She has it all:

wit, intelligence
and beauty,
but denies them
as if to be special
is somehow
a shame.

She keeps her heart
deep within a castle:
moat, drawbridge,
walls, keep and towers
to keep hurt away.

If you want her you
must lay siege
to the fortress,
slowly break down
all obstacles,
replace them
with trust.

You must win
her by being
patient and worthy.

I am an old soldier
but my will
remains stronger
than most.

I have one
more campaign
left in me.

I will take
this citadel,
overcome
these obstacles
or break my heart
on its walls.

Defeat is not
an option where
such a prize
awaits.

"Once more into
the breach."

   ~mce

Let us sink and seek the miraculous,
steal from the clothesline of nostalgia.
The crushing weight of a pith helmet.
The quandary that every exit out opens in.
What is not remembered still exists;
the song never plucked rings still.
Cease stifling epistemological *******.
In the end, very few will comprehend.
Hard feet on a bare-wood floor. Then flush.
Iced sausages and cold blood for breakfast.
French toast boasts an aftertaste of paper.
Sign on cafe: Enter ye and be devoured.
It is always eat up or be eaten up.
What is the reference of it in that sentence.
Converse with horses in a dingy sushi bar.
Horoscopes promise passionate promiscuity.
Sometimes cigars can act like ******.
Two hours of smoke an extended ******.
Purchase a pack of Godzillas. Enjoy.
You are responsible for whatever you read.
Do not assault my ears for explanations.
Pluck pantaloons from that nostalgic rope.
Wear them well where you will wear them.
Feel the miraculous swell and understand.

Waking up
where
you don't
want to be;
slice it
as you like
baby,
sounds like
prison
to me.
  ~ mce

After Work**

The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
     on your *******.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
     hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood

we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
            drinking wine.

for Leonard Cohen
RIP*

That holy voice that undid the buttons of dresses
whispered them off shoulders onto the floor;
songs that celebrated the pellucid sky of Greece;
the dark confessions of hustlers and junkies;
Abraham poised with the knife of obedience;
the desperate Hallelujah of broken kings;
razors in the hands of beautiful losers;
generous assignations in dingy hotels;
the singular Glory of the god of Art;
spoken in the minor chords of death;
celebrating the discordant mystery of life;
danced to the very end of love, never missing a step.

My brothers and I
have a family saying
about getting drunk
or ******:
It's never too early
and it's never too late.

Although I have given
up power drinking
(age, hepatitis, liver, etc.),
I still, very occasionally,
enjoy getting drunk in the
middle of the day.

It is so warm, so soft,
so languorous.

And, of course, it is
frowned upon as weakness
by those of virtue.

But I have made a life out
of laughing at those frowns

and I hope I never stop.

  ~mce

by Veronica A. Shoffstall*  

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean possession
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept
your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
burns if you get too much so you plant your
own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn...

The day's inertia grips an old, cold body.
Too dangerous to doze while ice melts.
Early morning commotion at the brain station.
An unnamed bird tweets but lacks followers.
Gesticulation of unknown parts. Shake the
waking brain: dissolve the haze of logic.
A Day Of Decision: to shave or not to shave.
Curse all the rules you learned in schools.
The difficulty of simultaneously breaking out
and in. White boys with hoodie-heads clearly
ignorant of color wheels. Each word waffle
in the mind meaning means. This craft makes
crazy but air and fire clarify these lines.
Poets voluntary outlaws in American eyes.
Who needs shrink wrapped verses? You are
implicated in whatever you choose to read.
Do not interrupt and demand exegesis;
we do not deal in scripture or litany;
you may only get the interpretation of wolves.
Only this blinky moment of alphabet unites us.
You are changed by this reading
if you get my memeing or not.
Armageddon is your beard to scratch. Have at it.

I practice
Pai Lum Kung-Fu,
which at 63
may seem absurd.

Not to be
a tough guy,
those days
are over.

Just to feel
the flow.

A martial art
is like poetry:
you work
your whole life
and never
perfect it.

So what
if the lovely
seventeen-year-old
girl beside me
can stretch
like Gumby
and the lean, mean
twenty-something
kid always
finds my nose.

It is meditation
for the body.

When it works,
it is being,
not doing.

You don't do
the technique,
you are
the technique.

The joy is in
the effort,
not the result.

  ~mce

If you have a country
where you pay workers
ten dollars an hour
to do $25 worth of work,
you will end up
with a ten dollar country,

and a growing mass
of angry, frustrated,
hopeless people.

Think of a powder keg.
Now think of a match.

Now think of an explosion.

Boom!

