Poetry is powerful
because it is real;
it grabs our throats
and makes us feel.

Real as the dead cat
upon the road,
at noon, smashed flat.

Real as the wounded men
I have known,
who will never walk again.

Real as the broken heart
that, having stopped,
will not restart.

Real as the delight
with which your body
fills my night.

Real as your love
nestled in my heart,
soft and gentle as a dove.

Real as death
whose siren call,
forgets, in the end,
no one at all.

Poetry is powerful
and real, indeed,
it grabs our throats,
it makes us read.
- mce

TN 2008

There is a girl in my cabin.
She sits on my 70s brown, velour
*****-couch with her long legs
tucked beneath her
like folded promises.
She wears nothing but a pair
of wool socks and an old, flannel
shirt of mine.  The wood fire blazes.
Her honest blond hair
cascades to the small of her lovely back.
Her skin is the flawless pink
of an unexpected spring sunrise.
Her eyes are emeralds that blaze
like novas when we make love.
Botticelli might have painted her.
I am reading Harrison to her aloud.
She imbibes his words like a toddler
learning language for the first time.
I light her cigarette and she laughs,
radiating the shameless pleasure
only the very young experience.
She expects nothing of me,
but this one evening,
and that is all she will get.
She tells me her name;
she is all of twenty-one.
Perhaps I am a ***** old man;
perhaps I am incorrigible;
perhaps I will burn in Hell;
perhaps I am a casualty of Eros;
or, perhaps, I am simply
still alive.
- mce

Since
she left me,
I have never
really
been able
to unpack,
not once.
- mce

the night of the day
   before tomorrow
      becomes today

he tries to imagine
   ways beyond that

but loses the path

mired in the boggy
   random darkness
      of his own muddy soul
   ~mce

AT THE NIHILIST’S FUNERAL**

(Hope delivers the eulogy)

He was always so interestingly wrong.
I loved him, in fact for years couldn’t live
without him, he who helped crystallize
what I thought by being so opposed to it.
But it’s time to rejoice.
Some of the invisible roads
that run parallel to the great boulevards
can be seen now; the era of darkness-
as-illumination has passed. It was useful
while it lasted, but how nice to discover
that so few of us count on negatives
these days to preserve what we hold dear.
My friends, if you can think of me
as such, take heart. Meaninglessness
has ended its long run at the Palace.
Already, a few of us mere specks
in the universe have begun
to insist on our importance.
May the odors of lilac and laurel waft
across the river, and float over his grave.
The great nihilist is dead. He’ll rise again
when needed. He always has.
But those of you standing now,
having turned your backs to me in protest,
how right that you honor him so.
It’s the kind of negation that he, I suspect,
would have thought might lead somewhere,
might even have thought was hopeful.

My day was spent Here
reading, writing,
meditating and practicing
kung fu forms,
quite content Here in my
aging baby boomer bubble.

I know that Somewhere

a surgeon struggles
to save the legs of a child
blown off by a landmine
from some forgotten war

and Somewhere

a startled soldier
who never knew what hit him
slowly burns to death
in his mangled humvee

and Somewhere

a shy small Muslim woman
trips the timer on
her suicide vest
and walks into
a marketplace prepared
to die for her god,

but I have lived those lives.

Here and now,
I am no longer a man
of this century
or even this
dying digital world;

no longer
in the Somewhere,
Now content to
play out my hand,

to just be
in the Here.

  ~mce

What can your lips
do for me, lover?
They can smile at me;
they can kiss my lips;
they can hold my manhood;
they can make me shudder;
they can tell me stories;
they can deliver to me
the only hope that matters.

~mce

Every day I toss it
a raw piece of my heart
so it doesn't **** me.
Strange to feed something
so it won't devour you.
I have lived with this
for years beyond memory.
Perhaps, I have always
been like this,
rending my heart
to keep death at bay.

  ~mce

Open yourself
up to me
like a delicate,
fresh blossom;
I will become
a wanton,
profligate
hummingbird
getting drunk
on the nectar
of your soul.
  - mce

Old men usually wake up with desire
only for coffee and ibuprofen.

So if you wake up
on a perfect spring morning
with a powerful desire
for that magic crease where her
inner thigh meets  her mystery,

Rejoice!

You have just experienced a miracle
and the day will certainly be
a vibrant and delicious one.

  ~mce

One more same same morning.
Ah, but there are perks to poetry.

