hatchet-faced features
of the very young
who try to look tough
as they finger their guns

poised to step off
into a lie
and begin a walk
where any can die

the hidden mines
await their feet
poised to turn them
into lumps of meat

children really, barely
old enough to shave
with feet never farther
than a step from the grave

  ~mce

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

I love
the way
zounds
rhymes with
hounds.
Sadly,
it is not
the sixteenth
century,
and I don't
own dogs.
  - mce

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

by Pablo Neruda**

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there shall be my voice.

Where blacks are flogged and beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory
comes,
even if I am dumb I must speak;
I shall see it coming even if I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall on my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping,
but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things you wanted me
indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.


                                      Spanish; trans. Brian Cole

I was born poor.
Sixty-three years later,
I am still poor.
Somewhere in between,
there must lurk a lesson
I haven't learned.
  - mce

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.

Your pretty dress
pushed up
to your hips;
your boots kissing
the small
of my back;
that is a ride
I want to take,
a picture
to hold close
forever.
   ~mce

The pay scale
for poets
is bleak indeed.
I could use
a wealthy
benefactor.
Where are you,
Lorenzo?
Even the Muse
needs to be fed
occasionally.
  - 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

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?

Take an instant,
a snapshot
or sound byte
from your life;
attach an emotion
or a thought;
couch it in
the fewest best words;
let it gestate
until your head
goes into labor
and it will
be born
like a real child
that is yours,
but has a life
of its own
and leaves you
to inhabit a world
you can never know
- mce

OK, the depressive part
can be a problem:
nothing to do but lie around,
immobile, counting ceiling tiles,
waiting to die, and afraid you won't.

But mania! Oh, sweet muse!

The gods kiss you with fiery tongues;
they burn their hissing brands
into your gelid, grateful brain.

Volcanoes of metaphors;
tsunamis of words;
earthquakes of images.

Every moment pulsates;
every instant an ******.

Shrinks agree that
most artists are
manic-depressive
to some degree,
but to us it is a portal
to the godhead.

Give the meds to the rest;
the agitated, anxious sheeple
striving to be normal:
to them it is a disease.

But for those of us
who lust for Art,
it is the necessary,
not to be missed,
divine, exalted,
madness of creativity.

Consummate
Promethean
benefaction.

   - mc

Trans. Elaine Pagels


Jesus said:

If you bring forth
what is within you,
what you bring forth
will save you.
If you do not bring forth
what is within you,
what you do not bring forth
will destroy you.

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

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.

I move south,
away from winter.

Middle-Tennessee
experiences
the longest streak
of sub-freezing days
in twenty years.

These two sentences
contain the story
of my life.
  - mce

deathly morning quiet
an old man shuffles
to the coffee maker
listens to Carter's
Sonata for Cello and Piano
hears the silence sing
between the notes
fumbles for a working pen
creaks onto the couch
and against all hope nurses
delusions of poetry

   mce

These are merely instances.* Wallace Stevens

Pick random points and place together. Pattern.
This map expands beyond its margins.
Vines of hysteria cover all. Swallowing.
The shell shock of the normal. Mind shrapnel.
Clocks kept in closet. Time out of mind.
Learning the algebra of flesh balances all.
These words torn from silence. Moral surgery.
Endless intimate details bore to the bone.
Pointless nostalgia for the forgotten.
Science of the lambs. Send up a woman.
The futile sexuality of questions. Will she?
Conjunction junction has lost its function.
You are the poet. What did you make of this?
Roll the dice twice. Call that meaning.
What a long strange text it has been.

