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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

‘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.

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

  ~mce

Although I want your body
what I need is to make love
to every piece of your soul.

Your body is the icing;
your soul is the cake.

I want to lick the icing,
but I need to eat the cake.
  ~mce

"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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

"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

a crisp white t-shirt
my lover's pensive green eyes
surely paradise

  ~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

Is there anything
more pathetic than
a smitten old man?

Is there anything
more wonderful?

   ~mce

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

When you hear
the methamphetamine
buzz of a bullet
just missing your ear,
you wake up and know
you are really alive.
   ~mce

Far too late now
to die young.

  ~mce

“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

To reject compassion,
a path of great danger:
hard hearts, in the end,
are prone to break.
- mce

I am a poet.

I love to say that
when smug oafs
ask what I do
and watch the look
of horror on their
faces, like they
just swallowed
the *** end of
a dead skunk,
maggots and all.

It's my job
to blurt out
the ugly truths
most folks won't
even think and try
to make them
beautiful,

to make flowers
blossom from the
***** of dead skunks.

Like a weather person,
I don't always succeed.

It's not a good job,
the pay is ******
and there are no benefits.

Sometimes, like April,
it can be a cruel job.

But it is a job
and it's my job.

Someone has to do it
so I keep on trying.

I am a poet.

   ~mce

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.

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

Once, I knew
a woman so
utterly lovely
in spirit
that her laughter
invoked images
of seeds germinating,
of buds bursting,
of flowers blooming.

That was years ago,
but whenever
I encounter a freshly
opened blossom,
I still see
those sounds.
- 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.

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 stillness
of Sunday mornings
always makes
me feel like
an amnesiac
jumping down from
an uncomfortable train
after a long ride
onto the platform
of a station
in a town
I can't remember
where no one
is waiting for me,
another deadly step
into an impossibly
inevitable future

  ~mce

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

Some mornings
are just that way.
- 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

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

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

for Anne Sexton**

I dream of writing words
that conjure screams and sighs,
that force my readers
to turn away and look back,
fascinated and repelled,
locked and paralyzed
by my serpentine stare,
by my hypnotic intensity.
Screams and sighs like those
that exploded from your pages
like verbal ******
illuminating the naked horror
of the life that led you
to take your own.
You were a wise, wild woman
whose fierce, fearless words
sprang from a fountain
of uncertainty and chaos;
but your pen never faltered,
not until the weight of living
became too much to bear
and drove you, disconsolate,
to the locked garage,
the running engine,
suffocation and death alone,
without screams or sighs.
The critics and the madness
that plagued your soul
are vanished now.
Only your white hot
woman's words survive,
searing my brain,
the living brains of many.
I hope you have found respite,
far from screams and sighs.
Be at peace, Sister.
- mce

Swallow a loaded
Exxon supertanker;
settle the
Great Pyramid
of Cheops
on your chest;
balance a 747
on its pinnacle.

Now try
to draw a
deep breath.
  - mce

~ just the short list.*

Her words, her voice,
the way she articulates
her soul's depths.
Creativity, curiosity,
the things she needs to know.
Smiles and giggles,
a vivid sense of humor.
A mind that devours
what it needs to grow.
Jeans and T-shirts;
sundresses and sandals.
That she appreciates
what it means to be naked
and doesn't flinch.
The desire to touch
and to be touched, often.
The way she can
walk into any room
and fill it up with light.
The mystery of why
she chose me.
Her sense of possibility.
The way she is content
with just who she is.
  ~mce

Lullaby**

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted *****
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.