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423 · Jan 2016
Evocation
Mike Essig Jan 2016
Come, Muse,
don't be just
another teasing
*****.
Sing through me.
Time is short.
Everyone dies.
Breathe into me
while I still
have a voice.
No one wants
a song
from a corpse.
  - mce
423 · Sep 2015
For Gary Snyder
Mike Essig Sep 2015
I stole a copy
of The Back Country
when I was sixteen
and it set me
upon the Poet's Road.

You signed it
for my friend
while I was
far away at war.

After most
of a lifetime,
I have it still.

May your
mountains and rivers
never end.

  ~mce
If you haven't read him, you should.
422 · Jul 2015
Gifts Of Grace
Mike Essig Jul 2015
No one has
ever given me
anything greater
than time, light
and silence.

Time to work.
Light to see.
Silence to think.

What could mean
more than these?

   ~mce
422 · May 2015
Help Is Here
Mike Essig May 2015
The old gods are as useless
as they always were.
The new gods run hedge funds
and order drone strikes
on weddings and birthday parties.
They are busy playing powerful
and have no time for mere us.
Only our own hearts can save us
until their numbered beating ceases.
Believe in that heart. It is closer
than any god and more reliable, too.
Use it for empathy and love.
Share it with others you care for.
Trust it because it is yours alone.

  ~mce
422 · Oct 2015
Not My Usual MO
Mike Essig Oct 2015
Some days
I just want
to strangle
the world.

A bottle
of whiskey
and a well
of anger

        say:

Back off.

Today is one
of those days.

  ~mce
422 · Dec 2015
Happy New Year HP
Mike Essig Dec 2015
Not mine, but the best poem about "new" that I know of.

Poetry
By
Mary Oliver

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
*determined to save
the only life you could save.
421 · Apr 2015
Exquisitely Simple
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Naked but warm
beneath the blankets,
at first light
watching you asleep.

A man could go far
and lead many lives
to find an image
this simple,
this perfect:

You, naked but warm
beneath the blankets,
asleep in my bed,
in my arms.
   ~mce
421 · Sep 2015
The Factory Girl
Mike Essig Sep 2015
by Walter V. Holloway**

When the trembling East is beginning to blush

With the rosy red of morn,

And the World holds her breath in a solemn hush

As another day is born.

I am startled from sleep's illusive dreams

By the factory whistle's imperious screams,

Which seem but an echo of yesterday --

So soon has the short night passed away.



A child was I in my beautiful dream,

In my old home far away,

Where I strayed on the banks of a laughing stream,

Through the slumb'rous summer day,

And gathered the flowers that blossomed there,

With never a thought of work or care.

While the birds above in the murmuring trees

Poured their joyous songs on the perfumed breeze.



Why is it, I ask, that the birds are free

To flit over vale and hill,

While I a life-long slave must be

In a noisy, squalid mill?

Does God love the birds, and hate me so

That He fills my life with work and woe?

Or can it be that there is no God,

Save the factory master's cruel rod?



But God, or no God, I must be in my place,

When the heartless wheels begin

To turn the machine in its tireless race,

More wealth for its lord to win.

From my hurrying hands, with a fiendish roar,

It snatches its food and shouts for more --

"More food, more food, for my sateless maw;

More gold, more gold, is my master's law."



No matter how weary my arms may grow,

No matter how numb with pain,

If I slacken my pace the machine seems to know,

And shrieks in its wrath again:

"More food, more food, for my sateless maw;

More gold, more gold, is any master's law."

Till the soul of the ghoulish machine, to me,

Seems to laugh at my helpless misery.



All day the demon laughs and leers.

Till my heart grows sick with fright;

And ever the taunt rings in my ears --

"I will have your soul to-night;

For my Soul and the master's soul are one,

And I'll come for your soul when the day is done.

More food, more food, for my sateless maw;

More gold, more gold, is my master's law."
For Labor Day
Mike Essig May 2015
Every place you go
becomes just another suburb
of everyplace you've been.

