There's birth,
there's death,
and in between
there's maintenance.

****, shower, shave;
how boring
sometimes
to be a primate.

Enforced ritual
*****.

Perhaps
the meaning
of life really is
just to floss
your teeth
while waiting
to croak.

Now there is
a wonderful
cosmic joke.
  ~ mce (with a nod to TR)

Ten years ago when
I got divorced, I
owned 6,000 books,
a riding mower,
a house on an acre
and enough other stuff
to supply a Syrian
family for a  year.

Now I live in a three
room shotgun apartment.

A year ago I embarked
on a minimalist frenzy.

Out went the LPs,
the vintage stereo
equipment and radios,
the remaining books
(a Kindle is a
minimalist's best
friend), most of the
furniture (no one visits
here), boxes of magazines,
all the clothes not
worn in the past year,
all of my gadgets
and, best of all, my
wretched teaching job.

I wanted to pare my life
down to the essentials
and see what remained.

Now I live on practically
nothing with practically
nothing. I give my
occupation (when asked)
as Poet. That gets
wonderfully baffled looks.

I am eccentric to the
extreme and love it.

The cat and I, an old
anarchist and mute feline,

make the perfect minimalist
family living out the dregs
of an obscure, minimal life.

We are what we are, free
from the tyranny of things,
content to quietly
careen into whatever bit
of future remains to us

enjoying the minutes,
ignoring the years.

   ~mce

When I was a kid
and ****** something up,
my grandfather would say:
"If you choose to live
on the railroad tracks
you can't be surprised
when a train hits you."
All these years later,
I've been hit by so many
I no longer notice them.
And I still haven't
moved off the tracks.
   ~mce

by Octavio Paz**

Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.


Translated by Eliot Weinberger

"Poetry Makes Nothing Happen..."*

The New is Confusion.
Embrace it and be baffled.
Give a nod to the absurdists
among us who demand illusion.
That engenders a reality.
Satire cannot compete
with rampant trumpery.
Poets who marry politics
produce stillborn tracts
whose topics will be
forgotten in a week.
In the theme park of words,
they are the talking dead.
This pig wallow of blame
leaves no hands clean.
History's a house that burns
too quickly for choosing sides
or taking detailed notes.
Accept the tangle of Truths.
Nothing outlasts everything.
Never sell out to the moment.

Entropy hunts you down;
until around 60,
this remains abstract.
Then, it becomes fact.
"Things fall apart;"
bodies are things.
Hearts and souls
improve with age.
Minds and flesh do not.
Fight the good fight.
You can only delay
inevitable decrepitude.
Every day, a battle
against the inevitable.
War with a grim enemy
that can never give up.
Entropy will hunt you down
Until your walls collapse
and death, relentless,
roars through the breach.

Valentine's Day Shopping...*

She had a
Mercedes’s face,
a Porsche body,
and a Maserati
libido.

Sadly, I was at
the wrong dealership
looking at
the wrong model.

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

GIC to HAR**

It is late at night, cold and damp
The air is filled with tobacco smoke.
My brain is worried and tired.
I pick up the encyclopedia,
The volume GIC to HAR,
It seems I have read everything in it,
So many other nights like this.
I sit staring empty-headed at the article Grosbeak,
Listening to the long rattle and pound
Of freight cars and switch engines in the distance.
Suddenly I remember
Coming home from swimming
In Ten Mile Creek,
Over the long moraine in the early summer evening,
My hair wet, smelling of waterweeds and mud.
I remember a sycamore in front of a ruined farmhouse,
And instantly and clearly the revelation
Of a song of incredible purity and joy,
My first rose-breasted grosbeak,
Facing the low sun, his body
Suffused with light.
I was motionless and cold in the hot evening
Until he flew away, and I went on knowing
In my twelfth year one of the great things
Of my life had happened.
Thirty factories empty their refuse in the creek.
On the parched lawns are starlings, alien and aggressive.
And I am on the other side of the continent
Ten years in an unfriendly city.

