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

  ~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

“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

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

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.

Axis**

Through the conduits of blood
my body in your body
spring of night
my tongue of sun in your forest
your body a kneading trough
I red wheat
Through conduits of bone
I night I water
I forest that moves forward
I tongue
I body
I sun-bone
Through the conduits of night
spring of bodies
You night of wheat
you forest in the sun
you waiting water
you kneading trough of bones
Through the conduits of sun
my night in your night
my sun in your sun
my wheat in your kneading trough
your forest in my tongue
Through the conduits of the body
water in the night
your body in my body
Spring of bones
Spring of suns

The real deserts are outside of tradition.* Leonard Cohen

Cloze reading does not run in jeans.
The eyes must fasten; synapses fire.
Practice, the way to Comprehension Hall.
Reading marks more than mere seeing.
The need to get a hold of yourself.
You must know stone to take up mining.
You must know the way of digging.
Pound your way to the Chapel Perilous.
No tradition equals no understanding.
Meaning illustrates a point in a process,
not an arrival at a place. Not home.
Volunteer yourself to be committed.
Engage the hard work first. Learn.
Forget the desert of individuality.
Follow the songlines of Culture.
They will lead to the Knowing of Know,
the springs and sumps of understanding.
Nothing easy, but all necessary.
Discover the way to where you must go.

I didn't know him well.
I was only just twenty.
He was the first Indian
I had ever met though
he called himself a Skin.
Came from northern Nebraska.
He was tall, strong, quiet
and soft spoken
with a strange authority.
Somehow, he could sense fear.
At the end of the first day
over An Loc I was
well beyond fear, beyond
terrified, barely functional.
While we refueled
he came over and told me
not to worry. Every day,
he said, was a good day to die.
First time I ever heard
Crazy Horse's famous phrase.
In the morning, his waddling,
overloaded chopper took
a SAM missile up the ***
and totally disintegrated:
no wreckage, no bodies,
no anything left at all.
There's nothing
really left to say
except I hope that for him
it was a very good day.

  ~mce

By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down,
yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.*

See them, a file,
a line stretching
dusty and torn
rearwards to
that distant time
when first men
invented war.

Run they do not,
but plod like cattle
praying to leave
behind torture,
interrogation
genocide and death.

This line has never
been severed.

It is a living beast
that bleats for
place and peace
finding welcome rare,
finding arms folded
and bolted gates
that sneer coldly.

So easy to look away
and pretend there
will never come a time
when we join that line,
when the gods
of war and fortune
turn their backs
to us and home
becomes only a
forlorn memory
and we too are left
scattered scraps
in a tattered file
extended eternally
backwards across
the sullen heaps
of history.

  ~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.

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
---Those dying generations---at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity**.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My ****** form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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.

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

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.

(Note: The first two lines of this poem were used by Diane Wakoski as a prompt for students in her poetry workshops. I couldn't resist the challenge. The result was this poem. Try it yourself.  - mce)

Next time we meet,
let's keep our clothes on.
Let us observe
the proprieties,
proper and Puritan.
Let us maintain
the distance of fools.
Let us smile
the waxed smiles
of corpses.
Let us pretend
we have never
danced within
one another,
have never sung
unlikely songs
of flesh and desire.
It will be awkwardly
exact and Victorian,
but it will be safe.
No heartbreak will ensue.
Next time we meet,
let's keep our clothes on.
  - mce

Broke,
busted,
tapped out,
destitute.

Once again
I have
no money.

Once more,
I don't care.

Too bad
my stomach
and creditors
do.

Oh well,
let them wait.

Money,
like women
or luck,
shows up
in its own
good time.

Patience,
my thin
little wallet.

You will
be fed again
directly.

