these malachite days
and are you sorry you grew up
believing in someone else’s truths or
maybe just sorry you grew up at all?
are you tired of all the
less obvious reasons?
imagine it
the dogs will fuck and the
dogs will bleed and then the wolves
will come down from the hills
to eat your young
don’t waste your life
looking for someone who cares
witches are always burned by
men who proclaim themselves
holy
crippled gods are always
invented by twisted minds
find yourself in this picture then
work on getting out
max ernst, all is forgiven
cold in the shadows down these side streets
and the flicker of sunlight
through bare trees
the names of people whose names
i will never know
the churches and the waves of desperation
that radiate from them
i’ve never asked for salvation
never wanted forgiveness
the world is full of children dying slowly
behind locked doors
is full of priests with their precious words
that taste like dust
and when i tell you that the storm has passed
it doesn’t mean that any of us
should come out of hiding
when i tell you i love you
it’s almost never out loud
what this feels like is safety
the indifferent heart
kept telling my father
he was dead
but the fucker wouldn’t listen
a generation of drunken car crashes
giving way to
a generation of heroin slaves,
a neverending stream of pathetic suicides,
and it was my mother who found him
on the kitchen floor
it was my sister who made the
prophecy from 3000 miles away
sent a letter from the church of st. maria,
sent a box of bones,
a postcard of some anonymous couple
fucking on the edge of the pch at sunset,
and i told me father
he was dead
told him he was an asshole,
the two of us standing there in the
wreckage of our shared past,
and my mother said
leave him alone
said it was all a mistake
sister told me i was an asshole
laughed when her boyfriend
kicked her down the stairs
kept telling him he was dead no
matter how hard he hit her and i was
2000 miles away, dreaming of
being in the arms of st. maria
told my wife i didn’t
love her anymore and she laughed
told me i was an asshole
gave me a list of my failures and
it was her boyfriend who called the
next to day to tell me my
father was dead
it was the sound of my mother
crying in the next room
my sister
5000 miles away,
screaming
John Sweet has recently been published in EASY STREET, JUXTAPROSE and BURNING WORD. His latest collection is the spectacularly titled A NATION OF ASSHOLES W/ GUNS (2015 Scars Publications).
