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JOHN SWEET
John Sweet has been writing for 20 years. His recent work has appeared in
Message of the Muse, Underground Voices, My Favorite Bullet among others. A semi-recent chapbook,
FAMINE, is available from www.leafpresss.ca.
BONE BY BONE
this house where a man is
the father
of his grandchildren
where he beats his daughter
to death
then disappears into the woods
is never seen again
and so where do you end the poem
and why was it even begun?
which child is the one who
finds the body?
how many of them are
able to move forward when
the truth is finally told?
i used to think i was a
good enough person to care
FINAL THOUGHTS BEFORE A NEW YEAR'S PARTY
sirens on the
last day of the year
christmas lights on the house
across the street set
against the heavy purple
weight of the evening sky
and nothing else
you can call it hope or
you can call it hopelessness
you can speak of the past
or turn away from it
something burns
either way
something else smolders
and threatens
to catch
we are all too fragile
to have come
this far unscarred
POETRY AS DISEASE
on some days
you bring up the ideas
like vomit
you read a story in the paper
about a forgotten friend shot dead
by the police
eight hundred miles away
you try to purge yourself
of hate
but it cannot be done
the door is kicked down
too late to save the baby
no one tries to stop
the jumper
and there are men in this world
attempting to measure the distance
between religion and reality
and there are men content with
destroying everything they can
there is bitter sunlight on the
last day of the year
a storm approaching
from the west
and my wife holding out her
empty hands
my father's ghost standing
in an empty room
his last words to me
forgotten but
still suspended somewhere
in time
THE FUTURE IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS
thirty four years old
which amounts to
three thousand poems written
in the last decade
give or take
bukowski's death
and then cobain's and then
your father's
candles in the windows of
sleeping houses
bones in the hands of
all the lovers you've ever
walked out on
stranger's names
falling from their lips and
who was it exactly that
taught you to hate
yourself?
who is it that will
teach your children?
do you understand why
it matters?
Copyright
© John Sweet
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