Poems
by John Sweet

 

poem of concentric circles

 

wake up to the news of

creeley’s death, some dark

piano music, brakes worn on the car and

eye strain in bright light

 

not young anymore

motherfucker

and you can start bitching about how

things used to be without stopping

to remember how goddamn

miserable you were

 

you can fix the back door but can’t

keep the house from falling down

 

you can stop pretending to care

about other people’s pain,

and so you do

 

 

 

 

 

fade

 

thought about all of

the ways we’d failed

 

all of the ways i’d

failed you

 

held a mirror up to the

sun on the first warm day

of spring & felt my

skin begin to burn

 

knew the world was full of

people wanting to die

for selfish reasons

but i had no use for faith

 

knew that god had

nothing to do

with spirituality

 

closed my eyes in the

motionless heat and

thought about you

some more

 

 

 

 

 

[the hungry and the hanged]

 

or everyone always

dying of cancer

 

no comeback album

 

no need to mow

the lawn

 

dark soon, and then

morning again,

and then what?

 

just tell me what i

want to hear or

don’t tell me

anything at all

 

 

 

 

 

bells/no bells

 

and death to all

yr junkie heroes and

death to all politicians

 

death to the holy men,

to the martyrs and

the compromised saviors,

and death to all of your

secret lovers

 

death to your families,

to all of your friends,

all of your enemies,

and death to you,

of course,

and death to me

 

what other way

could all of this end?

 

 

 

 

 

mixed media, metal on metal

 

most of his life spent waiting for

rain in a sinking house

 

funny shit

 

a deep belief in fear and an

unending fear of death

 

the simple grace of a small

back yard filled with flowers

 

magdalena with her torn and

tortured wings

 

tell her you’ll love her if she’ll

walk into the sea

 

tell her that her

husband’s assassination was

inevitable

 

this is the new world

 

i am the sun in human form

 

am an argument for the

sainthood of lester bangs or at

least of debbie harry and

what if time refuses to

stop in 1978?

 

21st goddamn century

happens with no premonition

 

sweetheart fucked and high

all summer long, lying naked on

the bathroom floor

 

 

 

 

 

 

crawling through warm fields of

sunflowers, face and knees

all cut and bleeding, throat bitten

by christ’s sharpened teeth and

she said her husband was

gone again

 

says her boyfriend

just doesn’t get it

 

has empty hands and a

mouthful of someone else’s poems

 

not wisdom

just words

 

taste of stale faith and wasted

lives and do you remember

pollock laughing as the car

slammed into the tree?

 

explain why the joke is

funny, and it’s ruined

 

set the church on fire

 

place the gun

against the child’s head

 

doesn’t take much strength to

survive in a coward’s world

 

 

 

 

 

the idea of god

 

helicopters in a yellow sky, sound

muted by blankets of heat and the baby is

found partially buried at the

edge of the lawn,

 

mother says she’s innocent says

                    she’s in love and it’s

possible she’s one but not the other and

so the experts are called in

 

the dogs keep worrying the bones

 

no laughter, no tears,

no song but the scream of insects

 

no hope but the

broken hope of fools

 

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