A flick of imagination and I am gone
to a warm country, green, with beaches
and castles and four poster beds
in one of which I am just now
waking to a vision of a lovely lass,
ready for a dash of dawn plunder,
to open a day of azure skies and heat.

In some ways, poetry doesn’t pay well,
but in others, it can make you rich indeed.

Love**

Love is twain, it is not single,
Gold and silver mixed to one,
Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle
Glist'ring then for aye undone.

Pain it is not; wondering pity
Dies or e'er the pang is fled;
Passion ‘tis not, foul and gritty,
Born one instant, instant dead.

Love is twain, it is not single,
Gold and silver mixed to one,
Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle
Glist'ring then for aye undone.

I am a thirsty man who
has spent long in the desert
dreaming of sweet juices,
succulent, lovely liquids.

You are a chalice of desire
brimming with moist, damp,
fluid lust and love.

I want to drink you dry.

Your legs end in heaven.
Your ******* are gentle hills.
Your lips an ***** of sighs.
Your eyes a green portal.
Your fingers pleasure's promise.
Your dress opens to paradise.

I will slide my lips
along your ivory thighs
and draw you rhythmically
into the torrid night,
where the world's marvels
are all released in joy

then, thirst satisfied,
desire quenched,
fall into life again
safely in your arms.

What have I made? What have I done?
Let those I love forgive what I have made.
Let the gods forgive what I have done.
Let the wind that speaks Paradise,
let it speak of what I have tried to do.
To be a man and not a destroyer.
To find the path to Paradise.
Beauty, not madness or unfinished
tangled works. The pillow, not the case.
In my homeland only shades stalk.
Fear is the forefather of cruelty.
To escape fear and find the way.
There are many ways but only One Way.
We live a thousand years in a wink.
Many wrong turns but perhaps a few right.
Let those I love forgive what I have made.
Let the gods forgive what I have done.

  ~mce and elp

I think I am
finally ready
for that other life.
You know,
The one without
all the mistakes.

  ~mce

Be humble, you
are mortal flesh.
Be noble, you
own a brave heart.
Be joyful, you
have tasted the
sweetness of love.
Enjoy your life,
it is the vessel
that contains
these wonders.

You shapeshift
in my dreams
and whichever
shape you take
fits perfectly
with mine.

~mce

I dreamed I saw Tom Paine last night…*

The dream became a nightmare. Ride it. Fall.
A Republic if you can keep it. You didn’t.
Every four years a buffoon appears in TVs
who can bleed the American people to disaster.
Burnt Knees. Hill artillery. Hearts not Trump.
An article on now. The inherent absurdity of politics.
Infamy. Liars in public places. Old lies. New faces.
Abandoned factories. Angry workers, Abandoned. All.
Pick a pack of proven paupers. No one cares.
We lust for the stud who can wave his thick wand
and magically make everything better. But won’t.
Even if that he is a she. Show me the money.
How can the one percent eat everything yet never ****?
Faceless bureaucrats cannot be held responsible.
Zombie politicos bought and sold like cats in sacks.
Still the mindless parade charade continues
off to the public polls to be pummeled. ****** on.
  Get down on your knees and set lips to *****,
  Due your duty, turn your trick.

Just an instant
twixt breath
and death.

In that living
blink-blink
let us lie
eye to eye

(moan to moan,
groan to groan)

so when we go
we will heart
happy know:

we were never,
not once,
not ever, alone.

Resumé'**

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

We wax eloquent
in forgotten
languages
describing marvels
to the dead.

Even when
they remember
the languages,
the dead are not
impressed.

~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

Simply sit down.

Don’t seek the Way,
you are already
on your way.

Just be present and
as you awaken,
the world awakens:

colors shout fragrance,
birds recite poetry,
breezes whisper caresses,
rivers of music flow.
light smells of hope.

Consider your past,
but do not dwell there;
consider your future,
but do not expect it.

Now is Is.

Peel away the squawking
layers of your heart
like an onion unwinding,
like a snake molting.

Approaching nothing,
you arrive at everything.

Do this until you think
you will vanish
and then vanish:

the more you lose,
the more you are.

The buzz
   of madness
       in the
          cicadas' whir;
insanity in
   the manic
      croak of
         tree frogs.

No quiet;
   never quiet;
        no quiet.

