When I look into her eyes,
I see my face before I was born.

Ha! Take that Zen Master.

Throw me a hard one next time.

   ~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

"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

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

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

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?

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

~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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

-mors vincit omnia*

The many old who live alone
must pay attention, take care.

Any misstep might hasten their descent.
Tumble down the lonely steps.
Lie waiting in your own filth,
unable to reach a phone.

What loneliness must attend such a fall?

If only we could choose.

Proud Aeschylus was struck down
by a falling tortoise.
That’s not too bad.
To be hit by a bus while
lighting one last lethal cigarette.
That’s even better.
In bed, at ninety, chugging toward
one, final gasp of ******.
Even better yet.

But not in a strange bed hooked up
to noisy, indifferent machines,
poisoned by chemotherapy,
surrounded by terrified
friends and family struck dumb,
embarrassed and uncomfortable,
stunned by their own fears.

Best on your own two feet.
Like a soldier before the bullet.
Like a Viking struck down in battle.
Like you might have even mattered.

But there is no choosing.

Decrepitude is woven in our DNA.

You cannot escape the
inevitable carnage of mortality,
but you can be very careful
where you place your feet.

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.

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

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

there is nothing
that whiskey can't cure
except whiskey

   mce

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

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

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.

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

In the Beginning, God touched the world;
not Logos but the embrace of tactility.
God pressed himself into creation, every
animal, vegetable, and mineral imbued with
the exalted power of consecrated touch,
leaving marks that remain for us to discover
like marvelous pieces of a sacred crossword puzzle.
A celestial charter, holy Magick, necessary theology.
But seeing is difficult and knowledge is demanding.
We are shattered, splintered, fractured lenses,
mirror fragments of  broken insight.
Rational and credulous, we see only what we want.
To read God's fingerprints we must first of all burn,
burn away the human barriers of debate and common sense.
To meet the transcendent requires clear-headed madness.
Unshackle yourself from argument and logic,
the Magick focuses into a massive corona of power.
Dross and gold separate when touched by that flame
and only the purest, precious metal remains.
You must connect directly to the mystical
to access such bold, terrifying, inhuman force:
only stolen fire or knowledge contains this power
and that theft demands sacrifice of great pain.
But with them you can meet angels personally,
discover the Soul's hidden treasure horde,
speak with corpses, become animals and plants.
No longer chained by causality, you fly free,
in danger of igniting and dying of gladness.
Only walk through the fire and reclaim your birthright:
to see God's imprimatur on every earthly object
and to know that fingerprint is set upon you too.

  ~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

Love Sonnet XLV**

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

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

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

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

  ~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 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

Three A.M.
Standing
on my deck.
No sleep.
Something calls.

Still and frigid,
waiting quietly,
I breathe in and out.

My breath rises
in misty, white
mortal plumes.

Inspiration;
expiration.

Beyond my cabin,
I feel the deer
dancing
in the deep night,
chanting the old
secret songs
of their antlered clan.

Exaltation.

I watch meteors
drop on
the ridge top
like God's tears
streaking the sky.

Clarity.

Two coyotes
howl a duet
in the darkness;
the creek whispers
and I understand.

Revelation.

I think
of your flesh
warm beneath
a thick quilt.

Expectation.

So many marvels
attend me.

Surely I am
a lucky man.
  - mce

an anarchist’s style guide...


Poems are liquid prose. Prose insists. Poems plead.
Kale tastes best in darkness. Residue of texture.
Texture makes the text. Don’t dress it up.
I is romantic vestige. Deport it. Feel the freedom.
Irony is literate decadence. Stick to sarcasm. Common voice.
Drumbeat of iambs in veins. Just the facts, Ma’am.
Edgy as opposed to hard. Violent refusal to respond.
Adjectives limited. Adverbs useless. Nouns just sit.
Ah, but verbs. Verbs as we are. *We are verbs. Creating.
Other parts, only utilitarian. Sequence of composition.
Words in a row marching like soldiers to certain death.
Metaphors compressed as diamonds. Regal and rusted.
The clock’s face reveals nothing. Blank chronology.
Humor provides shelter. Lear on the moor. Fool.
Lines in a stanza remain lines. Mere artifice.
Love is in and out of every door. Root of desire.
Say what you must as you must. Shout if you must.
Take whatever you like. Make it new. Make it new.
Feel noose around neck. Have the last word. Anyway.

