for Matthew and Richard*

Your children are not yours.
They are a gift on loan
from a generous universe.
They honor you with their presence.
They bring you laughter, joy
and sometimes worry and tears.
They are not your life,
but they are the substance
of the best part of it.
You try to raise them with love.
You would take a bullet for them
and smile as you died
knowing your brothers
would take revenge.
And when they are grown
you regift them to the world,
but you never stop worrying or hoping.
You know, that with luck,
through you, they will make
the world a richer place.
You hope they will always love you
and hold you in their hearts
because you know you
that you can never let them go.
You know you weren't perfect
and hope they will forgive you.
You pray that someday
they will speak of you
to their children with affection.
War, friendship, madness, romance,
nothing can compare
to the time they were in your lives
and nothing ever will.

  -mce

for Uli*

I am divorced,
but not stupid.
Time was, I was a
mentally unstable
*******. That is
why my wife divorced me.
She did what was necessary
to protect herself
and our children.
I don't blame her,
I am grateful
for her courage.
I tell people
I will never marry again
because I couldn't
find someone better.
That is true
and from the heart.
You can't be sorry
about 30 great years.
Sadly, not all endings
are fairy tale happy.
I can only sincerely
wish her happiness
and I do.

train to Chicago...*

See it from a train.
Should have called it
the Rust Apocalypse.
Endless piles of industrial
woolly mammoth skeletons
turned red by the rust
that never sleeps or blinks.
Miles and miles of factory,
mills, and foundry corpses.
The workers long scattered
to $10 per hour ***** jobs.
Businesses gone with the workers.
Globalization at its finest.
The end of the people's value.
Amerika crumbles of dry rot.
Enjoy your stuff, good citizen.
This will all come to you.
There is no immunity
to endless, mindless greed.

   ~mce

Because it's not the hollow life
of 8 to 5 in some cubicle hell.
No one feels more alive
and outside the banality
of plain old existence
than when surrounded
by violent, random death.
The ultimate rush of being.
Stronger than amphetamines,
*******, the best ****** ever.
Terrified, horrified, fascinated,
but more alive than you'll
ever be again.
If you survive, in your
secret heart you will
always miss it.

  ~mce

by Veronica A. Shoffstall*  

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean possession
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept
your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
burns if you get too much so you plant your
own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn...

No one has
ever given me
anything greater
than time, light
and silence.

Time to work.
Light to see.
Silence to think.

What could mean
more than these?

   ~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

July 15th,  2015,
6:30 AM, 55 degrees:
the summer that doesn't
want to happen.

Once every seven years
we shed our skins
like inevitable serpents.

I am in my ninth seven.

I know the time has come
to make a new life,
not so easy at sixty-three.

Although I practice
avoiding desire and craving,
I do so want this.

To be born again,
at least this once more,
into a fresh existence.

To plunge my clean hands
into pellucid water
and be made pure.

To walk with a new woman
through another rendition
of the fabulous Garden.

To be content with what is
and if the right birds sing
maybe even occasionally be happy.

I know that my story,
like every other story,
can only end in death.

I only want this last chance,
which is what we all want,
before the final curtain falls.

I am in my ninth seven
and I shall see what I shall see:
what remains possible for me.

  ~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 drops her dress
like a bouquet
and steps like a bride,
naked and trembling,
brave and eager,
onto a new path,
into a new world
beyond imagining.
- mce

TN 2008

There is a girl in my cabin.
She sits on my 70s brown, velour
*****-couch with her long legs
tucked beneath her
like folded promises.
She wears nothing but a pair
of wool socks and an old, flannel
shirt of mine.  The wood fire blazes.
Her honest blond hair
cascades to the small of her lovely back.
Her skin is the flawless pink
of an unexpected spring sunrise.
Her eyes are emeralds that blaze
like novas when we make love.
Botticelli might have painted her.
I am reading Harrison to her aloud.
She imbibes his words like a toddler
learning language for the first time.
I light her cigarette and she laughs,
radiating the shameless pleasure
only the very young experience.
She expects nothing of me,
but this one evening,
and that is all she will get.
She tells me her name;
she is all of twenty-one.
Perhaps I am a ***** old man;
perhaps I am incorrigible;
perhaps I will burn in Hell;
perhaps I am a casualty of Eros;
or, perhaps, I am simply
still alive.
- mce