these flags that mean nothing and
the fact that you would
die for them
the fact that you would expect
the same from me
from my sons
and what you become is a whore
for the men who own the corporations
what you're fed is the rhetoric of
freedom isn't free
and what it tastes like is shit
consider who it is that
makes their money from the corpses
of soldiers
from the corpses of the raped
consider that what they buy
are politicians
look at your president
look past him
a thousand assholes
waiting to be licked
a million dogs dreaming of
fucking your children
what choices
do you really think you have?
you put a man in a cage
or a young boy
or you leave a teenage girl dead
in a muddy ditch
you have a face
a name
a wife even
and you kiss her
before you go to bed each night
you crush the skulls
of newborn kittens beneath
your boot heels on the
firehouse floor
you know the name of
the man who raped your daughter
and you have a gun
a dream in which
the rivers all run red
in which you are given
an indian name
are shot dead by a soldier in
your own front yard
beneath the humming powerlines
and an impossibly blue sky
and you wake up lost and
you wake up alone and
the air tastes like gasoline
the house is on fire
someone says this must
be america
bodies falling from
a flawless blue sky and the way it
doesn't matter in the end
the way the days become confused
and the years wasted
listen
you think something has happened
but it hasn't
you think a war will determine
the course of human events
but it won't
do you remember the day your brother died?
drunk and driving a car full of friends
and he hit the pole at
eighty miles an hour and then
three years later your mother was
devoured by cancer
your father remarried
not an original story but your own
not a major holiday
but i hate being this alone
thirty five years old and the
possibility that
none of my wounds ever healed
the way the phone doesn't ring
the way the bills are
never paid on time
and what i remember about that year
is narrow light through dirty windows
the landlord's son overdosed
on his bathroom floor
and we never knew his name and we
were fucking when the shuttle exploded
and i forget why you told me
you hated me
but not the smile on your face
not the way you tasted
nothing i could name
but then i've
never been a believer in words
John Sweet has outlasted every small-press fad for the past fifteen years. His latest chapbook, Enemy, is available from Pink Anarchkitty Press.