this human noise

poems

 

john sweet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

regret

 

 

you start by hating

who you are

and who you aren't

 

you listen to three

teenage girls in the middle of

the street

screaming at each other

 

you watch the baby

sleep through it

 

think about the sister of

someone you used to

consider a friend

 

about her husband hitting

black ice on the highway on

a february morning

 

the truck that

destroyed his car

 

the way you haven't

seen the sun

for three days now

 

your fingers cold on

the first day of june and

your car sitting dead

in the driveway

 

your wife

visiting her family

two hours away and

without the promise of

return

 

all of the days

you've wasted not

telling her you

love her

 

 

 

 

kay sage resurrected on easter sunday

 

 

dead leaves in the

first days of spring and the

sunlight showing where exactly

things have gone wrong

 

the names of objects lying exposed

between the

shadows of bones

 

and there is digging in the dirt as

a symbolic act

and there is the thing itself

 

addiction or starvation or

the simplicity of standing lost in

a clean white room

 

of staring without recognition

at your own past

 

and what we have in common

i think

is the need to be clean

 

the need to shape a language from

flesh and bone and

now that i've made it past 27

what i fear is being dead at 44

 

at 49

 

what i fear is growing old and

all of the useless anger

that goes with it

 

all of the sad fucking injustice

that i'm powerless against

 

the unbearable weight of

motion

 

 

 

 

 

 

letter to michael

 

 

cold white light and the

shadows of powerlines and

the illusion of motion

 

the names of forgotten lovers

that no longer sound

like prayers

 

the names of seven children

found murdered

in a house in california

 

the names of

my own children

 

everything precious and

so easily destroyed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

absolution

 

 

you have choices

he says

 

you can either write to hide

or you can write to reveal

 

or maybe he says nothing

 

the machines are silent

but the sound

in my head enormous

 

the clock on the wall

pointless

 

and maybe what he does

is lie in the

bed without moving

 

maybe what he does

is die

 

it seems like i

remember it this way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

obvious poem for obvious reasons

 

 

the snow melting at the end

of february and

the garbage revealed

 

the skin peeled back to

find the cancer

 

can you taste it?

 

ashes and black blood in

the back of your throat

 

a boy with a gun and

another one dead

 

four years old and his mother

on her hands and knees

and the sound she makes as

the rope is pulled tighter

 

the way he just lies there

while the television blares in

another room

 

his silence

which says everything

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

lust

 

 

always these same fucking streets

with these same silent houses

 

the way you

mother's boyfriend swore he'd

kill you if you told

 

the dull pain of sunlight

or the simple bliss of getting stoned

 

my hands

which were too small to hold

all of your pain

 

such simple acts of failure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mural

 

 

or you hate your mother

or your father or

maybe both

 

you slash your wrists at

the age of sixteen

 

blow your brains out eleven years later

 

all of these brutal attempts

at self-expression in a world filled

with battered children and still there is

the flight of birds

 

the silence of empty highways in the

last purple light of september evenings

 

and later it's the winter of '56 on fireplace road

where pollock watches his studio

from the back door

 

waits without hope for his hands

to reinvent the world

 

and you tell me that

you could never stand his work

and that those who kill others

deserve to die themselves

 

and you're found swinging in the room

of hanged men in the week before christmas

almost half a world away from your home

 

and when i'm fourteen

i approach morrison like i would a god

and when i'm twenty-five i can

finally see him as pathetic

and there's a woman in a small town i no longer visit

who will never forgive me for this

 

there are the men who

fathered her children then left her

 

and maybe the children hate them

or maybe they just don't care

 

maybe a two year-old girl in another neighborhood

is locked in a heated room

in the middle of august and left to die

 

and you ell me that this is what

you expect from welfare mothers and then

you talk about the niggers who live

down the street

 

about how you're not prejudiced

but you believe in the truth

and it's a song i've been living with

my entire life

 

it's the man downstairs

teaching his wife to bleed

 

it's my childhood spent in the watery light

of a dozen anonymous bars surrounded by

false prophets who can no longer

stand what they've become

 

and you are found on your balcony

dead of an overdose

or you're found in your living room

or maybe you get yourself clean

only to end up shot to death

in front of your home

 

and your blood is real

and spilling everywhere and

twenty years pass before i wake up in

the middle of the night to the sound

of my son crying

 

i have nothing to offer him

but the past

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the need to sleep

 

 

in the stand of dead and

dying trees behind

the gas station where no one

is raped and nothing

is loved

 

south down

any number of pitted grey streets

past empty houses and

crying children

 

past starving artists and the

plastic bags caught in weeds and

the cigarette butts ground

without mercy into brown lawns

 

or the sky where it gets

caught in february's branches

 

the river where the

drowning boy is

always being found

 

where this

fourteen year old girl is last seen

by two of her friends and

what if all she leaves behind is

one mudstained sneaker?

 

what if the killer looks like

everyone you've ever known?

 

nothing in this world has

any meaning

beyond the obvious

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

blind in the hall of mirrors

 

 

not a war

but a stolen child

 

a house set on fire while

the baby sleeps

 

your letters

which you sign love

and the fact that you're gone

 

the way the dogs lap up

jezebel's blood

 

the way dismas is forgiven

then crucified

 

his eyes

which the crows devour

 

his savior

who dies beside him

 

this desert we call home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

dreaming the virgin mary

 

 

sunlight on the act of rape

 

blue shadows across

naked flesh

and she is saying she

loves him

 

she is crawling to where

the boot has crushed

the baby's skull

 

to where the face of god

has appeared in

the mess of human frailty

 

a miracle he says

and then places his hand

to her wetness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

when the baby is born addicted

 

 

what is the song when

the baby is born addicted

and who buys the

flowers?

 

and when the fever breaks

i will find you

where the weeds begin to swallow

the highway

 

i will hold you as

the birds fly from your

outstretched hands

but who will close their eyes

and count to ten?

 

who will be the first

to approach the body broken

at the water's edge?

 

and you're tired of choking on

my questions

and i'm tired of

starving on the answers

 

my wife turns away

from both of us and in

the back seat of a moving car

in a town too much

like my own

the baby opens its eyes

 

all it knows to do

is scream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ash wilderness

 

 

and when you can no longer

win the war

you start raping the prisoners

 

start shooting them dead in their cells

or hanging them in the courtyards

 

letting the crows have their eyes

 

small victories

to give to your children and

what your breath smells of

is rancid meat

 

what your lover becomes

is a whore

 

the barrel of your gun pressed hard

between her legs

and the way that you smile

at her pain

 

the way that being human is

all you can ever do

 

these failures

that add up to your life