In the alleys
of my hometown,
ghosts jostle metaphors,
but today
I am not seeking
memories or poetry,
crocuses and snowbells
suffice.
   - mce

Here's a thought. There is no market for poetry. None.
So why go to all the hassle and delay and dealing with
elitist editors' asinine egos to publish in a magazine with
a publication of, say 100, when you could self-publish
and give the books away. Either way, you make no money
and remain obscure. Except by self-publishing, your
frustration level goes way down. It was good enough
for Walt Whitman. Think about it before sending
a lot of submissions into the void. It's your writing.
Take charge of it. Be an anarchist!

  ~mce

At Blackwater Pond**

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

Watching my
demented mother
water plastic flowers
on her porch,
I come near
to seeing my face
before I was born.
~ mce

“Here is a secret you won't learn in your temple.
The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal,
because any moment might be our last.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.”
~ Achilles

You shall not find solace
in the marble laws of Man.
Self-help programs
and sermons
will not dispel the emptiness.
***, drugs, madness, alcohol
will not prevail.
The constructs of religion
will only constrict your dreams.
God is a disinterested third party
waiting to be approached,
not caring if he is or isn't.
Submit to the vacuum
of your heart at four a.m.
Surrender to the void
that only love can fill.
Drink deeply; hold tight.
Dawn must come.
  - mce

"A college professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep." - W. H. Auden

Off to teach once again.
Another semester beckons.
Students who don't read,
respect or understand words.
Colleagues mostly
young enough to be
my own children.
Migrant worker wages.
If only I had learned
a decent, honest trade,
like mortician or plumber,
I wouldn't be in this fix.
Oh well, we must all do
what will feed us.
Once more, into the breach.
  - mce

Often I awaken
into a world
different than
the one in which
I went to sleep.

It's nothing
dramatic, not

people with
green hair or
cats who speak
fluent Latin or
leaves that fall
upward in autumn.

It's only a
slight difference,
everything just
an inch or so
out of kilter:

like the first
moment of
consciousness
after an acid trip
45 years ago or

the memory of
a girl I should
have kissed,
but didn't or

a slight breeze
from the distant
wings of angels

or especially
like Monet's
endless *******
lily pads
floating at
Giverny

always seen,
but always
different,

simply
challenging
me to notice,

to wake up

to be alive

that most
important thing
of all:

just to
          notice.

  ~mce

Where everyone
is damaged goods,
there are
no damaged goods.

  ~mce

Nice people
can only make love.

Sad people
can only ****.

Smart people
learn to do both
at once.

Smart couples
create that
kind of luck.
   ~mce

Change seems inevitable.
Old sentences carry
different purposes.
Mold forms in old coffee cups
like modern paintings.
Tubas boom like thunderstorms.
Your age appears first
on the back of your hands.
A clock talks by ticking
or not at all.
The knot is not the rope.
Poets write only white lines.
Medications are altered.
The brain forgets itself.
Impatience scribbles nonsense.
We become heavier,
weighted and slower.
Playing the Sitar
becomes easy as whistling.
Tamed ostriches preen
in toy cowboy hats.
Lint tells secrets of navels.
Words float in bubbles.
The wicked become tender.
Voices ebb and echo
devoid of throats and tongues.
Speech nailed to walls
becomes the new poetry.
We burn the news
to warm ourselves.
Each dawn forms
a unique conclusion.
A moth destroys Chicago.
Vandalism is elevated
to curated folk art.
How can I be sure
these syllables are real
when everything changes
except the desire for coffee?
Please don't wake me up.
I want to remember this dream.

   ~mce

The past is a lie.
Don't let it bother you.
There are no facts,
only memories we create
and call the past.
Some memories are benign;
others are feral,
hidden in the landscape
waiting to attack.
You invented the past;
you can let it go.
Instead, take the shining path.
Live in the last, best
country of Now.
It is green and real.
It is radiant and full.
It loves you, body and heart.
It wants you to be happy
and if you are sad,
it is because of the past
that you invented,
that you still cling to,
that only you can destroy.
**** it. Walk away. Be free.
Now is the time that matters,
the only time
that belongs to you.
    ~mce

Someone recently
said to me,
"there is an epidemic
of loneliness."

There it is!

Now I know why
my heart flutters
when dusk approaches
and my soul
shivers at dawn.

