David Foster Wallace told a tale of three fish. A large old fish and two young fish were swimming toward each other. When they met, the old fish said to the young fish, "How's the water. They swam on. Finally one little fish said to the other, "What's water?"

This is as important a parable as Jesus ever uttered.

While none of the fish can escape the water, the crucial thing is to be aware of it. We can't escape the water of usury founded capitalist consumerism, but we can become aware of it and change how we swim.

Minimalism is a way of saying ******* to the water. It is a way of saying, I may have to swim here, but I will consciously choose how I swim. That's huge.

A minimalist says I will live on as little as possible. I will participate in proletarianized labour as little as possible. He says to the usurers, I will not feed you through debt. He chooses to live (well) on the cast-offs of consumer society. He says I will not watch your lies on TV. I will avoid the State as much as I can. I will fly (as much as still possible) under the radar. I will live my life. I will live my truths. I will be me.

This cannot be done perfectly. It can be done in many ways and to many degrees. The trick is to realize how it suits you and then do it. Learn to swim as you wish. Be your own fish.

My love
goes everywhere
in sandals
wearing abalone
at her throat.
She calls herself
a commoner,
but I know
she is a goddess
from an older,
fiercer
order of things,
a warrior woman
struggling
to be free.
When she laughs
the birds listen.
When she touches me,
my heartbeat slows.
She says what she means
and knows what she knows.
Unafraid of who she is,
she takes herself
wherever she goes.
My love in sandals,
walking.

   ~mce

Mozart,
Shakespeare,
Picasso.

Auschwitz,
Hiroshima,
My Lai.

Two sides;
one culture.

"Everybody's shouting,
which side are you on?"

   mce

~for Luke

I advise
my God Son
(for whom
I am called
to be wise),
just watch
what I do
and you do
the opposite.
You'll be fine.
  - mce

I would love
to sit in a sunny room
and drink coffee
and have
a long talk
with your heart.

Do you think
it would listen?

Do you think
it would respond?

If so,
call it
a date.
   ~mce

World says, must;
I say, won't:
pain results.
Classic definition
of a ****-up.
  - mce

Spring**

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

The odd and funny part of life
is how we resist
the nature of our own minds,
pretending we have
no more freedom
than a train stuck
on its predestined tracks
when we are the builders
of the railroad.
   ~mce

The slightest brush
of melancholy
tinges the evening:

that time of day
when ghosts awaken

and memories stir;

that time of day
when thousands
of lives lived
lean into now.

Where are you,
bright eyed lover?

I need a
gentle boost
to lift me above
this roar of silence,

this emptiness
that fills the
twilight.

Come to me.

Sing me songs
until smiles return
and we will smile
together.
   ~mce

Because it's not the hollow life
of 8 to 5 in some cubicle hell.
No one feels more alive
and outside the banality
of plain old existence
than when surrounded
by violent, random death.
The ultimate rush of being.
Stronger than amphetamines,
*******, the best ****** ever.
Terrified, horrified, fascinated,
but more alive than you'll
ever be again.
If you survive, in your
secret heart you will
always miss it.

  ~mce

You opened a random book
to a forgotten page:
A formula for loneliness,
a recipe for age.

I never meant to bother you
disturb you happy life,
bu you took down that book yourself
and opened it to strife.

It was a lucky accident,
well, lucky just for me,
but you were taken when that page
fell open for you to see.

It doesn't make you happy,
it makes you ill at ease;
It wasn't what I meant for you,
I hoped that it would please.

Say the word, I'll go away
and leave you to your peace;
forget the ghost who passed your way
just paint your masterpiece.

I know I make you nervous,
I only want to say:
speak the word and I'll be gone,
I'll be gone today.

You woke me up to live again
I can't go back to sleep;
but I will not do harm to you,
I'm not that vain or cheap.

My life is in your little hands
It's up to you you know
to find a place within your heart
Or bid me now to go.

Elegy for the Forgotten Oldsmobile**

July 4th and all is Hell.
Outside my shuttered breath the streets bubble
with flame-loined kids in designer jeans
looking for people to **** or razor.
A madman covered with running sores
is on the street corner singing:
O beautiful for spacious skies…
This landscape is far too convenient
to be either real or metaphor.
In an alley behind a 7-11
a Black **** dressed in Harris tweed
preaches fidelity to two pimply ******
whose skin is white though they aren’t quite.
And crosstown in the sane precincts
of Brown University where I added rage
to Cliff Notes and got two degrees
bearded scientists are stringing words
outside the language inside the guts of atoms
and I don’t know why I’ve come back to visit.

