Friday, November 26, 2010

John Sweet, "More Words in Short Choppy Lines" + Photography





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broken hand w/ mirror


in this world where
almost everything is beyond
your control and your
choices are limited to false
god, slave, impotent king

vote or don’t vote
shoot or don’t shoot and
                      either way
the starving continue to starve

grow old
then

die

eat handfuls of dust

send postcards back to
your loved ones, to
your enemies

let them see you
                finally
for the empty threat you
                   always were


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 the refusal


shoot the doctor in the
back as he walks away then
tell him he’s a coward while he
dies at your feet

it’s an addiction,
like humor

it’s a punchline

you capture the soldier, a
boy of fifteen or sixteen, and
then you torture that fucker
until he’s on the floor in a
pool of his own shit and blood

this is how wars are won

make your children
understand this

tell them how much you hated
your own father,
how much he hated you

show them the scars

explain how they can only
grow up to
repeat your mistakes



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 blue skied surrender


you near an ocean
          not my own
and what we have between us
                                 is silence

choices are made
absences explained

you tell me not to tell you there was
never any hope
but what does it matter?

i have these pictures
and my faith in sunlight

the train tracks here
echo the curve of the river

men with the heads of carrion birds,
with fangs and claws,
live in the trailers up in the hills

money is power and
               power is god

death is death, but there are
better and worse ways
to approach it

i choose running away

choose willful blindness

have only ever been brave
when there was nothing
valuable at stake




image



pythagorus, dismantled


and grey skies and
almost rain

no need to worry

no pain no
fear when the pills
take hold

woke up alone on
the living room floor

feel asleep with no
need for god

thought i had enough
money,
but the children
         were gone

thought i had enough
food, but my hands
just kept bleeding

the bottle was empty

fought through the
past to reach this
moment and then found
out there was no
way back

a man hung of his
own free will
can never be a nation

darkness offers
no safety

boil up whatever
splintered bones
you can find and let
this last meal we
share be a feast

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postcard to california


and you and i like
forgotten kings cutting wires,
like ghosts in empty fields

you and i staring
blindly into the sun

drowning, but slowly,
five years and then ten,
blood turned to amber,
empires to dust and
then you and i like
open flames

you and i like ashes

all of the years we will
spend growing cold


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 splendour


grow up fearing
men w/ answers

grow up fearing
growing old

reach the age at
which you are
no longer any use to
                     anyone

sit beneath the
dull yellow heat of
august skies and
consider suicide

consider sleep

the fear of dreams

of waking up
one day closer to
                 winter

of not
waking up at all




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 the obvious


you, still w/ the
taste of poison coating
your mouth

still w/ the need to write
these meaningless goddamn poems
about metaphorical deserts

so what if you’re lost or
if you’re never found?

so what if the middle is
worse than the end?

we’ll all be dead and
forgotten soon enough







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 into view


not blindness
but the sky gone dark

porch lights

bitter wind

in any story, you
are only the sound of
dead leaves down
sleeping streets

in any dream, i am
only the moment
of despair

you wake up
sweating and see with
absolute clarity how
all of our kingdoms
will fall

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 ex


just kill yrself a little,
maybe, just to see how it
feels, just to be able to still
step back out of that room
into pale april sunlight

just to have something to
talk about when your
lover starts to turn away





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untitled, grey on grey


and you can feed your children
the poison or you can wait
for someone else to do it for you
and, beyond this, you
have no choices

beyond this,
your life is good








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3 comments:

  1. Beautiful post—words as well as pictures.

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  2. Hi Becky,

    Thanks for dropping by. The pictures juxtaposed next to the poems create an odd sort of tension to me. Often I've found John's writing disturbing and his subject matter will border on the grotesque at times. Ok lets be honest, not border on it but jump into the mire of the grotesque, but yes, there's such an odd and painful beauty to the harshness of reality which he refuses to flower-up on the sly with overt poetic devices. I have yet to decide what to make of all his work that I've read, but his poetry resists my attempts to define it. I find it unique and refreshing if unrefined, undiluted may be another way to put it and yes, as you say, beautiful in some ways but also in other ways its a relentless beating of a dead drum.

    Or, in other words there are many contradictions going on here, most especially between the words and the images so I find the pondering of them fascinating and worthwhile,

    glad you enjoyed the post.

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  3. Click on post title to find John's collections, or copy and past in a search engine: http://www.lulu.com/bleedinghorse99

    ReplyDelete