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JOHN SWEET
the face of god, burned what i am is an asshole a father and a son and a man standing at a window watching september rain pool in the driveway a ghost with teeth and what i hate is poetry poets politicians the way we all become whores at some point and maybe i'm moving too fast here maybe cobain was concerned with more than his own pain and misery i've heard this kind of talk before have listened to a junkie father explain why he was a victim and when he was asked if he knew where his children were he said that wasn't the point said the past has nothing to do with the present and in the morning i walk jonathon to the bus stop and feel the last good heat of summer wash over me in the evening i drive past the apartment where a woman i never knew was murdered by her lover i consider how far faith can take any of us i consider the idea of fear as a weapon the idea of hope as a bottomless pit the way that nothing we say is ever exactly the truth gira the yards filled with weeds and broken toys cigarette butts dirty needles the hammer of god held by the clenched fist of government fear an animal caught in a trap dying slowly crushed bone and mangled flesh laughter cold wind blowing through an empty room through the ribcages of starving children the same fucking poem written again and again the same 500 million people it will never save this baby screaming until the father crushes its skull the truth is a length of rope, the past a tightening noose fifteen years later and the memory of this dog again chained to a tree in front of an empty house and the noises it made in its throat while i stood at the edge of the road and watched the name of the girl who said she'd always love me my eyes closed in a dark room all of the hours i've wasted waiting to feel this pure again small moment of ascension in the desperate season sunday afternoon in this house of dead mouths with my wife and son asleep my faith questioned by a stranger while my left hand crawls slowly across the prophecies laid down by the right and there is a moment where the sun finds a gap between the clouds and the hills and the ordinary decay of this dead-end street is suddenly transformed into something beautiful and there are the swaying bodies of all the witches hung in the name of god history is meant to be ugly what we learn from the crucifixions and the massacres is an addiction to power a contempt for the poor and i am not a believer in poetry or in the ability of words to function as weapons i was there when the bleeding horse was brought to its knees i understand why the weakest are chosen as sacrifices what i don't want to know are their names 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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