John Sweet, 34, lives with his wife and
two young sons in the wastelands of upstate
New York. He has been writing for 21 years,
and publishing in the small press for 15.
He has no philosophy for writing, no use for
"schools" of poetry, and is violently opposed
to any traditional ideas of what a poem should
be. He is the author of more than a dozen
chapbooks, and the recently released full-length
collection Human Cathedrals (
www.ravennapress.com).
the poem should always be
shows up at my door
on a tuesday afternoon when
her boyfriend
has taken off again
undresses and
says she's stood at
the far edge of every abandoned field
in every dying town i
can name
has buried her father
has buried a brother and
she tells me she believes there are
other ways to live than beaten
by the fists of love
tells me the poem should be more
than a
softer way of screaming
says she's an artist
but
i have yet to see her bleed
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lullaby, approximately
a soft moment
finally
with my son asleep in
the tarnished silver light
of the afternoon
a chance to turn away
from the raped and the beaten
and from the empty spaces
left behind by the
disappeared
a chance to breathe
the air cold and
mostly poison but
all we have
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searching for a father: last chapter in the book of wasted
always the news that
days
pollock is dead
always this lack of faith in things
i cannot see or hold
and the killer has confessed
but the girl's body can't
be found
eight years of digging
until we've forgotten she ever
had a name
and the battered women weep
and the suicides close their eyes and
the flags are all hung
backwards and upside down
the houses burn slowly
and from the inside out
and what about the fools who
view writing as an act of salvation?
what about the vultures growing fat
on bukowski's rotting flesh?
they exist like you or me
and the sunlight pins them
to their shadows and
each day holds the possibility
of being the last
a knotted rope or a
car moving out of control or
a man suddenly clawing for breath
on a cold kitchen floor
the faint sound of his wife's voice
as she screams into the phone
a stranger calling in the
first grey light of morning to
give me the news
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meditation in the age of absolutes
pure sunlight through gauze
on a sunday morning
white sky laid gently across
the rooftops of all these
dead and dying houses and i'm
finally beginning to understand
what de chirico was trying to say
each day is not a question
but an answer
each room has the potential to
become the room of hanged men
and the children smile and they scream
and their hands are small and
almost beautiful
are streaked with pastel dust
and tiny crosses litter the sidewalk
and the message JESUS SAVES
and what you smell is poison
and what you taste is gasoline
and eventually a crime will
be discovered of which
we are all guilty
there will be
four small bodies laid out
on the bed and a fifth found
floating in the tub and
some among us will speak
of forgiveness
some will scream for
crucifixion
we have reached
a point where no other
choices remain
Top of the Page.
poem, accidentally
pale sunlight shining on
all of the reasons we
hurt each other
flags that cast shadows
but that
hold no meaning
it gets to this point where
nothing is expressed
where there are only images
and a sense of
failure on every level
my wife locked in another room
her sister
bleeding on the bathroom floor
two hundred miles away
and later
i sit in a small apartment
filled with strangers and read
what i've written and
later still
i regret everything
too much has been given away
or stolen
the child is found naked
and filthy
at the edge of a desert
is four days dead and
beyond the need for poetry
and still the words
are written
all of these small
frightened voices saying
look at me
all of these empty prayers
that go unheard
anger turned inward
then exploding
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man ray as the father of my country
something distant or
blurry
against too much grey landscape
an act of violence maybe
or maybe only the residue
bones
which are always
a good place to start
a house made of ash and smoke
obvious things
but no less painful because of it
and in the absence of war
we find smaller ways to amuse ourselves
children disappear
gods are invented
and martyrs crucified in
their names
and all of this has
been written down somewhere
and it will all be crossed out
at some later date
will all be written again with
a few minor changes
numbers raised or lowered and
names deleted
and for now you drive
a small action in a world where
no small action
is without consequence
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september 14th, the age of minotaurs, the smell of decay
saturday afternoon in
a room with curtains and the
wind that blows through them
damp sunlight from a white sky
the shimmer of leave son the trees
and what frightens me is that
i might forget this simple beauty
what frightens me is
the sound of planes overhead
and also the absence of it and there is
always this need to escape
this need to stay hidden
and the front door of any house on
this quiet street opens and the
burning girl walks out
five years dead
and her name forgotten and
all she wants is to be held
or maybe resurrected
maybe forgiven
despite the fact that
nothing that happened was
ever her fault
and sometimes all i want is
the power to
make the guilty bleed
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His book Human Cathedrals: Poems by John Sweet is available for $10 from Ravenna Press. Email rantala@gte.net for details
Letter to the Author: John Sweet
at Bleedinghorse99@aol.com