cathedral of bones

what the dogs taste

is the meat of jesus christ 
and then they spit it out

what the junkies do is beg

but there is no room for symbolism down 

these empty streets

in the first purple light of five a.m.

children are dying everywhere and the thought i hang onto

is that my son isn't one of them

i have taught myself

the politics of fatherhood
after fifteen years spent trying
to escape the idea of the boy i was

i have built a cathedral of human bones

of meaningless words and angry voices and there is nothing left to put in it

there is nothing to see from the windows

but the flat white smudge of the sun spilling 
across november fields

beyond the fields are the factories

where nothing is made

where the dogs grow hungry in the glow of the neon cross

and home is

where you find yourself when there's 
no place else to run

OF ALL THE THINGS I WILL NEVER GIVE YOU

THE PRODIGAL SON SENDS HIS LOVE

THE INFINITE PRICE OF GOD

CRUSHED BY THE WHEELS OF INDUSTRY

king of kings no. 1

like fucking on shattered glass,
like you and i in the bleakest days of december
where i hide beneath a blanket of ash,
where you sing only words that have crawled through
the blood of castrated fratboy rapists


like the ocean


can’t swim the length of it and
so we drown


end up alone in some terminal room
with 500,000 others just like us


sound of broken bells
beneath a faded blue sky


sound of babies crying


let them grow up to be more than the
joyless wreckage we’ve amounted to

A GREAT SORROW

INTO THE PALACE OF LESSER DEATHS

...AND THEN NOTHINGNESS

imagined grace

weeds and garbage and barbed-wire fences,

nothing to keep in but poison,
no one to keep out but the dead and the dying
and so why do you stay?

where else would you go?

listen

piles of books gathering dust

in a curtained room

pale winter sunlight on the cemetery

follow the road that cuts behind it and

sink up to your knees in the muck at the river’s edge

consider all of the bitterness

your father left you

try to remember the last words

you ever said to him

pretend that they meant something

more than they actually did

in the kingdom of christ

feeling free just for a minute, you and

her, her boyfriend, his girlfriend,
bodies in a room in the heat of august and
one of you said or one of you meant to
say but didn’t, said no talking and
the others agreed, undressed and the baby slept

one of you was sorry afterwards and

one of you was stoned

brilliant sun in a dust-grey

sky, but no shadows

dead-end streets lined with weeds, abandoned

factories thick with
grease and empty premonitions and
one of you said this is a mistake even while you
were doing it again, even while you moaned
someone else’s name, while you screamed up
against the ceiling and, outside, just the
buzz of cicadas

just the stillness of time slipping away

silence like a smothering blanket and

one of you started to say but then one of
you said no talking, offered up lips or a breast,
the taste of sweat and the hum of electricity,
too may or not enough bodies and one of
you blind and one of you deaf and
always the absence of words

one of you without hope or without dreams, taste of

bare flesh on your tongue and the afternoon
brought up hard against dirty windows, the need
for language a thing of the past

(remembered saying i love you but

not to who and not how it brought you here)

(remembered laughter)

one of you feeling the press of someone else’s body

on either side of yours, hearing the news that the
bodies of 25 children had been found among the
dead, but this was a different day and so
why do you connect the two?

who is it that says the pain will

help bring you closer?

laughter, maybe, one of you or maybe

two, and a spilled drink

a broken glass and blood, not much, a

small cut and one of you licking the wound
and the silver sun and a heavy shroud of haze

(time stopped or spinning backwards)

(the one you know to be you crawling

away on filthy hands and raw knees)

a view of powerlines and rooftops,

shimmering trees and blurred hills, arms
around your waist, a hand at your throat and
another between your legs, a tongue, and
one of you says wait, one of you says
stop, and nobody listens

one of you has wings and one of

you wings tattooed

one of you roses, one of you sunflowers,

poppies, one of you the black iris blues and
if there is no father there can be no sin

(if there are no ghosts

there is nothing fear)

and one of you says this out loud

and one of you starts to cry and one
of you turns away

one of you still wants more

one of you always will

THE INFINITE REALM OF HOPE

...AND ALL OF US SINGING THOSE LOWDOWN MOTHERFUCKER BLUES

LOVE, AND OTHER THINGS

A PILE OF NOTHING, LIKE AS NOT

MONET, IN THE UPSTATE DESERT

LIFE IS SO BEAUTIFUL; I'VE BECOME IRRATIONAL

YOU AND I AND THE CITY OF GHOSTS

the child, cut in two

not the dying man
but his reasons


his hands
which are grabbing


which are empty and so
what would you
fill them with?


the bones of his children
is an obvious answer
so look past it


reinvent the circle
if you have to


build a better bomb


we have been in this desert
too long now and eating
nothing but the dreams
of the starving


we have been bleeding
for as long as we can
remember but
listen


every day brings us
closer to a darker age


every war is the one
that cannot be lost


this is what we tell the
widows as
we undress them

PUTIN ON A RITZ

Let’s have a warm hand for the Russian trolls

who have returned

to view my website.

