Women
blow through
my life
like neurotic
hurricanes.
In their
aftermath,
I repair
what I can,
knowing
that the next
tropical depression
gathers
just beyond
the horizon.
- mce

Returning alone
after work.

The shack
sitting empty,
waiting
for no one;

mist rising
from the still meadow
like silky,
slender ghosts;

the trees
keep their thoughts
to themselves;

a light rain
begins to fall;

no sounds,
but bird sounds
and my own breath,
both hushed.

How far away
the world
and all its bustle.

Money, ambition,
achievement
and success -
the cacophony
of modern life,
just so much noise.

In this silence,
I become
the best part
of silence:
myself.
- mce

It is not a state
of mind,
but a place
in hell
that you
do not wish
to enter,
although
you have no choice;
once you have visited,
nothing will ever
be the same
again.
If others
understood
the finality
of this horror,
they might not be
so quick to judge.
- mce

"I am here
and you are distant."

The essential sadness
of those words
seizes the heart
of loneliness.

Here/distant:
the kernel
of so much despair
and poetry.
- mce

I bought a beer,
twice,
for Richard Brautigan
in 1972
at Thomas Lord's bar
on Union Street
in San Francisco.
Each time,
he was already drunk:
this is what
the literary life
means.
-mce

I am what is around me.

Women understand this.
One is not duchess
a hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits:
a black vestibule;
a high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.

So many
empty days,
lost faces,
frozen dreams
empty beds;
soon:
spring breezes,
the asphalt seas,
another voyage
in search of
Argos,
Ithaca,
Penelope,
peace.
- mce

She was my student;
twenty-five years younger.
I noticed her
the first day of class,
got to know her slowly,
fell into bed
with her later,
and then
in love with her
abruptly.
It was unlikely,
broke many rules,
was doomed from the start.
Still, I have never
regretted a moment of it.
You never get to touch
what you are afraid
to reach for.
- mce

Sometimes
she is all kisses
and warmth;
sometimes
she is distant,
unresponsive
and cold.
Does she want
to be wooed
or left alone?
No man can know.
It is no accident
that the muses,
like wives,
are female.
- mce

A few moments ago,
my computer crashed
and I lost a poem
I had been writing since dawn.
Why did it vanish?
Where did it go?
Possession
is a comfortable illusion,
but uncertainty
rules the universe;
we own nothing in this life,
not even our words.
- mce

Han-Shan got it right:

the fewer people,
the fewer distractions;
welcome visitors,
but discourage guests.

Drink to ecstasy,
but not remorse.

Let your children
lead their own lives.

Expect nothing
from anyone;
you will never
be disappointed.

Assume that death
waits outside
right now,
holding your car keys.

Keep your nose
on the cosmic grindstone;

keep you fingers
on the Dharma throttle;

place preparedness
for resurrection
at the top
of your to-do list:

nothing, but this
solitary moment,
is guaranteed.
- mce

You sit in front
of your computer
and telephone
thinking of the wife
(or husband),
the kids, your IRA,
making money
for other people.
Who loves you, baby?
How long has it been
since you could call
your life your own?
Do you possess
what is your's
or does it
possess you?
Obligation
is not a virtue.
Does your heart dance
or does it merely labor?
There is still time.
Reject the full catastrophe.
Dismiss obligation;
embrace possibility.
There remains
a beautiful world
out there:
hoist the black flag,
live like a pirate,
get naked,
dive in,
be alive.
-mce

I call
my white  97 Saturn
Moby.
243,000 miles.
She is
the most
constant woman
in my life,
ever.
Ah, true love...
- mce

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

The Oracle at Delphi said:
Know thyself.

Oscar Wilde said:
Only the shallow know themselves.

After long, painful consideration,
I'm with Oscar.
- mce

So many lovely, young girls
brimming with despair and despondency.

Makes an old man sad.

You are like buds that can't blossom.

Casual ***, attempted suicide,
drugs, alcohol, broken hearts:
all accrue to the self-aware.

Self-awareness is a great gift,
but acutely painful
to the very young.

Never use a man to define yourself.
Only disappointment lives there.
Men aren't all that smart
or valuable, you know,
and can be easily replaced.
In 40 years, you won't remember
his name.

