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

let the idea be the map, let the palaces all burn by John Sweet

born beneath stubborn hills,

near barren water

no faith but the 

faith we create, right?

cities as mausoleums

poetry written in semen

find just one person in your

life with the gift of vision but

never learn her name,

                     or worse

learn her name, but only

when it’s too late to matter

middle-aged and lost in the

desert of upstate new york and

where the hell have you ever been but

this particular slice of nowhere?

how much of your life have you

wasted believing that

falling in love would

be the act that saves you?

look

the days have always been

beyond our control

the wolves keep circling

closer around the children, but

they wait for a signal

whichever man tells you

no one needs to die

is the one to kill first

 

 

John Sweet