A Fevers of the Mind Poetry Showcase from John Sweet (t/w)

John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in compassionate nihilism which, as luck would have it, has all the best bands. His published collections include NO ONE STARVES IN A NATION OF CORPSES (2020 Analog Submission Press) and THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY THIS IS GOING TO END (Cyberwit, 2023).

[you didn’t have to let us go]

or maybe sunday morning in
a nation of random suicides

grey snow on grey silence and
the drugs that help you feel alive

the uncertain kiss of ghosts

the uneasy ghosts of ex-lovers

find a room with not enough air in a
house with too few walls and
know that you’re home

believe yourself
to be safe

pretend there are
worse mistakes you
will make in your life

this, the age of ruins

bet on silence or
bet on death

silver sun in a dust-colored sky

the truth of being in love,
but with the
wrong person at the wrong time

a joke, right?

wait fifteen years for the punchline,
but it never arrives

days made of broken glass, of
rusted wire and unspoken resentments

radio static

oldest kid takes your car in
the middle of the night and you
never hear from him again and
good riddance

let all truths be
the fist of god

let all true believers be
consumed in the flames of
their secret self-doubt

and does it feel good in the back seat
with some 16 yr old from the
north side of town?

do you hate yourself as much as
your father hated you?

listen

someone’s gonna have to
pull the trigger, so
why not you and why not now?

the future has always been
written in the
blood of junkies and whores

the kingdom of nil is
inside all of us

there is nothing so important that it
will still matter when the
candle of your life gutters out

first and last

weatherman keeps calling for rain but
every day is 95 and sunny

when your sister’s house burns to the ground
no one cares

fat lazy clouds and the steady
drone of cicadas and
no one misses her children

no one talks about her boyfriend or
the waitress he took off with

grabbed the money from the register after
work that night and then they were gone and
what i remember is the weekend i spent in
some shitty motel room with her and
some fucked-up couple

what i remember is the guy asking me
to turn her around so her ass was
facing the camera and
was i less then or was i more?

the truth, of course,
is that i really don’t care

i was stoned on the day carver died and
the shadow i cast was 50 feet long

my wife was in the bedroom
contemplating suicide for
reasons of her own

the woman i was seeing kept insisting
we’d known each other in a
previous life

kept promising we’d meet again

and we are all the enemy of christ


everything is lost in the fire

november

december

goddamn parade at
three in the afternoon

fifteen degrees and falling and
my oldest boy with a fever of 102

at some point
we stop talking about summer

we grow fangs

claws

the futile scream of metal grinding
against cold metal at six
in the morning

places to be

the fear of failure

of financial ruin

breathe in exhaust and gasoline

breathe out

none of the doors here
shut securely

ice forms in
the spaces between us

it’s easier not to talk
of course
and so i don’t

flowers spill from her mouth
                     from her eyes
                              her hands

consider the possibilities
of despair

my son, half asleep, asks
daddy is it okay if i love you?
and i want to laugh

i want to to run

five below zero with the wind chill,
and some asshole out in the
street is screaming at a woman as 
she gets into a car with someone
else and drives away
and listen

no one died for
any of our sins

no one cares

fucker jumped from the bridge
in the middle of january

punched straight through the
ice and that was it

the baby had no father

every story had no moral
                          no reason

3000 miles away from 
where you began and no options
left and all you are is unhappy

all i am is lost

there is never a
halfway point between us

epilogue, early draft


and it takes me a long goddamn
time to figure out i’m too old for this shit,
that i’m past the point of caring,
february and freezing in the house where i’ll be
found dead someday, and what i don’t know
is if i’m saving up energy for one more
attack or if i’ve just started to fade away

what i don’t know is what my father
thought of me at any point in my life,
                              and does it matter?

am i nothing more than the
sum total of my failures?

goddamn right
i am