  ~mce

12th Century - Anonymous*

Lullay, lullay, my tiny child,
Too soon you’ll know the world so wild,
Yes all too soon, you will be grown,
And I’ll bide here, alone, alone.
The rushing billows you shall ride,
And the light of the North Star will be your guide,
But yet awhile, I’ll have you stay,
Lullay my sweet one, my child lullay.
For you shall run in meadows green,
And sport with otters all in the stream,
And you shall chase the dappled deer,
And swim with salmon in waters clear.
To pluck the small birds from the sky,
On the tail of the South Wind you shall fly,
And take the high hills for your home,
Blood of my blood, bone of my bone.
The moon must sleep beyond the tree,
So weep sweet maid of Galilee,
The sun must rise before the cross,
To dry your tears and share your loss.
The darkest hour of the starless night
Must bow to the power of the Eastern light,
That heals the Earth and makes us whole,
Heart of my heart, soul of my soul.
And when at last your course is run,
Joy of my joy, my little one,
Beneath the sky you’ll stand alone,
Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.
Yes, you shall stand on the coal black sands,
To cross o'er the waters of Western Lands,
But now I have you at my breast,
Lullay my sweet one, gently rest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SrQ9tTEKaI

I only wanted
what all men want:
to be thought worthy
by a lovely woman;
to hold her close
as a bundle of lilacs;
to inhale her
deep as a spring forest;
to undress her
with trembling fingers;
to touch her
like the skin of a saint;
to enter her
like a portal to life.

A woman is
sanctified by love;
her beauty is lifted
to the waiting sky.

She becomes:

wise and deep
as the falling peals
of church bells;
holier than Mecca,
Bethlehem and Jerusalem;
lovelier than the wildflowers
of a Tennessee spring;
lighter than
the gentlest breeze.

She does not fear lust,
for she has sacrificed
at that empty altar before
and has learned
from loss to make love
greater and more powerfully
than a whole generation
of Amazons.

And she manages
all these wonders
with a Mona Lisa smile.

But in the end,
you are still a woman
and I am still a man.

We will come
to understand
what to make
of each other.

Forgive me my desire;
it is all I can be.

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.

there is nothing
that whiskey can't cure
except whiskey

   mce

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.

~ for Paul Eluard

This prison isn't so bad.
Though the nights are cold,
tree roots break in to warm him.
The guards hum Mozart arias
which are profoundly comforting
and the food drives away
all expectations of hunger.
The sun is black but reassuring;
the moon has gone missing.
The books he doesn't have pass the time.
The caresses of absent women soothe his body.
Many birds choose not to sing
but invisible cats purr delightfully.
Often he is offered parole,
but can't imagine a better situation
and chooses to remain in his comfy cell.
Solitude sings sweet remembered songs
and all the trenches are far away.
Sometimes he misses the smells of flowers
but that soon passes and anyway
grass sprouts in the yard
surrounded by concertina wire.
Sometimes butterflies light upon it,
deliciously anomalous.
Nothing occupies him every day;
He is comfortable here and plans to stay.
   - mce

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.* - JB

My inner resources have collapsed.
I am officially in a rut.
I am terminally bored.
It's like dying over and over again
but never quite getting the job done.
A strong change is called for.
Perhaps I'll cut off my head,
take up ballet or start a hedge fund.
I could take a road trip
if my car wasn't 240,000 miles
toward dead and it wasn't winter
and if I had any money.
Pawn shops don't pay well for poems.
Sadly, all those conditions prevail.
Which means my chances of escaping
boredom are limited, which is boring.
I realize boredom is my fault.
In my case, it is the San Andreas fault.
If I owned boots, I could pull
myself up by my bootstraps, but I don't.
I wonder if the Buddha was ever bored.
All he ever did was sit around.
If so, perhaps I'm really not bored.
Maybe this is really enlightenment.
That's a truly terrifying thought.
During the war life was boring but
dangerous. Sad thing to pine for war.
Guess I'll just surrender to this
redundant, monotonous splendor.
If I wake up tomorrow, things may improve.
If I don't wake up, they surely will.

  ~mce

The very best thing
about loving someone
is that it very much
makes you want
to stay in the world.

  ~mce

Each morning,
eyes open,
a combat jump,
falling back
into the world.

If you trample the world
don't expect it
to kiss your feet.

Practice kindness
or the world will die.
The inescapable choice
we must all make.

Greed is not a virtue.
Make that your mantra.
Greed is not a virtue.

Do not let the enemy
steal the language
of your heart.

You are dying.
Why bother doing
anything you
don't want to?