O Uncle Adrian! I’m in the reservation of my mind.
Chicken bones in a cardboard casket
meditate upon the linoleum floor.
Outside my flophouse door stewed
and sinister winos snore in a tragic chorus.

The snowstorm t.v. in the lobby’s their mother.
Outside my window on the jumper’s ledge
ice wraiths shiver and coat my last cans of Bud
though this is summer I don’t know why or where
the souls of Indian sinners fly.
Uncle Adrian, you died last week—cirrhosis.
I still have the photo of you in your Lovelock
letterman’s jacket—two white girls on your arms—
first team All-State halfback in ’45, ’46.

But nothing is static. I am in the reservation of
my mind. Embarrassed moths unravel my shorts
thread by thread asserting insectival lust.
I’m a naked locoweed in a city scene.
What are my options? Why am I back in this city?
When I sing of the American night my lungs billow
Camels astride hacking appeals for cessation.
My mother’s zippo inscribed: “Stewart Indian School—1941”
explodes in my hand in elegy to Dresden Antietam
and Wounded Knee and finally I have come to see
this mad *** nation is dying.
Our ancestors’ murderer is finally dying and I guess
I should be happy and dance with the spirit or project
my regret to my long-lost high school honey
but history has carried me to a place
where she has a daughter older than we were
when we first shared flesh.

She is the one who could not marry me
because of the dark-skin ways in my blood.
Love like that needs no elegy but because
of the baked-***** possibility of the flame lakes of Hell
I will give one last supper and sacrament
to the dying beast of need disguised as love
on deathrow inside my ribcage.
I have not forgotten the years of midnight hunger
when I could see how the past had guided me
and I cried and held the pillow, muddled
in the melodrama of the quite immature
but anyway, Uncle Adrian…
Here I am in the reservation of my mind
and silence settles forever
the vacancy of this cheap city room.
In the wine darkness my cigarette coal
tints my face with Geronimo’s rage
and I’m in the dry hills with a Winchester
waiting to shoot the lean, learned fools
who taught me to live-think in English.

Uncle Adrian…
to make a long night story short,
you promised to give me your Oldsmobile in 1962.
How come you didn’t?
I could have had some really good times in high school.

man
bench
sun

Facts are not
a life.

Details.

old man
park bench
hot sun

Better,
but not enough.

An old man
on a green park bench
baking in the hot sun.

Closer,
but not the truth.

An old man,
still boyish,
sitting on a
green park bench
baking in the hot sun
remembering
that strange young girl
wearing
a paisley scarf,
red and blue silk,
standing like Venus
poised above
blue Aegean water
on the deck
of a white steamer,
her black hair flowing,
four decades past.

Closer still, yet missing...

An old man,
still boyish,
sitting on a
green park bench
baking in the hot sun
remembering
that strange young girl
wearing
a paisley scarf,
red and blue silk,
standing like Venus
poised above
blue Aegean water
on the deck
of a white steamer,
her black hair flowing,
four decades past.
He smiles,
considering
her hot breath,
her long sighs,
her silken thighs:
she lives again.

The poem at the confluence
of memory and imagination
engenders the stories
which render meaning.

Stories about stories;
all we can know of life,
yet enough.
-mce

I cannot not how you smell
so I project my own desire
onto your unknown skin.

Patchouli. A scent that
makes him instantly goofy
and transports me at once
to the decade before
you even drew breath.

Even now that scent
on a crowded street
turns my head in wonder.

Scent, taste and touch:  
our first mammalian memories.

Do not be troubled lover,
I will love and linger
on any olfactory lingerie
you care to wear or none.

My second favorite is just
sunshine on bare skin.

But any whiff of you will
become part of my heart
and I will inhale you
deep into my soul.

