The mad poet of the glade
sits at leisure in the shade.

He spends the measure of his day
recalling women gone away.

Women dressed in barbed wire
who set his anxious heart on fire.

Women in satin, women in jeans,
women far beyond his means.

Women who sang, women who swore,
each the ******, each the *****.

Women of flesh, women of soul,
who touched his life, who made him whole.

Women of mind, women of heart,
all a mystery at the start.

Women who loved the words he said
and fell like blossoms on his bed.

Women whose dresses slid to the floor,
he lifted them up, he made them soar.

Women who sighed, trembled and came,
each one different, each the same.

Women lovely as springtime flowers
with silken skin and magick powers.

Women who lusted, women who dreamed,
women who loved him, women who schemed.

Women who broke his willing heart,
caressed his flesh, inhaled his art.

Women who finally came to fear
the cost of keeping him too near.

Women who all loved to play,
but could not bring themselves to stay.

Now he dreams those bygone times
and turns them into lines of rhymes.

Oh, the mad poet of the glade
he sits at leisure in the shade.
  - mce

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

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.

Waking to the sound
of pounding rain
is like hearing
death do a drum roll
before a hanging.
Nothing to do
but step onto
the trap door
and prepare yourself
for the drop.

Weary of the same old same old?
Don't flee your imperfections.
Instead, double down on them.
Stand naked before a mirror
like the one in the Bardo.
See what is really there rather
than what you'd like to see.
Your soul will either
turn cold as a frog's *****
or explode like a **** lab.
Instantaneous suicide or
blinding enlightenment.
Die, awaken, or just
continue to muddle through.
Corpse, Buddha, Zombie:
     Which of the three
     would you rather be?

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

You were born,
as was I.
You are dying,
as am I.
What happens
in between matters.
Too many spend
their time as
they spend
their money,
straining for more
than food, clothes,
shelter until
they suffocate
under attachment
to the unnecessary
they have made
necessary.
They try to buy
meaning with toys
and feel uncomfortable
at the boredom
they have become.
They want the whole
world zoned commercial
so they can work harder,
buy more and feel better,
but they don't.
It is a hard thing
to admit how much
of our lives
we have spent
being full of ****.
Remember:
You were born,
as was I.
You are dying,
as am I.
What happens
in between matters.
We all stand on
wobbly hinges
that can give way
at any moment.
The question becomes
not about death
but about how to live
before the hinges snap
and the noose
breaks our mortal necks.
No easy answers.
It is hard enough
to have your foot
in one world,
let alone two.
You were born,
as was I.
You are dying,
as am I.
What happens
in between matters.
Instead, meditate
on the nothingness
that was and
the nothingness
that will be
at any second.
Do not **** your life
away on nonsense.
Find your way to make
what is in between
matter. Me?
I think I'll go fishing.

  ~mce

He wants her
naked upon an altar
wreathed in roses
so he can worship
her in every way
a human man
can imagine.

~mce

We live in an abrupt time
without ancestors.
Those gossamer threads
that bound us to the past
have long ago melted away.
I am a lone man on a bed in a room.
Adjectives do not accrue.
Only your mouth tracing my body
outlines me into reality,
your pretty teeth nip me
into the dangerous present.
And what then shall I give you?
Neither famous nor rich,
I possess only mundane flesh
and a grab bag of words.
These will have to do, lady.
Allow me to adorn you with them:
earrings made of desperate syllables,
a necklace of my broken fingers.
These are the offerings
I place before your body's altar
where I have come to worship
before the magic of your touch.
Only a man on a bed in a room,
everything that is left of me,
waiting with anxious longing
for your mouth to create me again.

