I don't work,
in the usual sense,
and I won't ever
do other's bidding
again, but many do
(I had not thought
death had undone
so many) and they
wear me out.
Mornings away,
afternoons home.
In between,
nugatory labors.
It is exhausting
to consider and
makes me want
to take a nap.
I'm weary
in general
and drowsy
in particular
and have
a great notion
to depart this
aeonian hell
of automatons
and hebetude
for some place
where birdsong
and sunlight
and kisses
are work enough.

~mce

Four Hundred Thirty Seven Miles
to a place of hope and possibility.
Not so much a trip as a voyage;
a quest not to be taken lightly.
In your ears, the asphalt seas whisper:
Take to the road, soldier.
There is always a way home for those
who have the guts to risk it.
Crafty Odysseys found the will;
his reward was the great, rooted bed
and the arms of his lonely Queen.
Do you have the strength and courage?
Only take to the highway and drive.
Four Hundred Thirty Seven Miles;
Not far to see an Angel smile; to hear
ancient, faithful Argos  bark again.
Four Hundred Thirty Seven Miles.
The road for the brave always leads home.

It contains
many volumes.
Women show up,
check them out,
but never
return them.
I keep hoping
one will
come back
and say,
do you have
anything else
by this author?
She will be
the reader
of my heart.
  - mce

for Paul Brandt and Patrick Dunnigan

Somewhere,
the choppers
still beat
the air.
  - mce

Eat, sleep, breathe, excrete,
a body living does not a life make.
Oh! Black dog do not my heart devour.
Only the lonely know only the lonely.
Know thing not without touch lives.
Do you smell that smell? Do not inhale.
Kick hard to keep the burly beast at bay.
Or cross the bar onto wine-dark depths,
Song of sirens. Whispers of doom.
How soothing simply to sink. Down.
Sometimes, the brain may prefer the drain.
Make the judgementally ill be still.
In my mania is my maintenance.
The abyss remains to revisit always.
Difficult balance: live or cease pain.
To resist. To defy. All that does remain.
Good morning, blues, how do you do?
To keep it or to give it away.
Bump. Bump. Down the funny steps.
Bear up. Hold on. Call that another day,
though sand through the glass’ neck still drips.

It’s all smoke and mirrors,
he declaims in Caesar's voice.
Do nothing until you hear from me.*
The yokels weep sincere tears.
Women get wet and men tumesce.
He mounts a gilded Mercedes,
glances over a shoulder with disdain,
and motors away, counting the take.

For Jim Harrison, 1938–2016*

Everyone takes the Ghost Road. End as beginning. Flowing.
You loved water more than fish, birds, even poetry.
Now your soul is immersed in infinite waters. Paradise.
Now you swim the particles. Fish the waves. Dead eye open.
Nothing foreign. Parts. Whole. Served. Serving. Never alone.

when i wear
a suit
i look like
exactly
the kind
of old man
who would
wear a suit,
the kind
of old man
i almost
was
but never
became.

   ~mce

She arrived fresh
as tomorrow;
she departed stale
as yesterday.
In. Out. Up. Over.
   Gone for good.

~mce

At the end of the road is the road...*

I used to live in a town,
but all that remains
is empty storefronts
and peopleless porches,
hardly a community.

Strangers on the streets
do not know their
neighbors and never will.

The woods and creek banks
where I hunted pheasants
and fished for trout
are overgrown now
with McMansions full
of bloated consumers.

All the orchards grow
houses instead of fruit.

The only country left is
corn and soybean fields,
slathered in pesticides,
about as natural as ******.

Now it is two towns,
the one remembered,
and the one that is.

I live in the latter,
but prefer the former.

I would leave, but
six years ago I fell
into a man-trap and
haven’t figured out
how to escape yet.

Not that it much matters.

We all end up exactly
where we are.

Those moments
when you want
to crawl back in
to the metaphorical
womb and
close your eyes
and pull the covers
over your head
and pretend
the monsters
can't see you,
but they always
do.
~ mce

Each day
when I take
my morning walk
along the creek,
everything
is different;
some things
never change.
- mce

I see you sitting
on the red bed
drinking Retsina
against the white wall
where we had
drawn hexagrams,
in your black slip
smiling up at me
in the pellucid
Greek light.

Since that moment,
Forty-five years
have dissolved
like tears
in a hurricane.

