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Poetry || SubmissionsFive poems by John Sweetman found man found in his truck at the edge of the parking lot found where the pavement gives way to something older and it's here that the animals choke on bright scraps of plastic it's here that the raped invent their own language and the crippled refuse to be healed there is no future for the holy ghost and the past is a lie ask this man listen he has driven a lifetime to stain the sky with his silence the dog that you dream of an empty house with a dog chained up in the front yard you put your hand out tentatively and the dog bites it the house remains empty *** beyond the back yard a cornfield beyond the rows of corn an endless stretch of hills you suspected all along that this was nowhere *** inside the house remnants of a forgotten life faded furniture torn wallpaper dust thick on every window this is all too close to what you've spent your own life escaping outside the dog has begun to bark *** or you keep driving your wife sleeps beside you and your hands are clean the front door is ajar an upstairs window broken the lawn is devouring the driveway the dog is devouring itself *** it's the dog that you dream of that night rib-thin and frantic as you pass you should stop but don't and you wake up at some point after midnight with the bone-white memory of jaws clamped tight around your throat what you feel is relief psalm for the holy and on these cloudless days with the villages in flames and the children drowning in their own blood you can finally see how christ was a failure you can taste the ashes of 20,000 strangers and know what it means to be hungry can understand at last that there is no divine light to be found in an ocean of corpses forgetting the west we are forgetting the west today we are draining the sky of color are bleaching it out to a dull bone white against which the sun can be placed like a smear on dirty glass like a faint ripple in holy water and it is against this softly luminous thought that the trees rest their branches and i call this place home grudgingly and my silence is an empty threat we are all proof that the shadows of ghosts stretch only as far as the earth's curve will let them we are all children of peace while the bombs that fall ten thousand miles away kill sleeping babies and i drive until the roads give way to barren november fields and then i walk if there is a father anywhere in this pointless land i will find him will bring him back to your door will put the flame to his tongue while you tell him you love him while you carve the history of desertion into his blind eyes your words finally nothing more than a rain of ashes falling too softly to hear another letter from a missing friend another letter from a missing friend saying (yes it's warm here in california) saying (yes we have seen the bodies being washed ashore and no you weren't among them) and it's comforting in its own small way but i'd like to be there for myself would like to be far away from this house and its damp smell of decay from the trees that burrow through the basement walls and the roof that is slowly pulling itself apart i'd like to walk the beach at zuma beneath a brighter sun than the one i've spent my entire life hiding from would like to find the broken remains left where the receding tide forgot them a man with a history but no name and i'd approach him slowly would look at his bloated blank face staring blindly up at the sky and see that he wasn't me would know that i was alive More by John Sweet at Burning Wood More by John Sweet at Ariga and here. Email to John Sweet Today's Situation
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