"sweeny" poems
The snow leopard mother runs straight
down the mountain.
Elk cliff. Blizzard.
Hammers keening
into the night.
Her silence and wild
falling is a compass
of hunger and memory. Breath
prints on the carried-away body.
This is how it goes so far away
from our ripening grapes and lime,
coyote eyes ******* the canyon.
Yet
we paddle out in our ice boat
headed toward no future at last.
O tired song of what we thought,
stillness crouches like a prow.
We break the ice gently forward.
If I want to cling to anything
then this quiet of being the last
to know about our lives.
Copyright @ 2014 by Jennifer K. Sweeney. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on June 27, 2014.
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 11:25 AM UTC
He raised the scissors high, I felt them pierce my brain
I shouted out in agony," I came for a short back and sides so man what is your game"
Don't worry son the man replied I'm an expert at my trade
If I'm to truly cut your hair I must expose your brain
And so I surrendered to his skill and the scissors went in deep
Don't worry son the expert said, the incision will be neat
So he slashed and and cut and hewed threw pieces in the bin
I thought that he had finished but still the blades cut in
At last the expert stood aside covered in blood and gore
He said my name is Sweeny Todd as he showed me to the door
As we walked across the room he said that will cost a five pound note
It would have been much cheaper if I'd just cut your throat
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 9:29 AM UTC
To Tyler,
My bestest friend of all these years of developing youth and developing adult,
I will you my rifle. Produced under scrutiny, post-war, blued by Chinese furnaces and inspected by communist advisers. I assign this to you my friend in hope that you will recognize more in this object than its role in my suicide. Guns are not the enemy, only the tool. The tool of my execution carried out by the enemy, Our world. And Our society. And Our suffering.
This rifle, my prize. Is accurate. And powerful. And a threat to 5 lives at a time. A symbol of my free will, dissolved into the blood stains and skull fragments laced on its finely carved wooden stock.
In my life, I had loaned to you this talisman of my depression,
But now, in the wake of my death, you will see the weight of my previous actions. My prolonging of life and effort to resolve the suffering and dread I endure.
Tyler. ******* T-Swens. Sweeny Todd. Squidward. Twizzler. Squib.
Many names you have been known by myself and our peers, but erasing human choice and force, you have been known to me and my soul as a Savior of myself for far too long. You have been Beacon for my hope, Home to my catharsis, Shelter to my heart and Medic to my wounds. I love you as most one person can love another without supporting the same roof with the pillars of our spines. I love you as a brother and friend and father and son and twin soul and caring teacher and patient keeper. We are two peas as they say. We finish each other's thoughts. We read the same material and play the same games and breathe the same circles and eat the same vocabulary and sneeze the same curses.
Like two strings of ivy, supporting one another as they grow and twirl. We fight each other in attempts to suffocate our foefriend, at the same time as relying on our friendfoe for the support to grow higher and steal more light. I love you my ivy brother. And I apologize for everything.
Please do not take my death too hard. Mourn and grieve and move on. I was not a cinder block for your foundation. I was a twin building. Of sister architecture and of sister glasswork. We stood for not one score before my sore soul was stole by this full world. You will stand further. And I admire you for it, as much as I pity you for having to endure this slow acid rain and littering of broken cans and smoke rings.
Rest in peace for me, because there is no rest in death, you know this.
- Marshall. Jackledead. Pompous and loud ******* and drama queen. Forever friend.
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 6:33 AM UTC
A loving man with power and riches,
Gets taken away and returns with stitches.
His lovely wife thought dead and gone,
He cries for her in a mournful song.
A razor's blade is sharp and clean,
Shown what's to happen in its gleam.
He's found a friend, one he trusts,
It's his to yield in his lust.
Venegence is now what he seeks,
For the one that touched her cheek.
He won't stop until he's dead,
Cut his throat and off with his head.
The man he wants was in his grasp,
He got away all too fast.
Anger can't compare to time,
Sadly his mind went blind.
He sees the man one odd day,
It's now the end of this game.
Rubies fall without a sound,
They shatter when they reach the ground.
There was a mistake on that day,
It all comes back in a haze.
It wasn't him, it was her,
His only love dead in a blur.
He sits in shock, her eyes still closed,
He blames himself for what he didn't know.
He stares at her face confused and still,
Pondering who he should ****
It wasn't him to **** next,
A young boy's eyes were too fixed.
The roles were changed in the play,
Some will never see the day.
Death comes fast to the man,
His mind goes blank as he holds her hand.
A razor that was once his friend,
Becomes an enemy in the end.
There is this city on a harbor,
It is said where there lived an demonic barber.
There was a fellow that was quite odd,
And his name was Sweeny Todd.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 9:01 PM UTC
you're the best actor i have ever known
i adore you and i am not alone
my friends all say that you are a nutcase
i would like to taste
your beautiful face
I've seen all your films
beginning to end
you were cute back then
the best pirate I have seen or heard of
love
sweeny Todd
ichabod
he is not too odd
johnny depp is best
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 7:24 PM UTC
huge black hulk of sunken sagging bedding
his armchair has seen its better days
his mousy derelictions from society's dictums
have born a wastrel with feet of clay
a bookworm hiding from the birds of prey
a lover unloved except for that long ago kiss on a Paris quay
cigarette burns and sudden coffee spills
scarce paper and broken quills
tribunal assaults on ambition's embattled frays
he holds fast to this chair
through many a disorienting maze
holds fast to this comfort flop of better days
canaries mourn the demise of his old dog lassie
while johns down the street rejoice over their whores' chassis
and the ice cream man takes a breather on the Santa Monica sands
listening to the far away poet
wrap up his film in the can
for video night at the local poetry slam
milk wood meetings in slumberous afternoons
enforce the guilt of absent attractions
though grateful bon ami erases
evidence of the satisfaction
then often leans back in his chair
falling asleep on a half remembered line of Poe or John Clare
awakening wishing once for a computer
though he thinks them a crime
a luddite at heart
neighbors revile him for being an old ****
yet sometimes he sinks deeper into his chair
imagining taking the big step if he dare
burp me mrs sweeny pleads
to her lover who raps her on the back
2 or 3 times and a fourth for FOOD luck
as on the bachelor's chair they commence to ****
though after stepping into the morning's widowed wind
all seems bleak and commonly thin
but both he and she kept the loss of a sedentary promise fearfully within
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 10:20 PM UTC
GAMES OF HOPSCOTCH
In the days of innocence and Eisenhower,
most girls would play their games of hopscotch.
Jay-walking to a vacant lot across the street,
we’d kick away debris and bits of broken glass,
scratch out our game-boards
on rough cement with pieces
of chalk snitched from school.
Like kangaroos, we’d hop, hop, hop, jump, hop
turn around, till sweat dripped down our rosy cheeks,
and our lips craved ice-cold cherry Cokes, grape
popsicles from Sweeny’s drugstore down the block.
We’d skip off laughing, hand
in hand, stepping over wide
cracks, sparing our mothers’ backs.
Just yesterday, I read the news:
DOPE DEALERS BUSTED
on my old street corner. Bullets
popped, brains and blood
littered the black-top war zone.
Now, trails of paint, white as lines
of pure ******* mark the place
dead bodies fell...down, down, down,
all meandering toward the spot
we girls once played our games
of hopscotch...high on life.
May 17, 2019
May 17, 2019 at 11:26 AM UTC