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

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

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

‘Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands’**
XXVII From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’

Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands,
lissome, terrestrial, slight, complete, translucent,
with curves of moon, and paths of apple-wood:
Unclothed you are as slender as a **** ear of corn.

Undressed you are blue as Cuban nights,
with tendrils and stars in your hair,
undressed you are wide and amber,
like summer in its chapel of gold.

Naked you are tiny as one of your fingertips,
shaped, subtle, reddening till light is born,
and you leave for the subterranean worlds,

as if down a deep tunnel of clothes and chores:
your brightness quells itself, quenches itself, strips itself down
turning, again, to being a naked hand.

First Evening (Première Soirée)**


Her clothes were almost off;
Outside, a curious tree
Beat a branch at the window
To see what it could see.

Perched on my enormous easy chair,
Half ****, she clasped her hands.
Her feet trembled on the floor,
As soft as they could be.

I watched as a ray of pale light,
Trapped in the tree outside,
Danced from her mouth
To her breast, like a fly on a flower.

I kissed her delicate ankles.
She had a soft, brusque laugh
That broke into shining crystals -
A pretty little laugh.

Her feet ducked under her chemise;
"Will you please stop it!…"
But I laughed at her cries -
I knew she really liked it.

Her eye trembled beneath my lips;
They closed at my touch.
Her head went back; she cried:
"Oh, really! That's too much!

"My dear, I'm warning you…"
I stopped her protest with a kiss
And she laughed, low -
A laugh that wanted more than this…

Her clothes were almost off;
Outside, a curious tree
Beat a branch at the window
To see what it could see.

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.

All that's left of me...*

Cross-legged in meditation at four AM.
Sitting in a provincial burg. Alone.
Completely comfortable with obscurity.
Ambition dead as ashes of embers.
Swallow emptiness as it swallows you.

This world holds no prizes worth winning.

Youth: dream dreams and lust.
Prime: chase success and love.
Age: write poems and be quiet.

What can a dead cat do but bounce?

You've done all you can for your fellow man.

Action is the province of the young;
there are reasons soldiers are only twenty.

People say go for it, time remains.
You know, you know, there's nowhere to go.

Everything important ends before it begins.

If all your words turned suddenly to gold,
at your core you would still be poor.

The things men chase: money, women, fame;
no longer matter at the end of the game.

Grab those pillows, sit down and see:
already all that you need to be.

brighter than a thousand suns...*

Helicopters scud the night. Syllables penetrate deeply.
Mulch has no value. Fingers curled softly in sleep.
Style marks the spot. Weapons hidden beneath kilts.
Pinpoint errors. Know where you are. Charlie Parker got lost.
You're a little teapot. The cat ponders these things.
Glamour a kind of architecture. National Enquirer a house.
Her only idea disastrous. He entered from behind. Stealth.
Take it any way you want it. ****** distillations of poison.
Something longer perhaps? Squash blossoms lovely. Preferences.
Ferns are not intentional. He wants a mulligan. Sentences question.
Ahead engorged. The color purple. Glance. Not quite wet.
Humpty-Dumpty the primary archetype. Master Coder. Triple Helix.
   If this gum be stale: do not chew it;
   If you are a window: draw the blinds.
   Or writhe in  ******* of meaningful.
      Come along to Carthage and Burn.

  ~mce

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.

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

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.

After a certain age,
morning becomes a relative term.

Three, four or six,
you wake up and get up.

Battle, marriage, divorce,
kids, lovers, fear:
sleep becomes a dream collage
projected in your weary skull.

The past lurks at night.

What remains begins again
when you awaken.

The two blend like a smoothie,
both bitter and sweet.

Lift the glass and drink it down.

It tastes like the only future
you have left, like the first
drink you ever took, like
the first time you ever kissed,
like another shot at awe.

It supplies the reasonless reason
that keeps you
plodding onward into the unknown.

The only place you can live

*now.

Be sure to secure your own mask
before helping others with theirs.
Droll instruction, but essential.
Wise advice for all in transit.
In a world of facile familiarity
you will need to clamp it on tight
to make sure it never slips.
Knowing who you truly are
does not mean that others should.
Join in the necessary Kabuki dance.
Let them guess what lurks behind.
They will anyway and usually wrong.
You are so much more and so much less.
Make every day of your every day
a safe and mysterious trick or treat.
Be sure to secure your own mask
before helping others with theirs.