I forgot to get
vaccinated.
  - 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

"No Gods. No Masters."*

Thursday last while
driving to the convenience store
I was pulled over by a local policeman.

It was midday. I wasn't drunk,
****** or driving recklessly.

He approached my car.
I rolled the window down.

He asked to see my papers.

I asked why.

He said just a "random traffic check."

I asked randomly checking for what.

He told me there was no need
to get belligerent.

I said I wasn't belligerent.

I said I was a free American
who lived in a country
where stopping people randomly
violated the Fouth Amendment
of the Constitution.

He asked again for my papers

I said not until he told me
for what probable cause
I had been stopped.

He said nothing, took a step back.

I asked him if I was under arrest
or being detained for arrest.

He said no.

I said I would be going then,
rolled down my window
and drove away,
being careful to signal.

He glared but did not follow.

Oh my sick and sorry America,
look what you have become.

He expected me to cower
before his uniform.

He was surprised when I didn't.

Never show fear to a cop or a dog.

He wasn't there
to serve and protect
but to harass and intimidate.

He was nothing but a ****
hired by the money that owns us.

Our police are beginning to act
like an arrogant, occupying army.

Let them beware and remember
what Thomas Jefferson said,

"The tree of liberty
must be refreshed
from time to time
with the blood
of patriots and tyrants."

Sometimes poetry can murmur gently,
but sometimes it must howl in rage.

I refuse to be occupied,
harassed or intimidated
by hired thugs and gangsters
in black uniforms with tin stars.

I want my country back.
I will have my country back.
I am not alone. There are many.

Let Officer Friendly consider:
There will come a reckoning.
The tree will be watered again,
even if it takes rivers of blood.

  ~mce

Ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.*

Live too long and words echo.
Sentences lose their bearings.
In the twilight colors wane.
New faces feel drably familiar.
Even the warm bodies of women
become gelidly generic.
Lovers live in other worlds.
War's clamor dwindles to murmurs.
Everything old, distant, familiar.
Memories as flea market post cards.
Wins and losses cancel out.
Too old for Jesus or ******.
Steady hands begin to tremble.
Books become a single manuscript.
Movies dim to one blurred screenplay.
Tomorrow just another cold front.
The future an inaudible rumor.
Caught in the evening of life
for a few more fading frames,
reluctantly faltering to the end.

by Terrell Morrow**

Motown tune harboring,
Automobile industrial base vicarious drive,
Downtown city lighting life-giver of struggling spirit,
Red-winged-angel-singing city I call home.
They tell me we can’t keep it together,
I fight for your honor trying to ignore the families I’ve seen ripped apart
Through the pressure of financial stress that weighs down the strength
Of even the toughest of Pistons.
Even though I’ve seen the happiness of children ripped away
Transcending from that signing purple colored dinosaur
To the morning sounds of hums,
I’ve heard a remembrance of the happiness of people ripped away
By purple colored gangbangers.
I say to those who don’t see the fury in our eyes,
That burns with the blaze of a 1967 riot,
Is the truth of our history:
Our city, our home, our tears,
From the very moment you set foot on that Riverwalk
And see the Princess set sail to a dream on a bank of beauty
As the waters part like Moses’ path.
We are but mere underdogs with the purest of waters.
The product for which they lust for the thirst in which we quench
An essence for which we must for the fist in which we clench
As we fight our endless battles and the Hells we’ve created in Paradise Vallies
As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death-toll population
Hand-in-hand generations that shine like sons of the son.
Yo, show me a city that’s aware of its oblivion,
And simply relaxes like my hometown,
Detroit.

