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Mike Essig Jan 2016
for Nietzsche*

Relax a bit.
Stop being so
****** Germanic.
Too much questing
after the truth
engenders, finally,
heartburn
and hemorrhoids.
Purge yourself.
**** epistemology.
Eat a paw paw.
Have a drink.
Count the cobwebs.
Learn to know
your toes.
Put that book
back on the shelf.
Accept the sunshine
that may illuminate
an uncritical moment.
Bask in it.
Release your mind
to wander aimlessly
in nature's delight.
Penetrate the Goddess.
Become the lover
content to enjoy
what cannot last,
what will be lost.
Save your questions
for a cloudy day.
There is more
to knowing
than knowledge
can say.
  - mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
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
You can't hear everything with your ears.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
I have not
unleashed my heart
for many years;
it's so old,
it's almost new.
But I offer it
now to you.
Not a perfect
offering;
it has many
cracks.
Be gentle.
It only wants
to rub up
against yours.
   ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2016
Disdaining experts, he specializes in
generalizations. He knows just enough
about everything and almost everything
about nothing. It won't earn him a Ph.D. or
gainful employment, but it's much more fun.
Poetry, like physics, announces the universe.
Who would not want to be
the town crier of eternity?

  ~mce
Mike Essig Dec 2015
Μάλια 1969/PA 2015*

Last night you came
to me in a dream,
vivid, alive, your eyes
still sparkling like
those perfect Greek stars.
Time's tears diminish or
erase most memories,
but some faces, like
like sun on Attic water,
shine too brightly
for even nearly
fifty years to fade.
I hope you are safe.
I hope you are happy.
I hope you stop by
my dreams again
sometime.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Nov 2016
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.
Mike Essig Nov 2015
Sometimes, for no
apparent reason,
I am reduced to a
fulminating idiot,
quivering and
flummoxed by
divergent impulses.

Do I hit the panic button
that will eject me to
anywhere but myself
or simply yawn
and take a nap?

This may be a proof of
The Uncertainty Theorem.

I'm not sure.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Nov 2015
The cosmos are 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
Mike Essig Feb 2017
The Cosmos is deaf,
mute, and dumb, too.

We humans make up stories
and call them our lives.

When the stories
don't turn out well,
we curse the Cosmos.

Such hubris!

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

It's too busy just
being the Cosmos.
Mike Essig Nov 2015
No devils,
no pitchforks,
no screams,
no fire,
no brimstone:
just
more people
and another
day.
  - mce
Mike Essig Aug 2016
Night of no moon. No twinkles. Poet time.
Murk of morning not yet become. Stygian.
Sky of two minds. Janus of covering clouds.
When does when begin? When does then end?
A dash of light tips the balance. Revision.
Syntax of the soul at 4 AM. Garbled images.
Why do bards embrace the darkness? Home?
Shades of past lives stumble in the gloom.
Portals to worlds lived and lost. Open.
Lovers with forgotten names once more whisper.
Friends long in graves stir and grumble.
Every single thing lost names itself found.
A slow sharpening into definition, detail,
becoming what those They insist is real.
   Wake to a world that’s barely now,
   live in a now that’s then. Somehow.
Mike Essig Jun 2015
He spent his day in
hell's reading room,
so now he is trying
to put out the flames
in his brain
which threaten
to consume it
entirely.

He does not try
very hard.

His mind wanders
to death
at a crossroads,
names without meaning,
how so much love
fossilizes in the air.

It grows hotter
and hotter.

His nervous system
recoils in horror
like a defiled angel.

Purity seems the
better choice.

Even though
the flames stretch
out tortured hands,
he tries no harder.

He is lost
in the kingdom
of words.

A kingdom
only burning cleanses.

He hears Cerebrus
barking.