   ~mce
Mike Essig Sep 2015
I am never certain
which reality
I am living.
So many strands
dangling in a
multitude of
possible nows.
Like trying to weave
a tapestry out of
shadows of light.
420 · May 2015
William Carlos Williams
Mike Essig May 2015
Arrival**

And yet one arrives somehow,
finds himself loosening the hooks of
her dress
in a strange bedroom--
feels the autumn
dropping its silk and linen leaves
about her ankles.
The ****** veined body emerges
twisted upon itself
like a winter wind . . . !
420 · Nov 2015
Squirrel Relativity
Mike Essig Nov 2015
The squirrel
that regularly
visits my deck,
blinks at me
through
the *****
plate glass,
unconcerned
as a fat, gray
Buddha,
just going about
his business,
casually and
without concern.
I can almost
hear him thinking:
what is that
in there?
- mce
rp
420 · May 2015
Linji - A Zen Monk
Mike Essig May 2015
If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it,
You turn away from it all the more.
420 · May 2015
Puddle Of Love
Mike Essig May 2015
Take me in your arms
and wrap me in the
creamy, satin blanket
of your skin.

I will make you,
shudder, squirm
gasp and scream

and when our breath
is nearly spent,

we will kiss
intensely, devoutly
and dissolve
into one rainbow
streaked
puddle of love

where our feet
used to be.

  ~mce
419 · Oct 2015
Good Luck Charm
Mike Essig Oct 2015
In war everyone
carries something
for good luck
and protection.

A rabbit's foot,
a piece of twine,
their girl friend's
*******.

I had a mantra.

It was simply,
**** me.

When the ****
got hot and thick
and the tracers
reached out
their lovely,
lethal fingers

I would chant:
**** me, **** me,
**** me, **** me,

perhaps thinking
god would hear

and say,

for christ's sake
**** him and
get it over with,

but god was AWOL
(as usual)

so it worked
and I lived.

  ~mce
419 · Jun 2015
Distance II
Mike Essig Jun 2015
Lasciviously
as the wind
blown from afar,
you arouse
my insatiable
eagerness:
a gentle breeze
across bare skin,
naked desire flares.

  ~mce
419 · Apr 2015
Repose
Mike Essig Apr 2015
A book is
a good place
to be alone,
but not so good
as  when
you are also
drinking bourbon
with a purring cat
on your lap.
My cat is neurotic, but he can purr...
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Every morning
I look in the mirror
and expect to see
the face that used to be.
Life passes
short as a shiver.
Yet ineluctably,
all those missing moments
belong to me
as surely as
thousands of pieces
of luggage
lost by a bankrupt airline.
Every morning
I hope in vain
that they will
be on the carousel
and find their way back
to my mottled hands
one more time.
   ~ mce
418 · Nov 2015
Soldier's Lament
Mike Essig Nov 2015
After being discharged,
he installed a stone lion
in his heart to ward off evil;
sadly, it scared off good, too.

  ~mce
418 · Apr 2015
String Theory
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Electrons whirl and leap
able to be in more
than one place at a time.
They move between
many worlds with ease
sometimes more than one
at a time.
Many lives;
many worlds.
Nothing ever as simple
as it appears.

~ mce
418 · May 2015
Bad Shot
Mike Essig May 2015
Words are bullets.
Sometimes,
I shoot myself
in the foot.
Be wary where
you point
that weapon.
Think before
you pull
that trigger.
If you don't,
you may not die,
but you will
feel pain.

  ~mce
417 · Apr 2015
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
Mike Essig Apr 2015
“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”**

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied  
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!  
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;  
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,  
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;  
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.  
There are a hundred places where I fear  
To go,—so with his memory they brim.  
And entering with relief some quiet place  
Where never fell his foot or shone his face  
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”  
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
416 · Apr 2015
Cheshire Angel
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Morning doves and sunlight;
waking up with a fuzzy head,
logy and still half dreaming,
I remember that
you are real and warm.

