amanzinita
and even in the cold april rain,
nothing grows
from the dead man’s bones
even in the act of hope
there is a moment of collapse
a house on fire
all of these small animals
dying frightened in the underbrush and
who is it that sings the
song of joy?
who is it that loves you with
words instead of actions?
not all empty moments
are wasted
[we are nothing and nothing will save us]
baby says she’ll burn the
flag for psychic warmth
says the best jokes are the ones
falling from the lips of dead men
look
no point trying to be
de chirico’s secret lover on a cloudy
day
step into the labyrinth with your
shroud wrapped tight around you
cast your vote,
rapist of werewolf,
whore or goat
ask baby what she thinks, says she
thinks she needs to get high
says maybe shoot the neighbours says
maybe touch the sun
fuck the poets and the priests and
all their meaningless words
butcher the jackals, slaughter the
coyotes,
and baby says what she wants
is a baby
ask her what about the
paedophile teachers, the suicidal cops?
ask her what about the next world war?
tells her living in fear is
the wave of the future
let her drink the blood of dying
species
let her cut out the
hearts of sleeping witches
small joys in a nation of ruined
machines and
when he asks here again
she says all she really wants is a
clean needle and a bathroom stall of
her very own
says she’d like to believe her
mother loved her or that her father was
a
better person than the asshole
she remembers
tells you she’s hungry but all you
have to offer are bones
tells you she’s tired but it’s still
another hour before we get there
it’s the dull grey fog of driving to
work at 5:30 in the morning
while she sleeps on the couch
says all of her dreams are dreams of
death
and he tells her his wife doesn’t
understand the need for trains
in the distance
says she doesn’t have any use for the
idea of circles within circles, of
iridescent midnight, and
baby smiles
opens her arms
believes without doubt in the
endless warmth of all those things
that will never come to be
invisible song for cautious suicides
a belief in silence and a
belief
in distance
a
small space set aside for
breathing
on monday morning
build
your house here and
dig
a grave for each ex-lover
let
flowers grow from their bones
grey
sunlight and
unspoken
apologies and,
every
hour, another war
another
name to add to the
list
of innocent victims and it will
be
your job to memorize them
it
will be your fate to become
the
one that got away
one
hundred thousand poems of
loss
and regret but they will
never
add up to a lifetime
admit
it
we
can only measure
the
ideas that mean the most
in
terms of distance, in
magnitudes
of negative space
one
of us here and
one
of us there and then
nothing
but the shape of regret
in
between
lost in the forest of blind prophets
words as weapons on some
gleaming
sunday afternoon, says
i love you says
i hate you and she’s a liar
says
we are always reaching
the end, but then what?
wind
across the river’s surface
small
children asleep in
pale
blue rooms
each
poem is only one small moment and
every
moment is equally unimportant
rain
and
then sunlight
god
as a failure
of
imagination
as
an externalization of fear
we
live and we die and
then
we’re forgotten
and
what more did you want?
why
did you think falling in love
would
be the ultimate victory?
i
am not a believer in pain,
but
here we are anyway
last story from the edge of someone else’s city
and nikki says
the only things
she's ever wanted
are love and violence
says one's as good
as the other
and they're usually
the same,
and i meet her
in the parking lot
behind the k-mart
kiss her
in the shadows
of the sodium lights
and i could swear
i've known her
all my life
John
Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a
firm believer in writing as
catharsis, and in compassionate nihilism. His poetry collections include A FLAG
ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY
(2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).
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