~mce
Mike Essig May 2015
If only you loved me
I would be a better man.
Less angry, more gentle.
But on this chilly morning
you are far away and unlikely.
Still, hope sticks.
I must only endure to find out.
She loves me; she loves me not.
Showered by your kisses,
I could live the life I ought to.
I could be lenient, soft, smooth,
forgiving, tender, calm, serene.
I own a good but wounded heart.
Kiss me Lover and hold me tight.
Help me to be the man I can be.
I will pay you back with a love
beyond any  ever known.

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

  ~mce
Mike Essig Oct 2015
My day was spent Here
reading, writing,
meditating and practicing
kung fu forms,
quite content Here in my
aging baby boomer bubble.

I know that Somewhere

a surgeon struggles
to save the legs of a child
blown off by a landmine
from some forgotten war

and Somewhere

a startled soldier
who never knew what hit him
slowly burns to death
in his mangled humvee

and Somewhere

a shy small Muslim woman
trips the timer on
her suicide vest
and walks into
a marketplace prepared
to die for her god,

but I have lived those lives.

Here and now,
I am no longer a man
of this century
or even this
dying digital world;

no longer
in the Somewhere,
Now content to
play out my hand,

to just be
in the Here.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Sep 2015
by Anne Sexton**

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my **** arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
Mike Essig May 2015
Thinking of you,
my brain stutters
like a broken radio
crying for mercy;

my eyes quiver
at the shining
of invisible
volitant objects;

my ears tremble
to the silent tunes
of ecstatic
unsung hallelujahs;

my lips seal
from the impossible
pressure
of your beauty.

Where
is the end
to this.

No worries.

Come lover,
I would
gladly discover
your  powers

over the rest
of me.
~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Sometimes naked,
Sometimes mad,
Now the scholar,
Now the fool,
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.
Mike Essig Mar 2016
For Jim Harrison, 1938–2016*

Everyone takes the Ghost Road. End as beginning. Flowing.
You loved water more than fish, birds, even poetry.
Now your soul is immersed in infinite waters. Paradise.
Now you swim the particles. Fish the waves. Dead eye open.
Nothing foreign. Parts. Whole. Served. Serving. Never alone.
Jim Harrison, the man I have long considered America's best living poet and novelist, took the Ghost Road today. I have read every word he has ever written, some many times. I have proselytized for his work for over 30 years. I never met the man but I feel I have lost one of my closest friends. My world is a lonelier place. Water ran through all of his works. Wherever you are Jim, I hope the waters flow. Swim in peace. Hokahey.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Holy are the days of boredom.
Holy are the days of loneliness.
Holy are the days of pain.

Pick a place to die and be content.

Life divided by time,
where time is the unknown,
always equals death.

Forget this fatal equation.

Weave the threads of memory
into tapestries of ritual;
rituals engender meaning.

Refuse to live an amputated life.

Remember that only joy slows the ticking clock.

Holy are the days that remain.
  mce
Mike Essig Oct 2015
~ for Paul Eluard

This prison isn't so bad.
Though the nights are cold,
tree roots break in to warm him.
The guards hum Mozart arias
which are profoundly comforting
and the food drives away
all expectations of hunger.
The sun is black but reassuring;
the moon has gone missing.
The books he doesn't have pass the time.
The caresses of absent women soothe his body.
Many birds choose not to sing
but invisible cats purr delightfully.
Often he is offered parole,
but can't imagine a better situation
and chooses to remain in his comfy cell.
Solitude sings sweet remembered songs
and all the trenches are far away.
Sometimes he misses the smells of flowers
but that soon passes and anyway
grass sprouts in the yard
surrounded by concertina wire.
Sometimes butterflies light upon it,
deliciously anomalous.
Nothing occupies him every day;
He is comfortable here and plans to stay.
   - mce
rp
Mike Essig May 2015
“Here is a secret you won't learn in your temple.
The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal,
because any moment might be our last.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.”
~ Achilles
Mike Essig Sep 2015
I live in that
tiny margin
between
the haves and
the homeless.
It makes
an interesting
but precarious
life. There is
no room for error.
A bad tooth,
a dead car and
things can
fall apart.
But you learn
to trust your
luck and wits.
It is like a
long range
wartime patrol
where any
surprises
will be bad.
Even so
I like it:
want little,
need little,
be happy.
Poetry and
a great fat cat.
When I make it
to my next
social insecurity
check with
more than
five dollars
remaining
in my account
I am joyous.
There are
far worse endings.
Just an old monk
from the last
century
trying to
survive a while
longer yet
in this
strange new one,
just breathing
until I'm not
anymore.