   ~mce

It all began with a cry in the night,
a slap on the ***, a blast of bright light.
The world unfolded like a dying rose,
a palette of joys, a whisper of woes.
The years slipped by, they crawled so fast
until you found yourself old at last.
A man with a cat in a silent room,
who’d laughed at death and courted doom.
The piles of drugs, the nights of loss,
the laughter, the money and all the dross,
that led you to this lonely place,
this weary body, this sagging face;
the years spent longing for a rainbow sign,
the nights of lovers, the nights of wine.
And what can you do now it's come to this?
Keep hoping for the holy kiss
that might redeem your broken soul,
and make you wise, and make you whole.
You've left everything that you ever knew,
listening for trumpets that never blew.
Now life has come down to this lonely place
with mirrors of memories and that sagging face,
and no real hope that anything more
than the life you've lived remains in store.
Forget the future, it's fled at last,
your days run backwards toward the past,
until you let out a cry in the night
and accept the dying of the light.

Poetry is a river running.

You know it is there and
sometimes you take
long walks on its banks.

One day, a Muse emerges
and calls out your name
in a magikal language.

Suddenly, you know
where you belong.

You jump in, surface,
roll over and float,
but remain immersed
for the rest of your life:

mesmerized, flowing,

speaking only in poems.

  ~mce

When you come of age
among Camaros, Mustangs,
GTO's and Challengers,
it seems somehow sad
to hear the pussified sound
of a Prius go puttering by
like Death driving
something sensible.

  ~mce

Good morning,
gentle readers.

If I could,
I would
bring you
flowers and
latte and kiss
your blues
away.

Really.
    ~mce

If you say
the noun
Nebraska
to any
easterner
their eyes
will glaze
like doughnuts.

But if you
go there
and experience
the exquisite
loneliness
of the Niobrara,
the empty
intensity of
the Sand Hills,
the primordial cry
of the Cranes
and more stars
than you could
imagine one sky
could ever hold,
it will fill
your soul
to bursting

and you will
never again
belong wholly
to your thin
strip of coast.

  ~mce

My laptop's
harddrive
sounds like gears
grinding.

I think
its time
will be soon.

How sadly mortal
these machines.

Announced
in glory,
soon they die
in obscurity.

I'd feel sad
if I didn't
hate them so.
  ~mce

my brain burns
and i can't sleep

too much poetry
too many difficult books

a part of my head
has popped open

i believe i have
a metaphysical hernia
brought on by
too much thinking

only one thing to do

truss it up tightly
and turn on reality TV

after a few episodes
my brain turns to mush
and the swelling
subsides.

brain dead bliss
not a synapse firing

absolute relief
of no thought

perfect slumber
of the seriously
stupid

Hoka hey.*

Each day a death and a loss.
Old friends, old lovers, old heroes.
A brain that draws a blank.
Knees that hurt. A back that aches.
Tentative steps down the Ghost Road.
An age of slowly letting go.
A time of things falling away
like leaves from an autumn maple.
Where we all go, in our own time.
A track through twilight to darkness
and then, we hope, into the light.

Death is a ******
who never misses.
He stalks us all,
calmly awaiting
the proper moment,
takes perfect aim, fires,
and thinks we are gone.
Looking anxiously
over your shoulder
will not avail.
Death is patience incarnate.
He is a gatherer,
ceaselessly collecting,
eternally foraging,
and when he finds us
he slips us into his bag
and thinks we are gone.
Death is a messenger
delivering the telegram
that says our time is up.
He reads it to us
and thinks we are gone.
Death is a conductor
who calls a stop,
sees us off the train
and thinks we are gone.

But death is mistaken.

Death is certain,
but it is not final.
The world we touched
is changed forever
by our journey in it,
however brief or long.
Something of us remains
in a child, a garden,
a painting, a poem,
a kiss, a caress,
a gasping ******.
Our hearts stop beating,
but breath does not depart.
It floats in clouds
of atoms that we were.
Those we leave behind
have only to inhale
and once again
we are with them,
and within them.
Bodies die; love never does.
Each life, sacred and eternal,
inspires Creation.
We are never truly gone.

Ah, four
in the morning
my old nemesis.

It has been
awhile since
our last visit.

I have not missed you.

Yet we meet again.

Four in the morning,
the corpse of time,
the still moment
between life's
dubious heartbeats,
when blood sugar
takes a vacation
to the cellar,
when the blues
were invented.

When Mother Angst
knits copious
black sweaters
for doomed souls,
when you hear
the black snake moan
just outside
your swarthy window
and ghouls roam
the aisles of 24/7
grocery stores.

