So many calling out for blood
who have never tasted it.
I have tasted it. It is bitter.
It smells like copper
and tastes like doom.
If they shed it, it won't wash off.
And they will never be innocent
again. If they hire others to shed it,
in their secret hearts they
will forever be ashamed
and the word coward
will  always whisper
in their ears.

As it should.

  ~mce

Find someone else
to do it.

  ~mce

I want to be
the Troubador
of your Heart;
allowed to roam
freely within it,
singing you songs
that no one else
can hear.
  ~mce

Another day and what to make of it? Tu Du list.
Things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew.
Water down darkness. Ask the sun for a light.
Loot Frederick's of Hollywood. Cultivate pompous grass.
Rewrite Moby **** as free verse. Irritate life with art.
Plant Rhino rhizome and grow *****. Turn over an old leaf.
Take a road trip to a state of anxiety. Try chewing gun.
Play the Jew's harp in a mosque. Pray for drains.
Steal a cop from a donut. See if LSD still works.
Listen to Rockabilly noir. Experiment with dysentery.
Set out buckets to catch sky. Talk with, not to, turnips.
Insist on having the last word. Get it. Die.
   Or just admit another wasted day,
   lonely as your heart, not as grey.

she firmly
runs her
wet hand
up and down
down and up
its slippery
length

before placing
the spatula
on the cloth
to dry

  ~mce

Wrinkles and scars
are medals
won for valor
in the thousand
private battles
we call a lifetime.
  ~mce

I'm only a poet with only a song,
and sometimes I get it, and sometimes it's wrong.
I live in a box, a box made of pain.
It sits in a field at the end of a lane.
A house without windows, a house without heart.
It's hardly a castle, but I call it a start.
It sits in its loneliness, no cars pass it by,
it crouches in loneliness beneath a gray sky.
The world stops outside. I stay within,
with my words, my memories, my pride and my sin.
I remember you baby when you came to this place
with your cheap lingerie and your lust on your face.
I remember you baby how you gave me that look
that no lonely alchemist could find in a book.
That look that told me that you wanted it all,
that led us to gasp and to writhe and to fall.
Your fingers were fever, your tongue was a snake,
you drew me inside you, your fire made me shake.
But love burns out as it flares in the night.
We got most of it wrong, but some of it right.
And then you were gone and I was alone
with a heart that was broken into pebbles of stone.
Left in that box, that box made of pain,
that sits in the field at the end of the lane.
See I'm only a poet with only a song,
and sometimes I get it, but for you I was wrong.

TWO ENGLISH POEMS For A Woman

I.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.

II.
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghost that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather –just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer her that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow – the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

Visit Tibet
while it still exists.
Quit smoking.
Forget the war.
Complete
a pilgrimage
to Rumi's tomb.
Experience
the world
as an
Indigo Bunting.
Strike a truce
with the past.
Learn to cook.
Make
passionate love
with a nice
southern girl.
Find
the meaning
of life
and set it free.
Eat more
paw-paws.
Resolve
the mystery
of the Three.
So many things
remain
to do, to be.
- mce

You sow
these words
in a graveyard.
They  sprout
in deep darkness,
never to see
the light of day.
It drains you
to plant only
nightmares.
Your heart
submerges.
Do not expect
to live long.

Most men notice
the perfect ***
of a 20-year-old
and feel lust.
All I feel
is the sharp nudge
of too late.
Age is a process
server it's best
to avoid.

  ~mce

An old man's head:
a bucket full of lies.
A vortex swirls there like
confetti at the ticker tape
parade of a traitor.
Fragments adhere and disperse
becoming ephemeral poems
that mean nothing for a moment.
Whoever and whomever become
a jaded lump of whatever.
That empty head contains
multitudes of nothing that
never quite achieve something.
Poems made of offal.
Thoughts never finished.
Whenever he is, he has been,
he will be. Vortex like
water in a flushed toilet,
disappearing into ****.
Unspoken words sounding loud
in a cistern of silence
where nobody pretends to listen.

