All Moments Without End. {poetry}
Begin underground
open your eyes
poison in the soil and sweaty
grey money in the pockets
of smiling politicians
new computers in the schools, but
the students are all filled
with cancer
do you remember this story?
The irony of dying young
in the age of greed
16-year-old girl on the bedroom floor
picking up the chalky remains of
her bones, and what can you
do but kill the killers and,
even then,
what can you do?
Preaching against violence is like
preaching against religion,
but still
look, we were fucking in her car, in the
parking lot of some abandoned
factory on the edge of town,
and then she was dropping
me off a few blocks from my
apartment and going back
to her husband
it’s a story with no deeper meaning
because the ending doesn’t matter
accusations, tears, blood or maybe
only some of them or maybe
none at all
October, let’s say, and the
palest sun you can imagine
hanging like some disembodied
fist in a Max Ernst sky
blue air
blue hills
dead leaves and cold and the names
of your children spelled out
in tar across the northbound lane
of the interstate
don’t confuse
escape with cowardice
drive, but without direction
the animals have been starving
since before you were born,
the cities falling in on themselves
move from one
desperate apartment
to another
tell these strangers
that you love them
smile when they say it back
remember, no one ever sees the image of
the Virgin Mary on the billboards
in this town, or of Elvis, or of Christ
no one ever tells the story
of the first Thanksgiving
some drunk you’ve never met
lies down to sleep on the
railroad tracks on a
bitter autumn night then wakes
up dead, half of him where he
passed out and the other
half gone
find the humor in this
find the spot where the
roof will start to leak
wait for rain
for the scream of
brakes out in the street
this kid on the ground and
his bike is mangled and
his skull is crushed
go deeper, and
his wings are broken
go underground
tell your mother you want to be
a poet and then look for your
father, but he’s
nowhere to be found
his favorite bar is a bank now
and all of his friends are
old and frightened
his ashes are on a
shelf in the living room
the water heater dies on a
Monday morning
pipes break in the bathroom
in the age of
blind indifference, what I
believe in is fear
what I surrender to
is depression
bright blue sky in every direction
and the memories of old lovers,
scars on the backs of empty hands,
on the backs of sleeping children,
and when you finally figure out
how much in this world really
isn’t your fault, you begin to
understand how unimportant
you really are
you start to tell the story of
how you lost your virginity and
the backyards are littered with
faded toys and broken glass
the fields beyond them are
vast, like oceans, are bottomless,
are thick with blood
dig down just a little and
it all comes to the surface and
if you want to kill the Indians
you need to begin by
slaughtering the buffalo
if you want to kill the few who
survive, make them march
get drunk
attack the camps just before
daybreak, set fire to the homes,
grind the skulls of sleeping
babies beneath your polished boots
rape the women, then
rape them again
make the men watch, then
make them die slowly
burn the corpses to
thaw the ground, then dig
telling the story will be like
opening your veins
think about it
what we have here is a
nation built on movies
make the pain seem real
paint the blood bright red
what I believe in, or
what I want to believe in, is
the idea of Christ
what I object to is blind
obedience towards any god
there are always reasons to kill,
but butchery is something
else altogether, and of course
you look like a fool trying
to explain this to your children
of course I run away from
everyone but my sons
the house is empty, half the
rooms filled with soft yellow light,
the other half cold and shadowed
the hills spin in
circles around us
go higher
thirty thousand feet and
the engines cut out
thirty thousand feet and
the bomb goes off
270 dead while I’m stuck in
freeway traffic, trying to find
something other than
static on the radio
girl next to me is crying and I will
think about her for the next
fifteen years, the warmth of her
breasts, sound of her laughter,
but we never really had a chance
we were telling stories
we were marking time, just waiting
for spring, for sunlight, for the
rest of our lives
I was an asshole then and I’m an
asshole now, and we’re talking
about half my life here
we’re building unsafe houses
from the bones of ghosts
of missing children
you dig and you dig, but
all you find is earth
an eight-year-old boy
twenty years later is still
an eight year-old boy
truck driver hangs himself in
his jail cell, and all I
feel is happy
minister’s wife is found naked
and dead on the side of the
interstate seventy miles north of here
not winter yet, but soon
blankets over the windows and
my mother calls to tell me
that my father is in a
hospital 800 miles away
Easter Sunday and the DTs and so
she flies down to get him
takes him another five years
to finally kill himself and by then
I’ve driven on every road out of this
fucking town at least a thousand
times only to end up back
where I began
a broken shovel
a pile of unpaid bills
late afternoon and then early
evening, dusk and then twilight
the soft weight of my
children asleep
the simple beauty of our lives
intertwined too complexly
to ever be undone
all moments without end.
***
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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