When the loneliness
thickens enough
to drive a
Romantic Poet
into therapy,
when only the Devil
is awake writing
lesson plans in Hell
and the JuJu waxes
evil and ready
to lead you to
some preordained
apocalyptic surprise.

When Thanatos
smiles and proffers
a deep French kiss.

Here we are,
together again, met
in your tenebrous
Kingdom of Tragedy.

I say we have coffee
and do some catching up
as I hope beyond hope
that we do not meet again
for a long, long time.

Four in the morning,
no friend of mine.

  ~mce

abhor circular time. clocks as monstrosities. dream eternity.
the immensity of everything. existence is elsewhere,
but life is here. in explosive silences, inexpressible delights,
truthful illusions, authentic falsehoods, slippery nights.
let sense and spirit sing a long song of your knowing heart.
exiled on earth in scornful times, become a bard of desire.
heart songs, earth songs, lust songs. amazingly human songs.
after all, flowers still spill perfume. drink it up.
study the mathematics of memory. the equations of living.
the trajectories of silence. the physics of poetry.
penetrate the disquieting muse. seek screeching squeals of joy.
all this has happened before. It will all happen again.
everything repeats in cycles, absolute and endless. return.
   dive into the infinity of the gyre.
   imbibe its cold, invigorating fire.

When life offers up
the inevitable two choices,
say *******,
invent a third,
and make it your own.
   ~mce

They swim the cesspit
of greed and usury
mouths wide open
hungry always
for more
and deserving it,
too.

~ mce

Some days
nothing
is the most
eloquent
statement
you can
make.
Shout it
out.
- mce

The ignorant religious
are fond of quoting Jesus:
"The poor you have
with you always."

They never mention
he didn't say to
sit on your ***
and not do anything
about it.

~mce

by Barry Lopez**

I'd heard so much good
about this place,
how the animals were cared for
in special exhibits. But

when I arrived I saw even
prairie dogs had gone crazy in
the viewing pits; Javelina had no mud to
squat in, to cool down; Otter was
exposed on every side, even in his den.
Wolf paced like a mustang,
tongue lolling and crazy-eyed,
unable to see anyone who looked like
he did–only Deer, dozing opposite in
a chainlink pen.

Signs explain
the animals are good because
they **** animals who like oats
or corn too much.

Skunk has sprayed himself out,
with people rapping on his glass
box. Badger's gone to sleep
under a red light and children ask
if he's dead in there (dreaming of dead
silence). And
Cougar stares like a clubbed fish
into one steel corner all morning, figuring.

Only Coyote doesn't seem to care, asleep under a
creosote bush, waiting it out.

Even the birds are walled up here,
held steady in chicken-wire cages for
the staring, for souvenir photos.
And this, on the bars for Eagle:

      The bald eagle was
      taken as a fledgling
      from a nest in New
      Mexico by an
      Indian. He planned on
      pulling feathers for cer-
      emonial headdresses
      every year. The
      federal government seized
      the bird and turned
      it over to the
      Desert Reserve
      for safekeeping.

Bear walks in his own
***, smells concrete
and his own **** all day long.
He wipes his nose on the wall,
trying to **** it.

At night when management is gone,
only the night watch left,
the animals begin keening: now
voices of Wood Duck and
Turtle, of Kit Fox and everyone else,
Bear too, lift up like the bellowing
of stars and kick the walls.

14 miles away, in Tucson, are movie houses,
cold beers and roads out of town,
but they say animals know how to pass the time
well enough. And after a few beers
they'll be just like Indians–
get drunk, fall down and spoil it all.

"Men only notice two categories of women's clothing: off and on."
   From: *High Tide in Tucson

Darkness and cold
press like death
upon my windows.
Each year,
harder and harder
to fend them off.
Slowly, surely,
each winter,
they creep deeper
into my soul.
Light and warmth,
only fading memories
of spring, youth
and you.

Wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.*

Within the
scrambled syntax
of lust we seek
the certain
grammar of love.
Choose any noun
I’ll become
your adjective;
Choose any verb,
I’ll modify you.
Together we will
birth a single
perfect sentence:
complete, simple,
compound, complex,
wholly… us.

  ~mce

Check every treeline,
the enemy lurks there.
Get used to people acting
like you are tainted.
Scan the rooftops when you walk;
examine the bushes.
When entering a public space,
look for an alternative exit.
Notice every face you see;
especially children, you never know.
Self-medicate. Whatever it takes.
Whiskey for breakfast, speed for lunch,
****** for dinner. **** their opinions.
Spend endless hours talking
with clueless shrinks and doctors.
Spin violently when anyone
taps you on the shoulder.
Strain your ears for the sound
of long silent mortars.
Never sit with your back to a door.
Remember Wild Bill.
Keep a weapon nearby when you sleep,
if you do.
Cringe like a beaten dog
at every loud noise.
Worry about everything because
you know the world wants to **** you,
because you know what expendable means.
Repeat all of this and more for 45 years
until your brain feels
like sloppy scrambled eggs.
And, of course,
don't forget to love your country.