Knowing that somewhere
you may be smiling
like a Cheshire angel,

how could I not?
   ~mce
416 · Aug 2015
Richard Corey
Mike Essig Aug 2015
by E. A. Robinson*

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
  We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
  Clean favored, and imperially slim.
  
And he was always quietly arrayed,         
  And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
  "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
  
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
  And admirably schooled in every grace:   
In fine, we thought that he was everything
  To make us wish that we were in his place.
  
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,   
  Went home and put a bullet through his head.
416 · Sep 2015
In A Sacred Grove
Mike Essig Sep 2015
The dying god
born again,
only to die and
be born again,
mirrors the heart
that falters,
hiccups
and stumbles,
but perseveres
to find its way.
  - mce
rp
416 · Apr 2015
Easter Invasion
Mike Essig Apr 2015
April of 1972*

All that spring,
the choppers fell
like fat, black flies,
swatted by rockets,
their crews tumbling
in abrupt terror,
but I soared on
like Icarus, only warier
of the burning sky
and made it home
  ~mce
Forty-three years ago, I was a bird man. I flew and I didn't fall. Many did.
416 · Jan 2016
Blind Observation
Mike Essig Jan 2016
The man with no eyes
fixed his vacant gaze
hard upon me and said,
You don't look so well
today, my friend.
Well, I replied,
I do feel a bit blank.
You need to concentrate
on being an atom, he said,
being particles
is just too difficult.
Taking up his observation,
suddenly I felt solid.
Only the sightless
see clearly.

  ~mce
416 · Apr 2015
Beginning With Only A Sound
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Ah, the swoosh
of your dress
gliding off you,
finding the floor!

It pools black
and elegant
at my feet,
an entrancing
****** puddle.

But I
cannot look.

Nothing between
us now but
silk and flesh,
my hands
and fingers
have become
the only eyes
I have,
the only eyes
I need.

Your soft
yielding skin
offers
all the seeing
and knowing
they crave.

Love,
let them
look closely
and discover
the delicious
details
of the world
you are.

This seeing
transforms lust
into magic,
makes
a ceremony
of desire.

It can lift us
off the earth.

Soar with me.

Touch me
like the sound
of that black dress,
falling.

What more
is necessary?
  - mce
I admit, I have a thing about dresses...
416 · Jul 2015
The Geography of Love
Mike Essig Jul 2015
I do not understand
the geography of love.
Perhaps I dozed
through that class.
Again and again,
I lose my way
in Love’s wilderness.
When I ask directions,
women answer
in languages
I can’t understand.
So many wrong turns.
So many dead ends.
Sister, if you
know the way,
show me the way.
  - mce
415 · Apr 2015
The Difficulty
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Life says no
in a million ways;
yes in only a few.
~ mce
And often not the yesses we want.
415 · Jul 2015
Don't Dawdle
Mike Essig Jul 2015
True Love
All the lost loves
of my life
have prepared me
for you.
Isn't it about time
you show up?
- mce
414 · Oct 2015
Time, Distance and Delight
Mike Essig Oct 2015
sometimes your body wavers
becomes transparent as light

yet still somewhere
solid lovely flesh

in such moments
contradictions define us

and distance casts a shadow
black as lonely night

but we shall keep trying
until we get it right

until flesh and light
merge simply into living sight

and together becomes
a wholeness of delight

  ~mce
aweezer
414 · May 2015
Private Painting
Mike Essig May 2015
Make me your blank canvas.
Cover me with your juices,
your drippings, your burgundy,
place me beside your washed blue,
I will smear it with my kisses
until they become masterpieces
only understood by we two.

  ~mce
414 · Apr 2015
Forbidden Fruit
Mike Essig Apr 2015
I have written
a dictionary
of universal
comprehension.

If you could
read it all
would be revealed.

Unfortunately,
it is out of print
and the remaining
copies burned.

You are not allowed,
even now,
to taste the fruit
of the tree of life.
  ~mce
Mike Essig Nov 2015
Real work, whether of mind or body. Real work isn't a job or an occupation. It is any effort that occurs when what you know and what you do converge with who you really are.