Big issues fade in the face of beauty.

Seat a great philosopher, mathematician,
physicist, and theologian at a table.

Have a lovely, perfect 18-year-old girl
gracefully approach to take their orders.

I can tell you exactly what they are not thinking.

Big issues fade in the face of beauty.*

  ~mce

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

No doubt I
could conquer
the living world,
if I could just
get out of this chair
where I sit
enthralled, bemused,
dreaming of your hair.

Some mornings
are just that way.
- mce

When they were sixteen,
his second cousin Jenny
was a full on white trash
Siren with ice pick *******
and alluring, famished eyes.

She was a dream within
a ******* within reach;

a succulent Succubus.

Jenny was a danger and
temptation to gaze upon
because they were only
sixteen and only
second cousins and
she already knew what
power lurked between
her fervid thighs.

At forty, she was just
another dead **** head.

Some girls just seem
to grow up early.

“I loved you long before you loved me. It's the only thing I have you beat at, and I'll bring it up every chance I get.”*

She was sitting on the beach
wearing the tiniest bikini
staring out at the perfect Adriatic.

She sat alone, which considering
her beauty and elegance
seemed some cosmically bad joke.

Unlike myself, I approached her,
flashed my guileless 17-year-old smile,
and said hello, fully expecting
a giant older brother or even
Poseidon himself to appear
from nowhere and ****** me.

She spoke a lilting English
with an accent I could not name.
She said her name was Marisa
and she was twenty-one.

Next morning, in my two dollar room,
after an exhausting night of abandon
during which she moaned and peaked
three times, she dressed as I lay
shrivelled and worn out
as a mummified banana.

She told me she had come here
to be alone a little because
next week she must marry
an older man whom she did not love
chosen as was custom by her parents.

She said she would remember me
as the last morsel of passion
she would ever know in this world.

She kissed my forehead and left.

I had no words.

I never knew her last name
nor ever saw her again.

The Wheel spins, the particles dance,
we can never know the trajectories
that chance encounter can engender
nor what shapes the next round brings.

The next day I left for Greece
uncertain of what had even happened.

I still don't know. I never will.

But I think I may have met her again...

  ~mce

Sorry for peeking into your heart;
Just wanted to see if I was there.

  ~mce

When I have fears that I may cease to be...*

Obviously,

I am strongly opposed
to stating the obvious,
but there is forever
scant hope of forgiveness
and I expect none.

I only did what the crazy do.
Events cascaded as they are wont.

Never expect absolution.
Who could ever know all your sins?
How could there ever be time enough?

Much better to mirror
the Stoic habit of silence.

Bind your wounds and walk away.

Obviously,

the only path leading forward
into the vast unknown.

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

Technology meant as tool, not lifestyle. Zombies walk.
ROM wasn't built in a day. I tweet therefore I am.
Change comes wicked fast. Computers becoming doorstops.
Weeping tablets die barely born. Phones devour brains.
My whole life is on my phone. Small life indeed.
Friends redefined as virtual entities. Sit on my Facebook.
AI will make *** safe, instant, anonymous and irrelevant.
Gaming console warriors. *******. Know nothing of war.
Search engines substitute for knowledge. Shallow.
Mere flesh flees before silicon reality. Resistance futile.
Pin all of this to your *** and see if you still bleed.
  ~mce

we all enjoy
being birds
of brilliant
plumage
perched
prominently
on wires
in the wind

especially
when watchers
ohh and ahh
at us

but somehow
we never stop
imagining

a better wire
exists...
somewhere

  ~mce

Not used to
The 13th floor
Of anything.
The lowlife
Calls me home.
Piercing loneliness
Of a hotel room
Where there was
A presence.
We know so little,
Suffer so much.
Nothing to do but
Breathe and hope.
Catch your train.
Make it through
Another day.
   Mce

These are adaptations in Ezra Pound's tradition, not exact translations. - mce

I

The moon is gone,
the Pleiades vanished,
my youth deserts me.
In night's darkest heart,
time streams on
and yet I sleep alone.

II

On feather beds,
we spent our desire,
dancing within
each other
until no holy place
remained untouched.

III

The Muses instructed me;
My honor is their craft.

IV

We shall enjoy
each other, Love;
let stillness and sorrow
stalk those
who disapprove.

V

No warning!
A torrent strikes
the stout oak
as love strikes
my heart.

VI

Stars hide their faces
when the moon's splendor
smiles and shines
upon the earth.

