Dreamingmonsters sampler (1)

The Century

of

Dreaming Monsters

Poetry

by

John Sweet

Winner of the 2014 LUMMOX Poetry Prize

The Century

of

Dreaming Monsters John Sweet

©2014 John Sweet All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of written reviews.

ISBN 978-1-929878-75-8 First edition

PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733 www.lummoxpress.com/lc/

Printed in the United States of America

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table of contents

5/

arthur ave poem

6/

madrigal

7/

with the taste of yr smile

8/

late summer, already cold

9/

song for no god

10 /

dumping the ashes: a vision

11 /

the immortal years

12 /

in the palace of stained benedictions

13 /

poem of concentric circles

14 /

dawn

15 /

anna

16 /

laurel’s blues

18 /

song for empire

19 /

in the empire of failed ideas

20 /

later in the age of abandoned hope

21 /

poem from the final bitter sunfilled days

22 /

february sonnet

23 /

when i was the city you were always leaving

24 /

a sighting of the christ child on the corner of jackson and main, late february

25 /

for carolyn wearing the crown of pain

26 /

double negative

27 /

for kristen, at the end of everything

28 /

the niceties

—3—

table of contents (continued) 29 /

a crippled song on sunday evening

30 /

windy afternoon on charlotte st

31 /

what becomes

32 /

this need to breathe

33 /

diogenes

34 /

the joke

35 /

painting from memory

36 /

the easy way

37 /

your buried lover, her missing future

40 /

diluculo

41 /

year zero, counting backwards

42 /

requiem, for lynn

43 /

late night poem in a one-room apartment

45 /

rime frost landscape

46 /

hesiod’s chaos

48 /

the slow crash

49 /

over/out

50 /

uncertain poem while missing st maria

51 /

too high, too long

52 /

wedding day

53 /

later,

54 /

imaginary poem for blind men staring up at heaven

—4—

arthur ave poem a car outside at 2 a.m. with the headlights on and the driver honking the horn but no one is there cold wind and dead leaves and the ghost of your grandfather’s suicide in this darkened room a letter from a woman named angel says the mind is a knife turned inward says she loves her daughter but it’s not enough and when the car finally pulls away there is only the light of the moon when the river dries up there are only our bitter pasts to swim and drown in lifetimes spent waiting for something better to happen songs about love in the abstract films about war clock on the floor next to your bed always hesitating just a fraction of a second before stumbling forward

—5—

madrigal or sunlight through december fog or the way no sense can be made from suicide the idea of forgiveness which seems to always be with me what have i done in my life out of kindness and what have i done out of vengeance or even just what have i done? what have i allowed others to do? war becomes the solution to fear you fuck with god before he can fuck with you gotta mow down the weak the starving those opposed live your life like a sick dog in a small cage and that’s what you become you hurt whoever loves you you dream in shades of green and grey can’t spend your whole useless life just drowning in the desert but at least you could try —6—

with the taste of yr smile but it felt good laughing at someone else’s pain all the days of yr life multiplied by zero all windowless walls all faceless strangers kid says he hates you then drives away soldiers dig graves for all the pretty girls what i’m trying to say here is more or less than what you want to hear and that’s the joke story ends just when it starts to get interesting

—7—

late summer, already cold kissed you in the car while yr brother lay bleeding in the back seat and you said you missed yr children said we would only end up hurting each other in the end a small wound really but he was dead before i could tell you i loved you

—8—

song for no god and then the dream where my oldest son slowly bleeds to death in my childhood room, and then the sound i make crying in the streetlight darkness of 3 a.m. late summer maybe or the middle of february the cities all rotting from the inside out and the empire in slow decline soft breathing from down the hall gentle rhythm of mercy

—9—

dumping the ashes: a vision no gifts for you and bleeding hands filled with the knowledge that words are worthless that distance defeats desire but listen your pain is your own your guilt gathers interest in the end, these houses have no room for hostages or shipwreck survivors i no longer acknowledge any messages sent in secrecy i understand the code but have given up on taking sides all war is sorrow all lies soar on angel’s wings we’re born just waiting to die, of course, and it’s easy to say no regrets but i’ve never met anyone who wasn’t a liar i’ve never believed that christ was a beacon whatever light you choose to follow only makes you blind — 10 —

the immortal years the petty grievances of minor gods and then all of their neverending wars butchered children and the point they prove better weapons by which we mean a more efficient way to kill a greater number of people and it’s all good fun if you’re on the winning team it’s a chance for rape without the fear of reprisal a chance to practice the fine art of torture to step right up and truly fucking shine

— 11 —

in the palace of stained benedictions i am not sorry am not apologizing and none or maybe some of this was my fault i maybe watched or maybe helped maybe held the camera but there are worse things maybe held her hand while she cried or screamed or maybe held her down tried to think of something to say turned the radio up louder tried to picture a day when all of this was in the distant past

— 12 —

poem of concentric circles wake up to the news of creeley’s death, some dark piano music, brakes worn on the car and eye strain in bright light not young anymore motherfucker and you can start bitching about how things used to be without stopping to remember how goddamn miserable you were you can fix the back door but can’t keep the house from falling down you can stop pretending to care about other people’s pain and so you do

— 13 —

dawn breath held in frozen silence in absolute zero january 6 a.m. moments of remembered loss of unspoken words of hostile gods and crystalline and cloudless and crescent moon brighter than other sorrows but not but never darker blue and bottomless and then pale at the horizon holy and unbroken like distance like crawling me to you over a thousand years of broken glass a single moment and then the moment after i am forgotten here i am forgetting we are always — 14 —

anna all of these poems about yr sister and never any about you and we were always cold in that goddamn room and yr father still four years away from his first heart attack yr sister naked in the doorway always smiling or laughing always asking what i was writing about