You are only a
ghost who smiles
in my memories.

I never thought
I would find another
woman like you,
strong and complete.

But I have travelled
far and long
and like magic,
here she is.

Thank you for saying
that one day
I would know love
because I was worthy.

And you went away,
and  she is here.

Ghosts always
tell the truth.

If you are patient.

Listen for the silences,
intervals between notes;
silence engenders song;
without it mere cacophony.

Poetry is no different:
what is not said
often says the most.
  ~mce

Like some antique schooner,
his heart vanished
into the Bermuda Triangle
of her eyes' green oceans.

    ~mce

It's all in The
Formula, boy, and
I have perfected
the formula.

It has worked on
women from
seventeen to seventy.

It even works
when you are older
with grey hair,
a (small) gut
and no money.

Start with the smile,
(still boyish),
self-deprecating
and selfless.

The look of a victim
that says I've
been hurt many times,
but for you
I'll risk it again.

Listen engrossed to
their every mortal word
with the intensity
of a fortune teller
and gaze deeply
into their private eyes
to see what is
really there.

Make them feel they are
the sun you circle around.

But mostly it's about
the poetry.
           You write
them a poem and
they melt like sugar
in a microwave.

'You wrote that for me?'

(Soulfully)

'Every woman is a poem
waiting to be written.
All I did was write you down.'

Offer them your
heart as a hostage.

Bingo!

Make love slowly,
their pleasure predominant,
and gently open them like
petals on a fresh flower.

Then, in bed, read them
a few lines from Neruda
or Lorca.

All cakes need icing.

Say a few wistful things
about war and
'back in the day.'

Few women can resist
a wounded warrior or
the Magick of nostalgia.

But what you must
absolutely remember,
boy, is that this is
not some scam.

Even if it's only
for a moment or a week,
you have to really
mean it all.

That is the
secret ingredient.

Make them feel special;
own their hearts.

It took a lifetime
to discover this recipe.

Use it well and
often and
you will decrease
the loneliness in
the world, if only
for a while.

That is true Magick.

And no one ever
hates you for
making them happy.

Women come and go,
but The Formula
is eternal.

Good luck, kid.
You won't need it.

  ~mce

I no longer
wanted to be
part of a system
whose sole intent
was to produce
reliable employees
when I didn't want
to be one myself.

  ~mce

Revel in
the flesh,
but examine
the heart;
one lasts,
the other can't.
- mce

I want to breath your perfect breath
I want you dance me to edge of death.

The time short, the night is long,
indulge me the joy of this final song.

Sing me a simple lover's lullaby,
bring me to life before I die.

I want to see the Glory through the lies,
Just one last time through your green eyes.

Let me remember how to be young
before I vanish and the song is sung.

   ~mce

I was a kid during
the Space Race
and loved all things
aeronautical.

Wanted to be
an Astronaut
or an ace
fighter pilot.

Then I went to war
and spent every day
in the Unfriendly Skies
of sudden death
hoping not to meet
the ground in pieces.

These days,
I prefer to drive.

   ~mce

When
neither
of us
can tell
where
we end
and the
other
begins
then
we are
both
exactly
there.
  - mce

Because your
fine white body
slept beside me,
I failed to dream
of anything else.
And when dawn
broke rosy red,
I hurled invectives
at the darkness
for ending.
But your tangled hair
thawed my heart,
as your talented
mouth said
good morning
in the most
soothing way
a lover can.
At times, this life
hurts like
a *******.
But this morning
you gave me
a dandelion
with a white poem
larger than my heart.
A new way to breathe
and face the tragic day.

  ~mce

~Vietnam/ Laos 1972

Known variously as:

Indian Country,

the ****,

the Jungle
& the Zone.

****** stumps,
flying metal,

charred flesh,

screaming agony,

cellular fear,

burning choppers,

dying men,
dead eyes

staring,

betrayal.

“Don’t mean ******* nothing.”

Not a place
on a map,
but a state of mind
-
my mind.

Vietnam has fallen,

but the Zone
remains
a jungle
in my head
& some things

return me there.

There I learned
the necessary.

In the Zone,
only predator and prey,
**** or be killed,

win or die,

the quick and the dead.

In the Zone

only survival matters
-
no morality,

no right or wrong

no lies,

no truths,
no fair,
no unfair.

No rules at all.

"It's only a ****.
**** it."