VII

Taking the lyre
into my hands,
my fingers
invited it
to speak
a lover's voice.

VII

You
have set
my heart
alight.

IX

I thirst
and
I burn.

One storm-driven black night
lightening snarled above our chopper
while an artillery battle blazed below.
Suspended between these geminated currents
of fatal power I thought my mortal heart
would explode in terror, but it didn't
and here I am 43 years later
still stuck in the endless quotidian.

  ~mce

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.*

Poetry conceives no meaning,
it is complete in its creation
as am I, as are you,
as are crows exploding
outside in the fevered air
or inside as worms slithering
in penumbral silence;
it provides no self-help,
no profound apocalypse
beyond delight in genesis
and what is engendered there.
That is enough to deliver
to thoughtless children
dancing and laughing and unaware
that death and decay turn with them
stalking beauty in the carefree air.
Poets speak only words not truths,
speak only to create wonder
from unconstrained imagination
beyond which bounds they may not dare.
   ~mce

Don't look back.* - Satchel Paige

Once upon a time, I
stumbled and dropped my life.
It hit the world hard
and shattered into a
myriad of sharp shards.
For years I struggled
to rearrange it
using the glue of
many helpful hearts.
But after I managed,
whenever I looked into it,
the life I saw was
never quite the same
as the one I dropped.

Sestina From The Home Gardener**

These dried-out paint brushes which fell from my lips have been removed
with your departure; they are such minute losses
compared with the light bulb gone from my brain, the sections
of chicken wire from my liver, the precise
silver hammers in my ankles, which delicately banged and pointed
magnetically to you. Love has become unfamiliar

and plenty of time to tend the paint brushes now. Once unfamiliar
with my processes. Once removed
from that sizzling sun, the ego, to burn my poet shadow to the wall, I pointed,
I suppose, only to your own losses,
which made you hate that 200 pound fish called marriage. Precise-
ly, I hate my life, hate its freedom, hate the sections

of fence stripped away, hate the time for endless painting, hate the sections
of my darkened brain that wait for children to snap on the light, the unfamiliar
corridors of my heart with strangers running in them, shouting. The precise
incisions in my hip to extract an image, a dripping pickaxe or palm tree removed,
and each day my paint brushes get softer and cleaner – better tools, and losses
cease to mean loss. Beauty, to each eye, differently pointed.

I admire sign painters and carpenters. I like that black hand pointed
up a drive-way whispering to me, “The Washingtons live in these sections,”
and I explain autobiographically that George Washington is sympathetic to my losses;
His face or name is everywhere. No one is unfamiliar
with the American dollar, and since you’ve been removed
from my life, I can think of nothing else. A precise

replacement for love can’t be found. But art and money are precise-
ly for distraction. The stars popping out of my blood are pointed
nowhere. I have removed
my ankles so that I cannot travel. There are sections
of my brain growing teeth and unfamiliar
hands tie strings through my eyes. But there are losses

of the spirit like vanished bicycle tires and losses
of the body, like the whole bike, every precise
bearing, spoke, gear, even the unfamiliar
handbrakes, vanished. I have pointed
myself in every direction, tried sections
of every map. It’s no use. The real body has been removed.

Removed by the ice tongs. If a puddle remains, what losses
can those sections of glacier be? Perhaps a precise
count of drops will substitute the pointed mountain, far away, unfamiliar?

Es ist in der Selbstbeschränkung,
     die ein Meister zunächst selbst zeigt.*
         - Goethe
We are,
by definition,
our limitations,
especially
those we choose.

They trace
the borders
of our being,
create our
distinctive,
singular
humanity.

Lines we cross
at great peril.

Far too late now
to die young.

  ~mce

I **** time;
time kills me.
An equation
balanced
perfectly.
  - mce

Thunderstorms grumble
this first March dawn.
The sun hides, shamed,
from the downpour.
Crows drip from bleak wires.
Spring is a lie on the lips
of budless branches.
Life can only be
what it is, when it is.

