Even in my seventh decade
enough remain:

impatience, ****, whiskey,
too many cigarettes,
lust (eternal and bright),
driving carelessly, laziness,
not being Buddhist enough,
preferring my own silence
to the chattering of humans
and others that come and go.

I once hoped to die pure,
but I know now these blemishes
will stick to me like true love
and follow me into the grave.

Such terminal devotion,
so rarely to be found
in this fickle world.

Friends to the end,
womb to tomb.

I’m a 65 year old white guy.
What could be more bland?

So, a little help here.

Dreadlocks? Man bun?
Floppy knit hipster hat?
Steam Punk shades?
A few visible tattoos?
Hajib scarf around neck?
Piercings? (But only painless.)
Purple hair? Perhaps pink?

Come on man. I’m struggling.

I want to change my
old cliché for a new one.

All advice considered.
Sadly, no payment.

I once went
on a first date
with a woman
so lovely
she made
my bones ache.
She said: "I just
want to make clear
that I have
no baggage."
I said: "How sad.
At our age
no baggage means
no life."
That was also
the last date.
How smooth
am I?

  ~mce

Look at the world,
not up your ***.

  ~mce

I once had
a deadly matt black
Colt 45 automatic
lent me by
an evil uncle.

I cleaned it,
coddled it
and prayed my
life would never
depend on it,
for I am
a woeful shot
with a handgun.

But when it
happened, my
aim was true,
luck guided
my hand.

I said a
little prayer
to the god
of war and

tried not
to look at
the dead man
20 feet away.

Good luck
and bad luck,

so close
together.

  ~mce

Live too long and friends will become ghosts.
Corpses will fill your address book.
The ghosts show up in the crushing morning silence
and depart into your dreams after the twilight.
They never seem to have much to say.
I often ask them questions. What's it like being dead?
Is it cold? Are there animals. Is there anything to read?
Should I join you or hang out on earth a while yet?
The answers, when there are any, are not satisfactory.
And so I stick to earth for another bruising day.
In the Shack nothing happens and that is more than enough.
It is hard to fall asleep and truly hell to wake up.
I often feel like a road killed skunk that just had electroshock
or a successful suicide who just ****** a shotgun to ******.
Between dawn and twilight exists a pointless purgatory.
Still, heaven remains a vague possibility.
But that is what is meant by life. I'm off to participate.

  ~mce

Twilight is ending.

I believe I will
take a walk
to the moon
and sample
some piquant peaches
dripping with light.

I'll bring some back
for you.

We will wantonly
consume them
and lick the juices
from each other's face
until we radiate
their succulent
alabaster perfection
and glow together.

That is the true meaning
of Good Evening.

  ~mce

Beauty is a war
that must be fought.
She will not
surrender herself
easily.
Gather your strength,
attack relentlessly.
In the end,
you may win
a bit of her
for yourself.
Only do not
imagine total victory.
This war rages
without end.
  - mce

the bright morning
no longer invites

every TV show
is a rerun

books that screamed
now murmur

even the body
speaks in the past tense

now becomes was

the falling away
of self
into shadow

even when time
falls and freezes
like winter leaves

the urge to consciousness
resists surrender

how we long for
bright new moments

right to the brink
of nightfall

even as the white flag of death

slowly unfurls

Once his eyes adjusted
to the light,
he realized
he was blind
and colors
gushed forth
from his heart:
never before
had he seen
so vividly.

  - mce

wake late
into slatted sunshine

force your mind
to gather fragments
and embrace chaos

take a shower

become a shark

swim in water
you do not understand

play Vivaldi

let the lute notes
wash over you

feel the feather
plucking your heart

vibrations in rented rooms
resonate and vanish

listen intently
to the wisdom
of a cat
who says nothing

the coffee cup looms empty
the ashtray overflows

dust motes in a sunbeam
regularly portend disorder

disregard them

clarity is a fiction

be still and grateful
content to know
you cannot know
which way
this day will go

until the circle
closes tight

until this day
returns to night
   - mce

I do not know
what rivers mean,
how buzzards think,
what the sun imagines,
or how snowdrifts feel.
This is sad and puzzling.
You would suppose
that in sixty-three years
even a crazy man
might learn something
of consequence.
- mce

Watching you
lighting a cigarette,
your long legs
smiling beneath
that flouncy,
breeze-blown
skirt
reminds me
why I still bother
to breathe
at all.
- mce

