Endless Rain Falling Without Mercy. {poetry}
From town to town from house
to house
and without joy and without sorrow
without history
which is only a human weakness
the need to love bones
to hold them close
to drag to the bottom for answers
without stopping to consider the
futility of questions left
floating on the surface
or this
politics are for assholes
war is nothing more than
the logical conclusion of ignorance
why would you ever trust someone
who would ask you to
die for what you believe in?
Why aren’t they doing it themselves?
And you answer the phone on a
wasted Saturday afternoon,
and it’s your son telling you he hates you
it’s the sky too bright and too wide,
blinding light without heat,
and you can’t remember the name of the
woman in bed next to you and
so you say nothing
you turn away
it’s the small gestures,
you see,
and it’s the poisoned memories
myself as an adult but
standing at the
edge of my childhood playground
cold and motionless,
sun through bare trees, low
and sullen, but where are the bones?
Where is anyone who ever
meant anything at all?
Listen, someone calling in the distance
and the familiar feeling of
a cliff somewhere behind me,
down a short dirt path
the taste of barbed wire
the laughter of opposing armies
and what was the point, really,
of growing up?
Fear is a bottomless well
me at 10 became me at 25
became me at 40 and the
hills never changed
houses faded, turned as grey
as cancer patients
escape was contemplated
but then I fell in love
then her brother jumped to his death
winter, and he punched through
the ice with no waste motion,
with no time for regret,
and then in the spring we made a
failed attempt at warmth
we moved backwards
memory of birds’ wings, of a
birch tree in a tiny yard
the silence of Sunday morning
picture window reflecting where
people might be hiding,
but no people
teenagers, three or four boys,
the one who wants to show you
his cock, the one who wants to spit
in your mouth, some of them brothers
possibly, and when their house
burns down you feel only
regret that they survive
you feel only savage joy
season of the resurrection in the
year of the bleeding horse, dead sky in the
water’s surface, weeds pushing up
through rusted shopping carts and forgotten daughters
season of blind gods in the
year of murdered nuns
we drive 50 miles to find your
father and, when we get there, he
has no idea who you are
asks for money
can’t stop coughing
has his kingdom, his one barren
room in shades of sickness
and despair, and the thing about the
desert is how familiar it
always is
dead trees and splintered glass and
abandoned trailers left on the shadowed
sides of the circling hills
he road to the cemetery
the washed-out bridge on blodgett road
had to find a different way to
reach this girl I loved
and then one day she just wasn’t there
one day, 20 years later, she turned up
again on the shore of someone
else’s ocean and wrote to tell me
that nothing had changed
sent me flowers and
the bones of angels and
what matters finally
is that none of it matters
the priests are rapists
but they’ll die
movies will be made about starving
children, but nothing
will be done to change the reality
those who have the money will
only hold on to it that much tighter
something to laugh about maybe
if that’s the kind of mood you’re in
a small bitter song to sing against
the walls of your house
when your children no longer visit
this endless fucking rain
falling without mercy
in all of these empty parking lots
the morning you wake up
and finally realize how lost you
really are.
***
John Sweet is a believer in writing as catharsis. He’s opposed to all organized religion and political parties. He avoids zealots and social media whenever possible. His latest collections include Heathen Tongue (Kendra Steiner Editions), A Bastard Child in the Kingdom of Nil (2018 Analog Submission Press) and A Flag on Fire is a Song of Hope (2019 Scars Publication). All pertinent facts about his life are buried somewhere in his writing.
***
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