Everything on this gelid morning speaks only dead languages.
Change your mind. Consider it a beguilingly blank canvas.
Slather it with the random pigments of your imagination.
Go for a stroll and practice random acts of sadistic charity.
Inhale the exquisite frondescence of naked branches.
Focus your neurons on everything you have forgotten.
******* incessantly to Mozart's Requiem. Honor his memory.
Unleash your nukes. Annihilate Canada. Destroy winter for good.
Make your lover a garland of cassowary feathers. Impress her.
Concentrate on growing horrifically profuse ***** hair.
Study the nonexistent texts of forgotten Uzbecki ascetics.
Raise fearsome armies of rabid Chinese lawn gnomes. Attack.
Try to knit String Theory while contemplating theoretical macramé.
Drink cider vinegar to defuse the carcinogenic dangers of politics.
Attempt to complete a peace treaty with gravity. Concede nothing.
Build a launch pad. Hurl rusting Ramblers into low earth orbit.
Collect ingredients. Home brew ******, absinthe and aphrodisiacs.
Test drive a luxury submarine in your neighbor's swimming pool.
Smash the endless contemporary Conga Line of Dumb. Think about it.
Surrender to uncommon sense for a change. Avoid the ordinary.
Give peace a chance. Endless war has left it lonely and depressed.
Admit that everyone is well and truly ******. Relax. Breathe.
Proclaim the advent of the poetry of the apocalypse,
but take care not to write any of it down yet. Go slowly.
Tomorrow is another day to be filled. Keep some options open.

At Old Souls Shack
twilight descends.
It is quieter
after the ghosts
are gone.
The lightness
of darkness
takes their places.
Birds sing quieter
as well.
I softly imagine myself
far north of here
drinking wine
and reading poetry
to an older
younger woman.
She is wiser than I
but owns a gentleness
that belies her wisdom.
She makes up her world
and then inhabits it.
She is simply herself
which is a great deal.
She soothes me.
Sometimes I am lucky
and get to visit.
Twilight is uncertain,
so soft imaginings
are good friends
to have.

  ~mce

for a high school friend, dead at 25 in 1976.

She demanded doomed love
( too much poetry)
and she found it;
born with an ungainly
sense of tragedy,
she was a heat seeking missile
perfectly tracking destruction.

He was a hugger and a hitter,
a cheater and a beater,
charming as a cobra to his prey
who reveled in his cruelty
and dragged her down

until the day she realized,
you can't negotiate with evil,
and tragedy isn't comedy
and darkness is very dark

and slit her wrists and got away.


  ~mce

Suppose I caught
you one day
and gently kissed
the sole of your
tiny foot,
wouldn't you limp
a little then,
afraid to crush
my kiss?

  ~mce

Three ravens
perched on
a bare branch
above the creek
stare at him,
but say nothing.

An old man
shivering
in the cold,
with many
questions and
no answers,
stares back.

They sit like
mute black oracles.

The truth
of the world
cannot be spoken
by the world.

An old man,
shivering;
three ravens
perched on
a bare branch.

Nothing but this
can be known
for sure.
  - mce

Sneaks up like a VC assassin
quick, invisible, deadly
the knife slides into your ribs
while you are thinking far away.

A sharp, sudden pain
and then sudden falling away
into a world of hurt.

Emptiness floods your body,
frozen and stuttering
in incertitude.

Ice enters your stunned heart.

It lasts a second, a minute,
an hour, a day a week, a year.

For that interval you gasp
with the hopelessness of life.

You do not want to die,
you only want to feel nothing,
to escape into nothingness.

And then it departs suddenly
and the earth returns to view.

Birds sing and women are beautiful,
the sun winks and you are saved.

Until the next time when
the unseen blade again finds
your soul and chaos blinds
you to life.

Avoid interstates and airplanes
whenever possible.
Never clean your shotgun
while depressed, listening to
George Jones and drinking whiskey.
Visit between the thighs of women,
but do not become stuck there.
Remember that gold is only a color.
Consider that while drunk
is sometimes absolutely necessary,
sober has its virtues, too.
Assume that you are wrong
and you will probably be right.
Believe in birdsong and blueberries.
Know that when the chips are down,
blood is usually thicker than water.
Doubt the lulling attractions
of usury and power.
If there is any way to stay clear
of marriage and war, do so.
Pay no attention to this list,
make your own, take it to heart,
and never consider it finished.

  ~mce

Job: work done for money,
to pay the mortgage,
to keep the wife and kids happy.

Vocation: what sustains you,
done for the love of it,
the pure craft of the doing.

Job: external, coercive,
necessary only for lucre,
status, accumulation, dross.

Vocation: internal, freely chosen,
necessary for your heart,
creative, affirming, alive.

The singer who sings
freely and from the soul
creates beauty
and informs the world;
the drudge who labors
for sustenance and stuff
murders time
and deadens reality.