  ~mce

Poetry as a mental illness.
Interesting proposition.

Poets do not see like others.
Poets do not feel like others.
Often, they do not live like others.
Ergo: Poets are not like others.

Assuming others are normal
(assuming that normal exists)
then poets are not normal.

Does that make poetry a mental illness?

I haven't a clue and the mad-hatter
is throwing a party for which
I cannot be late. Forget normal.
Come along. We shall take tea
and play croquet with
flamingoes and hedgehogs,
while speaking in puzzles and rhymes.

That feels normal enough to me.
   ~mce

Somehow, Sweet Lady

(how is a mystery yet)

I want to know you

beyond the confines of words

in a setting

(perhaps a magical bower)

where we can escape
the compromise of language,

(a magical bower does sound nice);

where we communicate
like trees in the wind
or tulips touching
on a breezy day in spring.

A place where a glance,
a touch or a smile says it all.

Where words do not
confound understanding.

(Definitely a magical bower!)

I am going to pursue this
(though it's an odd task
for a poet to undertake).

I'll post an ad on Craigslist:

Seeking magical bower for two:
must be a circle of silence
where gesture and touch reign.

And we will go there and live

(in that magical bower)

in our own quiet knowing
with nothing more to say
than what can be said
by the enchanted music of bodies,

(in a magical bower)

where I can love you
as hushed and completely
as those trees, those tulips.

   ~mce

Every life,
a history crafted
from memory
and oblivion.

The forgotten,
misplaced,
and excluded
have a voice.

White spaces
on a printed page;
emptiness
between
notes of music;
missing children;
cold loves;
dead comrades...

Silence
speaks aloud
when we
quiet our souls
and listen.

Stories
we don't tell,
but know,
saved within
the labyrinthine,
lost libraries
of the heart.
  - mce

Rather seek a mad climate:
happy, peaceful, elegant.
By brilliant abstractions lit.
A revolution must occur
in the people's minds
years before
the Revolution occurs.
Plant a seed. Pray for rain.
Life languishes
where usury pervades,
ignorance doth flourish.
The arts a septic sewer.
The marketplace a God.
Carcasses for sacrifice.
Remove base appetite
and this generation dies.
Send them on their way.
Flush the bankers.
Lose all interest. Live
to write another day.

~mce

The Day Lady Died**

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton  
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun  
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets  
in Ghana are doing these days
                                                        I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)  
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life  
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine  
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do  
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or  
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and  
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue  
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and  
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

He awoke
this morning
infested with
Angels.

Dreams erased
his sleep.

The Angels
mumble in
his heart.

He feels their
vibrations.

They clamor
like divine
tapeworms.

They seem to
be telling
him the
Truth,
but he can't
hear them
clearly.

This is either
Enlightenmnent
or he needs
the services of
a good Vet.

~ for FK

He fell asleep a defunct and uncertain mortal,
but in that night of wavering visions
he dreamed of crocodiles and lilacs
each blossoming according to its own nature.
That made a sort of sense.
Telephones rang and creditors questioned.
Fishermen returned from the sea with boats full of water
which they easily traded for vast quantities of oxygen.
The crocodiles were fragrant and the lilacs smiled.
That, too, made a sort of sense.
One melancholy action flung itself upon the stars
and vanished from the satisfied earth.
He loved God and Satan simultaneously
and in their delight they reopened the Garden
feeling once more the necessity of affection
and directed him to eat his fill.
Who can argue with such divine logic?
All his ex-lovers sent telegrams expressing regret.
The gold he never had swelled his coffers.
He decided this dream was too lovely to end.
And yet, how to make sense of this gloaming cornucopia?
The answer struck him obvious as an earthquake:
forget the prisons of words; take new orders;
laugh with the crocodiles; dance with the lilacs;
become a man of action; imbibe Ambrosia for breakfast;
devour Manna  for lunch; **** astonishing flowers.
This makes perfect sense.

  - mce

She kissed like barbed wire,
bruised his kidneys
with her vise grip thighs,
clenched his ****
like an anaconda,
climaxed like a volcano
spewing screams,
moaning like a torture victim;
always wanted more, deeper,
faster, harder, now.