I know the dealer
at the Game of Love.
He smirks as I sit down.
We go way back.
He has dealt me in
more than a few times.
I know his sticky fingers,
his devious, crooked smile
radiating amused certainty.
I know his game is rigged,
he knows I know it too,
but it's the only one in town.
I have never held
a winning hand
at his corrupt table,
never even won a game.
I thought that was all
in the bitter past.
But here I sit again.
He shuffles and sneers.
He knows a sucker
when he sees one
and I am surely marked.
With a smug look
that says he knew
I would be back,
his eyebrows arch
a cynical question.
He knows I am too old
for this impossible game,
but he knows how much
I want to play.
I nod toward him,
but he insists I speak
the invocation out loud.
“Deal me in,” I say
and the cards begin to fly.
I know this dealer
at the Game of Love
and he knows I must try.
   ~mce

One morning
he woke up
disconcerted
to discover
that overnight
he had become
a merely
ambulant footnote
to his own life.
  - mce

old monk
cold room
early morning
tattered pillow
just sitting

no expectations
no plans
no thoughts
no monk
just sitting

a cat watches
knowing everything
and nothing

monk and cat
no cat   no monk

just sitting

just everything

~mce

All my ghosts
meet me in the morning
for coffee.

We chat about old times,
what's happening,
possibilities, politics,
*** and aging.

It's better
than a book club
because
you don't have
to bring
dessert.

Ghosts
have no
appetites.

mce

The very young
like to believe
they will paint
their own lives.

To some degree,
this is true.

But many
loving hands
will touch
the brush

before the canvas
stands complete.

by Pablo Neruda*

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

Contempt is so easy.
Everyone who is not a saint
has their own laundry list.

Mine used to include:

bankers, generals, politicians,
voters, the smugly uneducated,
the greedy, loyal employees
and so on, World Without End.

I no longer have a list.

Not because I have
achieved compassionate
enlightenment,
but because
I realized that all of
the above suffer from
acute stupidity.

The only cure for
stupidity is death.

Now I am comfortable
in the knowledge that,
while not beneath contempt,
they will all vanish
beneath the earth.

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

What a load off!

   ~mce

"the sound of rushing waters..."*

Give me the apocalypse,
give me prayers upon my lips,
I've come to know
what lies outside tradition.

Each time I've tried to change the past
I've heard a trumpet's mighty blast,
I know that morning will not help,
it's ending.

The vain escape from the womb
has only led us to a tomb
and in between just shadows
and delusions.

Life is hard and life is smart,
it drives the dagger into your heart,
it doesn't care at all
what you wish for.

Take the lovers, accept the gold,
do exactly as you're told,
fall in line, you know you're nothing
special.

Take up your apocalypse,
lift those prayers from on your lips,
no one's listening anymore,
it's over.

See all the breaches in the wall,
this culture is about to fall,
thank those cold barbarians
for closure.

Do not resist and do not fight,
your time is over and now it's night,
be grateful for the darkness
and the silence.

We tried so hard, we tried so long,
it wasn't worth a line of song,
accept your fate, it's over now,
surrender.

The days piled up too high and then collapsed.
Everything was sadder than it used to be.
What we are concerned with here is unhappiness.
It is not a question of enlightenment, but recognition,
that chameleon of vapid disinterested change.
What does it all come down to in the end?
Feeling furtive needs isn't living;
you weary of feeding your needy, mammal body.
We must extricate ourselves from this repugnant spectacle.
The gates of the world open and close to no end.
The cosmos uses your own voice to complain.
The summit sings what is spoken in the depths.
The boulevards of your brain become smaller.
The wars are far away and oddly peaceful.
The lamps we light at dusk are for nothing.
I found this poem in the flea market of old words,
paid for it with the sorry shards of my memories,
and offer it to oblivion with whatever else I have stolen.
Consider it a final toast to everything that didn't happen.

  ~mce

This morning,
looking at a stand
of broken trees,
fallen and strewn
randomly about
by the storm,
I remember
battlefields and
the futility of war.
  - mce

It is not
like I haven't
tried hard
to learn
and understand.

I really have.
I passed all
the exams.

School, war,
marriage, kids,
divorce, lovers,
poetry and age:

Yet

After 63 years
of so much
effort and attention

women remain
the great
mystery
to me.
  ~mce

by Po Chu-i**

–Confucius said that it was not till sixty that "his ears obeyed him".

