John Sweet continues to send his cryptic missives from the rural wasteland 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 collection is APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press). the gift of failure, which is not for everyone rain and then no rain and then rain again white sun in a silver haze on a sunday afternoon and the smell of dogwood the past repeated endlessly fear of life and the fear of death and the point where they meet like a target laid over your heart birdsong and the screams of crows the sound of my children laughing at the forest’s edge at some point in their lives they will prove that i can’t protect them forever, and then what? every last hope is nailed to the wall escape is only temporary i keep running towards the sun, but all it ever does in this town is rain through the forest of broken stars finger comes away wet with blood on the morning the next great war is invented man calls to tell me picasso is dead feels like i should care but the car needs new brakes and my youngest son has another ear infection feels like all truths are so much less important than the lies i’ve spent my entire life inventing like god is just one more disease waiting for a cure you cut out the poisoned part of the soul and what’s left has no choice but to shine with the undying light of hope small grace in the age of ruin and it’s not that i wish you dead, but sometimes all i’m left with is the truth sometimes the trees can do nothing to hold back the sun, and we stand in their shadows and cast none of our own we speak of belief with our broken hands hold each other blindly in curtained rooms wait for the future like the ghosts of so many slaughtered children too high, too long 25 years burned down in a town where all streets circle back on themselves where all houses cast only the palest of shadows in late march sunlight all back yards stripped won to bone small tornadoes of brittle leaves and the wind with a sound like christ on the cross all wires wrapped tight, bind the baby’s ankles & wrists, the child chained to the closet floor and the teenage girls with their suicide drugs taste of creosote and of rust and skin like silk like sugar painted delicate shades of blue sing happy birthday sing eleanor rigby try to think of a death that will matter more to you than your own
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