a sound like picasso's scream there is something here you would not call a war a sound like picasso's scream maybe like the moment the blade removes the hand and the baby is only nine months old and the mother is next her left leg severed at the knee and we are all so undeniably human we are performing these unthinkable acts of brutality or we are witnessing them and the baby won't stop crying the days will not stop unfolding there is no end to the ways a life can be destroyed exiled, late august, the sun crying like a child the wind picking up until the day begins to feel like autumn a friend's child sick and a pregnant woman stabbed to death by her husband on the edge of the pacific the husband disappeared these are old stories painted in bright new shades of grey and the mortgage will still be due whether or not you shed any tears men will speak fondly of lethal injections and men will speak fondly of jesus christ and i will close my eyes in the sunfilled second story room i have no suggestions of my own i have been watching one atrocity lead to the next my entire life and occasionally i have wept more frequently i have turned my face away to hide a smile and i can accept the fact that i will never cure cancer i can live in this town another forty years without ever really considering it to be my home the trick is to always be found standing on the other side of any closing door poet embraces the absence of god and how long after the house burns down is the child's body found in the remains of a closet? eventually the answer doesn't matter and the question becomes pointless the mother is discovered in the garage and thirty-nine stab wounds are counted the father is arrested somewhere in the slow passage of days is eventually forgotten in the wake of newer atrocities and then my son speaks his first words i stand in the kitchen doorway and worry that the furnace won't last another winter i drive home after eight hours spent sitting in a windowless room a man at a four-way stop raises his hand to gesture me through and i raise my own in thanks and i will never grow tired of not speaking will never grow tired of sitting at the foot of the bed and watching april sleep and none of this saves the burning boy and flowers don't grow from the spaces between his bones but i will not feel guilty for turning my face to the sun and smiling i will not spend every waking hour digging tiny graves on the outskirts of fancy towns there are differences between lies and promises made only to be broken © 2001 John Sweet
	John Sweet Recent chapbooks include Seasons of Rust (Via Dolorosa Press) and Faith in Nothing (Kitty Litter Press).  i live in upstate new york with my wife and our son, and i really can't think of anything to say about the recent tragedy that hasn't already been said.  i'm still in shock.