   ~mce
Mike Essig Sep 2015
He was That Guy in high school.
You know who I mean, That Guy
who scored the winning touchdown,
who won a National Merit Scholarship,
who got accepted at Yale and Princetown,
who made everything look so easy,
Who was voted best looking,
most likely to succeed, most athletic,
who got blow jobs from grateful cheerleaders
and even ****** Mademoiselle Marsh
the **** French teacher as a senior
the day he gave the valedictory speech.
Everybody knows some Guy like That.
He is the Golden Guy who will never rust.
Only This Guy made an honest error.
The country at war, he felt his duty
and joined the Marine Corps in 1967.
He left a leg at Hue during Tet
and won a bunch of medals, but
a very Different Guy came home.
Yale and Princetown were ghosts.
He rented a room and tended bar
and he could hop those drinks
faster than anyone else,
but mostly he sat in his room,
saw and spoke to no one,
spinning reruns in his head
and drank and drank and drank
until someone discovered him dead.
Twenty-four and game over.
Sure, you knew That Guy.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Obviously,
the path
to salvation
took a detour
and missed
my house.

That's OK:
rather Pirate Hell
than Christian Heaven.

Finer wenches
down there,
better beer,
and anyhow,
I am allergic
to clouds.
  ~  mce
Another pirate poem. Just can't help myself.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
I have
often wondered
how a woman
would react
to an honest
man.

I have
often wondered
how a man
would react
to an honest
woman.

Just to be
naked
does not
ensure
honesty.

Lifetimes
of saying
and doing
what we
think
the other
wants.

Shapeshifting,
veils,
the dance
of deception.

Perhaps
they would be
too stunned
to react
at all.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2016
Sing me your pain, Love,
and I will sing you mine.
Together, we will make
a harmony of dissonance.
Lift your voice with me.
Let us make a song
against the darkness.
However brief and fragile,
the melody belongs to us.
What more can there be?
What more is necessary?
  - mce
Mike Essig May 2015
Hold the feathers.
Soon enough
the earth will turn
and it will be
tomorrow
in the only world
I am certain of.
I do not require
anything more
than that.
   ~mce
Mike Essig May 2015
I want to breath your perfect breath
I want you dance me to edge of death.

The time short, the night is long,
indulge me the joy of this final song.

Sing me a simple lover's lullaby,
bring me to life before I die.

I want to see the Glory through the lies,
Just one last time through your green eyes.

Let me remember how to be young
before I vanish and the song is sung.

   ~mce
R.L.***
Mike Essig Apr 2015
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Hope only ends with death. While you remain, it remains.
Mike Essig Mar 2017
Call out for Love.
Call out for Love.
Call out for Love.

Repeat until it becomes
a chant, an incantation,
a summoning, a charm.

Expect no answer.

Love is a tattered,
weary ***** standing
on an unlucky corner.

Her feet hurt and she
wants to go home alone.

She is disenchanted
of desire; dog-tired of
endlessly being needed.

Love does not listen.
Love does not hear.
Love does not respond.

Love owes you nothing
and pays her debt in full.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
The old
think the young
can't know anything
of importance
at their age.

The young
think the old
have forgotten
how to feel
anything
at their age.

What a waste
of knowing
and feeling.

Every age
has it's own
wisdom, feeling,
passion.

How to cross
that rope?
   ~mce
Mike Essig May 2015
When we meet
I will not
even say hello.
I will take you
in my arms
and kiss you
so hard you will
begin to melt
as will I
and finally
we will become
one hot,
steaming puddle
on the floor
with nobody
else to say
hello to.