— 15 —

laurel’s blues end of the day and you cast no shadow end of the song but you never knew the words never read the book never saw the movie and what good were you really in the end? who will dig the graves for the hollywood whores when they no longer earn any money? and i was 22 and working 3rd shift hands shaking and eyes filled with grit at 2 in the morning thoughts of another man’s wife, of clocking out in 5 hours to go be with her, and it was only 4 years later that she killed herself it was her sister who called to tell me

— 16 —

middle of january and blankets over the windows a thin crack where sunlight came in to illuminate a dusty corner of the bedroom and what i felt was holy a small piece of a larger emptiness a cold engine grinding itself down at the edge of some weed-filled lot nothing divided by nowhere and then cut in half by the dull relentless blade of the future

— 17 —

song for empire fucking cold and fires built to thaw the ground corpses everywhere a victory over sleeping children and pregnant mothers butchered them good for god and country wore those shiny metals with pride

— 18 —

in the empire of failed ideas always this dream of dust-colored skies of grey snow on barren hills and always the possibility of a different past leading to the same present an island of pain in an ocean of loss which is just one way of talking about regret a house made of cardboard melting in the rain and wherever you are the priests are busy fucking children on beds of broken glass and no matter what you believe your future has already been decided by politicians grown fat eating the shit of their masters say good boy say good girl say roll over and die and it’s done

— 19 —

later in the age of abandoned hope and if i weren’t a liar i would tell you i loved you and if the truth really mattered we would be together if every day was endless we would have nothing but time

— 20 —

poem from the final bitter sunfilled days staring into the palm of the angel’s other hand finding only visions only questions only rumors of war burying the bodies of politicians in the age of assassination and i get tired of every passing hour filling up with the color of blood i laugh at the violent deaths of tyrants and mediocre celebrities we are better than nothing and worse than most

— 21 —

february sonnet find yr house on the map of the bombed city & mark it w/ a small silver star tell me you love me tell me why laugh at all the acts of violence & all of the lies that have brought us to this small temporary grace

— 22 —

when i was the city you were always leaving and rose-tinted skies and a pale white sun, man with a flag or a man with a gun asks the obvious questions about freedom, says the enemy is hidden but he’ll know them when he sees them says war in the name of god can only be a good thing says the removal of those opposed is the path to a better future and did you vote for this asshole? did you hold his coat while he fucked your husband your wife and your son and your daughter? can you prove beyond all doubt that your own fragile life is worth saving?

— 23 —

a sighting of the christ child on the corner of jackson and main, late february always snow at two in the morning / at four in the afternoon three cop cars in the e-z mart parking lot and a man face down on the dirty sidewalk keeps yelling his girlfriend’s name while she walks away keeps calling her a bitch keeps screaming that she’s dead keeps bleeding onto the pavement

— 24 —

for carolyn wearing the crown of pain on the other side of the continent in the wrong part of the year, bleeding ice-cold sunlight and thinking about st maria and last blurry fucked up days of dennis wilson waiting for the children to run away waiting for judas and his latest girlfriend and when he finally arrives he brings a copy of exile on main st and a bottle of wine smiles and says the brightest days are behind us knows in his heart that there is no end in this world to the list of things not worth dying for

— 25 —

double negative among the weeds and frozen mud among the grey taste of cold metal, vision of wolves at the throat of god, small child lost in a january river white dust sky and ten inches of snow on the way hunger but not starvation ignorance fear these are the truths your government wants you to accept this is the age of crippled kings reborn they will always be busy looking for enemies who need to be killed

— 26 —

for kristen, at the end of everything and all summer long spun sugar from your open wounds until it was fall and i couldn’t eat anymore

— 27 —

the niceties king’s crown on fire and falling from great heights into an impossible blue sea and what is the truth but a lie in brighter colors? how can this man at the door tell me that death is nothing to fear if he’s never been dead? painting the walls is one thing but then we go and paint over the windows too we shoot the dogs when they beg for food and we blame each other and is this how you picture your life turning out? do you remember your childhood? or maybe it was worse than what we’ve become and everything since then has been an improvement or maybe our biggest mistake was falling in love

— 28 —

a crippled song on sunday evening life lived in grey light and charlotte street gone one hundred long years in the past and the sun never quite rising and the clouds never quite parting got these kids now and got these bills this job a town filled with churches waiting to burn a head filled with poems and all of them more real than god everything i can hold in my hands enough until the day that it isn’t

— 29 —

windy afternoon on charlotte st good riddance to the overdoses and a slow horrible death to the enemies of freedom gotta smile pretty for the camera gotta laugh when baby says she’s tired of bleeding in the name of love when she says don’t call me baby and would you rather be fucking her or her sister? would you rather be dying in summer or waiting for winter? all answers are equally important when nothing anyone says ever really matters

— 30 —

John Sweet, b. 1968, death in the distant future. Opposed to all organized religions and political parties. Not entirely sure he’d recognize a true democracy if he ever happened to see one.

— 31 —

The Lummox Poetry Prize has been a long time coming. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but hadn’t figured out how to do until last year. Where would I find a judge (someone who would reflect the Lummox ouvre)? Then it occurred to me that I could be the judge! And I could pull the winners from the list of poets who submitted to the Poetry Anthology that I had begun publishing three years ago.

I’m proud to acknowledge John Sweet as this year’s winner, and William Taylor, Jr. and Cristina Foskey as runners up. They’re all excellent poets. I’d also like to acknowledge Georgia Cox and Dr. Thomas Brod as Patrons who made the cash award possible.

I hope you will enjoy this book.

—RD Armstrong, Publisher & Editor-in-chief For more information, or to order the complete 60-page book, please visit our website at: www.lummoxpress.com