are you sure hank did it this a way?

hank Williams jr called
last night
a paid political puppet
in a last ditch effort
bashing  bashing bashing

ba- rack- o- bam- a
running scared

in the last hour
don’t vote for

o-bam a

(you say)
& his radical friends…
so if you want to keep yr gun
like I do
don’t let the democrat
liberal who doo
take it away

oh hell little bocephus
your guitar must be tuned
too tight
cause your songs don’t
sound the same
and this time the coat tails
that your ridin’
ain’t no magic carpet

joe the poet

everyone wants to
drink like bukowski
fuck like bukowski
write like bukowski
everyone wants to walk
in bukowski’s shadow
taking the same steps
like marcel marceau
trapped inside a glass box

so you drink wine by the case
nicotine stained fingers
hunt and peck on a
used underwood
but
listening to mozart
getting a blow job
from last night’s hooker
while scratching yr ass
in dirty shorts
doesn’t mean
you can ever
write like bukowski

I-435 & Truman Road

there are 3 homeless guys
living under the bridge
on truman road
you can see their
damp blankets
cardboard
water bottles lined up
tucked under the steel
each have a section
for sleep
share  the sound of a semi
and sirens on their ceiling
they spend the day
sitting
on plastic buckets
holding signs

homeless
hungry

waiting
for an angel
to come down
waiting
for a window
to roll down

you know the guys
the bucket
the sign
the cold stares
like a dull sun
shining off a winter lake
like waiting
for the ice to freeze
enough for christmas skates

you’ve see them
everyday
through tinted glass
then turn away
like that child
afraid if the ice breaks
you will have to ask
for help

old poet

in the café
i wanted her to tell
you that brautigan
was not a minor poet
and nobody else
could have written
trout fishing in
america
especially the king
of coney island

but you were too busy
scamming wine from
the usf girls who there
for extra credit
too absorbed texting
their boyfriends
or cared less
who you were
or what you read
or that you were
drinking their wine

but she didn’t tell you
instead she smiled
in respect
for who
she thought
you were

American Sentence # 31

I wanted her to tell him nothing about Brautigan was minor.

A Review of Next Exit: Nine by MK Chavez and John Sweet

Review of Next Exit: Nine by  MK Chavez and John Sweet
By Scot Young

Buy the book here:

Visit MK Chavez:
Visit: John Sweet:

As much as I like the work of MK Chavez and John Sweet I dislike collaborations even more.  As a child   my  report cards were always checked—does not play well with others—the handwriting has always been on the wall.  I have never been a fan of sharing.  In grad school  I preferred the solo act too and resisted the cohort thing.  As an adult and still carrying this trait, I could not see how publishing a collaborative chap could work. I believe art is solitary, that the creative process works better alone–in isolation.  I mean really, how can it gel?  And what is the point?  Give me a bottle of Two Buck Chuck’s and close the door.  So when I closed the door I found this.

Next  Exit: Nine is the latest chap book by MK Chavez and John Sweet.  It is a look at America from two poets–Sweet in New York and Chavez in California. As depicted on the cover, it is a look through an ornate gate at an open dumpster.  This collection takes you on a road trip from San Quentin to a roadside café in Nevada to a gas station in New York.

From springs, new york:

and we are tenderly blessed
for the sins we have
yet to commit,
and we have nothing to
break but promises

It is a collaborative trip to the land of melancholy, sadness and pain.  It is documentation of place, of America written uniquely enough in one voice from these two exceptional poets.

From point san quentin, california:

but we don’t cry and for different reasons. he can’t
be seen to have the weakness
of a woman. and I don’t cry
because it’s dangerous to be
a woman. in this foreign land
we call home, a teardrop
gets tattooed at the corner
of your eye to let the world
know that you don’t
have to go far to fight a war

This limited run of the Next Exit chap books always sells out fast.  This one with the combination of these two fabulous poets won’t last long either. At $4.00 postage paid it is a given.  And oh yeah, if you look real close in the dumpster on the cover, that is me sitting by myself in the corner eating a bit of crow and reading Next Exit: Nine.

bottom of last night

like a late night game
of scrabble
all these lonely letters
and can’t make
a decent poem
let alone form
a word
turn on some jazz
basie pounds out
one o’clock jump
but it feels like hank
cold cold heart
wine bottle almost
empty like scraping the
bottom of last night and
the night before
when screaming out
the window was drowned
out by passing sirens
at midnight

MK Chavez Book Chapbook Review

Lots of good stuff can be found along with the Chavez review already posted on this site at The Guild of Outsider Writers. This site is updated quite often.

bell jar

i walked  the path today
heavy with oak leaves

stumbling on the hidden rocks
i made my way down the hill

through purple asters poking
up  through autumn brown

at the waterfall I sat
on the black boulders jutting

out from tired grass and  built
a small fire in the circle of stones

starting it with bundled sage
seemed perfect for this october

smoke signals chased old demons
beckoned absent angels home

as it weaved through old growth  cedar
touched the tail of  a turkey buzzard

making his rounds

when the fire turned to ash I sat
listening to the moment trapped

in a bell jar and it was beautiful

Visitation by MK Chavez

Review of Visitation by MK Chavez:  Kendra Steiner Editions  #90
By Scot Young

I have found over the years there are poets that influence.  Poets that spark something we may not even be aware of.  MK Chavez is both of those. I began reading her on the recommendation of William Taylor Jr.  In Visitation, Chavez has another winner.  This time it comes from Kendra Steiner Editions. This chap is definitely one to add to your collection.  The chap’s cover is a picture of an old school deserted hospital, the kind where cries are heard down the hall right before the orderlies are called.  Visitation is a chap length poem in eight parts written in 14 point font that is unusually justified right to the paper.  This contributes to the same unanswered question haunting the adult speaker that haunted the child.  It holds the same feeling one gets when the phone rings at 3 a.m. and you never answer it.

I’ve been looking for the monster
that ate my mother, the one
that’s left me bleeding.  The one
I run from everyday

Chavez tells a story that begins in the gut and hangs there like waiting for the day the ringing stops.