the dead flag
by John Sweet

and after the last prisoner
is raped and hung
there's nothing left
but to burn down god

there's nowhere to walk
but towards the windowless buildings
on the edge of town

and there are men in this world
who consider human lives
to be the same as politics
and i call them whores
but can never scream as loud
as their machines

can never bleed as earnestly
as a three month-old baby
with its face blown off

and yes
i believe in beauty
and yes
i fear it

i understand that my children
will leave me

that my words will fail us

i sit in this house i never wanted
with a phone that doesn't ring
and i think of all the people i've hurt

i stand in the trash
and the weeds beyond
the empty parking lot
and listen to the sound
of my breathing

listen to the bones of indians
try to claw their way up
to a sky the color
of cracked glass

and does any of this
sound familiar?

look

i never wanted to write
never wanted to hear
about your sister crawling across
her bathroom floor or
the fifteen year-old girl
her boyfriend was fucking
in a motel room
thirty miles away

the power we have to hurt
each other is limitless

the ways we die are never
as important as the fact
that we die alone
but the fact that you're not here
blots out everything else

there is no point
believing in christ
without understanding why
he was crucified

Biography

John Sweet, born 1968, married, father of 2, working on the ideas of unfocused rage as inspiration and writing as catharsis.  John has been writing since '82 and publishing since '88. His first full length collection, Human Cathedrals, is still available from www.ravennapress.com.

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