falling from great heights into vast oceans

strange standing here naked
with a gun to my head,
but this is the new world

wanted to move out to california,
but i was tied to this house, to
this job, to these children

woke up sweating and terrified
from a dream with no meaning

heard water in the basement

tasted rot, tasted decay

not sunlight, you understand,
but this numbing sensation
of suffocation

this false hope of
50 degree afternoons
at the beginning of february

the threat of freezing to death
replaced by the threat
of drowning

the sensation of rust flaking
down from great heights
onto bare skin

and did i mention the gun?

can you picture the hills
all painted a
soft, despairing grey?

we will never be more in
love than we are at this moment

we will never be more alone

choose, but then keep
your choice a secret

malachi (2)

all of these small cancers
and all of these smoldering remains
and all of the bodies

all of the ways that each one
matters more than war

and these words
which do nothing but scratch feebly
at locked doors

these dogs
who are starving slowly

who are chained to the passing days

and this is not a poem but
an explanation
or possibly an apology

it's my mind
refusing to sit still while
the first big storm of the year
approaches

and there is a man who writes to say
that he can't make sense of
any of this

you need punctuation
he says
and you need flow
and you need to stop worrying
pollock's bones

and there is a four year-old boy
on fire
on the other side of town

his mother held back by the neighbors
while the roof collapses

some small tragedy with no meaning
and maybe these are all we
have left in this year of election

streets littered
with the corpses of soldiers or
this man who murders his
pregnant wife

the woman he fucked
two months earlier who says she
just wants to be left alone

who says the walrus was paul

says you have to look for the clues

the open hand or the third eye
or the burning cross

the way america is defined
by its history

the way christ's teeth have been
filed down to dirty yellow points

and do you fall to your knees when
he smiles
or do you turn away in shame?

consider your answer

consider the act of rape being
filmed for the internet

the way names are kept hidden
out of fear
and out of shame

your children growing up with
nothing more than
the wreckage you've left them

one for lisa, stoned

try to help and you
fuck things up even more and
so you stop trying to help

this is the way

these are the starving orphans
of the world and the
battered mothers and the
abused babies

wheels
within wheels

gears clotted with
rust and with blood

this woman next to you
in bed who says show me how
much you love me over and
over but all you do is
hurt each other

all you do is hurt

there is no shame
in turning away

For You

Sun through the blinds onto your body.
Sweat running down your breasts, music
everywhere. Loud, bigger than God, bolder,
and my fingers wet with your taste.

This is something from another room,
from a different town, and I carry it with
me instead of your name. Instead of your
face.

I stand at the window while you lie on
the bed. You touch yourself. You moan.
Things begin to fall apart.

violence

talk about the age
of burning witches as if it’s
a thing of the past

remember
the confidence of youth

hold your ground

the coldest days
are the brightest

squint into the overwhelming
roar of distant massacres

talk about both time and space

these men with their faces
painted white, black smudged
around their eyes, mouths &
teeth smeared with the blood
of other people’s children

the gun is invented,
and then the bomb

killing one martyr at a time
is inconvenient, inefficient

picture the face of god
as an explosion at
ground zero

blinding

overwhelming

you will know it only
once before you die

in the palace of exiles

walk to the far edge of the
field and shoot yourself

would this be considered lost
or would it be considered
found?

believe in christ
as a fever dream

scream at the hills

throw the baby in the river

no one offers you hope
without wanting something
in return

responding to the critics

and sometimes
they write to talk about
discipline
and sometimes to lecture
about the need for
hope

sometimes
i send them pictures
of nuns hanging raped and
murdered from the trees
of central america

we all need to
believe in something

Grace

What it is, after everything, is that his wife
feels cheated, and so she leaves.

There is silence, and then there are
all of the sounds that help define it.

There are the dead and the dying,
and he is one or he is the other.

He is counting the days.

He is walking backwards.

The sunlight feels good on
his useless hands.

lazarus, reinvented

and you and i in
the brutal light of
empty prayers, and
you and i in the
relentless shadow
of sorrow

thought the words
were what mattered

thought the truth
would be enough

jesus christ,
what a fool i was

borderland

faces painted dark and bright and
all of them hidden at
the edges of february fields

men of power
grown fat on lies

the women they have come to own

piles of skulls left to
mark where one country ends and
another begins

ASH WILDERNESS

I added a link for this collection over in
my BOOKS section. My email is in my
Profile, if yr interested in ordering a copy.

poem for america, ten below zero

and in the end it’s just
a dead man’s country, and
all you can do is sing

throne

small desperation in
pale blue afternoon light

cop on fire, but
too far away to offer
any warmth

do you believe that nothing
can be solved with
violence?