How fragile
   the fabric
        of personality;
how easily
   it rends, frays
       and tears

until what remains
   are loose threads
       blown randomly
           by howling wind

twirling within
   the whir
       of cicadas,
          the croak
             of tree frogs.
  - mce

When I speak to you
I tremble
as my words penetrate.
I think of
wet thighed surrender.
Deep inside you
I feel the pulse of god.
And we are making love
without even touching.

Just a few
sharp instants
of clarity
snatched
like ghosts
from blurry
lives.

  ~mce

In 63 years
as a refugee,
I have never really
unpacked, not once.

Every place
is just a place.

People arrive
and disappear.

Home, hearth
and household
do not adhere
to me.

This morning
rain drips
from the trees;
birdsong
fills the air;
in the mist
across the road
from my cloud cabin
three deer graze.

A good place,
but not home.

I belong nowhere;
I will not stay here;
I know that.

I am the shade
of a Long Hunter,
always passing through,
never settling,
or a Hungry Ghost,
observing, remarking,
but never involved.

I am not
a determined king
and no Ithaca
awaits me,
no rooted bed
or loyal hound.

Yesterday
I followed a path
through the woods
that went nowhere,
simply ended.

Perfection,
of a kind,
existing for itself,
no reason
or destination,
just a way.

But it is my path,
and I will follow it.
- mce

Take an ancient iPod
(click wheel!),
splash a few words
on Craigslist,
wait a short while
and it transforms
into fifty dollars
which morph into
a bottle of fine
Tennessee whiskey,
a haircut, cigarettes
and change.

Economists call these
transactions.
Alchemists called them
transmutations.

I call them proof
that miracles
still exist
in the ordinary.

I will now
have a drink,
light a smoke
and luxuriate
in just what is...

   ~mce

He once knew
a woman who made
every room
she entered
a work of art.
Her sentences
pronounced
like calligraphy,
pure as plums.
Her walk an
aphrodisiacal promise
of terpsichorean
delights.
Her laughter
a paint brush
deftly caressing
the atmosphere.
Her body a unicorn
every man dreamed
of hunting, but
feared to possess.
When she left
a room it was
transformed.
She should have
signed the walls
and left a mark
on the masterpiece
of herself.

~mce

"Hell is a place without birds." D.A.*

A tiny bird in my heart sings
that although the time of kisses
is not yet, it will be.
Like Dante, I have always
trusted the wisdom of birds.
   ~mce

At this point my in life as a man
I'm certain I have already heard
every lame ****** innuendo
about women and ***.

The one that obnoxes me most is
"get into her pants."

Not just intentionally crude,
but also illogical.

Unless she is a very large woman,
how would I ever fit?
  ~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?

Most folks
live in small yards
circled by walls;
eventually the walls
become reality.

This is known
as death.

Steal the pencil sketch
god drew to design you,
erase it line by line,
uncreate your self.
What remains to say?
Only the nothing
that is and the
nothing that isn't,
two nothings that
don't make something.
  ~mce

Softer,
smarter
than men,
they
smell better,
too.

Certainly
a subject
for a
lifetime
of study.

The final
examinations
can be fun,
as well.

But about
the time
you become
arrogant
enough
to consider
yourself
an expert,
their unique
beings
will slap
you silly.

The nervous afflictions
of poets drive
doctors to dismay;
it is difficult
and dangerous
to diagnose
a chameleon
in a thorn bush.
   - mce

On the borrowed
coffee table,
four candles lit
against the dark
share space with
a pack of Camels,
a glass of bourbon.

A Bach sonata
fills the evening
with elegant
notes and silences.

An old man,
remembering
the absent,
sits alone
and smiles.

He is forgotten,
but he is free.

Call that a
New Year's Eve
party:

he does.
  - mce

everyone thinks
they are unique

every trouble
and torment
theirs alone
to endure

until they open
a novel or
a newspaper
and find
their travails
already
experienced

suddenly, they feel
like they are
on some grand tour

just part of
a study group

with a tour guide
pointing out

the unknown
they didn't know
was known
that he knew

such a sudden
kick in
the ego's ***

  ~mce

my tongue in my cheek…

I despise the word relationship, singular and plural,
as it inevitably applies to swooning couples.

I’m old enough to remember the time
before Woody Allen made it a permanent part
of everybody’s everyday *lingua franca.

That was his truly heinous crime.

Finally, I have banished them from my life.

I can leave dishes unwashed for weeks,
sleep on the whole bed with all the covers,
allow the trash to grow into mounds,
and, best of all, never have to shave again.

I like not having to read anyone’s mind,
satisfy anyone’s endless, mysterious needs,
or do things I really do not want to do.