~mce
Mike Essig Jul 2015
~ for Erwin Schrödinger

Facts are light;
sometimes photons,
sometimes waves,
always dancing,
never for certain,
purely the creation
of the observer,
only the stories
we tell ourselves
about what is,
the dramas
we act out
on the stages
of imagination,
in the theaters
of our hearts.
  - mce
Mike Essig Aug 2015
For Louise*

When we meet,
we will know;
there is no fast,
only slow.

  mce
Mike Essig Nov 2015
The poem of the heart
must be the poem of the body.
The imagination of the flesh
contains the pure source
of all poetry.
Touch yourself in
silence and gasp
your words into
                         the world.
  - mce
Mike Essig May 2015
I broke my soul
and lived
in an empty world
until madness
set me free.

Few people
have heard
as much silence
as I have
nor accomplished
as much nothing.

And yet,
content,
I sit here
being what I am
expecting
nothing more.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2016
Embrace the impossible.
Exclude no mixtures.
Learn the secret, lost
signatures of things.
Immerse yourself in the
language of silk and thighs.
Assume you are only
one step away from success.
Take the Holy Dove prisoner;
learn its arcane language.
Believe your fingertips
may shoot flames at any time.
See through appearances
to the invisible core of being.
Guard your aura carefully.
Do not expect gainful employment;
even poets have better prospects.
Burn your fingernails.
Accept and nurture absurdity;
make it the reason you never
give up.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Mar 2017
I am often asked this question in comments, private notes and emails.

The short answer is: I don’t know.

I don’t know if there is an answer or if I’m the man to even try.

First, there are probably as many ways to write poetry as there are poets. I can’t imagine any one size fits all template. That is too horrible to contemplate.

Second, my method is actually a non-method. I will describe it, but I doubt it will be useful or transferable.

I have been a fanatical reader all my life. I still am. I probably read an average of three books per week. This has been going on for decades.

I have been reading poetry seriously for perhaps 43 years, including being taught how to read closely by some brilliant professors as an undergraduate and graduate student.

This has deposited an enormous mishmash of poems, sentences, images, phrases and fragments in my brain. Add to that mishmash decades of reading across disciplines, especially history, philosophy, religion and novels. Imagine that mishmash slowly marinading and fermenting.

From that random accumulation, without provocation on my part, poems emerge. There is no order to this and not much effort. I just channel what shows up. I do some retouching, but little serious rewriting.

And there you have it: my non-method. It should be obvious why I doubt it will be of much help to anyone else.

I can give a bit of advice, but only based on my experience.

Love words. Love to learn them. Love to play with them. Delight in them.

Read as much poetry as you possibly can. I doubt anyone can become a poet without doing this.

Be patient. It takes a while for the marinade to work. I’m 65 and I only began writing seriously eight years ago.

Find your own method and your own voice. You’ll know when that voice is authentic.

And then, sing out.
Mike Essig Mar 2016
Enjoy what’s possible
in this impossible world.
Eat any food the 
health ****’s despise.
Grin maniacally at
every toddler you meet.
Chant politically incorrect
words on public transportation.
Kiss random puppies.
Face down glowering cats.
Chuckle in the face of death.
Forget the odds,
you didn’t calculate them.
Make a joyful noise
with everything you’ve got.
If you can’t imagine a future,
you’re already dead.
Celebrate with enthusiasm,
time is very, very short.

   ~mce
rw
Mike Essig Jan 2016
Revel in
the flesh,
but examine
the heart;
one lasts,
the other can't.
- mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
~for all my new, young female friends here

Don't try to inhabit
your lover's heart.
It is occupied.

If you are truly smitten,
invite him into yours.

Let him rattle around,
poke and ****,
take some measurements.

Devour him
if you are fierce
enough and
so desire.

But then send him
on his way.

Remind him
your heart is not for sale.
You live there.