  ~mce

How To Speak Poetry**

Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly. There is the word and there is the butterfly. If you confuse these two items people have the right to laugh at you. Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data. It is not an opportunity for you to hover, soar, befriend flowers, symbolize beauty and frailty, or in any way impersonate a butterfly. Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and **** your head to one side when you talk about death. Do not fix your burning eyes on me when you speak about love. If you want to impress me when you speak about love put your hand in your pocket or under your dress and play with yourself. If ambition and the hunger for applause have driven you to speak about love you should learn how to do it without disgracing yourself or the material.

What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever. We have seen photographs of bereaved Asian mothers. We are not interested in the agony of your fumbled organs. There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply. We have seen newsreels of humans in the extremities of pain and dislocation. Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there. You are playing to people who have experienced a catastrophe. This should make you very quiet.  Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Everyone knows you are in pain. You cannot tell the audience everything you know about love in every line of love you speak. Step aside and they will know what you know because you know it already. You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser. Do not shout at them. Do not force a dry entry. That is bad ***. If you show the lines of your genitals, then deliver what you promise. And remember that people do not really want an acrobat in bed. What is our need? To be close to the natural man, to be close to the natural woman. Do not pretend that you are a beloved singer with a vast loyal audience which has followed the ups and downs of your life to this very moment. The bombs, flame-throwers, and all the **** have destroyed more than just the trees and villages. They have also destroyed the stage. Did you think that your profession would escape the general destruction? There is no more stage. There are no more footlights. You are among the people. Then be modest. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside. Be by yourself. Be in your own room. Do not put yourself on.

This is an interior landscape. It is inside. It is private. Respect the privacy of the material. These pieces were written in silence. The courage of the play is to speak them. The discipline of the play is not to violate them. Let the audience feel your love of privacy even though there is no privacy. Be good ******. The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition.

Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse. Do not get a hard-on when you say *******. Do not get all shivery just because of the towel. The sheets should not provoke a dreamy expression about the eyes. There is no need to weep into the handkerchief. The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes. Don't peep through them. Just wear them.

The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. You are speaking before a meeting of the Explorers' Club of the National Geographic Society. These people know all the risks of mountain climbing. They honour you by taking this for granted. If you rub their faces in it that is an insult to their hospitality. Tell them about the height of the mountain, the equipment you used, be specific about the surfaces and the time it took to scale it. Do not work the audience for gasps ans sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence.

Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you're tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.

Hallelujah

is the one true
commandment.
The Sacred
is not a puzzle
to solve;
not a commander
to follow;
not a creed
to mumble.
It is a joy
to experience;
it is a love
to share;
it is a way
to be.
It is simply
and divinely,

Hallelujah.

Wild Dreams Of A New Beginning**

There's a breathless hush on the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded & swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
ans bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps on Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhatta steaming in sea-vines
the washed land awakes again to wilderness
the only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
a cry of seabirds high over
in empty eternity
as the Hudson retakes its thickets
and Indians reclaim their canoes

First gelid dawn
of the dying year.

A crescent moon
shivers above
achromatic frost.

Four crows perch
like fluffy black
lumps of ice
on taut power lines.

Hungry sparrows peck
the severe ground.

The old poet
fears the cold.

Chilled eyes notice
bare ruined trees
and windshields
waiting to be scraped.

The earth has pulled
the covers up
around its neck,
wakes stiff and slow,
but stays in bed.

Cold's bony fingers
probe the old house
like burglars seeking
points of entry.

Still, the chill roads
point toward the
inevitable return
of warmth;
                  spring sits
silent as a cat waiting
for a door to open,
bidding its time
to counterattack.

Even on the most
algid morning
hope slumbers,
but never dies.

  ~mce

Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem

Because you always have a clock
strapped to your body, it's natural
that I should think of you as the
correct time:
with your long blonde hair at 8:03,
and your pulse-lightning ******* at
11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30,
I know I'm right