Mammalian warmth: the touch of human bodies in all it's wonder and pleasure that reminds me of Nietzsche's saying, "First, be a healthy animal."

A cat's purr. It's existence requires no justification; it is complete in itself.

Blueberries, the plants and the fruit. A feast for every sense.

Books, movies, and works of art that are so compelling they take you on a vacation from reality by creating their own more vivid reality.

My white, 1997 Saturn with 245,000 miles on it. A gift from an angel, I call her Moby and together we sail the asphalt seas. She's a real lady.

Birds. They fill the world with color and music and desire no profit in return.

A lovely woman with bare legs in a sun dress. As Wallace Stevens said, "Beauty is momentary in the mind, the fitful tracing of a portal, but in the flesh it is immortal."

The electric charge of lips touching lips, of flesh brushing flesh.

Anything, on a woman, that is made of silk. Silk is exquisite, elegant and ******.

Weeds that flower, because their beauty is unexpected.

Evan Williams bourbon. Exquisite distilled ****** that burns and satisfies.

Cool evenings after hot days.

Conversation that sparkles with intelligence, wit and conviviality.

Warren Zevon, Thelonious Monk and Mozart, not necessarily in that order.

True friends. When the chips are down, they are a treasure more valuable than even family.

The magical, healing sound of flowing water.

Trees, especially the deciduous. Their greenness speaks to and cools my spirit.

Writing and reading poetry, my craft and my solace.

Love. It is elusive and difficult and perhaps impossible, but the belief that it may be out there sustains even the jaded, aging life.

The fecundity of the unexpected.

Fireflies. Almost too much beauty for one world.

Sunrises, because they bring the undeserved possibility of another shot at redemption.

Garlic, the spice of the gods.

And on and on...
- mce
413 · May 2015
Walls
Mike Essig May 2015
Many folks
live inside walls.
The walls
of their houses
their yards,
their offices
their minds.
Their world lies
inside those walls.
They believe those walls
are the world.
But the real world
the green, verdant world
the world of danger
and of delight
lies beyond.
Few people venture
out and into it.
These few people
are called alive.
413 · May 2015
Amanuensis
Mike Essig May 2015
I do not write these thoughts
only because I love you. I do.
But I cannot create perfection.
It is your spirit calls them forth.
Your eyes flutter them into being.
Your lips smooth and polish them.
Your fingers shape and craft them.
I'm just the simple monk who writes
them down and returns them to you
as an offering to your inner beauty.

~mce
Smitten
413 · Sep 2015
First Sex
Mike Essig Sep 2015
by Sharon Olds**

I knew little, and what I knew
I did not believe–they had lied to me
so many times, so I just took it as it
came, his naked body on the sheet,
the tiny hairs curling on his legs like
fine, gold shells, his ***
harder and harder under my palm
and yet not hard as a rock his face cocked
back as if in terror, the sweat
jumping out of his pores like sudden
trails from the tiny snails when his knees
locked with little clicks and under my
hand he gathered and shook and the actual
flood like milk came out of his body, I
saw it glow on his belly, all they had
said and more, I rubbed it into my
hands like lotion, I signed on for the duration.
Mike Essig Jun 2015
The first pile
you see is

a burned, ******
stinking, heap
of humans, bloated
and swollen,
swarming with flies,
squirming with maggots

and you puke
like you have
never ever
puked before.

After that,

it's just
another pile
of dead *****.

Don't mean
******* nothing.