~mce

by Ramond Carver**

You don't know what love is Bukowski said
I'm 51 years old look at me
I'm in love with this young broad
I got it bad but she's hung up too
so it's all right man that's the way it should be
I get in their blood and they can't get me out
They try everything to get away from me
but they all come back in the end
They all came back to me except
the one I planted
I cried over that one
but I cried easy in those days
Don't let me get onto the hard stuff man
I get mean then
I could sit here and drink beer
with you hippies all night
I could drink ten quarts of this beer
and nothing it's like water
But let me get onto the hard stuff
and I'll start throwing people out windows
I'll throw anybody out the window
I've done it
But you don't know what love is
You don't know because you've never
been in love it's that simple
I got this young broad see she's beautiful
She calls me Bukowski
Bukowski she says in this little voice
and I say What
But you don't know what love is
I'm telling you what it is
but you aren't listening
There isn't one of you in this room
would recognize love if it stepped up
and buggered you in the ***
I used to think poetry readings were a copout
Look I'm 51 years old and I've been around
I know they're a copout
but I said to myself Bukowski
starving is even more of a copout
So there you are and nothing is like it should be
That fellow what's his name Galway Kinnell
I saw his picture in a magazine
He has a handsome mug on him
but he's a teacher
Christ can you imagine
But then you're teachers too
here I am insulting you already
No I haven't heard of him
or him either
They're all termites
Maybe it's ego I don't read much anymore
but these people w! ** build
reputations on five or six books
termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can't you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn't it
You wouldn't think a crude ******* like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann
**** I couldn't write up here
Too quiet up here too many trees
I like the city that's the place for me
I put on my classical music each morning
and sit down in front of my typewriter
I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see
and I say Bukowski you're a lucky man
Bukowski you've gone through it all
and you're a lucky man
and the blue smoke drifts across the table
and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue
and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk
and I puff on the cigar like this
and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this and take a deep breath
and I begin to write
Bukowski this is the life I say
it's good to be poor it's good to have hemorrhoids
it's good to be in love
But you don't know what it's like
You don't know what it's like to be in love
If you could see her you'd know what I mean
She thought I'd come up here and get laid
She just knew it
She told me she knew it
**** I'm 51 years old and she's 25
and we're in love and she's jealous
Jesus it's beautiful
she said she'd claw my eyes out if I came up here
and got laid
Now that's love for you
What do any of you know about it
Let me tell you something
I've met men in jail who had more style
than the people who hang around colleges
and go to poetry readings
They're bloodsuckers who come to see
if the poet's socks are *****
or if he smells under the arms
Believe me I won't disappoint em
But I want you to remember this
there's only one poet in this room tonight
only one poet in this town tonight
maybe only one real poet in this country tonight
and that's me
What do any of you know about life
What do any of you know about anything
Which of you here has been fired from a job
or else has beaten up your broad
or else has been beaten up by your broad
I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times
They'd fire me then hire me back again
I was a stockboy for them when I was 35
and then got canned for stealing cookies
I know what's it like I've been there
I'm 51 years old now and I'm in love
This little broad she says
Bukowski
and I say What and she says
I think you're full of ****
and I say baby you understand me
She's the only broad in the world
man or woman
I'd take that from
But you don't know what love is
They all came back to me in the end too
every one of em came back
except that one I told you about
the one I planted We were together seven years
We used to drink a lot
I see a couple of typers in this room but
I don't see any poets
I'm not surprised
You have to have been in love to write poetry
and you don't know what it is to be in love
that's your trouble
Give me some of that stuff
That's right no ice good
That's good that's just fine
So let's get this show on the road
I know what I said but I'll have just one
That tastes good
Okay then let's go let's get this over with
only afterwards don't anyone stand close
to an open window

This is just to say,
try my new book today!

http://amzn.com/B01D6KG7HK

:)

mce

Craving beauty,
we can only steal;
it fades
in the moments
we watch

and then nothing.

We live
in the flesh,
if we live
at all.
~ mce

The mysterious pregnancy
of the present moment.
Call it hazard, randomness
whatever you like.

Contained in that moment,
all the possibilities of life.
The locus of existence.
Whatever you do could
change everything.

You are 21 and sitting in a bar.
You walk out the door and turn right.
One life looms. Hazard.
You walk out the door and turn left.
A different life. Hazard.
You stay at the bar;
someone sits down beside you.
A third life opens up. Hazard.