We Stopped At Perfect Days**

We stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something--

Word salad. Everyone a poet. But use the correct fork.
Sometimes you’re the road sign, sometimes the weary traveler.
Woke up craving attention again. The cat was unimpressed.
Pay no attention to my browsing history. I’m a writer, not a serial killer.
Women never want much, only everything you are or will be or can’t.
He said he would stuff my taco unlike any man before him,
and boy did he! So full! I’ve always wanted a man who could cook.
Some day’s, you just know that the jail time was worth it.
Dementor support group meets Thursday evening at Starbucks.
Cows who give milk for free only meet lecherous farmers.
Australia’s Oldest Man Knits Tiny Sweaters For Injured Penguins
Relearn the dying art of thinking before you ******* speak.
I scream. You scream. We come. Police come. Awkward.
Jumpin’ jizzimy Jehoshaphat. Sticky patrol cars. Safety catches.
Thought it was a loofah, but it turned out to be steel wool.
A few moments of pleasure. A full year of skin grafts.
Onan’s Handy Man Service. No job too small. Try me.
Sixty is the new 40? Try getting your ***** to believe that.
Often lost but never alone. Handy to have a hand handy. True love.
You meet the love of your life and find out she puts ketchup on pizza.
I never flirt with danger but danger just keeps on insisting.
Life hits like a girl. Thing is, like a girl that hits really hard.
She almost put on ******* today, it was a clothes call.
She lost me at: Forgot the safe word? Excellent! Here we go.
Her ad slogan: my greatest satisfaction, awakening your passion.
She dumped me because I just stood there with my moves drooping.
Watching Internet *** is like ******* without arms.
I bet that pride of yours doesn’t enjoy snuggling like I do.
Sobriety, never as delicious as an exquisite bad lifestyle buffet.
Ask your doctor before beginning the ****** and whiskey diet.
You don’t have to be desperately lonely to tweet, but it helps.
Yep. Something is happening. But you won’t know what it is.
The only fact is that you’ll never understand anything at all.
***** anything you like. After all, only everyone will see it.
Sleep children. Sweet Dreams. Dreams of angry cassowaries.
Nanny will be here to sweep up the pieces in the morning.

wake up and forgive your wrinkles...*

Women. Drink cultural Kool-Aid. Believing it.
Grey is old is ugly is useless. So very wrong.
Not fruit for one picking. Fecund. Many harvests.
Fifty is not over. Nor 60. Simply is. Immortal desire.
Time makes changes in everyone. In X and in Y.
Every human age has its own allure. Wake up.
Each woman, any moment, beautiful in her own way.
     Lovely laughter, soul, thoughts, feelings, touch.
     Forgive the lines around your eyes and such.
     Worthy of desire. Desirable. Desired. Much.

  ~mce

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.”*

History is gravity
pulling me helplessly
into time's abyss.

Forty-five years ago
the sound of guns

in Cambodia,
in a small Ohio town.

I am not
responsible for what
I could not
prevent.

Such a thankless truth.

Do your best
and get on with it.

Leave the lost wars
where they belong:
eternally lost.

Stop trying to explain
what you don't understand.

Do not listen
to the chattering
of Hungry Ghosts.

Walk in the Now
if you hope
to keep walking
at all.
   ~mce

So many
empty days,
lost faces,
frozen dreams
empty beds;
soon:
spring breezes,
the asphalt seas,
another voyage
in search of
Argos,
Ithaca,
Penelope,
peace.
- mce

"The most important piece of technology in any classroom is the second hand of the clock. The purpose is to teach millions of students the identical prayer: Please God, make it move faster."  

Derrick Jensen

the constant of fluxation

truth merely a moving power
mortality merely mereness

a genuine body
sincere energy
a spiritual purpose

quarks, leptons, bosons, berryyawns. mesons
lead to electrons, electronic, electric, energy

this too is a syntax

letters, words, phrases, sentences & soforth

syntax added meaning unfolds
the human becomes

a life lived with intelligence, patience and whimsy

unfolding
like a lily

syntax sails a real world
but only one of many

mind without cause is a noisome thing
it is possible that your ears will bleed


meanings
        diverge
               for
                  different
                           readers


there is really only one sentence per reader

for each line only
one proper break
    or silly jabber
         becomes toxic tropes

     it can take days to understand one idea

I have never understood the
significance of garter belts

proceed with addition

let us go then you and I
out beneath the weeping sky
and attempt to make something new
from what has been

Allow the brain's raw edge
to blow away the fluff and
bore down to pure syntax
unadorned.

most ideas are only nostalgia

writing on the computer
an imaginary ribbon types back

purge the fluff

blow away the frills

what really remains?

