john sweet
John Sweet is a poet from the extreme eastern portion of
deep cleveland, also known as upstate new york, depending on
your map. His work has been published at Burning Word, Locust
Magazine, and Thunder Sandwich. Several chapbooks are available
at Kitty Litter Press and Via Dolorosa Press. bleedinghorse99@aol.com
one hand
or maybe god is
what you're looking for
this feeling like
a loaded needle finding
a vein when
you hit the child
and i've been there too
the sky
any number of brilliant shades
of grey and the days all
blackened at the edges and
the knowledge that you've become
the worst kind of coward
one hand finding
the blood of the other and
knowing it to be good
all versions
of the future destroyed
with the ease of
addiction
postcard to sylvia plath from burnt hill road
no one dies for
your sins
picture religion as a
hammer moving
through a newborn's skull
consider the ocean and
the planes that crash into it and
the fact that not all of the
bodies are found
consider the desert
fill it with rusted cars and
teenage mothers and
women bleeding on
the bathroom floors of
anonymous trailers
call it home
in the house of sorrows
sunday
afternoon
tears streak the walls
in the house
of sorrows
she carries her
unborn child from
room to room
beautiful and lost
and unafraid
only one of these
will save her
beneath a cattle car sky
burroughs
finally dead
and the flags fly
at half mast outside
of every shooting
gallery
small boys play
on railroad tracks
they fall into rivers
named after
massacred indians
and anger swallows
everything i write
the windows crack
and leak blood onto
the porch
i love you
but not enough
or maybe too much
and i dig
your father's bones up
in the k-mart parking lot
i give them to you
when everything else
has failed
and we drive west
beneath a
cattle car sky
past fields of
burning crosses
past runaway daughters
left strangled in
drainage ditches
and we tell each other
we'll know where we are
when we get there
it's a small lie
compared
to all the rest
self-portrait with my chest cut open to reveal a beating
heart
do you remember
pollock's last summer?
the war was over but
the future had already begun
to fall apart
and what the hell
could my father have been thinking
as he looked into my tiny face
thirteen years later?
it seems like i should have some idea
but the truth is that
we never knew each other
the truth is that
the crown of feathers never existed
is that the only things
he ever gave me were reasons to hate him
and then reasons to hate myself
this is what i remember
six years after his death
not a monster
but a brick wall without doors
a pair of hands clenched into
useless fists
and all i can give you
of course
is a blind man's portrait of the sun
a small speech maybe
on the necessity of anger or
the inevitability of violence
and can you think of a life
you'd like to see destroyed?
tell me no
and i'll call you a liar
i refuse to apologize for being human
i refuse to believe in a
world without love
even if it saves no one
it matters
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