a lifetime of bitter confusion

by John Sweet

nation of children dying from
their fathers’ discontent

ocean of blood surrounds this
kingdom of corpses, and you waste yr
breath on sorrow and you dig yr
pit of despair

you move further away from the
sun to where the air is dark with the
songs sung by crucified prophets

you let every prisoner believe he
should’ve been born someone else

i let cindy walk through my door
naked and ghostwhite and radiant

told the joke and no one laughed and
the days here are all sunlight and pain

asphalt desert 10,000 miles in every direction
and the sweat in our eyes while we
waited for the body to surface

while we waited for the drunken
motherfucker down the hall to
finally drop dead

to lose his footing, maybe, crash
seven flights to his bed of spikes and it wasn’t
until 20 years later that i finally figured out
you’d spent that summer homeless

it wasn’t until after i’d lost you
that i became a father
and i kept the drugs hidden kept the
windows open but you never came back

you never got to hear the punchline

could never quite understand why
each nail had to be driven
all the way through