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JOHN SWEET |
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ZEPHYR
the poem shouldn't begin with an image of sunlight on flowers but it does and the boy is dying of cancer
the sky is blue and the ground black with poison and the factories have all been abandoned because there is no more money to be made here
there is no more blood to be licked off the blades of rusted knives
and numbers are called and no one ever answers and this boy is dying
painfully and with sunlight at every window and a small breeze blowing through his bones and then your husband drops you off at your apartment after the abortion
says he'll stop by later and when he does you're in bed with your boyfriend
and the dog is starving by slow degrees and the house is empty and the boy has cancer
he has breathed the wrong air or he has bathed in the wrong water and all the lawyers do is smile
all the accountants do is close their doors
what they know is how much one dead child is worth or how much it will cost
how quickly it can be written off and forgotten
and what you are at any given time is someone else's enemy and who you lie to the most are the people you love
where you are when the house catches fire is with the wife of someone you know
what you need to remember is that god is either an obvious truth or a brilliant lie
that the boy is either dying or he's already dead
that there is no other way for the poem to end ABOVE THE BURNING TREES, LIKE ANGELS
in the end there is only the truth and we will all bleed like indians
in the end there is only america
hands held up to an endless white sky and the sound of gunfire
the bones of ten million slaughtered buffalo
soldiers sent home in bags
and i dreamt that i was beautiful and i dreamt we were in love and in the morning i woke up alone
woke up next to a stranger and the borders were closed
the helicopters sang like dogs on fire like children murdered in suburban living rooms and then it was my father
it was a woman on the phone who said it’s your father and then four days later it was
no machines and the silence of distant wars and the mother of my children in a different room in another hospital because she couldn’t stop crying
and what i told her were half-truths and what i told her were lies and it went on this way for another ten years
the soldiers were dead in fields and the slaves were raped behind locked doors in sleeping houses and listen
there will always be abortion
there will always be prison
and if there are flags they will always be burned and what grows from the ashes will only ever be more flags
what we build at the borders are walls and the guards are given orders to shoot and the word that we carve into the tender flesh of sleeping babies is democracy
the man you find fucking your wife on a quiet october afternoon is someone you’ve never seen before
smiles at you over his shoulder in the seconds before the trigger is pulled
says it’s your father and then the phone rings
nothing on the other end but bombs falling out of a perfect blue sky
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Copyright © 2006 by John Sweet
Material may not be reprinted without prior written permission.