Wealth and power
don't mean ****
except on a
temporary basis.

Your name means
captivating in Hebrew.
I am your prisoner.

Mammals crave touch
and mammalian warmth.
We are mammals.
Touch me; warm me..

I wish you had
a thousand fingers.

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.

Sometimes
I wake up
feeling lethal
after old war
nightmares.

To sooth myself
I slowly
sharpen
my K-Bar.

Weird, but
the motion
drives away
the toxic
memories.

Sometimes,
it takes a knife
to **** a dream.
   ~mce

Huck Finn is dead.

Some say

he died alone
in an apartment in Tulsa
during a Swamp People
marathon
body discovered
three days later
after neighborly complaints,
face somewhat gnawed
by his trusty cat.

Some say

he died in Montana,
struck mute by space,
rigid with terror,
dreaming of The River,
beside a trout stream,
eaten by a jealous grizzly
with a taste
for southern cuisine
and fame.

Some say

he died in Arizona
rattlesnake struck
and shrieking
beneath
a pellucid sky
seeking
to glean current events
and unlikely meanings
from ancient petroglyphs.

It does not matter
where or how;

only that

Huck Finn is dead,

and with him
the lights of the territories
gone black.

  ~mce

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

How different
the world appears
after such
a tortured night.

Grey, dripping,
bleak and dismal.

God must be
in Portugal
working
on his tan.

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

Shooting starts
any minute now.

****,
who am I?
- mce

A self-portrait.*

Gaze into the mirrored face
of the drunk man. See the
blurred innocence of
the departed boy. There are
no worlds but this world.
War, women and whiskey
do their destruction.
A man becomes what
a man does, but sometimes
that can’t be helped.
Perhaps a thousand more
lives must be lived
to undo the doing, to
break the bonds of Karma,
to find the arms of peace.
Every day a good day to die.

  ~mce

Do not think you are free
because you have nice clothes,
plenty to eat and a mortgage.
Do not think yourself free
because you attend a good college,
and get to party and have fun
before the student loans hit.
Do not think yourself free
because you are white
and consider yourself a good citizen
while those others cause trouble.
It takes a lifetime to free your head
and that doesn't begin to guarantee
that your body and words will remain free.
We have forgotten that freedom
is never just about stuff.
Stuff is the drug they use to lock you up.
It is the new ***** of the masses.
Only those who can proudly walk naked
cradling the Revolution in their hearts,
willing to pick up their guns
and die for that Revolution,
can ever be well and truly really free.
   ~mce

Time itself
will dissolve
(leaving nothing).

My life
will dissolve
(leaving nothing).

Your kisses
will dissolve
(leaving nothing).

But that is all ahead.

In this moment,

I live my life,
taking my time
and enjoying
your kisses.
   ~mce

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.

These gelid mornings
engender island dreams
of pinkest flamingos,
hot sands, swaying palms,
chattering parrots,
and rising tropical sun;
but finer far, Lady,
(closer, nearer, softer)
would it be to wake
beside your naked flesh
(willing, inviting, enfolding)
beneath a pile of quilts
in the dawn's iron chill
and coax from that
smoldering feminine heat,
from the striking sparks
of your eager kisses,
the exquisite, explosive fuel
of your caresses, deep
within the you of you,
the first fire of the new day.
  - mce

I have
often wondered
how a woman
would react
to an honest
man.

I have
often wondered
how a man
would react
to an honest
woman.

Just to be
naked
does not
ensure
honesty.

Lifetimes
of saying
and doing
what we
think
the other
wants.

Shapeshifting,
veils,
the dance
of deception.

Perhaps
they would be
too stunned
to react
at all.

  ~mce

or, a few reasons I left Facebook*

Sick of: conflict, bigotry,
inanity, politics
(of all persuasions);
cat memes, dog memes,
memes in general;
kids and grandkids
I don’t even know;
people who prefer
animals to people;
delight in ignorance,
people who won’t,
or can’t, read anything
longer than five lines;
having to consider
everyone’s feelings
all the time, which
is just another form
of self-censorship;
losing friends in
the real world over
mere comments
in the virtual world;
increasingly intrusive ads,
and the fact that I hate
punk, puke billionaires
like Mark Zuckerberg.
I could go on but
everyone has their
own, personal lists
so why bother?