Culture?

the moaning and bleating
of cattle from a
moving truck's ***
                   doomed

consider all poetry
               a Lost and Found of consciousness

plagiarism an invention of  
lady freshman English teachers
with withered ******* seeking job security

oh poets of the world
find your lines here
be glad they were chosen
no longer in old ink frozen

made new  made new  made new

Born Again!

(can i get an amen...)

the Poet appropriates and incorporates
making the old new

oh! bursting creation!

fresh fire from fallen twigs

make it new! make it new! make it new!
(old ez bombastic but on point)

everything you
imagine is possible

alphabet, words, syntax = narrative
narrative the only reality
and you are The Magus
with power to create

but this calls for courage

again it is an alphabet
making a word endowed
by syntax with meaning

meaning as always
just one of so many
possible realities

created out of lack of time

if there were world enough and time
you could embrace multitudes

you could spasm out
a plethora
of galaxies nebula planets

only cursed by time
is limitation introduced

know the silent voice of the gods made visible

find the Center of Self
just what is and no more
    sentence
            syntax
                  skein

unr­avelling back to the Source

we are more
than we can ever be

  ~mce

~for Rimbaud

The same rules
you lived out
still apply:

Drink too much.
Take drugs.
Sleep with
too many women.
Drink too much.
Be irresponsible.
Squander
your money.
Drink too much.
Hurt those
who love you.
Drive them away.
Drink too much.
Overdose on silence.
Drown in solitude.
Drink too much.
Ignore consequences
Go quite mad.
Drink too much.

And then,
of course,
die young.
  - mce

To the many readers, I ******* with my poem about Bukowski.

I don't loathe Bukowski. My point is that he is a cult writer. His cult seems to be made up of people who are ignorant of other much better writers of his time. If they read the Beats (in particular Gary Snyder) or others like Richard Brautigan, Jim Harrison, Wendell Berry and many others, they would see how poorly his writing stands up to comparison.

Bukowski's persona is what seems to attract people. He knew that and cultivated it. It was his meal ticket. The poor, drunken, uncouth, outsider, loser who was scorned by the literati of his time. In truth, he was a writer of pulp poetry. What he needed was a good editor. You could take all of his books of poems, cut out the rambling, self-serving, tedious, self-glorifying *******, and cut them down to maybe two books of decent poetry. His prose is better, but not that much.

Young people, lacking better poetry for comparison, are mainly attracted by this cult of personality. Young people are attracted to rebels, even bogus ones. He himself said he didn't write, he just typed. Some hero.

He portrays himself as a big, tough *** willing to fight the whole world. Actually, he was a fat drunk barely six feet tall. That's why I laughed at him when he threatened me. I was 20, just three weeks back from Vietnam. The thought of fighting an old drunk seemed pathetic to me. I could have easily killed him. Who goes to a poetry reading for that?

There was also his attitude toward women. I believe he really hated women. He saw them as receptacles for his *****, nothing more. He used his fame to **** a good many young admirers. He's not alone in having done that, but he was obsessive about it. Women were a perk, nothing more.

In the end, his cult status will remain, but he will never be taken seriously as a writer, because - by his own admission - he wasn't. There is much excellent poetry out there by better writers of his time. Do yourself a favor, read them, educate yourself. If you only read mediocre poetry, you'll only ever be a mediocre poet.

Even at his most unheroic, he is the hero of his stories and poems, always demanding the reader’s covert approval. That is why he is so easy to love, especially for novice readers with little experience of the genuine challenges of poetry; and why, for more demanding readers, he remains so hard to admire.

Please: Join in. Tell me why I am wrong or right.

Mike Essig

Even after ten years
of living alone
the coal mine depth
of the morning silence
stuns me.
Time was, it could be
pierced by Mozart,
birdsong, poetry.
Now it has become
an impenetrable,
invisible wall
that I strain at
but cannot
hear through.
I accept that it
is permanent.
I know that when
the silence ends,
I will too.

"Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky." WHA

Easy to escape what you hate;
difficult to find what you love.

Handsomely equipped to fail,
we sail out into the world.

Disillusion follows disillusion
until disillusion becomes disillusion,
it's own gray Shade of life.

The old know they have failed.
They young suspect they will.

Take wing against the dead.
Craft waxen wings. Seek the sun.
Soar against all despair.

