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grey on grey

John Sweet

and what if it’s not hope i offer you but
a lie in the form of a tearstained cross?

what if all our months and years
refuse to add up to a life?

listen

i have kept all the blame my
father ever laid at my feet

i sang the song of crows on the morning he died
in a voice thick with rust and
what if it’s not a lie i offer you but a more
personal form of nihilism?

what if nothing is learned from a past
littered with addicts
and whores and butchered corpses?

are you actually any better than any of
the assholes who were here before you, or is it
just something you tell yourself when you’re
out hoping to get laid?

but it was my father’s death
i was talking about here

it was a landscape of dirty snow and rusting cars
and it was the future we had given ourselves

it was a soldier’s bullet
looking for the skull of a starving orphan

blood up to our open mouths and rising and
not a goddamn thing we could
do about it but laugh ourselves sick

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