None of this is new.

The trick is to find
your way to survive
and do it no matter what.

On the other side of suffering
is life, and perhaps more suffering.

You don't need bunnies and rainbows,
you only need yourselves and time
and toughness and belief.

Go ahead and blossom.

Make an old geezer smile.

The poem sprouts
from the compost
of the mind.

People, events, desires
memories, hopes,
dreams, disappointments,
all mixed and turned,
watered with imagination,
until something
catches and clutches,
pale and fragile,
and begins to *****
slowly for the light.

Coax it,
nurture it,
tend it.

Pour your soul
and your love
into it.

Bring all that is you
to the task.

Perhaps a poem
will blossom.
- mce

Thunder storms,
crazed lightening,
downpours,
nightmares,
intermittent sleep.

How different
the world appears
after such
a tortured night.

Grey, dripping,
bleak and dismal.

God must be
in Portugal
working
on his tan.

I feel like
a minor player
in some cheap
film noir movie
trying to remember
my lines.

Shooting starts
any minute now.

****,
who am I?
- mce

Women:
they show up,
they smile,
they love my poems,
they grace my bed
and then,
they leave.
Something
is awry here.
- mce

Some days
nothing
is the most
eloquent
statement
you can
make.
Shout it
out.
- mce

The poet owns
a closet packed
with dancing
skeletons,
whirling and gliding;
he never needs
to dance alone.
- mce

Women
blow through
my life
like neurotic
hurricanes.
In their
aftermath,
I repair
what I can,
knowing
that the next
tropical depression
gathers
just beyond
the horizon.
- mce

A lover,
whom I cherished
(and who left me)
once said:
I will always
love your words;
apparently,
my words
are easier to love,
than I am.
- mce

The man of deeds who lacks the word
is simple, stupid and absurd.
He works and struggles all the day
for nothing more than mindless pay.
He loves the rich and thinks them smart
for gaining through their lack of heart.
He loves his boundaries; worships rules;
considers those who break them fools.
His mind is closed; his world is small;
he has no words to think at all.
His conversation tends to stink
because he never learned to think.
His only drive is buying more;
he's little but a robot *****.
He does and does and that's enough,
if he can just keep buying stuff.
He never questions what he's told;
he's just a thing that's bought and sold.
And when it is his time to die;
he'll lack the words to wonder why.
- mce

What is the smell
of yesterday,
the color of pain,
the taste of love?
How many blueberries
in a second?
Are women
really human?
Does death
make a sound?
Are cats truly smart
or just pretending?
Will those I've
loved and hurt
ever forgive me?
So many questions
to answer
before I can depart.
- mce

On Tuesday I drove near
my ex-wife's house
for the first time
in almost three years.
At just that moment,
in just that place,
my car's clutch blew up.
Curse or coincidence?
Spooky to think about.
Hard to say.
- mce

Do not mistake
the poems for the poet.

The exquisite grace
of a panther
stalking the jungle
in blackest night
renders it
not one iota
less dangerous.

Enjoy my words
at a safe distance.

Never, dear reader,
confuse the words
with the man.
- mce

When you reach
that unexpected point
where you understand
that no magical person
will be showing up
to save you,
life suddenly becomes
very interesting,
indeed.
- mce

Times show up in life
when a man must decide
to face the fire or to flee.

They have visited me before
with fabulously mixed results.

Now again I hear,
if only in imagination,
the sound of bullets,
the whine of shrapnel,
the drone of rotors,
whispering to me:

Your life; your choice;
stand your ground
or run away.

May my heart choose wisely.
- mce

Discovering
that what you
were sure
was you last beer
is actually two.
- mce

He told me once,
at seventeen,
in my parents' attic,
that he would be a star,
remake the world
in his own image,
forge his life
by his own hand
with his own tools.

It would all happen,
he assured me,
through his own will
and determination.

Other people
were unnecessary;
fate, destiny, karma
and bad luck
only existed
in the heads
of losers,
not for him.

He was exempt.

Nothing could stop him.

