What is beauty?
Is it the way you look?
How you dress
The way you hold yourself in front of others?
Or is it something you're just born with?

You could be told a thousand times over how beautiful you are
But it only takes one time to ruin your self image
Only once do you need to hear about beauty

She tells you she loves you
She tells you you're perfect
And she tells you you're beautiful

But now things are different
You notice how your body looks for the first time
Bones protruding from every spot
A stomach that concaves back inside your body
Hip bones that could be used as knives

Once you thought your curves were perfect
A place that perfectly fits her hands
Arms long enough to hold her face
And legs that could wrap around her and still have room for more

Mirrors seem to show a different you
Full you has disappeared and dissolved
Like smoke in the night
Reflections shows nothing but a sketch with dead eyes

What is beauty?
Something that I don't have

What is sadder
than the poem
you forgot to save
vanished forever
into digital darkness?

Where do words go
when computers forget
and memory fails?

Is there a
dead letter office
for lost poems
and in which
circle of hell
would that be found?

Do the poor lost poems
huddle and keen
knowing no lips
will ever sing them?

Too many mysteries
for an ordinary morning.

Birds and lawn mowers
call out for justice
but the lost poem
purrs just beyond reach.

   ~mce

I live in poetry
Even if I can't live off of it

Don't try to hide your scars.
They are the signatures of your life.
They speak a secret language
that reveals who you are to yourself.
No one else can ever have them.
Only you can know what they mean.
Wear them with a lover's pride.
It doesn't matter how you got them,
only that you have them.
They are secrets you whisper
into your own ears.
Listen to them closely.
As a wise man once said:
"A scar is what happens
when the word is made flesh."

~mce

A poet is
a low rent god.

He gets
to name things
and insist
on meanings.

Even broke
and out
of cigarettes,
he is
the absolute
divinity
of the universe
of words.

Keep your
pecker up,
buddy.

Better days loom.

I insist upon it
and I am the keeper
of the keys
to the Garden.
  ~mce

Each time
I've faced
a major change
in my life,
I was sure
I would die

and I did.

No one
is more
qualified
than you
to decide
what
your life
will be.

Don't fight
the power;
be
the power.

On the subject
of you, you are
the only expert
you will ever
really need.

~mce