless screams the smell of burning flesh your faith in humanity in the dream of ordinary shame you should believe in messiahs conceived by man you should believe there will be an end to poets an end to words and to politicians and we will be here in this empty house with nothing between us but the corpses of the disappeared we will consider the moment where christ clenches his hands into bleeding fists the moment where the sun reaches its highest point and the power fails and the prisons are all filled with nothing but priests and widows and i have seen myself reflected in the windows of abandoned buildings and i have turned away i have called my lovers by the wrong name and then laughed and listen whatever you write is meaningless you save no one but yourself and even this is questionable remember god isn't a lie but a punishment think about whatever it is you've done wrong 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). |
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© 2007 Underground Voices |
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