lucifer
no alchemy
here in the
forest of the
mind where the
murdered
children will only ever
be what they
are
no roads in or
out and the
buildings have
all
been reduced
to rubble
kirchner
watches the soldiers
burn his
paintings
rothko
considers his reflection
in the
bathroom mirror
isn’t sure the
pills will be enough
and so he
grabs a razor blade
and there is
nothing you can tell
your children
but pale versions
of darker truths
there are no
poems worth
writing, only
those worth stealing
only gods
waiting to be defiled
a blessing
devil is a pagan beast and
the days pass slowly in
the back of his luminous mind
grey sun in a chrome sky and
the crushing weight of all of your
sad little self-inflected wounds
all the ages of man just
leading up to extinction
give the gun to your
lover’s son and tell him who to
hate
try to find words for the
things that really matter
and are you a believer?
are you a holy beacon?
let the ones on fire burn
let the suicides believe in
a better world
no gracious gods here, no
laughter of children in
wildflower meadows
crow dreams of the ocean but
lives his life lost in the desert
has his pills and his cloven tongue
and
the vague news of a priest
held prisoner there
has a mouthful of broken glass but
still screams his belief into an
indifferent sky
whispers motherfucker
says nothing
but pulls the trigger
has visions of bloody handprints
across his lover’s naked body and
understands that his heart is a
cage
that his mind is
a windowless room
stands alone in the darkest
corner and finds the devil there
after charlotte st.
so
make yr life
easier
all poems are
poems about death
all sunlight
is literal
keep changing the
names, of course,
because too much truth
is the same as too
much heroin
keep telling beth
you’ve always loved her
but say it from a
distance of
10,000
miles
jesus it’s
got to get boring
being such a
fucking
sap
the oblique
sunlight in the
spaces between houses
map of loss
geography of both
memory and sorrow and
then what?
find the man with the
crosses carved into his palms
find the one with the head of
a crow,
with the mind of a jackal
the junkie hymns are
what matter here,
and the prayers
of murdered dreamers
gold and myrrh and that
all gifts are weapons
that all lovers
believe in resurrection
the heart betrays the body
yes
but then the
body betrays the soul
ecstasy precedes despair
the desert spreads without
mercy in every direction
malice
a lack of pain, maybe,
or at least a diminishing of it
warmth, but not peace
tension, yes, fear, yes, on and
on both of them until they feel like
all you’ve ever known, and when
you tell the kid to cut himself,
he does
when you tell the woman to
get undressed, to get on
her knees, she does
sorrow is its own
form of blindness
hatred is the driving
wheel of western thought
if you close your eyes, you
can already hear the next
war approaching
dog on fire
baby is found dead in
the back seat
is red and blistered
and the air between his
tiny hands
too hot to breathe
the world of
human error too
large to comprehend
John Sweet