Every man has one. You notice her when you are sixteen and she still inhabits your heart at sixty. She is the angel always just out of reach. Her scent is of Ivory Soap and lilacs and spring and youth. You never quite forget her. She becomes the template of desire. You tremble for her flesh, but wouldn't know how to touch it.You spend your life wishing she would invite you up to her room to play, knowing that she never will. You want to embrace the texture of her being. You want to brush your tongue along the thighs of her most secret longings. You want to hear her moans echo in your own throat. You measure all the women you will ever stumble into against her. Some fit; most don't. You believe she holds the answers to all your unasked questions, the dark ones your soul is afraid to speak out loud even to itself. Sometimes you wish she would release you, but that can never be. She is the Queen of your dreams. You are her subject. You will always kneel before her. You will always believe that her touch could heal your deepest wounds. You will be her Fool forever and be glad of it. On your deathbed, you will catch her scent one last time, smile and carry her with you into infinity. Every man has one.
  - mce

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.
And the wolf shall tear it to dripping shreds
and devour it with great gusto, smacking
its lips over such a stupid animal.
And *the meek shall inherit the earth,
but only a plot just six feet in depth,
small recompense for being so gentle.
Better for the lamb and the meek to get Kalashnikovs.
Predators and prey: some things never change.
The world is too ****** to be weak.

  ~mce

You are no longer the
tortured tumescent terror
you were at twenty.

After sixty, the ****** urge
waxes and wanes,
but still arrives
promptly when called upon.

A kind of peace lives in this.

Arousal now requires love,
whereas when young
it arrived at the glimpse
of a leg or a skirt's flounce.

This is more personal
and more satisfying.

The young deserve lust and
the tempestuous heartbreak
it inevitably brings
when mistaken for more
than it can ever be.

Those older need the touch
of a beating heart
as much as the touch
of simple, hot flesh.

No time remains
for the merely casual.

Your desire reminds you
of ruins, fallen towers,
the pressure of mortality.

You want the body beneath you
to touch your soul as well.

You want to touch it back,
to make it gasp and moan
but to hear it in your heart
as well as in your ears.

You want to hold it close
and keep it near forever,

remembering that forever
is not nearly as long
as it used to be.

No time to fool around;
find someone real
and clutch them as if
they were your last chance,
which they may well be
at any age.

Every poem a foundling. Ancestry uncertain. Cuckoo. Kidnapped.
Each line liberated from a huge, noisy foul. Taken not stolen.
Don't put all your words in one. Task it to be new.
Almost bought organic bananas yesterday like some kind of millionaire.
Some of the best times of my life have no photographic evidence.
I often wonder where my thoughts come from. Perhaps Uranus.
Date a girl with small hands.. Everything will look bigger next to them.
Get to the point. My medication is starting to wear off.....
Karaoke, because being an obnoxious drunk isn't embarrassing enough.
If I am the man of your dreams, my condolences. Stupid is.
It's all fun and fiction until you show up missing. Internet romance.
My thighs are looking awfully lonely without you between them.
You've spent an entire day creating the ultimate sheep pun,
but have you ever considered the ramifications? Disordered thoughts.
Die a quick and painless death: the new American Dream. Lonely kills.
All I need is just a little cherishing. Comeuppance. Cherish is the word.
Listen, karma is the *****. I am simply her occasional instrument.
Meaning becomes data becomes information becomes content becomes meaningless.
Writer creates order. Otherwise only words in a row. Whole more than parts.
Big bird tweets often. Means nothing. Vacancy. Disappear into void.
Shout out the words you don't understand. Leave them to the poet's hand.

  ~mce

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.

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

When he walked into that room, he carried his whole life with him.

There is something.

It all began when the umbilical was cut.

After that conversation, he just wanted to drink and be whole again.

She sighed with pleasure and slipped the bonds of the appropriate.

He was as nervous as a ***** in an earthquake.

A thousand years ago, he would not have made that promise.

Jesus, get that thing out of here!

Life was good; he had just gotten an NSA grant to study the speed of darkness.

Sure, I knew your mother; she was great in bed

The overwhelming
importance of beauty.

