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

Gacela of the Dark Death**

  I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemeteries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

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

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

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

  ~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

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

~ 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.

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.

Is there anything
more pathetic than
a smitten old man?

Is there anything
more wonderful?

   ~mce

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

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

Do not weep
for your
imperfections.
Like love
they make you
human.
They are
the facets
that allow
you to shine.
Keep them
polished.
Send your light
into the world;
it already has
enough darkness.
Consider yourself
creatively
maladjusted,
not broken.
Become an eagle
or a flamingo.
Soar into
the night sky
seeking love
and knowledge.
Who knows
where you may
land.

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

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

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

~ 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

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

Consciousness rears its reptile head;
Medusa in the morning gloom.
You wake to iron silence,
a tourist in a rented room.
I have never feared death
but often been terrified of life.
Chaos theory is not a balm
when the unexpected fall begins,
the sudden plummet into strife.
Life says no so often and loudly
we begin to doubt the yes.
The performance begins anew;
the usher guides you to your seat.
The mortal day coiled like a viper
ready to strike and poison.
Wise souls move through the murk
one careful step at a time.
When you rise, check your weapons;
be careful where you place your feet.
   ~mce

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.

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.

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

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

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

He stuffed
an imaginary cat
( along with
some other
imaginary stuff)
into an
imaginary box,
thought about it
and suddenly,
the seemingly
very small world
became vast with
potentialities.
  ~mce

riverrun, past Eve and Adams*

in the end there is a beginning
that must never end.
It is hardly difficult to argue
that this is no time for the fatuous
and that nothing is more fatuous
than scribbling poetry at dawn.
But compulsion and desire will out.
We must sing of this world
not some better unknown star.
The given is the wool we weave.
All times are equally terrible
and equally sublime.
The eternal politics of horror
must never stifle the human heart.
Which serves to make clear that

Plumbing the abyss
is fine if you wish,
but there is much
to be said
for a full heart
and a warm bed.

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

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

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

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

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.

Let us get together and share nightmares.
You show me yours. I'll show you mine.
We will tremble like off balance washing machines.
What is love if not a combination of horrors?
So many intimate fears and phobias to merge!
Assuredly we shall end up an old married couple,
mute at table, staring blankly into the void,
wondering whatever possessed us,
waiting for the inevitable exorcist to arrive.

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

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

All these faltering words:

just a deal
I made with myself
as a personal reason
to keep breathing;

my own
hermetic language
designed for discourse
with the Divine,
with Madness.

When you think
you are reading them,
you aren't.

Really,
you are only
eavesdropping.

Listen too closely and
the worms may begin
to chew.

Not my responsibility.

- mce

You've read many books,
think your homework done,
consider yourself
well-informed.

And then you stand
on the hillock
at Wounded Knee
or the spot
at Fort Robinson
where Crazy Horse
was murdered
or the ravine
at Sand Creek

and you smell blood,
leather, horses, sweat, earth

smoldering around you

and suddenly you know
what you didn't know:

history is more than words.

  ~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?

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

Love Compared**

I do not resemble your other lovers, my lady
should another give you a cloud
I give you rain
Should he give you a lantern, I
will give you the moon
Should he give you a branch
I will give you the trees
And if another gives you a ship
I shall give you the journey.

I Am Vertical**

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
******* up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them —
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Next time
you stand
on the corner
of Asylum Street,
there can be
no return.

Forty years ago today Saigon fell.
I wonder what my 60,000
fallen brothers would think
of the country they died for
if they could see the prison
it is becoming now.

No knowing.

But I think: sad and angry;
especially angry,
and perhaps, vengeful.
  ~mce

Obviously,
the path
to salvation
took a detour
and missed
my house.

That's OK:
rather Pirate Hell
than Christian Heaven.

Finer wenches
down there,
better beer,
and anyhow,
I am allergic
to clouds.
  ~  mce

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

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.

Seeing a future that does not exist.
Dead child. Lost mother. Empty cradle.
Loveless heart. Soul minus zero. No companion.
Friends far away. Leaden morning stillness.
Noun without verb. Lonely adjective. Period.
Days upon days upon days of endless same.
Dysfunctional GPS. Maps that lead nowhere.
Rooms of the void. House of many sorrows.
Untold story without ending. Unwritten poems.
Homeless veterans. All soldiers at night. Fear.
Imaginary kisses. Touches of air. Lost caresses.
Knowing that everything that comes next is nothing;
     knowing that you really know that.

  ~mce

American Sermon**

I am uniquely privileged to be alive
or so they say. I have asked others
who are unsure, especially the man with three
kids who’s being foreclosed next month.
One daughter says she isn’t leaving the farm,
they can pry her out with tractor
and chain. Mother needs heart surgery
but there is no insurance. A lifetime of cooking
with pork fat. My friend Sam has made
five hundred bucks in 40 years
of writing poetry. He has applied for 120
grants but so have 50,000 others. Sam keeps
strict track. The fact is he’s not very good.
Back to the ******* the farm. She’s been
keeping records of all the wildflowers
on the never-tilled land down the road,
a 40-acre clearing where they’ve bloomed
since the glaciers. She picks wild strawberries
with a young female bear who eats them. She’s being
taken from the eastern Upper Peninsula down
to Lansing where Dad has a job in a
bottling plant. She won’t survive the move.

Every ending includes
a beginning.

The past can
never be escaped,
but it can be
left in the past.

The tree that
falls and rots
feeds new growth;
it remains,
but is transformed;
likewise the past
must nourish
the future,
not stunt its growth.

Open your arms
to what might be
and what has been
assumes it's
proper place.

A ****** fine world
waits out there:

time to get on with it.
_ mce