Forget choice. You didn't choose,
you just unthinkingly did.
Yet so many possibilities
in that innocent instant.
Mythic, timeless, un-contemporary.
Powerful as a Black Hole.

We speak of good choices,
bad choices, as if we control
our lives absolutely.

Wrong. Worse than wrong: absurd.
Ego. You believe yourself a god?

First comes the random hazardous moment,
numinous and fecund with an unknown power.

Choice only follows that moment.
You choose within the arena of hazard.

Only then, thumbs up or down.

Not such a bad place,
although it can take
many lifetimes
to get the hang of it.
  ~mce

When the time is come
a Viking funeral
is what I want.

No crass military honors,
no graveside of grieving.

Place me in the boat
soaked with flammable unguents,
mould my rigid arms
around my life's sword
and push me into the current.

There I will glide alone
until one precise arrow
sings its firey song
and I depart this world
in a burst of flames,

like a warrior, like a man.

  ~mce

We are not quite like monks,
although we, too, sit.

A monk sits and seeks
to find nothing in nothing.

We sit to create
something out of something.

Things float in our minds:
childhood slights and successes,
puberty, hormones, pain,
our first fumbling *****,
our first bewildering wars,
colleges, conquests, rebuffs,
disappointments, jobs,
marriages, children, divorce:

all that has brought
us to this moment alone.

The monk sits in
deepening quiet,
unmoving in silence.

We sit, hand
caressing a pen,
a typewriter, a computer,
waiting upon experience,
hoping that
its loose images
and uncertain memories
will coalesce into words.

When they do (not always),
we call that a poem
and we call ourselves poets.

The monk devolves
into a nothing that is.
The poet crafts
a something that isn't.

Is the something
we have wrought
more than the nothing
that swallows the monks?

Or is it very the same:

not an attempt to touch
the depth of being,
but to become the depth
itself.

Not to be a magician,
but to become magick
itself.

To bow to the god
within ourselves
and allow it voice
or silence.

We both, in our ways,
do what we must do.

Namaste.

  ~mce

A pirate sailed south, but too far.
The good ship's prow found
harbors filled with icebergs,
frolicking penguins and walruses:
it began to snow inside his mortal soul.
He dreamed of perfect white beaches,
warm sand, sunlight, palm trees
and (perhaps) a lovely French poet in a slight bikini
lolling like Erato on holiday.
He could taste the sun and coconut on her skin.
It was only a vision, but one worthy of a quest.
He preferred living dreams to dead conclusions.
Many people told him he dreamed too much,
to accept this landfall and be content.
But cold and darkness are not a pirate's lot
and contentment does not appear
in the official pirate's vocabulary.
Even an aging pirate holds true to course,
pinned like a medal to his longing and desire.
More sail, he cried, and turned the helm
toward the islands of his heart,
toward a landfall of warmth and color,
toward hot and willing flesh,
toward parrots and monkeys and blue skies.
Leaving the nay-sayers in the cold,
he headed the only direction a pirate can, further.
- mce

Do not squeeze
the life
out of your life
trying to follow
someone else's
principles of right
and wrong.

  ~mce

by John M. Ford*


The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

Just how important do we
imagine ourselves to be?

Maybe not so much
as we would like to think.

Perhaps we are merely quirks
of sexuality and history.

Does that bruise our egos?
Who would we be if our
parents had never met.

The Moirae spin our fates
which hang on feeble threads;
the fragilest of continuities
bind us to this world
of brutality and beauty.

Yet we count our money
as if it were steel cable,
proof against rust forever;

we fight our wars as though
something noble and eternal
depends upon their outcomes;

we pretend we are playwrites
instead of actors reading lines.

Vanity of vanities.

In error, we drive ourselves
to beat hard against the wind,
headlong against time and death
as if we are actually steering.

Until the Day we must look
the Tiger in the eye and know,
too late, in that certain fatal second,
that we are small and weak
and mortal and always have been.

And the earth closes over us.

Consider the optimism of alchemy.
See how desperately we strive
to create what we never were
from what we really are.
A stone, a potion, a spell:
anything that can transform us
into the actual we aren't,
into the being we'll never be,
through a pulseless world
of winter, still and lifeless;
where yet, the tantalizing
possibility of Spring
beckons like the ghost
of a beautiful woman
murmuring to us:
*yes I said yes I will Yes.

