a method
better days,
or at least more of the same and
do you remember there ever
being a difference?
was your father’s suicide
ever really meant to have a purpose?
look
you seem like some who can
appreciate a decent punchline
you seem like someone willing to
fuck on the first date and
why not?
the war’s going to
reach us sooner or later
the mansions of the rich will
have no choice
but to be burned to the ground,
the corpses of false kings wrapped in
their meaningless flags then
dumped in shallow graves
there is no way to the future
but over the splintered
bones of the past
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
no fear, only oblivion
slow bleeding in a cold room and
he’s the same age as you
he’s a father and a son and
a believer in the age of miracles but
the age of miracles is gone
the west coast is a fading dream
all those saints and angels waiting
for the last house to fall or
the needle to hit bone
all those death row inmates
laughing at
the idea of salvation
tell her you don’t believe in murder but
what about all of those
people you’d love to see dead?
think about the ocean
as it begins to rain
two half-truths are a start but
the map still needs a key
the desert means something
different to each of us
tell him this and he turns away
a clock on every wall and they
all give different times
it’s like some definition of
god that finally makes sense
Author’s Biography
john sweet, b 1968, still numbered among the living. A believer in writing as catharsis. Opposed to all organized religion and political ideologies. His collections include A BASTARD CHILD IN THE KINGDOM OF NIL (2018 Analog Submission Press) and A WEALTH OF POVERTY (2025 Cyberwit). All pertinent facts about his life are buried somewhere in his writing.