Meantime,
chew on
a bit of faith.
- mce

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

tis pity she's no more*

A redolence of musk pervades the evening's air.
Take situation in hand. Sweat and perfume. Lubricious.
Teasing digits. Pressures applied. Tense of touch.
An opening of skirts. A parting of lips. A portal.
Brush of thumb she begins to writhe. Early moaning.
Damp, wet, moist, oozing, dripping, slippy. Fruition.
Coming to. A dance of desire. So many ups and downs.
Withdraw slowly. Enter with alacrity. More is not less.
Hollows of legs on shoulders. Depth charges. Grasp of gasps.
Muscles massage. Internal grip. External eruption.
Bear down. Press your case. Silent screams. Everything ends.
Simply collapse into delight. Smooth texture. Fine night.

Nothing in the world is softer
or weaker than water.*

Water is soft,
stones are hard.
Which would
you rather be?

When boulders
are worn beyond pebbles
only water remains whole.

Fill a bowl with water
until it brims and overflows
dripping on what's below.

Soft drops rain down.

Each drop of rain,
inexorably falling,
wears away the boulder
until only pebbles remain.

Each teardrop of time,
inevitably passing,
wears our lives away
until only memories remain.

The pebbles of life
begin as boulders
worn by time and tears
to their own perfection.

Paradox of life:
we must be worn away
to become whole.

When boulders
are worn to pebbles,
and pebbles to dust,
only water remains.

Time and teardrops
fill a pond
ruled by stillness.

Be still.

Know that enough's
enough to know;
that to live
until you die
is long enough.

Be the teardrops
not the boulder.

What worse sentence
can the world pronounce
upon your soul
than to wake up in
a silent room
alone?

Year after year,
that sudden waking jolt
of pure loneliness.

Fight it.

You know the drill:
coffee, cigarettes,

Bach, Mozart,
Vivaldi or Telemann
to drive away
the quiet despair.

Sometimes, success.

But sometimes nothing works.

You are just an aging man
alone in an apartment
wondering how you got there,

wondering if anything
ever comes next.
~   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

Time does not erase
nor can it heal,
it dulls, like whiskey,
the edge of real
sins and griefs,
but they remain,
living souvenirs
of our human pain.
Try as we must
to drive away
the debts of hurt
and not to pay
any attention
to the lingering woe
of scars incurred
in the long ago,
the best we can do,
with a brave face,
is bind them tight
in a secret place,
in a shabby box
that sits apart,
in the dusty attic
of our mortal heart.
  - 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.

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.

At four AM,
the hour of the Blues,
you will think
you want to escape
from the world.

By dawn
you will know
you must escape
into it.

Where shall you go?

Wherever your
heart leads.

Listen to it
and be on your way.

  ~mce

Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.*

Another day and what to make of it? Tu Du list.
Things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew.
Water down darkness. Ask the sun for a light.
Loot Frederick's of Hollywood. Cultivate pompous grass.
Rewrite Moby **** as free verse. Irritate life with art.
Plant Rhino rhizome and grow *****. Turn over an old leaf.
Take a road trip to a state of anxiety. Try chewing gun.
Play the Jew's harp in a mosque. Pray for drains.
Steal a cop from a donut. See if LSD still works.
Listen to Rockabilly noir. Experiment with dysentery.
Set out buckets to catch sky. Talk with, not to, turnips.
Insist on having the last word. Get it. Die.
   Or just admit another wasted day,
   lonely as your heart, but not as gray.

Find an unused closet.
Open it and in it
place your unlived life.
Close it and lock it.
Walk slowly away
and toss the key
where it can't be found.
Notice where you are.
True comprehension
requires all the senses.
Practice using them.
**** plans and goals.
**** life's petty details.
Be like any other mammal:
try, moment by moment,
to figure out what
you should do next.
There is always
another corner
around the next corner.
Don't think:
just choose and go.

  ~mce

Sit. Meditate. Forgive. Repeat as needed.
Forgiveness holds great virtue. Forgive.
Try to let your anger at the world,
even though it deserves it, melt away.
You will fail, but to try has great merit.

Use your body as it was meant to be.
Move or die. The choice is yours.
Even as you creak and hurt,
pretend that you are a supple leopard.

Spend time with the young.
Mostly, they won't understand you
and you may not like them much,
but they are only future there is.
Share with them what is possible;
don't expect them to listen.