If only, on that fateful day,
my Draft Board had been on LSD.

They might have sent me to Wonderland
to explain croquet and the proper pouring of tea;

they might have sent me to OZ
to get into Dorothy's pants or train flying monkeys;

they might have sent me to Hogwarts
to get an advanced degree in something useful;

they might have sent me to Narnia
in search of ****** pelts and talking mice;

they might have sent me to Never Land
to counsel Captain Hook on anger management;

but no, instead, imagination failed utterly,
and those patriotic imbeciles sent me to Vietnam.

If only, on that fateful day,
my Draft Board had been on LSD.

The wind is curiously silent tonight.
Nothing disturbs the deep darkness,
but the wafting scent of madness.

In the desert, captive children
toss and turn, whimper and sleep,
the government their souls to keep.

They will wake to razor wire,
and the company of strangers,
caught in concentration camps
of unknown bureaucrats and guards
blamelessly following the orders
of distant, calculating masters
who play political chess
with the lives of the innocent.

The country that separates
mothers from their babies
will rise and ask no questions,
going about its business,
buying, selling, grasping at more,
untouched by this insanity,
kissing its own kids good morning,
unwilling or unable to feel or see
the malignant cancer eating its way
through the complacent, rotting soul
of what, once upon a time, used to be

the home of the brave,
the land of the free.

Some mornings,
I want to leap
from bed:

pluck the eyes
from anacondas,
beat monkey butts
with broken spoons,
and steal flowers
from cemetaries
to warm
the homeless.

But this
particular
morning,

I'd  much rather
stay in bed
with your warmth,
your deep kisses,
your long sighs

and let the anacondas,
monkeys and homeless
fend for themselves.
   ~mce

just a hint of fever
and he recoils
                     recalls
when first the malaria
hit him like a
a dump truck full
of iron garden gnomes
left him shivering
                           sweating
swimming
                in pain deeper
than the greatest
                 Great Lake
before it broke and
he was smashed
                         flat
left crapulent and woozy
a still stagnant pond
where parasites
permanently
                   petulantly
           patrol
awaiting their turn
to make another visit
and say hello again hello

   ~mce

A pirate sailed south, but too far.
The good ship's prow found
harbors filled with icebergs,
frolicking penguins and walruses:
it began to snow inside his mortal soul.
He dreamed of perfect white beaches,
warm sand, sunlight, palm trees
and (perhaps) a lovely French poet in a slight bikini
lolling like Erato on holiday.
He could taste the sun and coconut on her skin.
It was only a vision, but one worthy of a quest.
He preferred living dreams to dead conclusions.
Many people told him he dreamed too much,
to accept this landfall and be content.
But cold and darkness are not a pirate's lot
and contentment does not appear
in the official pirate's vocabulary.
Even an aging pirate holds true to course,
pinned like a medal to his longing and desire.
More sail, he cried, and turned the helm
toward the islands of his heart,
toward a landfall of warmth and color,
toward hot and willing flesh,
toward parrots and monkeys and blue skies.
Leaving the nay-sayers in the cold,
he headed the only direction a pirate can, further.
- mce

When the papers finally arrived and the seals were sealed and the law that had made had unmade he took off his wedding ring and felt truly naked for the first time in years. But in that nakedness rage boiled. He wanted revenge on women. And for seven misfortunate years he took it.

Seventeen or sixty, no matter. Meet them, charm them, tell them the lies they yearned to hear and then **** them. The ******* was extraneous, no more ****** than doing push-ups or eating  apples. Even as he ****** them he lied, telling them how **** and desirable they were, how he never felt this way before. Convince a woman that you believe what she wants to hear and her legs will be on your shoulders in no time.

Mission accomplished, he would simply vanish.Not take their calls, their texts or emails. He didn't just want to hurt them, he wanted to make sure they knew they had been hurt on purpose. He wanted them to know they had been ****** in the worst, truest, most brutal sense of the word. Degraded, used like a ******, taken like a **** and discarded. It is hard to say how many guiltless woman he punished this way. He didn't feel bad or guilty; he felt nothing.

There is no excuse for his behavior other than he was a strong person and when a strong person ***** up, he ***** up in a big way.

