all pain, all grace
by John Sweet
sunday morning suicide rain and
the phone doesn’t ring
the walls tremble, but stand
call my life a life but
what if?
takes me almost 50 years to
realize i can’t save anyone
i grow tired of standing in as a
metaphor for a better person
i grow tired of myself
there are songs written for dead men
and there are songs written
by dead men, and there are all of
us who live in between
there is the feel of electricity
when i touch your skin
the hum of quiet joy that
forces blood through my veins
let me become who i
always thought i was and
the past will be forgiven
lucidity
sort of a purplegrey pulse behind the
eyes that comes with living in the
age of murdered artists
a stomachful of
someone else’s blood
a punch in the throat
this man with the gun
says he needs to get high
wants to shoot the ideas out of your head
and this dog at his feet just
begging to be kicked
these children’s bodies dumped in
shallow graves because not all wars are
formally declared
not all victims are remembered
you kill what you fear and then
you become who you hate
we laugh at the pain of others and
hope that it makes us holy
***
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. Some serious stuff, right? His latest poetry collections include Heathen Tongue (2018 Kendra Steiner Editions) and A Flag on Fire is a Song of Hope (2019 Scars Publications).