He declared
himself
invincible,
(he had been reading
Ayn Rand)
and smiled
patronizingly
at my own
pathetic hippie
lack of ambition.

Now,
forty years gone,
divorced, broke
and unemployed,
he bums a cigarette
and whines
about the economy.

Apparently
the world
had other plans.
- mce

Some mornings
are just that way.
- mce

Since
she left me,
I have never
really
been able
to unpack,
not once.
- mce

Once on a miserably
hot, humid day
cruising above
a silent jungle,
I watched
a twenty-two year old
Cobra pilot
clear his machine guns
on an ancient,
abandoned,
Buddhist temple.

All the hubris
of western civilization
explicated
in one burst.

Homer, who best
knew the hearts
of men at war,
could not
have sung it better.
- mce

I vaguely recall whole nights
of deep, refreshing slumber,
waking renewed and ready.
Now, every morning,
I stumble into consciousness
from an exhausting welter
of dreams and demons
wondering who
you must ****
to get a single,
decent night of sleep?
- mce

I do not know
what rivers mean,
how buzzards think,
what the sun imagines,
or how snowdrifts feel.
This is sad and puzzling.
You would suppose
that in sixty-three years
even a crazy man
might learn something
of consequence.
- mce

What happens
when every road
is a detour
and you are
too tired
to keep driving?
- mce

******, war,
marriage, divorce,
madness, freedom:
who knew the last
would be hardest
to survive?
- mce

Why do I
always wake up
exactly where I am,
uncertain where
exactly that is?
- mce

Sometimes
the dice
simply cry out
to be rolled:
pass them bones
over, God;
baby needs
a new pair
of shoes.

_ mce

Some evenings,
the voice
you don't hear
cries out
in your heart.
- mce

Just as day broke,
mission safely over,
red tracers reached up
to grab our chopper:
Ah, the rosy-fingered dawn!
- mce

~to The Fallen

No one is invincible.

The world makes soldiers
of willing nineteen-year-olds
because they believe they are
invicible.

I have heard them die
screaming for their mothers,
crying out to a deaf god,
begging for another chance,
amazed this could happen
to them.

If you had heard them
whimpering and bawling
in their final moments,
completely baffled
by death,
you would understand
what they learned too late:

No one is invincible.
- mce

Why this worry
about who
you really are?
Confusion
and creation
are twin sisters.
Embrace them.
Accept them both.
Enter them.
Surrender.
It's a *******
or nothing at all.
  - mce

Immaculate,
white,
brightly lit,
sterile
and locked.
Ruled
by certainty
and good
intention,
not a solitary
doubt disturbs
its perfection.
As close to Hell
as you can get
on earth.
Worse even
than war.
No one
consigned
to such a place,
even by
mistaken love,
can help being
changed forever.
And no one
every truly
leaves.
  - mce

Eat more often.
Be grateful for breath.
Notice smiles.
Smile back.
Surrender to serenity.
Get a cat.
Split more wood.
Build bigger fires.
Stay warm.
Drown in desire.
Embrace Creation,
flawed but gorgeous.
Walk in beauty.
Taste the breeze.
Touch someone's heart.
Feel the music.
Find the blaze of light
in every word.
Remember the best.
Learn from the worst.
Repeat...
  - mce

I admit that
I have been
a fool for love.
I don't care.
It was worth it.
If you won't be
a fool for love,
you will always
be a fool.
  - mce

The dreaded holidays recede.
Greed and gluttony,
bogus religiosity,
mandatory jollity,
painful remembrance,
all depart for another year.
The merchandising serpents,
having sold their apples,
slither back to their offices
to count the take.
The usurers smile
and unbutton their vests.
The God of Mammon
is sated for a while.
The possibilities
of real life return
and that is truly
something to celebrate.
  - mce

In the chill morning darkness
the soul gropes blindly about
trying to find its pants.
  - mce

From the pellucid
night sky,
a waning half-moon
spills frozen light
on writhen branches
of forlorn trees.
Two owls
hoot conversation.
A distant coyote
attempts to join in.
I am the amanuensis
of early morning:
if I do not
write this down,
no one will know;
this useless,
frigid beauty
will disappear
unnoticed
with the dawn.
  - mce