What we do
paints the portrait
of who we are.

Real work brightens being;
useless work darkens the heart.

Choose carefully.
- mce

This morning I enrolled
in the Nihilist University,
but I don't believe
that I will attend.

  ~mce

Embrace the impossible.
Exclude no mixtures.
Learn the secret, lost
signatures of things.
Immerse yourself in the
language of silk and thighs.
Assume you are only
one step away from success.
Take the Holy Dove prisoner;
learn its arcane language.
Believe your fingertips
may shoot flames at any time.
See through appearances
to the invisible core of being.
Guard your aura carefully.
Do not expect gainful employment;
even poets have better prospects.
Burn your fingernails.
Accept and nurture absurdity;
make it the reason you never
give up.

  ~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

Read and weep...*

16 Ways to a Bigger Sock.
Why you should **** your boss now.
7 Ways to Thieve Your Lover.
11 ways to Grow Your Own Bud Lite.
The One Hard Thing Harried Women Want.
43 Reasons to Die Young.
Vladimir Putin For President!
13 Yoga Positions Against Entropy.
Learn to Pick ******* From Trees.
33 Reasons to Love Your Shingles.
Genuine Faked Proof Obama Murdered Scalia.
14 Methods For Preventing Dottle.
Why Internet Lists Make You Stupid.
666 Ways To Fail At Suicide.
The Number One Reason Literacy Is Dead.
  ~mce

This morning,
I saw a bird
that doesn’t exist.
It vibrated one
pregnant instant
in my fluttering head
and vanished;
by far the loveliest
I have never seen.

mce

I want you.

Even if for
the briefest
moment of time;

even if the world
disapproves,
and it will;

even if our hellos
quickly become
good-byes;

None of that matters:

the world and time
mean nothing to me,

I see no rules
in your soft
green eyes.

I want you.

~mce

He had only been home from the war for six days when she knocked on his door. He had been contemplating suicide. Sworn to secrecy by law and strange spooks with dead eyes, he couldn't tell her that. Whatever wounds he had suffered were his to bear alone and would be for many years. Still, his world was so turned upside down by the madness he had just escaped that her unexpected arrival seemed appropriate.

San Francisco, 1972; not the halcyon hippie days, but the lull shortly thereafter. It was a good place to be, safe and cheap. Much better than upland Laos with its piles of dead ***** and terrifying firefights. His apartment at Geary and Van Ness cost $275 dollars a month and felt like a sanctuary.

And there she stood, even more beautiful at nineteen than she had been at fifteen when they first made love on the grass in their hometown cemetery beside the Civil War memorial near the pile of cannon *****. You don't turn down a vision.

Come in, he said, and she didn't so much enter as flutter back into his scarred life. Her traveling companion, a nondescript hippie wannabee, stood beside her. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand and he disappeared.

That night, they made love like tigers. All the unspent lust accrued in battle erupted out of him and flowed into her. He wasn't gentle or considerate or skillful. When they ******, he smelled cordite, heard choppers beating and saw bloated corpses. It was like another deadly encounter in the bush, ferocious and abrupt. What she made of it, he couldn't tell, but she was more than game.

He had orders for Germany, but that was weeks away. They spent those weeks mostly in bed, as only the very young can manage, doing it every way they knew or could imagine. That tornado of desire took the edge off his rage and sense of betrayal. It may have saved his life.

Later, when he flew away, she stood and waved, astonishingly lovely in a miniskirt, her long chestnut hair flowing. She had no idea what she had done.

Things changed. It was decades before they really talked again. By then not even her name was the same, if she even really had one. Although their lives had long diverged, the connection remained, name or not. When he saw her, after all that time, all those bodies, all those endless miles, she was exactly the same girl who had knocked on his door those thirty-six years gone and he knew in that instant that nothing true ever really dies.
- mce

Get on.
Turn your back on death. Smile.
The journey of your being continue.
The days roll by like a train
diminishing in inevitable distance.
Nothing can stop tomorrow.
People disembark randomly
at the stations of your heart.
Friends, lovers and family
walk off into worlds of their own.
The train rolls relentlessly on,
faster, always and only faster.
You know the final destination.
Soon, you will be wholly ghost.
One life, your life, one lonely world.
The conductor calls out your stop.
Turn your back on life. Smile.
Get off.

