in the shuffling madness

 

it was something, anyway,

a stray thought or a foolish idea,

a blind idea that being touched

would be enough to save you,

that being held would make me human

 

it was knowledge,

but it wasn’t truth

 

it was your father’s hands in all of

your dreams,

hitting or grabbing or gently caressing,

and there were never enough windows

when you were awake

 

there was never enough sunlight,

and the locks on every door

were broken

 

my words were

like sawdust in my mouth,

were like shit in yours, but i

couldn’t stop talking

 

couldn’t stop equating the

act of fucking

with the idea of caring

 

wanted you, yes, but

only if you were someone else

this well-fed asshole going through your pockets

 

the skull, the feet, the palms of her hands

 

cold in july and the sound of

dead air moving in through open windows

 

sound of twilight

 

ghost of man ray

 

and all objects that exist

exist without end and all objects that

fade fade without memory and so

take comfort in failure

 

be locked up for your views, or be

shot and left in a field for the crows

 

be exiled

 

don’t believe for a second

that you’re not an island

 

don’t build prisons from the

bones of your children

 

allow yourself small amounts of space,

all blossom and decay, all fingers and

longing and soft, warm flesh

 

dig deeper down to sunlight

 

moist earth

 

moss and vines, the shapes of your life

distorted by a slow consuming, the sound

of your voice from a distance, five

miles and then ten, one hundred

and then a thousand,

and stop saying i love you

 

stop believing your own lies

 

consider what it is you still

have when there’s nothing left

 

open the wound just to

make a little more room

but the ghost needs a home

 

age of crows or the

season of bright laughter

 

some goddamn useless

moment in time

waiting to become an event

 

some small rusted piece of christ

broken off and sold but

i have no money and

i have no faith

 

i find out later how many

people were disappeared by

government on the day we met

 

i consider palaces

built from the

bones of the butchered

 

dream of vast machines

fuelled by human blood and

when we wake up we

wake up alone in

strangers’ beds

 

trade dirt for ashes and

call it even

 

call it love

an edited list of your failures

 

even here, despair

 

the hanging man

 

or the necklaces made of

fingerbones that our children wear,

or the oceans of violent blood

they drown in

 

the hollow prayers of shadow kings,

and that there’s no time to

waste here

 

gotta kill all these tired gods

before they kill you

 

gotta fuck the best and burn the rest and

do you remember tulsa 1921?

 

are you nostalgic for birmingham

in the spring of ’63?

 

you can either be your father or you

can grow up but

a nation of mad dogs is just

another war waiting to happen

 

any whore who claims to hold

absolute power

can only ever be your enemy

 

or the idea of infinity, expressed in terms of clenched fists

 

poem for time-travelers, for moments lost

 

and we get to the point where

you tell me you love me,

but how?

 

i know who i am

 

i believe in fear,

and in self-doubt

 

in de chirico’s shadows,

because what we say is never as

important as what we really mean

 

what we can name has no

bearing on what we can own

 

fuck it

 

we can’t all be cobain,

right?

 

someone needs to stick around

to clean up the mess

 

someone needs to pay for the smack

 

it’s the simple economics of

staring into the sun

 

the kid in the back seat

with a hole in his heart

 

tell him you love him,

but he isn’t listening

 

explain how the story will end,

but he doesn’t care

 

just wants a little room

to bleed

every hour, another war

              STILLPOINT

 

http://stillpointliterarymagazine.com/2022/02/14/invisible-song-for-cautious-silences-by-john-sweet/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU MIGHT HAVE TO READ THIS TO YOUR STUPID FRIENDS

 

three sonnets for the drowning boy

 

a saviour full of brittle bones

 

ALWAYS THE DEAD MAN; ALWAYS THE PROMISE OF RESURRECTION