[dreams, they complicate my mind]
and all the fucked up kids are always gonna want to
get you naked, and all those truths we keep to ourselves will
always matter more than god
and all those girls you kiss, and
all those boys,
and all of the drugs pumping through your veins
the thirty years you waited to tell me
everything we might have been
taste of salt in your sweat, taste of blood in
your kiss, constant motion of my
hand down your pants
poems about sex and poems about sorrow and
all the time we spent learning to crawl
all the secret wounds we hoard, and the
way we breathe in the past like sleeping gas
the ease with which we speak of
hunger and spiritual starvation
religions of the flesh
and there has never been something as simple as
a straight road between us,
and there is no such thing as THE END
there is time, of course, but always in
more than one direction, and what if we meet in
some empty field in that first sunwashed
season we shared?
what if we drown our unnamed children in
tears of joy, in rivers of sorrow, and
what if our silences have always mattered?
what if our scars run too deep?
i would be a better king if all your pain was
still mine to give away
i would kneel at your feet if it
would bring back all the lost hours
are you with me here?
can i count on an open
heart and an open mouth?
half a lifetime too late, let’s say
your fears and my fears and this
kingdom of doubt that spreads out between us
laughter and lust and our hands on
each other’s bare flesh
with such simple, divine power
our hopes placed gently on the floor in
a room of spun glass
just take one wrong step to claim them,
and everything we were is destroyed
©2020 John Sweet All rights reserved.
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).
Cajun Mutt Press 