KILLING FOR THE RIGHT TO LIVE

EATING THE BONES OF THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

DISTANCE + TIME = FEAR

EXIT WOUND

WALKING THROUGH THE WALL OF NOISE

MICHAEL CAYLO-BARADI Reviews

Human Cathedrals by John Sweet
(Ravenna Press, Washington, 2002)

Crucifixions Without Crosses, Resurrections
Under the steeples of John Sweet’s Human Cathedrals

Human Cathedrals assumes a certain firmness of tone, one that can be mistaken as mournful deliberation that precedes rebellion, or rebellious action. There are many passages that can illustrate this argument; but one particular passage stands out, because of the intertwined vein of courage and casualness that flows beneath its rhythm: “[o]f all the/words i own/the one i refuse/to say is/god” (58). The strongest phrases in this stanza, at least for me, are ‘i own’ and ‘i refuse’; the phrases are declarations of ownership, and a categorical declaration of something toxic in religion. The subject in question is contained in three-letter word: god. It’s crucial to underline the number of letters in the term ‘god,’ because three in Christianity stands for Holy Trinity, the sacred trio of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, summed into one Godhead.

Now quite coincidentally -- on the book’s cover -- in the black and white photograph of an old art deco building in Seattle is a suggestion of this trio; it’s a carved image in the building’s façade, of what appears like three stems: in the middle is a taller stem and to its left and right are two identical stems. On the other hand, while this image of three-some is, unavoidably, loaded with religious connotations, its presence above the title creates an ironic and un-iconic relationship with the title, because the idea of ‘human cathedrals’ presents a subversive platform; cathedrals ought to be juxtaposed on equal hierarchy with holy elements, not the one element that is beneath the sacred: the human.

Thusly, this image of three-some in the cover and the tension it creates with the title presents a gesture that frames the collection’s imagination: that the spectre of organized religion hangs over this collection like halo, not halo of sainthood, but rather that of moral introspection. In this regard, the poems in this collection become a sort of journey into the circulatory system of emotive introspection and examination, a system that doesn’t necessarily constitute or structure unified cathedrals of a specific community but rather distances itself -- as opposed to creating barriers of resistance -- from the notion of cathedrals, of structured and organized belief systems.

In many ways though, the poet’s sense of distantiation from these belief systems -- quite confidently suggested in the refusal to say the word ‘god’ -- can be viewed as the kind of distantiation hoped, exercised, or even forced among members in a family caught in a state of falling apart out of each other. Injecting the idea of family in this discussion is not incidental nor modestly relevant but rather critical, because when one discusses moral intimacies that implicate religion and religious beliefs, one steps into realms wherein the familiar becomes familial. In organized religion, belief functions as blood-line among believers; belief then, becomes critical indicator of kinship.

Now representations of distantiation, in the context of family, are often easy to recognize in amplified and theatrical simplifications: movement from one geographic location to another, absence in usual social gatherings, refusal to accept certain phone calls, refusal to assume connection with certain organizations, or, of course, explicit confession and iteration of commitment or non-commitment on something. On the other hand, when one asks to what extent these representations measure depth of separation, one starts to talk about degrees of separation, because of complexity in the process of separation. Members from any form of family-unit severing membership from that family are often aware of this complexity, because memories about being part of that unit cannot easily be severed.

The voice in this collection comes from that sort of family member, one who has tried to sever ties from a family called Christianity. This collection’s first poem convincingly takes us into that mind-space in “waiting for the day to begin”; and there are, at least, two families suggested that are intertwined here, that of the author’s and Christianity itself:

this is three degrees below
zero
and waiting for the
day to begin

am waiting for the baby
to wake up

for objects to solidify
cast shadows and i am
waiting for christ’s name to pour
like black blood from the
mouths of priests (2)

Something about this passage is almost like a chant for Christmas celebration without lights, or perhaps one transported along the River Styx. Christmas, as we know, celebrates the birth of the Christian messiah. In this birth a Savior has arrived, whose too-familiar story resists biography and history, but rather prefers to define doctrine, one that frames and colonizes world-views.

