4.6.26

Two Poems by John Sweet

i do not like anything anymore

and everyone here not dead
is dying,
and so what are we
still waiting for?

stick around as
long as you want, but the
future was never going
to be anyone’s
friend


portrait w/ still life, c. 1984

you and i like some frightened
child’s dream of blue skies

no words,
only images

the sleepy deaths of
summer afternoons on
burnt hill road

the inevitability of powerlines

you grow up and then you
move away and then
you stop believing in the idea of home and,
when you drown,
you do it quietly

you do it well

the trick here
is to pay attention

study the art of passive suicide

let the junkies dig their sad little graves,
let the priests be fattened for slaughter

zero is the
only number that matters

all kingdoms fall

never thought about this when
i was kissing you,
when i was undressing you, when the
spaces between us had disappeared

never considered mortality

never breathed in the poison
of government, of religion,
of false morality

was too busy laughing to
believe in those
next 30 years of unrelenting drought