In the Zone
everything is allowed…

meet the enemy,
destroy him,

maim him,

outsmart him,

walk away
with the blood of others
squishing in your boots

feeling gloriously alive.

Friend,

brother,
enemy,

child,

lover,

you do not
- ever -

want to meet me

in the Zone.
–mce

for John Berryman*

How many poets,
by alcohol and despair,
choose to depart
this living air?

The Muse can be
an evil *****:
she'll **** your brain,
she'll make you twitch.

With her it's not
a casual roll,
she wants your *****,
she'll eat you whole.

You strive to strike
the head of the nail;
one blow comes home,
but a dozen others fail.

Soon you despair
to ever succeed:
you open your veins,
commence to bleed.

You give to her,
and give and give,
until it's just
too hard to live.

Then in the bottle
you sadly seek
another day,
another week.

It isn't pretty,
it isn't fair,
and so you depart
down the dying air.
  - mce

If I saw you
naked and dancing
in the pale moonlight,
your body
perfect in my mind,
your grace a holiness
of abandon,
a Muse of lust
and purity,
I would still be
jealous of Luna's eyes.

  ~mce

I am at war with time.
At war with. At war.
With time. War. I. Am.
I am at war with time.
Second by second,
I am losing the war.
  - mce

the sound of a
helicopter above
a small
Pennsylvania
town in the
October dawn

time vanishes

once again
you swoop
above the
jungle in
terror

years pass
people die

your fears
cold and
sharp as

a knife

stick in you
forever

some wars
never end

  ~mce

Shot down three times
in that forgotten war;
an old man now,
all his dreams
are of falling.

Not nightmares
or flashbacks;
not specific,
just generally
of falling.

He never dreams
of those abruptly
ended flights
or the strange
loose sensation
of the chopper
headed for the dirt,
just of falling.

Age has brought
a new fear of heights
and he won't get on
or near an aircraft.

Despite these obvious
precautions, the dreams
continue to plague him.

It sounds so pleasant:
"falling asleep,"

but falling, falling,
falling in your sleep
brings no rest.

To sleep calmly
and peacefully
remains his most
elusive dream of all.
  ~mce

Marching**

At dawn I heard among bird calls
the billions of marching feet in the churn
and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet
still wet from the mother's amniotic fluid,
and very old halting feet, the feet
of the very light and very heavy, all marching
but not together, criss-crossing at every angle
with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump
into each other, walking in the doors of houses
and out the back door forty years later, finally
knowing that time collapses on a single
plateau where they were all their lives,
knowing that time stops when the heart stops
as they walk off the earth into the night air.

by Sarah Law**
You love the way my hair falls
over your bones, your prone body, how
I choose to cover you with words
so close to your own. From here
I can't imagine why we ever worried,
even the span of my hand, small
compared with yours, fits to your plan.
I write you down in barely perceptible
whispers, just so I know you exist;
you look for patterns that promise us
an ultimate alignment. It's so crystal clear,
the night sky's X-ray. Bright with symmetry.
I can't expose myself to this often;
I'd end up broken, on the floor,
like a cutting waiting to be swept
clean of its own implications. Tether me
to this quiet language. This one prophecy.

A ****** of crows
perched above
the newly
planted corn;
we expect sustenance,
they simply wait.
See how the world
mocks our plans.
  - mce

The Zen Masters say,
when you reach the top,
keep climbing;
the deeper question is
what do you do when
you reach the bottom:
keep on digging?

  - mce

I am not the kind of man
who wants to possess anyone;
We are not things to buy.
You can only give love,
you can never own it.
    ~mce

"I vow to save
all sentient
beings."

A big order,
worthy of
many lifetimes.

The Dharma wheel
spins.

Lifetimes
fall away.

Perhaps,
after enough
times around
the wheel,
this is possible.

I hope so.

After all:

I am
a sentient being
too.
   ~mce

Otherwise**

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

These former treasures
now transformed into
anonymous junk.
Where did their history flee?
I stroll this flea market
with 10 dollars and no plan.
How many lives held these items?
Like mute Zen Masters
each has found its original face;
the desire that attached them
to life has evaporated.
They are only sad things in boxes
waiting for new hands
holding disinterested dimes,
seeking meaningless curiousities
to gather dust on lonely shelves.
This is what stuff comes to.
   - mce

I have heard rockets and mortars fall,
the screams of wounded men, heard it all.
In my deepest sleep, still those soldiers creep
into my dreams and beg me recall
that they once lived and still they exist
as more than names on a dusty list,
but each one a soul, though no longer whole,
whose memories must always persist.