Then suddenly the nothingness closed on him like a clamp. All the manipulation, lies, and corruption exploded into his brain. He felt like a guard at Auschwitz directing jews into the gas chambers. For the first time in his life he was truly ashamed. So he did what had to be done. He simply gave up women. It was nowhere near as hard as he had imagined. After a while, it became peaceful, restful, satisfying. He invented his own Order and became a monk. He imagined this a permanent state that would last his life.

And then, wholly by accident, he stumbled across a woman. Her words ****** the breath from him; he swooned. It is an alarming thing to imagine yourself sexually dead for years only to wake up and discover that you aren't. Afraid for his very soul, he became smitten. But fear lurked in his *****. What if this was pay back for his sins. What if she did to him what he had done to so many others? It would be just, but he did not know if he could survive it.

But he held his breath and took the leap back into the world. He put his heart in her hands. He does not know how this will turn out or even if it will. But for the first time in years he feels like an entire man. It is worth flying too near the sun even if destruction is its end; better to be fully alive for a while than completely dead forever.

Redemption? That can only be bestowed by the gods.

For personal reasons,
that name conjures
in my mind only
images of war.

Yelling rebels,
teaming Lakota,
Nipponese samurai,
stealthy NVA.

Perhaps
it is time
to declare

a Peace Moon

and learn
to live quietly,

bathed in its
silken shining.

  ~mce

You know it's over.
Your shoes have walked away.
Your phone dives
into the pit of despair.
Cigarettes have become healthy.
Your knees don't knock, but clap.
The chipmunks have fallen silent.
All the chameleons are gray.
The cat dismisses you and leaves.
Bullets pass through you like prunes.
Love is a forgotten memory.
Everything transforms into other.
You are a stranger growing
stranger by the day.
Over and out good buddy.
You know it's over.

Words, words, words, but powerful,
they dig deep into a boy's mind
and become the standard he comes
to measure himself by, who he is,
who he must be, must live up to.

Real men never cry. Real men never cry.
Never, ever hit a girl no matter what.
Bullies are all ****** little cowards.
Never back down. Never back down.
Always demand the most of yourself.
Never blame anyone else if you fail.
Never back down. Never back down.
Play fair but play to win.
Show no mercy, take no prisoners,
have no regrets, never complain.
Never back down. Never back down.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
Real men never cry. Real men never cry.
Pain makes you stronger. Life's not fair.
Don't be a baby. Stop acting like a girl.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
**** it up. It doesn't hurt. Be tough.
Nice guys finish last. Shed no tears.
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
Real men never cry. Real men never cry.

We believed deeply in all this ****
and when the time came, took it to war.
Very little made it back to the world.

  ~mce

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda**

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me **** over ***
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to **** tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

For all the brave lads who want to keep us free and pure. Whether we like it or not.*

We are the Redneck Militia,
marching here in stride,
white is the only color
in which we'll ever take pride.
If you don't like the color white,
we might gut you like a fish
and fry up your private organs
and eat them from a dish;
or maybe stamp out your brains on the street
and leave you there for dead
or hold you down on the pavement
and slowly run over your head.
For we are the Redneck Militia,
we're as wasted as can be,
if you still don't love the color white
we'll cut off your ***** for free.
And if you still aren't with us
we'll hang you high from a tree,
but if you don't like swinging
then a scalping it will be.
So get off your *** and march with us,
march til we've conquered this land,
if you don't like the blood and the bullets
you can always play in our band.
Just be sure to bang the drum loudly,
keep up with us stride for stride,
for we are the Redneck Militia
and white is the color of pride.

  ~mce

The night you got shot
I pushed your scrambled remains
like a sack of red meat
onto the deck of the chopper.

I wonder what it felt like,
those bullets tearing through you?

It must have been quick,
but what is quick to the dead?

It's forty-three years later
and I am sixty-four
but you will always be nineteen.

Which of us was lucky?

Last night you appeared in a dream
all shot to pieces and gave me
an enormous, important hint
about my future which I forgot
as soon as I woke up.

Believe me, buddy, you haven't
missed much. The world is still all
****** up and don't mean nothing.

No one has learned a single ****** thing.

Would you have had a good life?
A happy life? A successful life.
All pretty much moot.

But at least, you would
have had a life.

