When I look into your eyes I see the dirt of the troubled path that you've walked,
the fear that you hide,
The many emotions that you feel and often don't express.

When I look into your eyes I see determination and strength,
A craving for something more,
You're many dreams for the future that overwhelm you from time to time.

When I look into your eyes I see warmth and affection,
A deep compassion,
The want to mean something to someone at all times.

When I look into your eyes I see you and I,
A future of happiness,
A love so strong preparing to consume us.

Hope rarely flies straight;
it flutters and weaves
like a butterfly
in a stiff breeze,
sometimes making headway,
sometimes blown off course,
sometimes interrupted,
but never completely
disappearing;
always present,
always whispering:
maybe.
- mce

This is just to say
you have restored my voice
after three years
of oppressive silence.

Your words have opened
my soul and set me
once again in search
of that lost chord.

Such an unexpected gift!

I was so sure
that I would end
as a tortured mute
that I had given up
that holy quest.

Now, after a few words
and pictures,
I can sing again.

Thank you gentle Lady.

An old man now wakes
to possibilities
abandoned and forgotten.
An old man now wakes
to the warmth of a Muse.
An old man now wakes up alive.

I had forgotten how
to practice resurrection.

In your distant presence
I remember what I am,
a free-lance bhikkhu
stalking the dragon
of truth.
A man in whom
a fierce heart still beats.
  ~mce

If I could kiss you on the lips,          
beneath the stars of deepest night    
I'd feel the dancing of your hips        
if I could kiss you on the lips          
possess your breath in small sweet sips  
until my heart with pleasure skips                                        
If I could kiss you on the lips          
beneath the stars of deepest night

~Vietnam/ Laos 1972

Known variously as:

Indian Country,

the ****,

the Jungle
& the Zone.

****** stumps,
flying metal,

charred flesh,

screaming agony,

cellular fear,

burning choppers,

dying men,
dead eyes

staring,

betrayal.

“Don’t mean ******* nothing.”

Not a place
on a map,
but a state of mind
-
my mind.

Vietnam has fallen,

but the Zone
remains
a jungle
in my head
& some things

return me there.

There I learned
the necessary.

In the Zone,
only predator and prey,
**** or be killed,

win or die,

the quick and the dead.

In the Zone

only survival matters
-
no morality,

no right or wrong

no lies,

no truths,
no fair,
no unfair.

No rules at all.

"It's only a ****.
**** it."

In the Zone
everything is allowed…

meet the enemy,
destroy him,

maim him,

outsmart him,

walk away
with the blood of others
squishing in your boots

feeling gloriously alive.

Friend,

brother,
enemy,

child,

lover,

you do not
- ever -

want to meet me

in the Zone.
–mce

One night a very young man sat in a jungle foxhole, an M-16 cradled in his arms and all his nerves twitching outside his skin. First night in Indian Country.

The darkness was octopus inky and his heart fluttered doom. Roots pained his *** and ants nipped his body. His lust for daylight was a ******* in a kindergarten. Nothing moved, continuously and at once. He inhaled fear, exhaled terror and knew despair.

Beside him, a comrade slept the agitated, concentration camp slumber of the ******, but he was more awake than he would ever be again.

He felt it before he saw it, felt it gliding there where nothing could possibly be.

Before him, a spider web of death awaited its prey. Claymore mines, strung from bush to branch, waited for the gentle caress that would explode their lethal lead fruit in a ****-storm of destruction.

Nothing could pass through it alive, yet something loomed in the murk.  

A sudden hairline fracture broke the clouds and a single moon ray defined the big cat's sleek body, reflected its yellow feline eye. A panther black as nightmare walked untouched through this garden of death and then vanished.

His heart surged hope. The slithering dreads departed. That cat had walked where nothing could and silently survived. So might he.
- mce