His truest desire
was to free her from
her nailed down skirt
and pluck an
intimate chord,
plant feral kisses,
taste the sweetness,
hear the moan
and learn the language
of sighs and thighs
from the lips
that matter most,
to make a poem
from their
murmurings.

  ~mce

A shaft of sunlight
sparkling with motes
falls through the window
on the cat plopped
purring on my stomach.

There are many things
I could be doing;
there are many things
I should be doing.

But the sun is warm
and the cat is purring

and it is important
to have your priorities
straight.

  ~mce

the hippie life:
**** and acid;
the blues life:
****** and whiskey.

one a party,
the other
a funeral.

good times,
bad times,

but oh,
what
a Time.
   ~mce

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

Integrity:

All these decades
thirsting in the wilderness
and still he refuses
to drink the kool-aid.

Delight:

He has lived alone
so long that
he has learned
to hug himself
and enjoy it.

Where is the illness
in either?

If all the politicians
died tomorrow,
it would be a blip.
If all the scientists
and engineers died,
it would be an apocalypse.
If all the poets died,
so would god and love..

  mce

Obese women
in yoga pants
with garish
tattoos
sweating
like bovine
demons
while
screaming
at their
doomed
brats.

  ~mce

We flew into battle
like young Gods,
but fell from the sky
like shattered birds.

  ~mce

What falls away is always. And is near.* - Theodore Roethke

It begins when you are small:
some marbles, a jack knife, lunch money,
simply seem to vanish.

Older, the stakes go up:
lovers, chances, a bag of primo ***,
disappear without explanation.

In war, it's your comrades,
your lighter, perhaps your sanity,
gone in a ****.

And then the big stuff leaves:
wives, children, careers,
down the cosmic rabbit hole.

It's not all bad. No one misses
a mortgage, car payments or taxes.

But then your body retreats:
a hip replaced, wobbly knees,
no more rock hard erections,
the creaking back and bad omens.

Until, at last you are an old man
- sitting with a beatific grin -
        alone, broke, bored, yet
                                        curiously joyful
at having nothing else left
                                         to lose.

Looking down, you find a missing marble.

  ~mce

A storm is coming,
lightening and thunder
consummate.

Soon, it will be
on top of me.

If only that storm
was your electric body.

I would wail out a thank you
and place flowers
on Ben Franklin's tomb.

   ~mce

only a moment
between breath
and death

in that blink
let us lie

eye to eye
moan to moan

so that
when
it ends
the instant
flown

we truly know

we were
not alone

   ~mce

From whence springs his or her story?
Just what drives the wave to surge and break.
Evolution, not revolution, determines destiny:
Lungfish gasping in a mudflat. Initial syllables.
Every beginning begins at the beginning.
Only victories allowed to repeat themselves.
This is the way the way the word begins.
Endless repetition until only Now remains.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare: one human voice:
One song sung sighing across the sky.

The Law is the Law;
**** is ****;
do the math.

/////

Try not to **** away
your life on nonsense.

/////

While I wasn't looking,
the whole earth was
zoned commercial.

/////

There is always
another corner
around the next
corner.

/////

It is hard
on your soul
to admit
how often
you have
been full
of ****.

/////

Never let clocks
control your life.

/////

Waking up
every day
is another
chance at
Spring.

/////

Wherever you go
you carry along
all the places
you've ever been.

/////

We are
breeding people
who will
have no place
in the world.

/////

It takes
a life's work
to recognize
the mystery
of the obvious.

/////

Much that you see
isn't for your eyes.

/////

Exactly how long
does forever last?

/////

I keep waiting,
unsure of what
I am waiting for.

/////

Sometimes, you walk
through doorways
in you mind
and can't get out.

/////

When you are sure
you can't stand more,
the worst is just beginning.

/////

We must learn to appreciate
our fatal savagery.

/////

Don't disrespect alcohol.
It provides consolation
for the inconsolable.
Not a small feat.

/////

Sometimes, art must be foul
in order to scrub the heart clean.

/////

There are no
brave, new worlds;
just this one
seen clearly at last.

Even
an octopus
wants
to be
tickled
occasionally.

~mce