Better to tumble than not to try,
to fall far and furiously alive.

Try to breach that pure, Attic sky
where light and hope may reside,
once before you wither and die.

It begins with
nervous laughter,
creaking springs,
builds to
loud supplications
to Jesus and God,
ends in final
melting moans.

Funny how little
the notes vary;
more classical
than baroque;
more advertising
jingle than
hallelujah.

The simple sounds
of who we are,
where we come from,
what we do
to each other

played on mortal organs
by ardent amateurs,
overheard through
thin motel walls.

   - mce

I own a
black t-shirt
that proclaims
(on the back):

Disturbed Veteran
Do Not Approach

When I wear it,
mothers clutch
their children and
I am rarely jostled
in check out lines.
You'd think
I was a *****
asking to shake hands.
Mostly, they pretend
blindness and just
walk away as they
did long ago
when the war ended
*for them.

If I had $12 I'd
buy a bottle of whiskey
to ease the pain of poverty.
I don't.That is
exactly the definition
of poverty.

  ~mce

Step out of
your frigid bones.
Break into blossoms.
Snow-bells and crocuses.
Tentative daffodils.
Spring arrives
outlining a new world
and all that might imply.

Sunlight slants
on pale pink
cherry blossoms;

for exactly an instant,

I really See.

~mce

1.  If the enemy is in range, so are you.

2.  Incoming fire has the right of way.

3.  Don't look conspicuous, it draws fire.

4.  There is always a way.

5.  The easy way is always mined.

6.  Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.

7.  Professionals are predictable, it's the amateurs that are
    dangerous.

8.  The enemy invariably attacks on two occasions:

       a. When you're ready for them.
       b. When you're not ready for them.

9.  Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at.

10. If you can't remember, the claymore is pointed at you.

11. The enemy diversion you have been ignoring will be the main
    attack.

12. A "******* chest wound" is natures way of telling you to slow
    down.

13. If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush.

14. Never draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.

15. Anything you do can get you shot, including nothing.

16. Make it tough enough for the enemy to get in and you won't be
    able to get out.

17. Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself.

18. If you are short of everything but the enemy, you are in a
    combat zone.

19. When you have secured an area, don't forget to tell the enemy.

20. Never forget that your weapon is made by the lowest bidder.  

21. Friendly Fire Isn't.

And Mike's Three Corollaries:

1, Keep your head down.

2. Never pick up anything off the ground.

3. Never, ever, trust the locals, especially children.



Compiled by mce

Those lost in war
are mostly
gone for good,
but sometimes
their ghosts pry
my ears open
and softly
weep into them.
I can only listen
and wonder,
why not me?

  ~mce

Another day
to show up for.

Chores to do,
people to love,
choices to make:

nothing special.

Just what is,
just all that is,
just everything
that matters.
  - mce

"Nobody loves me but my mama baby
and you know she could be jiving too..."

Really nothing left to say.

~mced

After the Big War,
his uncles came home
(some of them)
different men but
bearing souvenirs
of devastation.

One was a rifle,
a Karabiner-98,
with stains of death
on its wooden stock.

His uncle wouldn't say
just how he got it.

When his uncle died,
the weapon came to him.

It spoke to him
of glory and bravery.

He was proud to hold
that dead German's gun.

Not many years later,
he returned, shattered,
from his own war.

His only souvenirs
burned in his head.

One *** shrouded night
he tossed the rifle into
the Susquehanna River.

Never again did he
own another weapon.

Comes a time for the
circle to be broken.

At 4am you are as alone
as the last Tasmanian Tiger.
You are a bundle of screaming nerves
with no skin to protect them.
Absolutely nothing matters:
not women, not friends
not ***, not money, not poverty,
not friends, not lovers,
not the future, not the past,
nothing at all. All that exists
is the terrible freedom
of the insignificant
blob of protoplasm that you are.
You know in your soul
that there is a strong possibility
that nothing means anything.
So you go back to bed
and anticipate remembering
nothing of this in the morning.
The bliss of unknowing
is your only hope
in a world of hurt.
Try it. Perhaps it will work.
It never stays 4am forever.

Be very careful.

You really don't
want
to catch this!

Could be fatal...

