millefiori john sweet
wall of noise press this collection Š2016 john sweet
standing in the hall of mirrors on a sunblind afternoon
because how else to describe my memories of you? how else to explain that it was always summer, that we were always lost? where else to tell you i love you but in a room that never existed?
Max Ernst
Marries Dorothea in 1946. Paints the sky luminous, pale sun over a forest, monsters hiding in the shadows. This is his gift, this small brutal truth. God is neither here nor there. The war, having been started, can never be brought to an end. Your sons wait to die horribly. Your daughters give birth to angels with broken wings. Give birth to blind dogs, to silent corpses, to severed tongues. The future will be theirs to rape.
cupid, deconstructed
and even here, from a continent away, i can tell that you’re the sun, and what the fuck good does it do me? anger is not a gift, of course, and pain is not a blessing memories are untrustworthy at best they will only slow you down when the time comes to make your escape
april, defeated
Wanted the story of Icarus, but there was only rain. Wanted the myth of Christ.
letter to the west coast
we can talk about bravery or we can talk about poetry but not both, not together you understand this don’t you?
crybaby
you find your father there in the room of hanged men, and you cut him down with your favorite knife, and the fucker doesn’t even thank you just walks out the door without saying anything at all
feral heart
you are the tool of god and you are both the wolf’s hunger and the baby’s throat you are the losing side of all possible wars let this knowledge be what defeats you in the end
lovesong #2
and she was and you are and so what now? what next? nothing and nothing and noth ing
the bleeding horse crawls to the water’s edge
let the weight of faith be what finally pulls you under close your eyes as you touch bottom then open your mouth to sing
the thought of leaving
book of poems found in the snow vague ideas all melted together in the last good heat of october and shelly just wants to laugh and crawl wants to learn how to beg says if words aren’t the
death of you it’ll just be some other goddamn pointless thing
poem for picasso
it’s nothing to admit you’re afraid it’s cold sunlight in an empty room
finally, the truth
we should have been braver or stronger, should have been older or less in love should have just kept running towards the late afternoon sun
Pond
In the season of murdered lovers, season of saviors, hands all nailed to empty doorways, teeth all gleaming white and broken, don’t forget the truth. Don’t forget to let the children drown. Smile at them. Wave. Car goes under slowly, and then it’s a long walk back to town.
poem after waking up to snow at the end of april w/ these words caught like fishhooks in my mind
sunlight on priests, and they cast no shadows sunlight on priests, and they cast no shadows
a better dog
let the weight of faith be what finally pulls you under close your eyes as you touch bottom then open your mouth to sing
self-portrait on the last morning
i am the reflection of the sun in tinted glass i am an unspoken apology there are only so many ways to state the obvious
2nd dream followed by the fear that i’m losing my mind
all i can do is rub his back while he lies in bed and dies all i can do is listen to him crying
unease
bike in a ditch by the side of an empty road, one wheel pointed skyward, slowly spinning this can only be the beginning or the end
preliminary sketches
and bluegrey light without shadows and then deeper into the forest snow on leaves, on last year’s bones a still life a landscape imagined are you sorry you grew up laughing at the truth?
finally, the future
we should have been braver or stronger, should have been older or less in love should have just kept running towards the late afternoon sun
incident
or this woman who says that her daughter knew me says she died in a drunken car crash on the interstate in the last hours of february waits for me to remember
the river in winter
oldest boy says
don’t stand so close to the edge says
i love you daddy just like that
this mortal light
But he gets it wrong. Says the poems are supposed to mean something, are supposed to have weight and depth, when all they really are is another form of bleeding. The fist you fear isn’t the fist of God. The names of your children sound hollow when you speak them out loud, like the bones of birds, like bottomless wells. Jump in. Look upwards, back to where you began. Let the prayer come naturally.
like snow falling on the dead
which is just another way of saying nothing another way of filling up the silences that frighten us the most you grow tired of fucking and then all that’s left to do is bleed
dundane
big man with a gun in his hands says this is nothing says we are nothing stands like god in the room of butchered children and says this is what
you deserve this is how the story will end
zimmer ave, end of summer
called up said yr husband was gone said the kids were asleep and i was there in 15 minutes i was gone before daybreak seemed like we were happy at the time
unease
bike in a ditch by the side of an empty road, one wheel pointed skyward, slowly spinning this can only be the beginning or the end
regret
midnight having yelled at my children having apologized and now awake in their room to watch them sleep to try and imagine myself as someone better
w/ wings clipped
factories and the rubble and then dirt and then dust stand there for as long as it takes come to see yourself as a god let the doubters say what they will
self-portrait on the last morning
i am the reflection of the sun in tinted glass i am an unspoken apology there are only so many ways to state the obvious
the kill
this is not nothing, this one child’s death, this is greater than war, and so fuck the politicians and their boldfaced lies and so fuck the poets with their hollow ideals they are all your enemies in the end
talking to my sister
14 year old girl hangs herself on a sunfilled afternoon, and will you be the one to place the roses over her eyes? will it be an honor? an occasion for fear? nothing is ever as clear as i’d like it to be
Jezebel, devoured by dogs
August w/ the shadows of birds up the sides of houses. My mouth, which has no more apologies. I am not the sickness, am not the cure. Opened your letter, read about the rape. Listened to a train on the other side of town. Stood in the back yard, ghost of a moon nailed to a pale blue sky. Laughter of children. Screams. Could’ve been either happiness or fear.
: :
and then just lay face down in the february rain and call it surrender and doesn’t it feel so goddamned good? both bigger and smaller than the suicide of someone you’ve always loved and your tender mouth overflowing with the holy taste of gutter
Another way to hide.
Ring that broken bell she said, and she laughed, and the sky began to cloud over Thunder began to fill the empty spaces Distant, like everything else out here, but moving closer
menace
and there is always danger in leaving a trail, in leaving proof of your past lives denial becomes an artform, lies become oxygen do you practice in front of mirrors? on your children? you are always more or less than what you seem
the sanctity
says everything is happiness and smiles like winter sunlight, three different types of salvation offered directly from the hand of god and who are you to disagree? really who are you at all?
in the room of the drowning man
find a point in yr past you would return to in an attempt to make yr present better, and then find all the new ways things will go wrong remember that the joke is always funnier when seen from a distance
Mortal
You w/ yr broken hands of sorrow, yr sunlight, open arms and pale breasts. My words all coming out wrong, my teeth pressed flat against yr skin, my hands like the hands of Christ, not bleeding but dripping honey onto our bed of bones. Onto yr belly, and the joy of licking it up, the taste like yr sweetest kisses. The sound like yr softest sighs. Invisible, but everywhere.
flag
got there too late, no one alive, just the stench of burnt bodies year zero in the new world best wishes to all