For The Record**

The clouds and the stars didn’t wage this war
the brooks gave no information
if the mountain spewed stones of fire into the river
it was not taking sides
the raindrop faintly swaying under the leaf
had no political opinions

and if here or there a house
filled with backed-up raw sewage
or poisoned those who lived there
with slow fumes, over years
the houses were not at war
nor did the tinned-up buildings

intend to refuse shelter
to homeless old women and roaming children
they had no policy to keep them roaming
or dying, no, the cities were not the problem
the bridges were non-partisan
the freeways burned, but not with hatred

Even the miles of barbed-wire
stretched around crouching temporary huts
designed to keep the unwanted
at a safe distance, out of sight
even the boards that had to absorb
year upon year, so many human sounds

so many depths of *****, tears
slow-soaking blood
had not offered themselves for this
The trees didn’t volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it

and ask whose signature
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were.

ex uno plures

The earth quakes, roils, groans  and trembles.
The ****** minded mob rumbles and roars.
The *** itself has melted into chaos.
One devolved into many. Fractious factions.
Deaf falcons stray awaiting further orders.
Dissonant screams rend the unsettled night.
A plague on both our houses and none immune.
Commonwealth collapsed. Polity in ruins.
In a Republic of dreams and visions, now
civil blood doth make civil hands unclean.
Colors chosen, two gangs spew discord.
Everybody shouts, *which side are you on?
  Weapons of fear fill every angry hand;
  against itself, a land divided cannot stand.

Paradisaical PawPaws
decorate bland trees;
few know their
delightful texture.
If a fruit grows
and no one knows
its virtues,
does it exist at all?
Forget unheard trees falling;
this is a much more
pressing question.
To Paw or not to Paw:
the great southern question.
   - mce

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

Move to the energy
of love which balances
the chaos of existence.
Love for yourself.
Love for your lover.
Love for the universe.
Make it a prayer.
Meditate upon it.
Dance actively among
the waves and photons.
Make it a dance of joy.
Dance yourself to ecstasy.
Become the energy
you sought and smile
at the fangs of death.
This is the only
immortality available.
Be at home in the world
you have made.
Where else can you live?
Where else would you want to?
Dance where you are.
Smile.
   ~mce

Sonnet: What Lips My Lips Have Kissed*

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more

Only the worst poets
spoon feed their readers.
The rest sing it out
and let the chips
splatter as they will.
No one writes
to be misunderstood.
Spout your words
like a fountain.
Perhaps a few drops
will fall into
thirsty mouths
and satisfy.
Then again,
                  maybe not.

Americans scramble about
like hyperactive lemmings
trying to fix themselves.
Vanity; egotistic futility;
pointless self-obsession.
How can you fix yourself
when you are already you?
  - mce

Sorry to interrupt this program.

The print version of my new book, The Biology of Strangeness,is available today from Createspace and should be on Amazon in three days. Even if you aren't a poetry person, some of this will make you laugh. Currently available as an e-book on Amazon. Just search my name. Read for free if you have Amazon Prime. Don't forget to review. Please.

Now back to regularly scheduled poetry program.

Thanks.  Mike

by William Carlos Williams**

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

An Irish Airman foresees his Death**

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

the brilliant morning
no longer invites

every TV show
is a rerun

books that screamed
now murmur

even the body
speaks in the past tense

now becomes was

the falling away
of self
into shadow

even when time
falls and freezes
like winter leaves

the urge to consciousness
resists surrender

how we long for
bright new moments

right to the brink
of nightfall

even as the white flag of death

slowly unfurls

She only saw the duplicity
of men and how they treat
they treat their ***** as
both a compass and
a weapon of conquest
and scepters of power.

It didn't occur to her
that they might also
use them to please her
and her, of all the women
in the word) alone.

  ~mce

I am splitting wood
with my brand new
just bought yesterday
Eight-pound maul.
Gripping its very cool
red fiberglass handle
I whack with abandon.
I am transformed.
No longer just an aging
refugee college professor,
I am become
a mighty woodsman,
a handsome lumberjack,
PAUL ******* BUNYAN!
Only now, my back hurts.
I need a cigarette,
a drink and a nap.
Transformations,
they always come
with such a price.
  - mce

this plain of death

corpse-strewn
stone lonely
smashed objects
broken by

abstractions

what painted this scene?

decisions made
by ample men
in clean rooms
faraway

good reasons
bad intentions

abstractions

orders given
and followed

a soldier
slumps among
the bodies

abstractions

stained fatigues
silent rifle
dead eyes

wondering

how this happened
and who they were
and why

abstractions

no answers

boy, man,
executioner,
victims

abstractions

killer or killed

life will not
go on

   - mce

The best lesson
to learn
from the past:
pleasure
is fragile,
but pain,
built to last.
  - mce