Eat and drink as you like, moderately.
Ignore the shouts of the health nazis.
Let the ******* eat Kale.
Only you know what is best for you.

Ignore or break any rules that you
believe to be stupid and chickenshit.
For the most part, only you will notice.

The bankers and politicians
have already owned enough of your life.
Quietly, but firmly, tell them to *******.

Fall in love no matter what your age.
Being in love is the true Fountain of Youth;
it awakens things you thought long dead.

Act freely, but consider the consequences.
The only sin is hurting someone. Be careful.
Make kindness your constant companion and mantra.
It will return to you many times over.

Remember, no matter what you do or try,
no one lives forever and time is not your friend.
Get on with it. Live now.

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."

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

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

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

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

It is hard
to make poetry
out of nothing.

Out of empty rooms
chilly at dawn;
out of a solitary bed;
out of bad food,
poorly prepared,
eaten alone;
out of jobs done
only for the money,
not the work;
out of dead memories
of family and love;
out of no expectations;
out of life's end time.

It is hard
to make poetry
out of nothing,

but I just did.

   - mce

Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4**

1.Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,*

Bones awake groaning. Sing the body decrepit. Don't moan, Agonize!
Neurons snap, crackle, plop. Locate head. Try to find shoes.
Dreams dismissed. Day bleeds into sameness. Relentless boredom.
Tread the doomed bog of Old with attentions. ***** traps.
Each step the future. Abandon all dope. Mortality worm gnaws.
Denentiasand *****. Tumorgators lurk. Snappers break hips.
EDacondas slither. Limply. Lungconstrictors hide in tar. Gasp.
Peer through blurry eyes. Portage cataracts. Slow streams drip.
Lust peters out. Prostate yourself. Up becomes down. Flexile.
Shelf life gets shorter. Discard after. Only expiration Dates.
So what if life is ebbing. Reality is an unhappy meal. Ignore.
     Be a clueless American. Slap on a big grin. No fears!
     Pretend to enjoy the swamp of these Golden Years.

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

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.

Spring**

How many sticky buds, candle ends
sprout from the branches! Steaming
April. Puberty sweats from the park,
and the forest’s blatantly gleaming.

A noose of feathered throats grips
the wood’s larynx, a lassoed steer,
netted, like a gladiatorial *****,
it groans steel-piped sonatas here.

Poetry! Be a Greek sponge with suckers,
among green stickiness drenched,
I’ll consent, by the sopping wood
of a green-stained garden bench.

Grow sumptuous pleats and flounces,
**** up the gullies and clouds,
Poetry, tonight, I’ll squeeze you out
to make the parched sheets flower.

He sits rigidly, like
a calcified projection
on his porch chair
as four butterflies
churn the invisible
atmospheric milk,
indifferent to language.

For he is the type of verb
that disdains noise,
motion or being.

He listens to a radio
tuned to silence,
the acoustics of
emotion, lacking adverbs
or adjectives, pure
as an oblivious ******.

He listens with intensity              
to that envelope
of silence and says
nothing, knowing that
words cost a great deal
and syntax calls
for a life sentence
ending with a period.

Already, the tense
of time stalks him.

Better to leave
the unsaid unheard,
that single noun:
                           death.

  ~mce

Your red hair has
fallen over one eye
making the other
seem even larger
and  deeper green
against your creamy
skin

I know you.

Before you were born,
I read your face
in many fine books;
saw it look at me
from many fair paintings.

We met in many lives.

We will meet again.

Muses are eternal
and they are free.

I am not the first
poet you have smitten,
nor am I prideful
enough to imagine
I will be the last.

Doesn't matter.

What matters
is only this moment
and my eyes
meeting yours
for the first time
again.

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

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

  ~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

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

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.

Metempsychosis**

Some stories last many centuries,
others only a moment.
All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,
grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree
and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,
ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket
gives off -
the immeasurable's continuous singing,
before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.
Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,
to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:
an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.
To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,
and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

Sometimes
when all my
broken places
ache at once;
I feel
a singular,
optimistic
kind of joy.
~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

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