Here And Now*

for Barbara*

There are words
I've had to save myself from,
like My Lord and Blessed Mother,
words I said and never meant,
though I admit a part of me misses
the ornamental stateliness
of High Mass, that smell

of incense. Heaven did exist,
I discovered, but was reciprocal
and momentary, like lust
felt at exactly the same time—
two mortals, say, on a resilient bed,
making a small case for themselves.

You and I became the words
I'd say before I'd lay me down to sleep,
and again when I'd wake—wishful
words, no belief in them yet.
It seemed you'd been put on earth
to distract me
from what was doctrinal and dry.
Electricity may start things,
but if they're to last
I've come to understand
a steady, low-voltage hum

of affection
must be arrived at. How else to offset
the occasional slide
into neglect and ill temper?
I learned, in time, to let heaven
go its mythy way, to never again

be a supplicant
of any single idea. For you and me
it's here and now from here on in.
Nothing can save us, nor do we wish
to be saved.

Let night come
with its austere grandeur,
ancient superstitions and fears.
It can do us no harm.
We'll put some music on,
open the curtains, let things darken
as they will.

So many lives
to come this far.

Each story fragile,
imperfect, incomplete.
Still, the Bardo mirror
says more to go.

So sad to know
that Love remains
at least another
life away.

Say
her eyes are
intoxicatingly
limpid pools.
Dive deeply.
Swim joyously.
Get drunk
on her soul.
Later,
enjoy
the best
hangover
ever.

  ~mce

What drives people crazy is trying to live outside reality. Reality is terrible. It can **** you. Given time, it certainly will **** you. Reality is pain. Reality is suffering.  It is the condition in which we live. And when reality arrives, you know it. You know it as the truth. But it's the lies, the evasions of reality, that drive you crazy. It's the lies that make you want to **** yourself. If you evade the pain and suffering of reality, you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will never know what it means to come home to yourself.   ~ from *The Dispossessed."

Nouns and verbs swirls. Word anarchy. Everyone a poet.

Pay no attention to my browsing history. I’m a writer, not a serial killer.
Women never want much, only everything you are or will be.
He said he would stuff my taco unlike any man before him,
and boy did he! I've always wanted a man who could cook.
Someday's you just know that the jail time was worth it.
Cows who give milk for free never know what a respectable farmer is.
Relearn the dying art of thinking before you ******* speak.
I scream. You scream. We come.  Police come. Awkward.
Thought it was a loofah but it turned out to be steel wool.
Sixty is the new 40. Try getting your ***** to believe that.
The only fact is that you'll never understand anything at all.
I never flirt with danger but danger just insists on it.
He lost me at: Do you prefer the ropes really, really tight?
She dumped me because I just stood there with my moves unbusted.
Watching internet *** is like ******* without arms.
I bet that pride of yours doesn't enjoy snuggling like I do.
You don't have to be desperately lonely to tweet, but it helps.

Say anything you like. After all, only everyone will see it.

"Listen
to your own
music," deaf
Beethoven said.

Good advice
and inevitable.

In the end,
you will
hear no other.

Hallelujah
rings only out
of your heart:
sing along alone,
sing out loud
in silence.

Listen to your
private holy voice.

It wants to tell
you something
important.

Do you hear it?

   ~mce

Lightening from a clear, blue sky.
Random firing synapses. Fluttering twitches.
A moment where the eye and I diverge.
Mind rockets in flight, morning or night.
Become a twisted ball of rubber bands. Writhe.
Avalanche of trembles. Lungs in a vise.
Devastating payload of cognitive dissonance.
How long will this horror of nothing last?
Waiting is the worst. Paralysis of time.
     Sitting on a sofa on a quiet afternoon
     Hoping for a large slice of normal, soon.

For a few minutes
you are the Buddha.
A gift to yourself,
though you know
there is no
giver, gift
or receiver,
only quiet and peace.
Not difficult at all.
Sit down; be quiet.
Listen for the nothing
you really are.
It will come and go,
but when it comes,
you will be real
and you will know.