Now the gothic beauty painted in this passage rests not so much on the stand-in for baby Jesus, but rather on the baby’s duality, both as baby Jesus and the author’s son. But baby Jesus doesn’t wake up here. There is a wait, a long wait, a very cold one that takes us into the number three again, the trinity: “[…]three degrees below / zero”; this temperature somehow suggests the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are submerged below zero: frozen, powerless. No promises of messiahs here; baby Jesus appears dead. But what seals or unifies the darkness in this passage is the voice’s aspiration: “I am / waiting for christ’s name to pour / like black blood from the / mouths of priests.” The scene summoned is now the Holy Communion, the heart of Christian-church services, wherein the priest delivers the body and blood of Christ to the congregation, to God’s people, symbolically, through bread and wine, the ritual of transubstantiation. Furthermore, the idea of Holy Communion is not unique to Christianity; it has a secular dimension. Symbolism has, indeed, preserved the idea and drama behind the secular origins of the Holy Communion, sanitizing the bloodiness and violence involved in the culinary ritual: the taking in of body and blood of a human subject: cannibalism. Thus, the Holy Communion as simulacra of civilized and highly-dramatized cannibalism is holy because the body involved is not that of an ordinary human subject but that of God in human-form: Jesus; his body is the cleansing agent for the bodies and souls who take him. But then when one associates or equates the name of Christ with ‘black blood’, one stops thinking about blessings, but rather contamination, of something viral about the sacred. The equation of Christ and ‘black blood’ flowing out of the ‘mouths of priests’ further emphasizes the vampiric element and nature of the Holy Communion, not from the context of congregation but among priests themselves. Instead of being able to drink the blood of Christ first, before sharing that blood to their congregation, the priests reject Christ’s blood, and vomit it out. The vomited blood is black. The voice in the poem is waiting for this impurity, somehow expecting its flow as form of celebration; it’s not a nice vision of Christianity, because it renders Christ’s blood as toxic, and that the men who preach his gospel somehow have had enough of him, and cannot ingest and digest him anymore in their souls.

John Sweet walks on dark terrains, in this collection, without blinking. Released in 2002, within a year after September 11, 2001, Human Cathedrals can stand as epitaph for things in the human condition, too many to enumerate.

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST GOD

LAYING WASTE

A MOTHERFUCKING REASON TO LIVE!

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LIKE SHOOTING PRIESTS ON EASTER SUNDAY

LANGUAGE

and there are
these mornings where
language is an awkward
stone lodged in
my throat

where the sun is
beautiful liquid down these
frightened streets but
my hands have been cut off
at the wrists

my head fills with static
and the baby won’t stop screaming
and gorky is found standing
three feet above the
earth

or not standing but
spinning

swaying to the
harsh music of crows as
van gogh walks into the middle
of his last field

aims his gun at the sky
and squeezes the trigger

blows this wasted day and
all of the ones that
will follow into
dust

EVEN IN THESE DARK DAYS

DREAMING THE OLD MAN'S DEATH IN THE KINGDOM OF NIL

TAKING THE WRONG DRUGS FOR THE RIGHT HIGH

SENTIMENTAL GENOCIDE

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE. BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!!!!!!!!!!!

My copy says "Limited run of 25 numbered copies", so why are you sitting around? Get a move on! Excellent new collection by JJ Campbell w/ a most-superb cover by Janne Karlsson (which my photo doesn't do justice to). Go to http://www.analogsubmission.com. NOW!

GOD AND THE DEVIL ARE BOTH THE SAME

YOUR GOD STRUNG OUT AND WEEPING

ERNST, IMPERFECTLY TRANSLATED

LANDSCAPE W/ MINOR CRUCIFIXION

THOSE AWKWARD DEATH BLUES

PLEASE DON'T QUESTION/PLEASE DON'T ARGUE

FORGET THE GRIP OF ECSTASY

A KISS-OFF TO FASCISTS

NEW WORK @ PRETTY OWL POETRY

https://prettyowlpoetry.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/summer2018.pdf

SUBURBAN TEENAGE PUSSY

YOUR PRESIDENT (NOT MINE) JUST THREW YOU UNDER THE BUS, YOU STUPID ASSHOLES. YOU DESERVE WHATEVER YOU GET.