She was the wanton
wild, *******
every guy longs to meet,
ravaging his bed,
bruising his body,
******* him dry

and he couldn't run away
fast or far or soon enough.

  ~mce

Poetry is so hard to find,
quite like love.
When you do, you must
write it like a check
you owe for allowing it
to express how the world
comes to mean anything at all:
to cover the debt you pay
for being, for flashing brightly
before the day begins
to crumble.

  ~mce

Let us take
an impossible
road trip
through each
other's worlds.

Bring a bag,
I'll bring one,
too.

Away we'll sail
across
the asphalt seas:
finding adventure,
making love,
counting birds,
looking at each other,
exploring ruins,
asking the right
questions.

Eventually,
we will arrive
at our destination
being two, in one,
together.

Finally, home.

  ~mce

Our deaths will be
transformed into
driftwood washed up
on terra incognita
and gathered
for firewood by
savages who cannot
imagine what we were
but will enjoy the
anonymous warmth
we have gifted them.

  ~mce

I own a huge,
dazzlingly
blue emu egg
given me
by two lovely
young women
who used to make
omelets for lions;
beauty emerges
from even
the most unlikely
orifices.
  - mce

The cosmos is deaf,
and mute, too.

We are the beings
who strut about
muttering words
we turn into stories.

We then call these tales
our lives and blame
them on the cosmos.

The cosmos can't hear
our pathetic laments
and wouldn't care
if it could.

It is too busy
just being the cosmos.

~ mce

for Jim Harrison

The very definition of Exuberance,
life squeezed of life's juices drop by drop.
each lovely female bottom lovingly observed and graded.
every delectable morsel chewed to digestive ecstasy;
wine and bourbon straining like blossoms in springtime;
trout, bear, javelina and ravens known personally;
rivers encountered both above and within;
genuine tears evoked by dogs past;
appetites that won't be denied;
sentences that strike like rattlesnakes;
that lone, probing eye
that even Galileo would have envied.
A Man in the old sense, disappearing,
content with love, nature and war;
what writer could hope
to be anything more?
   - mce

and there comes that moment call it the first adult moment at 17 from heartbreak or at 20 fighting a lost war when the realization of emptiness attends you and you know in your testicles or ovaries that god is deaf chaos rules eternally the universe stands indifferent and you are but a carbuncle on the cosmos' *** alone and forever alone and that moment may be debilitating or delightful enslaving or freeing and your life is launched upon a trajectory that you can never escape it is a moment of depression or bliss depending on your malleable personality and temperament and you will never ever be the same again...

We are not
unlike serpents:
at intervals
we must shed
our skins and
enter new lives.

Are you uncomfortable
in the comfort
you have created?
Do you itch for no reason
you can think of?
Do you long
for the scent
of flowers you
have never seen?
Do desire flesh
you have not met?

Lives wear out.

Someone new
longs to be born.

It may be time
to molt and bolt.

New lives,
new roads.

The Dharma
wheel spins
trailing wonders.

Live or die,
we must follow.

  ~mce

All these decades
thirsting in the wilderness
and still I refuse
to drink the kool-aid.
   - mce

Han-Shan got it right:

the fewer people,
the fewer distractions;
welcome visitors,
but discourage guests.

Drink to ecstasy,
but not remorse.

Let your children
lead their own lives.

Expect nothing
from anyone;
you will never
be disappointed.

Assume that death
waits outside
right now,
holding your car keys.

Keep your nose
on the cosmic grindstone;

keep you fingers
on the Dharma throttle;

place preparedness
for resurrection
at the top
of your to-do list:

nothing, but this
solitary moment,
is guaranteed.
- mce

The twin pockets of love and money.
You wake up and there they are:
one far away and perhaps impossible,
the other merely nonexistent and empty.
You dreamt of an old friend cut in half
by an unlucky burst of machine gun fire.
You wake up angry, lethal and mean.
You want to strangle the world
or whoever you happen to meet first.
Unless you wish jail, ruin, or the chair
this is a good time to simply disappear.
You need to hide away from the world
until your rage subsides and calm returns.
Like Grendel, you must slink back into your den
and let the blood-lust dissipate.
If you don't, someone is going to die.
And it will probably be me.

Have you ever
stopped and considered
where all those
typewriters went?

I am just eccentric
enough to do so.

I imagine them in
a heap lofty as K-2
somewhere in
the Nevada desert
mothballed by the CIA
against the time
when words become
scarce and expensive.

In the meantime,
when the stars
align just right
they chatter out

massifs of sentences
that are only
published in silence

and read by rattlesnakes
and passing coyotes.

It is a such sad thing
to outlast your audience.

   ~mce