Certainly painful.
   ~mce

The heart
of the wood
burns hottest;
the heart
of a living man,
as well.

Both consume
themselves
to produce
light and heat.

A life of fire.

In the end,
only ashes
remain.

Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier (Canada)**

We all know you now.
You have fallen at our feet.
You have guarded them all
With life and limb,
Noble and brave
Only to fall
at the cowards last call.
You have stirred the souls
of the unknown heroes.
Their disgust shall seek the just dues
from your defamers and saboteurs.
Young lads who now
welcome you in the hereafter
Shall haunt your enemies from near or afar.
The drum rolls sound, as the rifles salute,
The pipes play "the Flowers of the Forest."
You are no more The Unknown Soldier.

Stroke her mind.
Caress her soul.
Touch her heart.
Pet her pride.
****** her dreams.
Cuddle her confidence.

Her body will
smile at you
without a
second thought.

  ~mce

I moved to this town
fifty-four years ago
to live in a house that
was a two and a half
bedroom half a double
with two parents and
six siblings in a
welter of tumultuous
chaos and disarray.

Being the oldest, I
hated the confused
congestion and constant
bickering and fled
at every opportunity
to the houses of
friends who had their
own rooms, enough to eat,
and even peace and quiet.

At seventeen, having
graduated from high school
(barely), I was out
the door in a heartbeat
and on to hippiedom,
Europe, the middle east
the draft, drugs, Vietnam,
marriage and my own life.

Now, forty-seven years
later, I live in a small
apartment in the other half
of that same double house
with only a cat.

My parents are departed.
Strangers own their half.

It is quiet and serene
and all mine.
                      Forty-seven
years of running to end up
a foot from where I began.

Even Odysseus couldn't
compete with that feat.

I enjoy living here now.

It is everything it
wasn't when I was a kid.

Still, the irony would
be apparent to an idiot.

Forty-seven years of
running in a circle.
Life, not so much a
journey as eternal return.

  ~mce

~ for a friend dead of cancer at 48.

We are no more
than fragile meat puppets.
Decades ago, I saw men
blown to tiny, random
bits of flesh.
When that happened,
we had a saying, a chant:
Don"t mean nothing.
Didn't mean the comrade
meant nothing, just that
death means nothing,
only life matters.
We all have a bullet
looking for us.
Your's found you too soon.
Still, your life was good.
Don't mean nothing.
I'll miss you.
   ~mce

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
      From: *The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Gee, You’re So Beautiful
   That It’s Starting to Rain**

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
     to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
     A

Computer Magic
     A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
     A

Finding out about Fish
     A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
     A+!

It is only a piece of fruit.
Take its fuzz in your hand
and make a vertical slice.
Seek that rift with your
hot and eager mouth.
Engulf it. Probe it gently
with your tongue and enter it
like a lover. **** hard and
take its sweet juices into
your mouth and enjoy them
dripping down over your chin,
sensuous, sticky moisture.
Lap at it until it is empty
and you are exhausted, spent,
fluidly full and fulfilled
with its satisfying succus.
After all, it is only a peach.

  ~mce

The whiskey bottle is empty.
Now there is a sufficiently
sad sentence. Succinct, too.
It speaks a grave-side quiet,
as when emptiness is all.
The whiskey bottle is empty.
Five words leading only
to a garbage can.
The whiskey bottle is empty.
The simple, declarative,
syntax of nothing.

   - mce

The coffins are sailing to a port near you.
Consider their lovely, dark sails.
how perfectly they catch the wind of death,
Think of them as bringing you precious gifts
on the Christmas Morning of Doom.
Forget the card. Be the first to unwrap yours.
Don't be concerned about returning it.
You can be sure it will fit you perfectly.

1 - Sweep out the International Space Station.
2 - Eat Kale every day and like it.
3 - Learn to know and like a republican.
4 - Become a Mixed Martial Arts champion.
5 - Be kind to extinct wolverines.
6 - Develop at taste for Rap music.
7 - Explore gastronomic excess with you $16 in food stamps.
8 - Teach the cat how to vacuum and dust.
9 - Find the last person under 30 without a smartphone.
10 - Figure out why God created Twitter.
11 - Solve the riddle of what women really want.

12 - Give up on all the above by Ground Hog Day.

  ~mce