New Poetry by John Sweet

song of the wounded horse

18 year old girl naked &
beautiful in the room at the end of
the hall and will you be the one
to tell her that christ is dead?
don’t just stand there
while the trailer begins to burn

don’t think you can ever stop a
war being fought for profit

the sink in the bathroom drips and
the children are hungry and
i am tired of being told to take
pity on the junkies

i am tired
40 year old ghost on the other end
of the phone tells me we had to
dig for seven hours to find
our daughter’s body and what can
you say to this?

the men out there die of AIDS
or they live forever

the women commit suicide

there is nothing you can build
from the bones of angels but
i collect them anyway and at night
if you’re quiet you can hear the
noise this house makes as
it pulls itself apart

in the morning you can walk
through the rubble of your past

feels like being lost except
that all of the pain is familiar


- John Sweet 2016


John Sweet sends greeting from the rural wastelands of upstate New York.  He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the need to continuously search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest collection is APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016 Flutter Press).