do you believe in anything?

it’s a pointless question
in a house of broken mirrors

all clocks remember the
moment of your birth

they have all seen the
details of your death

count backwards from 1,000,000

scrape the ice from
every december windshield

man stands there in the street

raises his arms in
surrender
and is shot to death

small minds build
flawed houses

i lived there for 20 years
without incident

phone rang every day but
no one ever answered

no one left a message

found her on the
other side of the country
long after i’d stopped looking
with pictures of her child
and pictures of her husband
and we didn’t quite touch

filled the space between us
with too many words
while evening fell

arrived at the truth, finally
but by then it
wasn’t worth shit

THE RETURN OF ASH WILDERNESS

It's back, and who are you to deny it? All relevant info is in the link. E-mail me w/ questions, comments and/or faint praise.

ASH WILDERNESS

starling

somewhere in the dark
cross the line between lover
& apprentice
between angel & whore

cross your heart

believe the prettiest lies

in the morning,
i’m afraid to get out of bed

i need sound, or
at least noise

this desk drawer that
holds all of her letters

this poem that bleeds

that leaves a mess on
the dining room table

no flowers

no mirrors

keep the doors locked and
the phone unplugged

smell of sex still
on my fingers

stand perfectly still

breathe in stale air
and grey light

all despair causes cancer

all starving children
are as good as dead

grab what you
hold most dear and wait

was kissed by ghosts, was weeping

find the ocean just inches
below the desert's surface &
then wait for rain

this is the kingdom of false prophets

these are the bones of old lovers

no one here
wants to be your friend,
but being an enemy has value
too

wars cannot be fought
without cowards

children cannot be raped
without the cold embrace of priests

what matters isn't the truth,
but how pretty the
lies can be made to sound

what matters is power

the shame of being poor is a gift
given freely by the rich

houses built by the hands of
beggars can only fall

you will stand naked in
the ruins of everything you've
never owned and wait like a dog
for the kindness of strangers

ashcroft

lovers w/out faces
or else

towers of metal
connected by thin wires

vast empires

you open your door
and find the ocean

woman in the bed
behind you says stay

choices are like bones
or like promises, but
only because both
can be broken

sky is the color
of sunlit dust

breathe in the
whole of the empire

minotaur

in the end
i say nothing

walk down this empty street instead
into the face of pale broken sunlight with
the lesser bones of priests ground into
fine powder beneath my feet

with the mother of my children
begging god for forgiveness

empty sounds from a bleeding mouth
empty hands cut off at the wrists
because the idea of war cannot be
considered w/out the idea of pain

the forest is where you run
only after all of
the cities have burned

being lost is what comes
after being alive

OTHER AVAILABLE TITLES

the john sweet storefront at lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/bleedinghorse99

MK Chavez/John Sweet, “Next Exit: Nine” (KSE no. 112), now available

The ninth and second-to-last installment in Kendra Steiner Editions' "Next Exit" series of chapbooks—-a series devoted to poems rooted in a strong sense of place—- is now available. MK Chavez (from Berkeley, California) and John Sweet (from New York state) are friends and also admirers of each other's work, so pairing them for a joint chapbook seemed like a natural. MK and John write about beauty and pain in styles that are rich yet understated, jagged yet warm, and ultimately disquieting. The people whose lives they document in their work are human versions of the blades of grass that somehow manage to grow through the cracks in the asphalt. Travel the desert backroads where Gram Parsons spent his last hours; walk through a world of domestic violence and pickup truck gun racks; take a sobering trip to San Quentin; taste the stolen and desperate kisses; harvest the empty garden.

Eleven brand-new poems written specifically for this project from two of the most distinctive American poets—poems that perfectly capture 2008 America.

MK Chavez is the author of Virgin Eyes (Zeitgeist Press) and Visitation (Kendra Steiner Editions) and an active participant in the San Francisco/Bay Area poetry community. She is a poet greatly admired by her colleagues and has been a joy to work with on her two KSE projects.

John Sweet, author of the much-acclaimed Human Cathedrals (Ravenna Press), has been an important voice in the alternative poetry world for at least 15 years. His blog and more recently his myspace page have been offering powerful, expertly crafted new poetry on a regular basis. Recent collections of his work include False Hope, Between Truth and Mercy, and World Without Sound. John is a true artist, and it has been an honor to work with him on this project.
Don't miss this one, folks. These Next Exit chaps generally sell out in 8 weeks or so. $4 US/ $5 elsewhere (postpaid).Ordering information can be found at:

http://kendrasteinereditions.wordpress.com/available-kse-poetry-chapbooks/