IGNORANCE VS MALEVOLENCE

New one at Rebelle Society.  Got a little butchered in moving it from  Word to the internet page, so I've included the whole thing here...…


http://www.rebellesociety.com/2018/12/18/johnsweet-years/

my last five years spent living in the shadow of the palace of futility

in the half light of our last good days, in the

quietest room of the burning house

      couldn’t get warm and

we couldn’t stay lost and when

your father showed up he

said the baby was his

wanted money and he wanted

a different life

wanted another drink and and i

forget where he was finally buried

i forget why your mother hated me

but not that she did

held onto her rage liker some

precious holy relic

and so i became her god

i became her faith but

what about the burning house?

were we ever actually there?

25 years later and all of the ashes

have been consumed

we have stayed hungry

we have grown old

have wasted our lives speaking of hope

in the kingdom of nil

either no one listens

          or

          no one hears

can you see the difference?

ignorance vs malevolence and

in the end its

not the size of the war that matters but

the quality of pain inflicted on

those who survive

but do you believe this?

a world where

suffering is deemed holy

an empire built not on wealth but

on the idea the wealth is all that matters and

                                               was it suicide?

did he drink himself to death?

saw him for the last time in some

rat-trp one-room apartment on the north side,

said $200 would get him through the month

said the baby was his

but that we could keep it

said $400 was all he’d need and then he

started peeling the skin from

his face but

failed to become someone else

failed to be anyone we knew

1990?  ’91?

somewhere in there, dead grey sky of

late winter and all you wanted was

to let me know that you loved me and

all i wanted was your sister’s number

charlotte st, other side of the river in the

last weeks of the war, said her

boyfriend would be coming home soon

said the bruises were almost healed and i

joked that it was your mother’s fault

had this savior complex but none of us

ever found salvation

christ was either

a lie or a junkie

a house on fire in the upstate desert

but we couldn’t get warm

  

had enough pills to

get uis through the day and we

had this baby but

not its name

not its father

a pile of anonymous bones at the

                                edge of town

and your mother considered it

                                  a victory

built her house from them and

what i saw when we met

was the day you would leave

what i believe in are lesser forms

of grace and hope

my enemies consumed by

disease and despair and

were we stoned that entire summer?

was victory declared while we

slept on the bathroom floor?

i wanted to ask your sister

but she wasn’t

answering her phone

wanted to buy you a gift but

you’d already left for the coast

we’d buried your father and

given the baby to your mother and

they were both growing fat

                           on poison

they were both erasing me

from the future

woke up alone on

the morning it finally arrived and

knew myself to be

                       lost