december 17th, the days like pools of tar

cold rain for
a week now and that
i am tire of raping
my past

i am tired of
damning the future and
so i choose silence

i pick up my son from
the sitter's
and drive home

i fix his dinner
while my wife gets
ready for her
second job

none of us think
to breathe

glacial

or this man who tells me
he doesn't believe in violence
or the one who says the
holocaust was a lie

the fence my wife wants to build
to keep the neighbors away

the bruises on
her sister's children

the way the phone never rings

all of these
small revolutions that
never quite occur

never stop

or this

the bombs fell
like warm rain

the children were on fire

mothers clutching babies screaming
and the hand of god was
a fist

the blood was a river flowing
from an ocean of corpses

we had won

John Sweet is 37, and has been writing for 20some years now to varying degrees of success. His recent work has appeared in THE FLATLANDS, FAMILIAR, ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE, WHINO. He is married, a father of two, overeducated, underpaid, and deep in debt. He is a believer in writing as catharsis, and in the government as excess fat.

Email: John Sweet

Return to Table of Contents