  ~mce
412 · Jan 2016
"Only Connect"
Mike Essig Jan 2016
How rare to truly hear
what another person
is actually saying,
caught up, as we must be,
in the imagined resonances
of our own perceptions.
Do I hear you or do I
hear me hearing you?
By no means the same thing.
  - mce
412 · Sep 2015
Declivity
Mike Essig Sep 2015
Ignition, spark,
a turning key,
sets the writhing
serpent free.
Worlds spin,
words collide;
realities begin
to slide.
Markers
fall away,
lines implode;
unlikely voices
yawn in code.
The palette
melts to a
fluid smear
that  trickles
down a
thirsty ear.
Sounds skew,
scream, resonate
at an inaudibly
alarming rate.
Neither sense
of life nor joys,
only cacophonic noise.
The birds of touch
are flown away,
leaving vacuums
in the day.
The chain-mailed,
twisted, human heart,
tortured from
its fatal start.
Find the answer,
spin the wheel,
stop the madness,
cease to feel.
  - mce
rp
Mike Essig Jul 2015
Join me
between
pillow
and sheet,
the bower
where soul
and body
meet.
  - mce
411 · Aug 2015
Oral Astrology
Mike Essig Aug 2015
The sun went down on me
right when you went down on me.

Sweetness explodes
when the planets align.

I did not know
that sunsets could scream.

  ~MCE
410 · May 2015
Consider
Mike Essig May 2015
Consider my lips
whispering secrets.
Consider my lips
nibbling your ears.
Consider my lips
touching your throat.

Consider my hand
running in your hair.
Consider my hand
brushing your cheek.
Consider my hand
caressing your breast.

Consider my tongue
sliding down your belly.
Consider my tongue
pausing in wonder.
Consider my tongue
tasting the best of you.

Consider our bodies
melting in euphoria.
Consider our bodies
sliding in ecstasy.
Consider our bodies
engaged in wonder.

So many marvelous
passions to consider.

So many astounding ways
to achieve rapture.

Only please, Lover, consider.

  ~mce
And another
410 · Apr 2015
Caveat Emptor
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Do not mistake
the poems for the poet.

The exquisite grace
of a panther
stalking the jungle
in blackest night
renders it
not one iota
less dangerous.

Enjoy my words
at a safe distance.

Never, dear reader,
confuse the words
with the man.
- mce
410 · Oct 2015
Lake Lost Love
Mike Essig Oct 2015
who knows where
love goes
when it disappears

maybe it just leaks out
of holes in people's
hearts and collects

perhaps somewhere
there is a Great Lake
of mingled lost loves

each missing
the lovers
who lost them

each hoping
to be found
and held close
again

   ~mce
410 · Aug 2016
Hello Darkness My Old Fiend
Mike Essig Aug 2016
Night of no moon. No twinkles. Poet time.
Murk of morning not yet become. Stygian.
Sky of two minds. Janus of covering clouds.
When does when begin? When does then end?
A dash of light tips the balance. Revision.
Syntax of the soul at 4 AM. Garbled images.
Why do bards embrace the darkness? Home?
Shades of past lives stumble in the gloom.
Portals to worlds lived and lost. Open.
Lovers with forgotten names once more whisper.
Friends long in graves stir and grumble.
Every single thing lost names itself found.
A slow sharpening into definition, detail,
becoming what those They insist is real.
   Wake to a world that’s barely now,
   live in a now that’s then. Somehow.
410 · Dec 2015
Musing
Mike Essig Dec 2015
You'll depart when you feel like it:
goddesses do not adhere to timetables.
Your body is so lovely
it scares away sharks.
Why should it fear time?
Your grace comes from deep caverns.
The tocks of clocks mean nothing more
to you than the creaking on weary stairs.
You leave no footprints as you glide the beach.
Millennia would not allow
half enough moments to describe
the tiny eternity
of your arms around me.
You arrived in a dream and
you'll depart when you feel like it.

   - mce
rla
410 · Apr 2015
So Much For Self-Help
Mike Essig Apr 2015
The Oracle at Delphi said:
Know thyself.

Oscar Wilde said:
Only the shallow know themselves.

After long, painful consideration,
I'm with Oscar.
- mce
410 · Oct 2015
Joan of Arc
Mike Essig Oct 2015
To Carthage then I came.*

Deep down,
who doesn't want
to **** a saint,
to penetrate
the mystery
of holiness,
to enter
the enigma
of eternity.

Pile the wood
high as you like.

Oh sweet
  and lonely Joan,
I will follow
  you into
    that fire.

    ~mce
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