Between thirty and forty, one is distracted by the Five Lusts;
Between seventy and eighty, one is prey to a hundred diseases.
But from fifty to sixty one is free from all ills;
Calm and still–the heart enjoys rest.
I have put behind me Love and Greed; I have done with Profit and Fame;
I am still short of illness and decay and far from decrepit age.
Strength of limb I still possess to seek the rivers and hills;
Still my heart has spirit enough to listen to flutes and strings.
At leisure I open new wine and taste several cups;
Drunken I recall old poems and sing a whole volume.
Meng-te has asked for a poem and herewith I exhort him
Not to complain of three-score, "the time of obedient ears."


                                                      Chinese; trans. Arthur Waley

You peer intently
through a window.

What are you seeking?
What are you hoping?
What are your dreams?

Something wistful
attends your face;
pretty but pensive.

The Dharma Wheel spins.

So many Ways for us to go.
So many lives to try again.

Perhaps, in another life,
I will stroll down a street
past a house where a pretty
but pensive woman
peers wistfully
wistfully through
her window

and smiles.

~mce

Today is
Thomas Jefferson's
birthday.

I'm sure,
if he came back
for a
short visit
he would be

appalled.

Omnis in hic sum...*

Writers write to understand. Axiom.
But time worries ever onward.
Alchemists in a dungeon. Thinking magick.
Realistically demanding the impossible.
Trying to tell what must not be told.
Feeling things not understood.
First, last, in between, without end.
Things intuited, not comprehended.
Spectacular. Ordinary. Ecstatic. Troubled.
Listening to humanity’s sad, silent music.
Struggling to be worthy of themselves.
Practicing successive language experiments;
Cast in the dazzling fluidity of words.
Blowing life into this quintessence of dust.
Forever in a frenzied rush, for:
  Envious time doth ever slide.
  This single day is what they own.
  Tomorrow they may be denied.

I have chewed
the bitter heart
of loneliness
and found it
surprisingly
sweet.

  ~mce

I want to die
in the forest
of your red hair
and be reborn
in a field
of your kisses

So, are we good?

We are good.

Good.

Better to hear
sometimes
even than

I love you.

Or perhaps
the same thing.

  ~mce

It is ever more difficult
to sing of One's-Self.
The En-Masse
has swallowed up
the simple separate person;
the Democratic
is dying, if not dead.
The Leaves of Grass
now all look the same,
chant the same slogans,
believe and buy
what they are told
to believe and buy.
The power, pulse
and passion of Life
are subsumed
in blind conformity.
You said a man should,
"Resist much; obey little."
How many, in all this land,
now have the courage
to live those words?
That vast American energy
you rightly celebrated
is channeled now
to serve war and greed
and evil usury.
You would find little
in the current version
of The Modern Man
worth singing about;
little worth the immensity
of your vision and voice.
If you could return now
and chance to see
the empty, constricted husk
your country has become,
I wonder how Cheerful
your song would be.
  - mce

Clocks are the butchers of life.
They take it and cut it into pieces.
Some folks get the good cuts:
houses, families, money, mindlessness.
The rest get the nose, hooves, tails.
Awaken, sleep, work, ****, drive, eat:
Relentlessly it drives us on following
directions, being where we must,
doing what the clock says is appropriate.
Slaves to its tick-tocking reminder:
death is coming, hurry up, hustle
or everything that will not matter anyhow
won't get done. Check your watch.
Step on the gas. Be where you must be
to make others happy and get a pat on the back.
I have been buggered near to death by clocks.
No more.I am taking time into my own hands.
I declare it obsolete. I ignore its chiding.
I won't know what day it is and I won't care.
And when my clock stops forever. I will be free.

In a perfect world  
I would adore you
without guilt.
I would call you
trembling.  
I would ****** you
with poems,
eyes, hands, lips,
a famished tongue.
loud as lightening,
I would cry out
all the names
of your hidden lusts,
perfect them
and hand them to you,
day after day
until you are
a bundle of
potential *******,
throbbing
and burning for
my touch
to make you
shudder and scream.

