sonnet

John Sweet

the afternoon filled
with light but
no color

dead trees and empty streets
and the patches of
dirty snow like cancer

the small brutal acts
committed in anonymous houses

the unpaid bills
and runaway daughters
and the sounds of engines grinding
but refusing to start

and what they run on of course
is blood
and what the drowning boy does
is sing until there's no one
left to hear him

until we come to a point where
the fences end raggedly
and the fields become wastelands

five miles of static and
then ten
and then the beginnings of
another town

the filth of the 20th century caught
in the weeds and low branches
and waiting to outlive us

the words of poets like bones

like fire on
the skin of orphans and
what i'm trying to say here is
that i love you

what i've started considering
is the hopelessness of it

let me start again