CRUCIFIXION WEATHER

OR THE PRIESTS RAPING YOUNG BOYS

another excellent shot from dawn.....

IF GOD WAS YOUR ONLY LIE

CORRUPTION

a big sound rising up

out of the emptiness

a hand, severed, found in a ditch

alongside the roadway

alongside the rutted dirt road

that passes through the village,

and then a woman’s body,

and then another

five altogether, let’s say,

or ten, or fifty,

and then we grow tired of digging

in the sandy soil

we hear stories of our daughters

on their hands and knees

in the offices of politicians

we learn about their deaths

in the usual way

DEMOCRACY, MEASURED IN CORPSES

YOUR GOVERNMENT IS YOUR GREATEST ENEMY

A NATION OF ASSHOLES, PERIOD.

THE DEAD MAN AND THE DEAD MAN'S SON

BUILDING HUMAN CATHEDRALS

summer gone without warning

the burning house where you left it

twenty years ago and

your father still trapped inside

the past can be rewritten

but not changed

and it makes me tired

i am thinking of the suicide queen

and the stories of her boyfriends

how they sold her for cash

or traded her

for tires

is what she told me

for a new tape deck

and before that

it was her stepfather

and i am sorry

yes

but i am not anyone's savior

i am not a confessor

but still these stories pool at my feet

still the drowning boy is found

three days too late

and his parents blame whoever they can

and all the statues of the virgin mary

that line this dead-end street

refuse to weep

the pavement shines in the bitter rain

and the flags fade to

silent admissions of surrender

we have been speaking of war for

the past two months

without naming the enemy

we have granted pardons to

the killers of young women

have forgiven them their violence

and we are in love with our own voices

the sounds of dangerous words

as they spill

from the lips of politicians

the screams of the bodies that fall

from the 98th floor

and i have been in this room

for too long

the mirrors are heavy with dust

the windows warped

the clocks all run down and

it's here where i finally realize that

i will always be numbered

among the guilty

it is a small thing in the face

of so much freedom

WHY WOULD WE NOT SET FIRE TO THE MANSIONS OF TYRANTS

New slap diddly doo dah work at Misfit:

http://misfitmagazine.net/archive/No-24/sweet.html

FIGHT THE POWER, FUCK THE POWER

WITH YOUR BRAINS DRIPPING INTO YOUR SHOES

Some psychedelic spider web photography from Dawn...…

RUN AHEAD AND BLINDLY SHOOT

age of crows or of

someone else’s bitter god

a joke made at the expense of

this dying man while

the soldiers rape his wife

a church on fire and

filled with children

will you change the channel?

will you plunge your knife

into the false king’s throat?

in an ocean of blood,

there is no way for

any of us to stay clean

FINAL DAYS OF JUNKIE KINGDOM

THE WHOLESALE BUTCHERY OF DEMAGOGUES

Maybe i'm too subtle?   I write these poems, and then the comments I get sometimes make me scratch my head.  At least one of us in this equation strikes me as a simpleton.....




FALSE KINGS, CRUCIFIED



in this seething cauldron of days
i will rise like ashes to the sun

in the age of murdered children
i am grateful for vengeance

am a believer in the
wholesale butchery of
demagogues and rapist-priests

there is no point wasting
compassion on cancer 


*********


With respect, john sweet, this sounds a bit too much like a charnel house to this reader.
Then, of course, isn't vengeance the prerogative of the deity?
Finally, I don't think that cancer has any moral sense, in which case compassion and any other human emotion would indeed be wasted on it. It does, however seem to respond to research-based mitigation.
Regards,