medication & prayer

 

growing solitude in

the upstairs hallway

 

sound of rain, of

music turned down low

 

3000 miles is too far

 

wouldn’t know where to

find you, or you, or any of

them, and then wouldn’t

know what to say if i did

 

what i fear is

giving too much away

 

my own words, my own

history, turned back against me

 

my oldest son, who loves

the idea of war

 

who loves to shoot and

be shot and then come in

for dinner

 

paces the room in between

bites, talking and laughing

and joking with his brother

 

doesn’t believe that pollock

died for his sins

 

has both his hands, both

his feet, even as the soldiers

keep kicking in doors, and

what i fear is the truth held up

to the light of the afternoon

                                       sun

and i’m sick of not

saying your name

 

am starving on the

rancid meat of regret

 

would gladly put out the

horse’s eyes myself, if the

fucker would just hold still

DANCING ON THE CORPSES OF THE ENEMIES OF FREEDOM

 

HUNTED CHRIST LIKE A DOG, DROVE HOME THE TRUE MEANING OF FAITH

 

WHEN AND WHERE YOU DIE, BUT NOT WHY. NOT HOW.

 

year zero in the terminal empire

 

blood machine moving down main street,

broken bones and mangled babies and

who the fuck screams with their throat torn out?

 

who the fuck stops to help the already-dead,

                                  the perpetually stoned,

                              the terminally unwanted?

 

we have never been a kingdom of saviors

 

we will never know a truth

unstained by ignorance

 

let the holy men burn in

their false sanctuaries

 

let the demagogues be fed to

the rusty whirling blades

 

you and i are what’s left once

the storm has blown over,

and we still need to bury the children

 

we still need to wash the feet of

the lepers and junkies

 

to screw the brothers and sisters of

100,000 anonymous suicides and it’s

not an act of kindness but aggression

 

a sound like metal on metal, like a

wrecking ball against a skull

 

music, you know?

 

explosions, or the slamming of doors

 

the sound of shots fired on

a nursery school playground

 

it happens, but then some asshole cocksucker

starts screaming that it never did, and

suddenly you know who the true enemy is

 

suddenly you see how their story will end

POEM WHILE WAITING FOR THE GUILTY TO HANG

 

it’s okay to hate your government

 

 

 

 

NEW WORK AT

 

ADELAIDE

 

 

http://adelaidemagazine.org/2023/08/23/tourniquet-heart-by-john-sweet/

 

 

 

 

a collapsing house in the age of starvation

 

just standing there on the side of

the road in a few feet of snow,

and you hit him

 

you slow down, or at least

that’s how you tell the story,

and something by the cult on the radio

 

loud,

and then you wake up

 

then you fall asleep

 

you dream about

that last good summer

 

you taste blood

 

think maybe you’re high, think

maybe you just wish you were, and do you

ever get tired of being

your father’s favorite failure?

 

did you end up the whore

your mother always said you’d be?

 

it’s good to keep your

options open

 

look at christ,

right?

 

tunnel vision and then

dead at 33

 

some fucked-up religion based on

misery, murder and pain

 

the pretty smiles of

porn star suicides

 

and you want love to be

better than sex, but we’ve come too

far to keep swallowing that

candy-colored bullshit

 

we need money for drugs, and we

need drugs to help us

forget that we have no money

 

we need this asshole to get

up and walk away, but it looks

like he might be down for good

 

looks like your father might have

a new joke for

all the guys down at the bar

 

probably kick your ass later

for fucking up the car,

but you’ve still got the rest of

your life, right?

 

still got a nickel bag tucked away

in the back of your

sister’s bathroom closet

 

still got a million

mistakes just begging

to be made

A POST-PUNK ANTHEM FOR THE LAST DAY OF YOUR IMMORTALITY

 

YOU NEVER SAY A GODDAMN THING I WANT TO HEAR

 

BECAUSE WE WERE NEVER THIS YOUNG AGAIN

 

ENDLESSLY WASTING THE DAYS THAT YOU HAVE

 

NO ENEMIES BUT THOSE WHO INSIST THEY KNOW WHO THE TRUE ENEMY IS

 

2nd floor, 3000 miles away

 

this is how the world collapses

 

these are the hills closing in,

the sky pushing down,

pulling the oxygen from your lungs

 

pills, but the pain won’t go away

 

the proper dosage, and still the

heart remains a broken record

 

and who is pollock in this

kingdom of despair but a

surrogate father or an emperor in exile?

 

who is your father but a drunken

stranger in a faded photograph?

 

or maybe there’s nothing but

dull grey rain all fucking day and

your hands refuse to work

 

the brushes gather dust and

the colors have no meaning

 

man with a gun in the doorway of

your sister’s room or

hanging from a greasy length of rope

 

says believe in hope but

don’t be a slave to it

 

gotta remember that every age is

the age of murdered children

 

gotta stand by the broken window

and watch water pool in the

corners of your lover’s heart

 

wait for the future to arrive and

then hate whatever

small irreversible change it brings

an obvious question

 

AWFUL HIGH AND FUCKING LOW

 

APPROACHING THE BORDER

 

it's all good advice to me

 

ALL THE YEARS YOU'VE BEEN ASLEEP

 

this country of polished chrome, these ancient ruins

 

made a flag from the bones

of dead soldiers, built a nation from

the skins of the natives

 

raped children in full sight of god

 

in houses of prayer

in houses of shame where the

water ran black

 

where the dogs ate what the

priests puked up

and we hid in alleyways

and we started fires where the

homeless slept

 

we were the bitter

hands of jesus

 

we had come to stone

his lover

 

she said pain was better

than feeling nothing at all

FUCK THE MAN

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g5pLFktstcD3f2zYnB0V7QaIYnnbm23O/view?usp=sharing

with ash in your mouth

 

like blue skies over rows of

split-level houses like

lush well-kept lawns

 

like driving lost down

anonymous suburban streets

 

says sunlight is all he has to

give you and so

you take it for your own

 

says the bridge only goes

half way across the river

 

reminds me of my

grandfather’s suicide of the pale

luminous skin of the only woman i

never stopped loving

 

feels like war

which is what we always say in

this age of neverending

                      atrocities

 

a million children

starve to death just so you

can grow up fat

 

a job digging unmarked

graves is still a job

 

dream of warm saturday

afternoons and the sound of

                         church bells

 

wake up to the

smell of gasoline

 

and god is neither lost nor

found and christ was only ever

one more frightened junkie

 

woman i know tells me she

can’t see me anymore but says

i’m still in her prayers and i

have no answer for this

but laughter

 

i keep driving

up and down silent

sunwashed streets hoping to

recognize one of these houses

                               as my own

 

i keep waiting for the

moment of truth to end

YOU WERE ALWAYS SUCH AN ANGRY CHILD