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

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

~mce

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

They are ubiquitous as red, white and blue.
Everybody's entitled to them.
Everybody has many, all insightful.
Everybody feels compelled to share them.
Frankly, I don't care what you think
about Trump, Obamacare, refugees, Syria,
the patriarchy, pumpkins or the Patriots.
But go ahead and fill me in. I know you will.
I will smile politely, as I always do,
while imagining twenty ways to ****** you.

Grab Your ***** And Hide The Starch!*

Begin the day with a lean and hungry cook. Seize her.
Catch the tide or lose your dentures. Vault of jars.
Cry "Amuck!" and let slip the hogs of yore.
Bid me done, and I will thrive on the impossible.
This foul **** shall stink above the hearth.
Pardon me, you breeding piece of worth.
You crocks, you crones, you worse than senseless things!
Consider the I'd's and beware of scam.
Perhaps by dusk you can say: This was a yam!

  ~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

alles klar herr kommissar*

Write it all down with painstaking haphazardness,
carefully constructing nested memories,
exotic confections, negligible nuances,
dubious symbols of great insignificance,
an absolutely truthful pack of living lies.
Your readers deserve exactly what they get:
stumbling horses, nuzzling cassowaries, dead flowers;
the impenetrable clarity of an imagined life
imagining its mind imagining itself.

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

Over and Over

Over and over,
no matter how vividly
we know love's landscape
and the lost cemetery
with its sad names
and the chasm into which
the others have fallen,
once again we walk together
beneath ancient trees
and lie down entwined
among the blossoms
facing the sky.
  - trans. mce

Autumn Day**

God, the time is now.
Summer was vast.
Drop your shadow
across the sundials
and loose your breath
upon the fields.

Command the last fruits
to fullness,
allow them a few warm days
to discover ripeness
and press their sweetness
into heavy wine.

No time remains
to seek refuge.

If you are now alone
you will remain so
for a long, long time.

You will stay up late,
writing letters
to no one,
restlessly wandering
the hollow streets
while the leaves
tumble aimlessly.
  - trans. mce

The frozen meadow
is a hard, white
**** carpet.
Seven wild turkeys
arrayed in a
gobbling skirmish line
pick their way
carefully across it.
I stand silently
on the frozen deck
in my bare feet
and watch.
The algid world
contains us all,
no exceptions.
Strutting fowl,
the flaneur
who watches,
no one escapes
this brumal vista.
The God of heaven
is simultaneously
the God of phenomena.
Skepsis slips away
when your toes
are cold.
  - mce

ἐγγὺς μὲν ἡ σὴ περὶ πάντων λήθη· ἐγγὺς δὲ ἡ πάντων περὶ σοῦ λήθη.

How many streets,
how many times,
has he strolled
in this irrelevant
town?

Fifty years
The perambulating
flaneur.*

Change must be
but often arrives
glacially.

Crows on wires.
Nonchalant bunnies.
Indifferent children.

These ancestors
of that first ramble
take no notice
of the white haired man
with a cane.

The scenery never
comments on the drama.

Walking old streets
where many lives
have lived and vanished

brings neither sadness
nor nostalgia,

only the reminder
of time's inevitable,
ineluctable vortex.

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

Sometimes, for no
apparent reason,
I am reduced to a
fulminating idiot,
quivering and
flummoxed by
divergent impulses.

Do I hit the panic button
that will eject me to
anywhere but myself
or simply yawn
and take a nap?

This may be a proof of
The Uncertainty Theorem.

I'm not sure.

  ~mce

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

  ~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

When I get really decrepit,
I will wear mismatched clothes
on purpose; fill my pockets
with useless pennies; leer
lasciviously at girls far too
young; mutter arcane
wisdom to myself just loud
enough to hear but not to
understand; eat everything
that makes the health Nazis
cringe; smoke in inappropriate
places; get drunk in the
mornings if I so desire
and smoke *** in public.
It will be an ecstasy to
not give a rat's *** what
anyone thinks. My only
regret will be that I
did not start sooner.

   ~mce