Clocks like feral vultures open wounds with fatal, ticking beaks. Their hands take you by the throat, choking off thought. Clocks tell many lies: no time to lose, time heals all, time will tell and, most despicable, time is money. Time isn't money. Time is your soul bleeding out onto your socks. Money is just an inferior brand of toilet paper. Use it for what it's worth. Middle-class zombies buy these lies, confusing time with tempo. The measure it out like expensive coffee: four years of college, forty hours a week, thirty years of mortgage, five years of car loan. They buy their lives on time. The usurers have propagandized them to equate payments with ownership, success with things. This keeps them too busy to ask questions. When time runs out they die, ignorant of having lived a lie. Time laughs last. Always.
  - mce

I call
my white  97 Saturn
Moby.
243,000 miles.
She is
the most
constant woman
in my life,
ever.
Ah, true love...
- mce

And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And Death Shall Have No Dominion


And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

I am weary
of deliberations;
let us get on
with the countdown:
she loves me,
she loves me not...
   ~mce

Fate and doom have
no part in it.
Accidents just happen.
Enjoy them.

  ~mce

by Kim Addonizio*

Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you're still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don't you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of ***** and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard
that you're so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —
don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven't they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it's time. You've rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there's one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they're howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors' dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won't shut up.

Do not despair:
the time is not
too short, the distance
not too far.
Stick to your plan,
each day add to
necklace of wishes,
the last may
bring your heart's
desire.

Mce

The wars, they will be fought again. - Leonard Cohen*

I am harmless now,
my anger long spent,
my bloodied hands
long dried.

I hurt no one,
consciously.

But the wars,
the wars do not
know an ending

and the warriors
in anger
splash blood
across the earth
eternally.

Sometimes,
it is good
to be an old man
with dry hands.

   ~mce

When he told his VA shrink (a nice lady)
about his chopper being shot down three times,
she asked him what he dreamed about.

Falling, he said.
                           No ****, she said.

She asked if he was afraid to fly.

He said wasn't cause he'd never,
ever get in an aircraft again.

She said these were perfectly sane responses:
If I were you, she said, I wouldn't ride elevators.

He didn't mention he avoided them when possible.

  ~mce

I am thinking
of you, Lady,
and my thoughts,
while tantalizing,
energizing,
and enjoyable,
are not, exactly,
of the purest sort.

Well now,
how I wonder
what runs through
through that
pretty mind
of yours.

Would I blush
to know?

Oh, I hope so.
  - mce

There has
only ever been
one day
and it happens
over and
over again.

  ~mce

"True initiation never ends." - R.A.W.

Forsake the bolted Temple gates;
dogma has frozen them shut.
Ride the howling night of storms
following the path of your heart.
Shed the armor of limitations.
Travel fast and travel light.
Expect no guidance but courage.
When the tempest abates,
the stars alone will light your way.
A gleaming chapel blocks the road.
To go on, you must go through.
Enter and confront the King;
ask the questions you carry.
Release the burden of your self.
A simple, earthen cup will appear.
If you dare to drink it deep and dry,
you will see a portal traced by flames
leading to a green and warm world.
If you falter, you must repeat the quest.
There is only one road, one chapel,
and each of us must approach it
broken, alone and filled with fear.
Steel your heart. Try again and again.
Each soul contains the proper moment.
  - mce

Just as dawn
hinted at itself
I saw something
large and winged
staring at me
from the roof of
my neighbor's garage,
dark against
emerging light.

Angel or vulture,
I couldn't see.

No doubt the
day will tell.

  ~mce

What doesn't **** you makes you stronger.*

What doesn't **** you
maims you.

What doesn't **** you
makes you an *******.

What doesn't **** you
makes you afraid of life.

What doesn't **** you
makes you afraid to love.

What doesn't **** you
makes you meek.

What doesn't **** you
scars your soul.

What doesn't **** you
should have.

  ~mce

I'd like
to get
deeper
inside
your head
she says.

I'd like
to get
deeper
inside you,
he thinks.
-mce

After John Keats*

I have no fears that I may cease to be,
but long for the still silence of the grave.
Nothing remains in this world to long for;
nothing that I wish to keep or to save.
The best of youth, love and hope are vanished,
Driven away by time and loss and pain;
things that made the world a place to live in,
will never return in fullness again.
Just to breathe has no value in itself;
to wake to nothing does not make a day;
a walk to nowhere is not worth taking;
and nothing of value remains to say.
  Come death and be quick, take these blues from me;
  I’ve seen it all and no more wish to see.