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
