John Sweet

"A Subtle Threat"

you with your anger aimed
like a gun
and that i will never kneel
before your grave

and you with your god and
me with mine
and the way we measure
distances

the bones we lay between us

the small deaths and
the larger ones and
not if but when

not why but how many
and that i'm too busy
holding onto you to
hear the rain

that i'm too far away to
remember how you feel

that nothing i say
really ever makes a sound

"Dali in His Old Age, Remembering the Bleeding Horse, Wondering How he Ever Ended Up Alone"

or broken glass trapped beneath
fragile december sunlight
or the pale grey shadows of bones

the desert
where it meets the ocean

the factories where they dissolve
into rust and weeds

into powerlines stretched tightly
over empty parking lots

over empty fields

and the bones of indians buried
beneath soft waves of static

the hands of killers

of sixteen year old boys
holding shotguns

holding the naked bodies of thirteen year old girls
and then the highways

the fact that i've poisoned my children

the fact that i love them

and somewhere in between the two
the truth
and somewhere over texas
there are burning bodies falling
from the sky

there is the president's daughter
on her hands and knees
with the idea of america being
forced down her throat

with the taste of it like tar
or like gasoline

the feel of it like violence
and there is a point where she
looks up and smiles and
begs for more

there is the news of
someone you know dying horribly
in the last purple light of day

the sound you make after
the phone has been hung up

these walls
that protect you from nothing

"Bodies, Falling"

or the first time i see you or
even the last

it all gets confused in my mind

the phone ringing at two in the morning
and the taste of your sweat and
the absolute silence as i sat in
the room of empty chairs

and i think we had names

i think the soldiers were
raping the women before killing them

it wasn't a war but a cleansing

it was only real if
it happened to us and it didn't
and at some point i become a father

i learn that i'm mortal

i learn about fear

the list of people i would gladly destroy
grows longer with each passing day

the house here are all white
and the sky burned grey

you look for christ
down these empty streets and
find nothing

i lock the doors at night
and never think for a second that
i'm safe

we call it a life and it passes

"The False Safety of Distance"

cold rain on dead trees and
the sudden fact of this emptiness

a landscape without houses
or a house without walls

a child found hung in the bathroom

electricity through the wires

and we gave birth to this place
but then it grew too large

the factories tasted like cancer
and the politicians gave us more

i answered the door and
the woman who stood there was on fire

was bones poking through
charred flesh
and she asked if i still loved her

asked if the baby had a name and
what i remember is
being fourteen

my father drunk and trying to
teach me how to drive

screaming faster! as we roared down
some potholed back road at
sixty miles an hour
and then thirteen years later he was dead
and all i wanted was to forget him

all i found in my back yard were
memories of the disappeared
and small piles of broken teeth

pictures of children or of parents

not clues but talismans and
when i stood in the shadow of the garage
my own shadow was swallowed up

when the first drops of rain
began to fall
i was standing at the edge of the highway
with a shovel and a plastic bag

i was looking for something i
didn't want to find

i closed me eyes and
there it was

"Nowhere"

bitter white sunlight on
the frozen mud and every shadow
a starving child
and have you been here before?

are you there right now?

maybe just driving
through upstate new york
in the relentless emptiness between
november and december

maybe with tanguy's bones in
the seat next to you

a town approaching or one
disappearing in the rearview mirror

this idea that you're moving
which is a lie

the feeling that you're drowning
which is almost always true

the people you love or hate
laughing as they pull you down

"River of Tears"

this is your voice in
the silence between us

these are the ideas of god
and godlessness set
aside

my hands cold and
never holding you

your fears
which have come to define me

being sorry
which is one form of defeat

and what i wait for is
the day
you tell me you hate me

what i believe in are
acts of futility

the hands of saviors
nailed to church doors

anger that can be
directed outwards

and the question
isn't who you'll save but
who you'll let down
and the days are all weights

the truths i give you
look emaciated when placed
against what you've built
in your mind

this person i've become
has to be someone's fault

give me this much at least

"Landscape With Entropy"

snow on dead factories in dying towns
here in the last days of the
season of doubt
and this job that you're given

to watch your father be devoured by cancer

this third eye you've developed
to find the blood

these afternoon you waste walking
down grey sidewalks past
strangers you almost think you recognize

the hours you spend missing your children
and then the time that you spend
yelling at them
and what it feels like is failure
and what you are is trapped

a house with dry rot

a small piece of land that's been poisoned

and were you told that
within the sickness lies the cure?

and did it feel like a lie?

or this woman who turns to you in
the fading light
and asks if you still love her

these machines that keep you company
in this sterile room

the smell of sickness
and the sound of drowning and
the excuses you make when you leave

the fact that you have
nowhere to go

your eyes shut tight
as you merge onto the freeway

"Chroma"

and on monday afternoon
the doctor says it might be cancer
and my words all run dry

the sky threatens rain or
possibly snow

the bodies keep piling up in
countries that mean nothing to me

for causes that
no one can ever remember

and when i get home
my oldest son laughs as he
jumps into my arms

"Empathy"

give away your money

your food

your clothes

burn your house to the ground
in the middle of winter
then consider

what is it you're
approaching?

god?

understanding?

watch the skin melt
from your bones

watch your children die

lose your name

your dignity

everything and everyone
you've ever loved

you're getting closer
now

Confession

or the deaths of children
which i will always hold against
whatever version of god
you believe in

the sounds this soldier makes
as the bullet tears out
his throat

november
in the age of gold

bare trees spilling their shadows
down quiet streets

someone's daughter raped on
a cold linoleum floor

always the need to define love
in ragged shadows of anger
and always the refusal to apologize

the weight of this house at
four in the afternoon
while both of my sons sleep

with my father's ashes cold and
the wind finding its way into
this silent room

the silence breaking up into
the sounds of fear and mortality

my heart
no longer in this