Hi! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Telegram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for visiting!
chromata
fuck you & yr
bed of nails, okay?
yr goddamn pain yr
ideas of sorrow
we are not nothing
we are less
we are ghosts in the
world of sunlight
glass reflected on
dirty ice and
i am not sorry
i am not drowning
it’s the only thing
i’ve ever
truly believed
the story, as i remember it
and this is earlier,
back when things still mattered,
the two of us in a sunfilled room on a
dead end street and he’s popping pills. he’s
flipping through my collection, telling me
exactly why the stones suck, looking for
just the right song to soundtrack the afternoon, and
he asks so how do you know if you’re
a failed poet anymore?
and he laughs, or maybe he doesn’t, and i
remember the sound of empty hallways,
remember that i’m already forgetting how to breathe, and
he asks how do you know you’re depressed if
you’ve never been anything but? and so i
try to explain the idea of being saved by
the person you love, but even then
it’s starting to feel like a lie
even then i’ve come to terms with the idea of
hating myself, and i want to leave but
this is where i live
i want to sleep because it’s been a couple of days,
but now he’s got the fridge open, is
bitching that i don’t have any beer, says he’s got to
go see one of his kids later on, is hoping that
his ex is feeling horny and if not there’s always
her sister, and so i tell him i need to get
ready for work
i tell him i’m leaving town for a few days and
he nods, sees me for the coward i am,
walks out without another word, and i have no
concept of being 30, or 40, or 50
my father is still alive, but has nothing to offer
will die without ever knowing anything
about me, but this isn’t what i was getting at
this is only a poem in the sense that it
hopes to express some vague,
undefined truth
i am only a failure because i
never had the ambition to be anything more
one of us will live
but i remember you
circling the sun
i remember your face
like i remember the future
your sister crying behind a
pane of broken glass as you
slide your hand through the jagged
opening to touch her and then
picasso’s suicide at the
news of paul’s death
the simple fact of ringo
told me he was your favorite but
i think you were drunk and i
think we were through
a phone call, maybe,
or a letter from rehab
the drugs that you swore were
better than fucking
the threats from your
husband, the communist
said there were children both
real and imagined that
needed to be considered
said there was an ocean view
and a brighter future and that
the stones were better anyway
told me he was on
the next plane out to
come and find me
told me it seemed like kicking
my ass would definitely be
worth his time
was the last thing i ever heard
from either of you
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. His latest poetry collections include A Flag on Fire is a Song of Hope (2019 Scars Publications) and A Dead Man, Either Way (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).