What could be more brutal
than the meeting of a child
and a bullet?

I have seen it.

There is a choice in this.

Accept chaos and ugliness
or fight back by
creating beauty against them.

Artists are essential.

The only beauty in the world
is the beauty we create.

Taken together, that is enough.

  ~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.

Demanding happiness
requires standing
in an endless line
hoping that
something good
waits ahead of you.

  ~mce

In warmth and safety,
the lucky few
argue about slogans
on coffee cups,
red, green and blank.

On a frozen
Syrian mountainside,
caught in
a season of hate,
men are tortured,
women are *****,
and children starve
like trapped
forgotten vermin.

A world away,
angry arguments
about which words
to best mark this
season of love.

Whose side are
you on, God?

Hallelujah.

  ~mce

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.

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

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

If your heart doesn't bleed,
you are dead.
You have become
just another greedy
little **** factory
on your short path
to becoming
compost yourself.

~mce

The future is a portal,
invisibly outlined,
through which time rushes
like a flooded river
sweeping on its torrent
the flotsam of our lives
and the years
swallow themselves
and disappear
forever into forever.

  ~ mce

When you were born,
I was 25 and had
already been a hippie,
a soldier, a husband.

If I had known
your birthdate,
I would have sent
you a card saying:

Happy Birthday!
I'll meet you
in a few decades.
Can't wait.  Mike

It's a little late,
but here it is.

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

She was my student;
twenty-five years younger.
I noticed her
the first day of class,
got to know her slowly,
fell into bed
with her later,
and then
in love with her
abruptly.
It was unlikely,
broke many rules,
was doomed from the start.
Still, I have never
regretted a moment of it.
You never get to touch
what you are afraid
to reach for.
- 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

Bright pellucid morning
blue as icy aquamarine.

Fall nips the air
like a petulant cat.

It feels chilly
as a chance encounter
with a former lover
in a sunrise coffee shop.

The season spins
like an obstinate top.

Legions of lawn gnomes
don their long underwear.

The earth accepts this
glacial change, but
I will miss the warmth
of lilies and dandelions.

Still, this new  ambience
contains its own charms.

Trees spasm with delight
as vivid leaves waft like
inevitable paratroopers
to the retreating lawns.

Flowers hibernate
secure in the
inevitability
of resurrection.

It is a time to honor
common sense.

We know the snows
will blanket our
sleepy, gelid lives.

We know that
in time we will
wake to spring,
warmth and hope.

The world will turn
until we don't.

  ~mce

Quis est iste puer?*

Not even the
sterile, serious
hospital scene
can diminish
the wonder.

Your wife
glows radioactive.

Something new
in this old world.

Love made flesh.

In her arms,
your child.

The Cosmos smiles.

Everything changes
forever.

Come into my hands
like a book.

My hands are strong,
have weathered decades,
will hold you tight.

Let them open you
to the right page,
the center of you.

Let me enter your story
and together we will
search your text
for meanings even
you don't know, yet.

We will write
unimagined chapters.

Cackle at the comedy;
weep at the tragedy.

We will read
each other's pasts,
guess what happens next.

We will find
the perfect passage
and know where
we belong
int the world.

At the tale's ******
we will explode
into a final
exclamation point!

If you only
come into my hands
like a book.

I have seen death's face
in many places
from Saigon to An Loc,
to the DMZ:
not by virtue, but luck,
he did not see me.

The others who fell
in those self-same places,
he surprised and snatched
away too slow to flee:
by the dumbest of luck,
he did not take me.

Now they are the forgotten dead
and I am old and weary
and worlds from Saigon
An loc or the DMZ:
my time and luck are running out
and slowly he turns his face toward me.

  ~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.

Her eyes are
intoxicatingly
limpid pools.
Dive in.
Get drunk.
Enjoy
the best
hangover
ever.

The poem sprouts
from the compost
of the mind.

