JOHN SWEET - POEMS

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).
 

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​                 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