When he told his VA shrink (a nice lady)
about his chopper being shot down three times,
she asked him what he dreamed about.

Falling, he said.
                           No ****, she said.

She asked if he was afraid to fly.

He said wasn't cause he'd never,
ever get in an aircraft again.

She said these were perfectly sane responses:
If I were you, she said, I wouldn't ride elevators.

He didn't mention he avoided them when possible.

  ~mce

How do you separate
the **** from the *******...

  ~mce

I am but a mortal
who lives by chance.
I do not know why
you love me.
Praise the Great Wheel
where the Spirits dance
for allowing me to
to move inside you.

~mce

When you are young
you believe
you will never be
middle-aged.
When you are
middle-aged
you believe
you will never be
old.
When you are old
you believe
you aren't really
that old.
And then you die.
Surprise!

   ~mce

Only the dead know the end of War.*


The truth at the heart of combat:
those who have seen war never stop seeing it.

There is combat and there is the rest
of your life. Nothing ever measures up
to the mad rush of combat; nothing in
your life can compete with that
heart-rending, dire intensity.

Explosions, fire, everything extreme,
the melding of terror and pleasure
into an apocalyptic ****** that rocked
your soul, your mind, your body.

Not the sort of thing you encounter
at the office or in the factory.

So some small part of you never returns
and in deep secret longs to feel it again,
to return to that holy, redemptive horror.

War is life increased exponentially;
it is life on the brink of insanity;
it is the most alive you will ever be.

The truth at the heart of combat:
those who have seen war never stop seeing it.

My love
goes everywhere
in sandals
wearing abalone
at her throat.
She calls herself
a commoner,
but I know
she is a goddess
from an older,
fiercer
order of things,
a warrior woman
struggling
to be free.
When she laughs
the birds listen.
When she touches me,
my heartbeat slows.
She says what she means
and knows what she knows.
Unafraid of who she is,
she takes herself
wherever she goes.
My love in sandals,
walking.

   ~mce

~ for Erwin Schrödinger

Facts are light;
sometimes photons,
sometimes waves,
always dancing,
never for certain,
purely the creation
of the observer,
only the stories
we tell ourselves
about what is,
the dramas
we act out
on the stages
of imagination,
in the theaters
of our hearts.
  - mce

Consider my arms your refuge.
You are always welcome
and always safe there.
Come into my arms and
I will come into you.
Separate, we are people;
together we will be a poem.
We will create each other.
We shall be as complete
as a perfect villanelle,
whenever you come into
the refuge of my arms.

  ~mce

She is a clear running stream,
her pools a mirror reflecting me.
She wakes me up
to my virtues and failings.
She fiercely challenges me
to be the best I can be.
Like water, she is irresistible,
but conquers slowly,
wearing away the bad,
leaving the gold beneath.
The sounds of her fluid flowing
speak the language of creeks,
saying: you are more than you think.
A clear stream running
through my life, my heart.
White hot corona of fire;
tempering cold stream of desire.
Opposites reconciled.

I put up a flag above mine abode
To let all others knoweth I was a different soul
The flag read freak
Freak flag.....



©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
Inspired by Shanna Stojakovich