Selfish of me, surely, but such sweet relief.

Relationships mostly lead to too many
conversations, usurpations, explanations,
denunciations, recriminations, vivisections,
and, finally, to rancorous separations.

They are necessary for the romantic young
and for propagating the species, but
I am old and well past propagating.

I keep them lodged firmly in my past where
I can remember the best and forget the rest.

I prefer my cat, my books, solitude, silence,
microwave tacos, and peace of mind.

Hey, I’m not kidding about this!

And yet, there is the loneliness factor…

So I might welcome a companion who
was not desperately “seeking a relationship.”

But that is no woman I have ever met
and, I fear, no woman I ever will.

Thank you, Al.*

I was born poor, came up hard,
learned early to fight. I didn't die.

Streaming fire struck me three times
from the sky; I didn't die.

I lost my money, wife and children
to a bout of madness; I didn't die.

Many drugs, much alcohol, dead friends,
despair and depression; I didn't die.

Life is what I overcame and survived.

Life is the practice of suffering and joy
that I will continue until I die.
   mce

not so much writing as stuttering, said L.W.
no matter. The whole always false. donut.
only the peace meal may be milled to flower.
periplum. plot a coastline. only pieces seen.
fear unity. seek multiplicity. in a grain of sand.
rethink. remake. re-imagine. explore chaos.
old trials lead nowhere. only blind allies.
forms remain but meaningless. void. nada.
sweet sounds engender projectile vomiting.
foundations all rotted. build anew on a nothing.
chains do not signify. schizophrenic fragmentation.
the world and everything in it. complex system.
complex systems temporal. made of time. tick.
turbulence & unpredictability. not unlike weather.
poem a piece of time. complete universe. hole.
prose means. poetry makes. difference of kind.
form is meaning. words only place markers.
never theory. of stuff. practical & experimental.
art desires dissonance even as the ear rejects.
polar bear on white canvas howls to pallid moon.
take up tools. create the unknowable knowable.
      who surfs the froth of anarchy’s wave
      reaps only the freedom of the brave.

You know it is over.
Your shoes walk away.
Your phone dives into
the pit of despair.
Your cigarettes
have become healthy.
Your knees no longer
knock, but clap.
The chipmunks are silent.
Wolverines arrange
mass suicide pacts.
Chameleons permanently
turn invisible.
Everything transforms
into Other.
You are a stranger
becoming stranger
day by day.
You know it is over.
Ten Four good buddy.

My life has been
upside down
for so long that
I can now walk
on the ceiling
without leaving
footprints.
   ~mce

It is six AM.
Do you know
where your poet is
right now?

  ~mce

I am an aging man;
you are a younger woman.

So much uncertainty
caught in the few words

of such a simple sentence.

The world will have
something harsh to say
about this.

It always does.

Lucky for me I am
no longer a worldly man.

But you must still
find your path in it.

I hope that path
leads you to me,

but

I am an aging man;
you are a younger woman,

and that's plain for
all the world to see.

  ~mce

Sonnet XVII**

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

A competition of realities. Every narrative a life. Choose.
You tells yer story and you takes yer chance. Gambol.
No one knows the truth but you and you don't either.
Truth as Hydra. Lop off them heads to no avail.
Grey cat on bookcase. truth. Pain of broken heart. truth.
First morning cigarette. truth. Collapse into ******. truth.
Millions of truths conspire to create The Truth.
     We are fabrics woven of infinite strings
     Complexly simple in this world of things.

Thinking myself invincible,
I tried to break the world.

Instead, the world broke me.

Surprise!

Sometimes, to learn humility
requires taking a beating.

The pain doesn't matter;
what you learn through it does:

be wary of pride;

you are not as strong
as you imagine;

no one is immune
to reality.

Getting my *** kicked,
the only way for me
to know these things:

the price I always pay
for being a slow learner.
- mce

Seven years
of molt and shed,
people lost,
mistakes made.

We change,
but we live
one person
at a time.

OK, I'm a new man.

But what kind
of man.

mce

~to The Fallen

No one is invincible.

The world makes soldiers
of willing nineteen-year-olds
because they believe they are
invicible.

I have heard them die
screaming for their mothers,
crying out to a deaf god,
begging for another chance,
amazed this could happen
to them.

If you had heard them
whimpering and bawling
in their final moments,
completely baffled
by death,
you would understand
what they learned too late:

No one is invincible.
- mce