People, events, desires
memories, hopes,
dreams, disappointments,
all mixed and turned,
watered with imagination,
until something
catches and clutches,
pale and fragile,
and begins to *****
slowly for the light.

Coax it,
nurture it,
tend it.

Pour your soul
and your love
into it.

Bring all that is you
to the task.

Perhaps a poem
will blossom.
- mce

Sometimes words
cease to be a joy
and become a burden.
Sometimes you
must set them down
and take a rest.
The poet is a mailman
lugging a load of life,
carrying bundles
that most people
don't even want
to think about:
heavy thoughts
on weighty subjects.
Occasionally, even a
metaphorical mailman
needs a holiday.
  - mce

The ones I loved,
who made me what I am,
dead or dying.

Jim Harrison,
Leonard Cohen,
the other Saints
of word and song.

Death spreads like ink
from an octopus.

Not so long now.

I'm running short
of things to be.

With each passing,
my broken heart
breaks again.

You must give him your life.
He won't settle for less.
He will turn it into poetry
and become you
for a little while.
He will wear your skin
next to his own
and feel your darkest pains,
your most exquisite pleasures.
He will finally understand
your definition of love
and why you will leave him.
He will steal the secret
of your deepest longing
and know how to satisfy you.
But he will make
a few unasked for
subtle alterations
in your soul.
Then he will return it
as something
slightly different.
You will notice.
He will amaze you;
he will charm you.
You might even love him,
but you will never trust him.

  ~mce

The days run away
like frightened children.
Brevity is the soul of life.
Each sunrise becomes a miracle.
The only true sadness
is to age without a song.
This can go either way.
Some mornings the black dog licks;
but on others, you still feel
the kiss of fire upon your lips.

  ~mce

Death dropped by last night.

I never expect him, but he was lonely and I was available.

What’s up, I asked.

Same old ****, he said. You have no idea how hard this job is. Absolutely no one wants to see me. Ever.

Must be lonely.

Lonely, he said, you can’t imagine! Most of them die as soon as they see me.

Do you know hard that makes it to have a meaningful relationship? Or even get a date?

Death lit a cigarette, unafraid.

Oh, I can imagine.

Well, let me tell you; it’s ****** frustrating. Sometimes, I’d just like to cuddle, but I’m not into corpses. Yuck.

Death isn’t much of a conversationalist. Mostly he just whines. It’s all about him. He tends to ramble.

I just quietly let him talk. He did.

Have to be going, he said finally. Must meet the soon to be dead. Rush, rush, rush… and Santa Claus thinks he has it bad. Thanks for listening. See you soon.

No hurry, I replied.

I swear his missing lips smiled as he turned and left.

It took a while before I realized what I had just been spared.

Sometimes, it pays to be a good listener.

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.

I vaguely recall
whole nights of deep
refreshing slumber,
waking renewed
and ready.
Now, every morning,
I stumble into
consciousness
from an
exhausting welter
of dreams and demons
wondering who
you must ****
to get a single,
decent night of sleep
around here?
- 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

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

He has devoted his life
to a Ph.D. in Uncertainty.
Now he is aging
and thinks it nearly done,
but he just can't be sure.

  ~mce

Lightening
in a night sky:

not there,
there,
not there.

Our lives
in this world:

not here,
here,
not here.

From nothing
a brief flash
of being
before nothing.

Death does
not end,
it resumes.

No fear.

   ~mce

It’s not that a photon can be in two places at once, it’s that a photon is everywhere at once.*

We are
two photons
apart, together,
everywhere
at the same time,
different but
the same
yet always
radiant.

  ~mce

for SJH

Even when most frozen,
the soil of the heart
contains the possibilities
of fresh and better life.
Water it; tend it; nurture it.
Wait for the warmth to return.
Many flowers wait to blossom.
New bouquets for new days.
  - mce

I am what is around me.

Women understand this.
One is not duchess
a hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits:
a black vestibule;
a high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.