Damp wood
sizzles;
Dry wood
explodes.
Smoke or fire?
To discover
which you
contain,
you must risk
the flames.
  - mce

February a baleful month
dabbed with deep darkness,
the calendar's mortuary
nature's own Gulag.
Its window opens upon
possible impossibilities
none of which yield joy.
Crows plummet murderously
from the heavens
vainly trying to flee
into spring but merely splat.
Roads are crushed
beneath a carpet of ****.
Frosted blimps soar naked.
Boots refuse to stay tied.
Your parent's nightmares
freeze your sweaty sleep.
Snow falls like dead swans.
Eclairs crystallize into
lumps too solid to enjoy.
A month of undeserved
solitary confinement
that trembles the soul.
A deep achromatic terror
keening coldness
in a huge white wail
penetrating the ears
until march stops
the madness and hope
blossoms as crocuses,
apricity achieved,
small phosphorescent
dots of desire.

  ~mce

The real America
died at Wounded Knee
where this plastic,
****-coated monstrosity
we now call home
was born,
appropriately,
in a hail of bullets.
- mce

I want to make poetry
from poverty.
I eschew women.
I buy nothing.
I eat little.
I own less.
I have neither
TV nor cellphone.
This is not asceticism.
I just want
to know the bones
of life before
I become
the bones of death.
  ~mce

OK. Today may be dull. It happens. Sure.
But tomorrow remains rife with possibilities.

Podcasts of Trump on on the value of modesty.
Street fights in several extinct languages.
Hillary wins at Detroit poetry slam.
Jihadists explode poodles in crosswalks.
Island countries wave & grin as they sink.
***** flicks found starring Merkel and Putin.
A sane, reasonable presidential election.
Angry cats with opposable thumbs rebel.
Men & women speaking & understanding each other.
Brock Turner announces *** change operation.
God announces: No More Mulligans!
Gender wars conclude. Everyone’s dead.
Debut of lost Bach Partita for Electric Kazoo.
New, hip-hop production of Treblinka: The Musical.
Shakespeare cloned. Buys poetry anthology. Dies.
End-up, instead of start-up, launches in Palo Alto.
Smart phones install apps with annoying ads on users.
Common sense becomes common again.
Victimless rhymes decriminalized.

This is America! Never two dull days.
Take Heart! Tomorrow, there be Wonders…

Remembering Greece,
I imagine you there now:
naked, skilled in spells.

Your toes in the sand,
your bright green eyes radiant:
island conqueress.

   ~mce

My first real job
was trying to glue
blown up teenagers
back together.
I was twenty, old.
I held them in my arms
and told them lies
while they cried and died.
Told them it was ok,
they were fine, going home.
Their spirits lodged in
the secret chambers
of my broken heart.
I can never forget.
Their faces stick
in in my brain
like photos in a wallet.
I will never forgive
those who sent us to die
and then treated us
like mad, pariah dogs
if we made it back.
But we knew what we knew.
He today who sheds
his blood with me
shall be my brother.
Brothers in arms.
Brothers forever.

Hope rarely flies straight;
it flutters and weaves
like a butterfly
in a stiff breeze,
sometimes making headway,
sometimes blown off course,
sometimes interrupted,
but never completely
disappearing;
always present,
always whispering:
maybe.
- mce

Perhaps the most
honest woman
in all history;
she only did what
all women see.
  - mce

Weave your
nightgown
out of the
darkness.
Modesty
imparts to
your nakedness
willowy grace.
I thirst for
clarity.
I want
to drown in
the white bones
beneath it.

  ~mce

My mother
slips to and fro,
mindless and mad
in a nursing home,
unaware
of the Kardashians,
impending financial collapse,
Say Yes To The Dress,
the corpse children
of Syria,
yoga pants
or the impending
asteroid.

Wherever she is,
she's not missing
much.

mce

Our hands rise
and the street leaps.
Our eyes lower,
the heavens collapse.

From our unspoken pain,
a tulip tree grows
mysteriously behind us.

From our cherished wishes,
a star rises
just beyond our reach.

Do you hear the bullets
whizzing around our heads
guarding our kisses?

The sweetness
of your glance
never ends.

No birds fly south
from your eyes;
no avalanches slide
from your *******.

In the paradise
of your sight
the sun never sets.

These are your lips
I return to your neck.

Your blood
burns in my heart.

Everything remains.