John Sweet sends greeting from the rural wastelands of upstate New York. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the need to continuously search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest collections are A NATION OF ASSHOLES W/ GUNS (2015 Scars Publications) and APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press).
somnabul
feels like a dream of
dying, like i’ve lost my name
in the sunlight
the water is glass, the glass
is chrome, and all sounds reach
us from great distances
the canyon leads to the ocean
the house has no walls
has no ceilings, no roof, and
when you open your mouth
i can no longer hear what
you’re saying
when you drive away, i
can no longer taste your smile
in the back of my throat
the great flood
man on fire in the
back yard,
laughter,
sunlight and birdsong
children in tears but
this is to be expected
send them to bed
without supper
drive down to the
store for more beer and
another pack of
cigarettes
come home to find
every room empty
but no, this is not a poem about katherine linn
before i became who i am now and
before we became hopeless,
this is what i want
summer or even fall but
not winter, not ever
no phone calls bringing me the
news of my father‘s death
no pale blue rooms
because there has never been any
beauty in regret
listen
ice forms here
even on the sunniest days
animals chew off their legs to
escape the traps we’ve laid and then
bleed to death on the sides of
anonymous hills and can you
laugh at the irony?
will you allow your children to be
sent off to wars that can
never be won?
will you vote just because you’ve
been told that it’s the
only way to create change?
jesus christ
open your fucking eyes
a letter from dismas
cold blue skies and dead
trees and
all the wasted days
a god who makes no sound
which is just another way of saying
a god that never existed
gotta turn towards the obvious
at some point
and learn to embrace it
gotta stand on
your own skinny legs
your parents fuck you up
but you move on
the drugs leave you empty and
the sunlight burns your eyes
and what if one minus one
ends up being less than nothing?
the truth is that truth is neither
a friend nor an enemy
the world of skin and glass is
a gift
just waiting to be stolen
my hands always claimed to
know this before my heart
the last great day
couldn’t stop
laughing at the
animals left there
dying in pools of
blood couldn’t
stop breathing
couldn’t run or
sing just stood
there in the late
afternoon sunlight
holding you and
kissing you and
and laughing and
all around us
the sound of
empires
collapsing
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