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

Hardly, my friend.
The Dharma shrieks
a diamond radiance
from my heart.
I do not fear
the turning
of the wheel.
I revel in it.
I made this world;
creator and arbiter.
I control my destiny
by controlling my self.
I choose how to live,
where to live,
with whom to live.
I know what I need
and take it.
I make my desires
into my truths.
My karma is strong.
It is not my karma
to surrender, ever.
My other lives
roiled with war,
death and destruction,
but never surrender.
What to fear in this one?
Only fools fear death.
Death leads to the Bardo
and the Bardo leads
to another try
at conquering life.
I sit where I am
and I choose who I am.
My heart feels
the circle turn
and I exude its
diamond radiance
once again:
action in inaction;
order in chaos.
I make my freedom here
in the still spoke
of the spinning wheel
we call life.
Let the Universe
look after itself.
I have other worlds
to conquer.
   ~mce

At three AM, on the deck
gathering stove wood,
the air is as cold
as an ex-wife's heart,
the looming full moon
drips luminescence
through stark black branches
onto perfect new snow,
and the only sound
is one lonely owl
asking his eternal question.
  - mce

Alchemy is the art of the far and near as is poetry.*

Prima Materia. ****** alchemists groping, questing.
The Face of God. Omphalos. The Chapel Perilous.
Lost path through invisible forest. Hazard.
Base metal to gold. Ignorance to wisdom.
Crucible of transformation. The Rosy Cross.
Inner distillation. Metamorphoses. Essence.
To be bathed in the breath of infinity. Crystalline.
Quantum foam. Particles. Waves. Plenum of possibilities.
     Moving through the world of illusion,
     seeking the sacred glory of fusion.

I have been
cold so long
that warmth
is just
a memory.
Come to me,
Lady,
and build
the fire
that will
warm
my soul.
I will love you,
even amidst
flames.
  - mce

"The only questions that really matter
are the ones you ask yourself."
- Ursula K. Le Guin

For some of us
the universe
provides
a long list
of questions
and a short list
of answers.

Our work,
the real work,
the only work
that matters,
is filling
in those blanks.

A hard blessing,
but a blessing,
still.
- mce

Random stones huddle
close as lonely turtles
in the morning rain.

~mce

People seem to be
          sincere
when they say
to me
          thank you
for your service.

Perhaps they are.

But if they knew      
what I
          know...

Heard men screaming
for their mommies that I
          still hear,

Smelled
the ****** and
charred flesh I still
          smell,

dreamed
the dreams of gore,
not glory, I still
          dream,

I think
they would
          tell
the truth:

better you,
          than me,

Which may be
all they are really saying
          anyway.
   _mce

Read these words
and you will know why
though we trip through
the Bardo ten million times
or lead a billion lives,
my karma is to follow you
forever, beyond endless time,
through limitless space
until infinity itself vanishes
and we are the all, the only
because त्वां कामयामि.

An Exercise in Love*
     ~for Jackson Allen*

My friend wears my scarf at his waist
I give him moonstones
He gives me shell & seaweeds
He comes from a distant city & I meet him
We will plant eggplants & celery together
He weaves me cloth

                   Many have brought the gifts
                   I use for his pleasure
                   silk, & green hills
                   & heron the color of dawn

My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind
He backlights my dreams
He has built altars beside my bed
I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember
his name, or my own.

Cool?

Of course
I was cool,
back in the
cliched day.

I attended famous
rock concerts,
took the hippie
Grand Tour,
lied my way into
many lovely beds,
wrote horribly
juvenile hip poetry,
never met a drug
I wouldn't try,
imbibed lakes
of alcohol,
got blindly
behind the wheel
without a thought.

Oh... so cool.

But now I sit,
an aging man,
happy to have
come through
it all,

content to
have survived
long enough

to become
decidedly

uncool.
  ~mce