Rock on, fuckers!!!!!!!

But seriously -

buy a book.

eight month-old infant beaten to death by his mother's boyfriend (three variations)

    1.


run towards the idea like
you would a wall
of rusted razor blades


drag fistfuls
through your hair
down your face up the
insides of your thighs


don't ask for reasons why



    2.


which face do you see
when you
look in the mirror?


are you surprised?



    3.


or what about dahmer
beaten to death on
a prison floor?


is it a thought that
makes you smile?


good

BITTER NEWS FOR A DYING WORLD

A BARREN FIELD, A DEAD LAWN, ROADSIDE DITCHES

MORE

DUBIOUS

WISDOM

@

POETiCA

REViEW

http://poeticareview.com/john-sweet/

 

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN..... THE MONKEY'S ASSHOLE

To quote the late, great Aristotle - 

"What the fuck is wrong with

this freak's face?

THE SUN, DOWN FROM THE SKY

BECAUSE THE KINGDOM OF NIL IS ALL YOU DESERVE

BECAUSE YOU WERE NEVER WORTH MUCH

THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMMUNICATION

a girl is found murdered

or she isn't found


or a girl is found
and then she's murdered


is lost


is maybe raped or maybe
filmed while being raped


is told to smile


is told to stop her fucking crying


is told not to stop and
she cries while she keeps
doing whatever it is she's been
                                          told to


she cries and
then she's murdered


she's found


she has been there
all along

HOLY & INTOXICATED

THANK YOU JOHN D. ROBINSON

AND HOLY & INTOXICATED PUBLICATIONS

NEW WORK IN THE POETRY CARDS SERIES 9

LIMITED EDITION,

SIGNED & NUMBERED,

INCLUDED WITH BOOK ORDERS

DIRECTLY FROM ME

FOR A VERY LIMITED TIME

TRANSMISSION STATIC

TREAT YOURSELF RIGHT BECAUSE SOMEDAY YOU'LL BE DEAD

SANDY IS LOOKING TO RAISE SOME OPERATING CAPITAL FOR

FLUTTER PRESS.

DONATE OR, BETTER YET, ORDER:

https://flutterpress2009.blogspot.com/2016/04/approximate-wilderness-by-john-sweet.html

HOPE AGAINST HOPE

DRUGGIES SMELL LIKE SHIT, LOOK LIKE DEATH

NOT RELIGION, TRUTH

THINKING HIS DEATH MIGHT JUST BE A DREAM YOUR SISTER HAD

SALVATION FOR ALL, BUT NOT YOU

I AM TIRED OF NO LONGER HAVING THE STRENGTH TO HATE MYSELF

NEW RUMINATIONS

AT REBELLE SOCIETY

http://www.rebellesociety.com/2019/09/02/johnsweet-when/

MY CATS TAKE SHITS THAT ARE SMARTER THAN DONNY TRUMP

On Sunday, Trump was asked if he had any message for Poland on the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion.

“I just want to congratulate Poland,” Trump replied, adding, “It’s a great country with great people.”

vast fields beyond the kingdom walls

in the aftermath of the war,

any war really,
they stood their at the edge of the freeway,
three indians,
and we drove past with our pockets full of their  children’s’ bones,
with the sunlight hard against our eyes,
and the starving went unmentioned

the sky was blue, like time frozen and made holy,

and the trees had just begun to turn

it was that last year before the true famine,

when we still believed in miracles,
when we still knew the names of every saint

it was three indians on the side of the road,

and one of them blind,
and i couldn’t make out the sign he held,
and then we were past

it was a dream about starving children devoured by wolves

and i couldn’t speak

stood nailed to the railroad tracks,

sat frozen on the living room floor while the flames approached,
fell endlessly down some abandoned well,
and when i woke up the sun was in my eyes

we were moving fast past dead black water,

past the dead black trees that rose up leafless out of it

it was three tiny crosses on the side of the highway,

markers left by anonymous hands and
nothing in any direction for a hundred miles,
and it was a wreath of dying flowers

it was where the bodies had been found,

or maybe where they’d last been seen

the air was chalkwhite and dizzying,

hot,
thick with tar and gasoline

it was summer,

towards the end of the war

we were neither here nor there

with wounded hearts, in ecstasy

and all of the washed-out days,

and all of the bitter ones

sunlight,

but no warmth

no shadows

and what now, when you’ve

become the old man you swore
you’d never become?

listen

two dreams last night, and both

of them about a woman i
loved when i was still immortal,
and so i woke up sick with loss

woke up bathed in the

soft glow of my children

waited until the wolves had

eaten their fill, then
opened the door to let them in

WHO WE ARE IN THE AGE OF IGNORANCE