John Sweet
dear kathryn
feels like being alive,
like breathing,
nothing but sunlight and blue sky
at the end of winter,
the gentle collapse of dreaming cities,
of sleeping prophets,
and i am here in this room where
one wants to leave
i am weeping over kirchner’s bones
am letting the crows
pick them clean
no one will ever go hungry
in a world filled with
so many frightened gods
poem for the idea of never letting yrself be seen
each day like a failed suicide beneath the
late september sun, right?
no point fucking around
with the niceties
the ship is lost at sea,
is filled with fire,
is the desert your father always dreamt of
men with the heads of vultures
palaces built of barbed wire and broken bones.
but it’s ok, kid
just because everything’s your fault
just because our days are numbered
the sky,
though
cerulean blue and infinite and
how can today be
the day you hang yourself?
how can anyone blinded by the future
see clearly
what stands right in front of them?
fuck
we were lied to from day one, ok?
put no trust in words
place no faith in humanity
no gods is one basic truth,
no life after death another
we are here, yes,
but we are already leaving
we are already in the distance
each day is never anything more than
another chance to smile and
say good bye
tongue
and what we have in the here and
now is only the here and now
is only the knowledge that
it will never be enough
that we will only ever be ourselves
call it failure if you want,
then set the church on fire
tell me you need me and
then wait for an answer
have our lives really been
leading up to this one irrelevant point?
listen
i will be the asshole you swear you love and
then i will be the one you hate forever
i will hate myself
will laugh at the
deaths of anonymous children and
what i actually want is distance
a wall
an ocean of fire with you on one side and
me nowhere to be found and
listen
what i want is to grow old and
be filled with regret
to realize you were the one
to understand that all possibilities
have bled themselves dry
a dinosaur, finally, caught up in
the tar of a life never truly lived
hope/defiance
treat the past like a plague and
the future like a curse
teach me to be well
one, by definition,
will rule out the other
i fill the last sunlit days of winter
with idle thoughts of suicide
i send poems to the west coast,
but no promises
my youngest son appears in
the doorway and tells me
he loves me
laughs, then
runs down the hall
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate New York. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis. His latest poetry collections include A Flag on Fire is a Sign of Hope (2019 Scars Publications) and A Dead Man, Either Way (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).
Essay and more art by Dean Monogenis
John Sweet’s Books at Amazon:
A Flag on Fire is a Sign of Hope
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