Keep your heart
for yourself.

Allow him his own.

Live nearby; visit often.

You will be
happier, truer,
and avoid needless
heartbreak.

And you will still
have yourself.
   ~mce
Forgive me. I spent much of my life teaching and I am myself a father. I'm not preaching, just pointing some things out.
Mike Essig Dec 2016
Poems are
the deeds of language,
but meaning
dances in the silence
between the lines.
Listen hard.
Take up the dance.
Mike Essig Jun 2015
Temagami, Ontario. 1967*

Take out wheat wafers,
spread on thick cheese
and crunch loudly.

Wash it down with
long cool swallows
of Molson's.

Sit by the window
and watch the rain,
smoking a cigarette

and dreaming.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2017
Everything on this gelid morning speaks only dead languages.
Change your mind. Consider it a beguilingly blank canvas.
Slather it with the random pigments of your imagination.
Go for a stroll and practice random acts of sadistic charity.
Inhale the exquisite frondescence of naked branches.
Focus your neurons on everything you have forgotten.
******* incessantly to Mozart's Requiem. Honor his memory.
Unleash your nukes. Annihilate Canada. Destroy winter for good.
Make your lover a garland of cassowary feathers. Impress her.
Concentrate on growing horrifically profuse ***** hair.
Study the nonexistent texts of forgotten Uzbecki ascetics.
Raise fearsome armies of rabid Chinese lawn gnomes. Attack.
Try to knit String Theory while contemplating theoretical macramé.
Drink cider vinegar to defuse the carcinogenic dangers of politics.
Attempt to complete a peace treaty with gravity. Concede nothing.
Build a launch pad. Hurl rusting Ramblers into low earth orbit.
Collect ingredients. Home brew ******, absinthe and aphrodisiacs.
Test drive a luxury submarine in your neighbor's swimming pool.
Smash the endless contemporary Conga Line of Dumb. Think about it.
Surrender to uncommon sense for a change. Avoid the ordinary.
Give peace a chance. Endless war has left it lonely and depressed.
Admit that everyone is well and truly ******. Relax. Breathe.
Proclaim the advent of the poetry of the apocalypse,
but take care not to write any of it down yet. Go slowly.
Tomorrow is another day to be filled. Keep some options open.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Get up in the morning,
look in the mirror,
and realize
that you have aged
ten years
in eight months.
- mce
Mike Essig Sep 2015
Forget everything
you know about life
and write down
only what you imagine.

  ~mce
Mike Essig May 2015
We flew into battle
like young Gods,
but fell from the sky
like shattered birds.

  ~mce
A war of choppers ridden like chargers by young men who thought themselves invincible but were not.
Mike Essig Jul 2015
Huck Finn is dead.

Some say

he died alone
in an apartment in Tulsa
during a Swamp People
marathon
body discovered
three days later
after neighborly complaints,
face somewhat gnawed
by his trusty cat.

Some say

he died in Montana,
struck mute by space,
rigid with terror,
dreaming of The River,
beside a trout stream,
eaten by a jealous grizzly
with a taste
for southern cuisine
and fame.

Some say

he died in Arizona
rattlesnake struck
and shrieking
beneath
a pellucid sky
seeking
to glean current events
and unlikely meanings
from ancient petroglyphs.

It does not matter
where or how;

only that

Huck Finn is dead,

and with him
the lights of the territories
gone black.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
"Say it plainly, the human name doesn't mean **** to a tree." - Grace Slick

Stumbling the rocky falls path,
two large trees,
hickory and sycamore,
fallen to the last thunderstorm.

Soil and stones
festoon their naked roots;
leaves still fresh,
green, not wilted.

I clamber over and continue.

Now an obstacle,
in the cool of autumn
we will return
with chain saws, axes,
cut and carry this wood,
transform it into heat
for winter.

Walking, falling, cutting, burning:
all magical steps
in the inescapable process
of age, death, decay and rebirth.

The earth provides
and points the way.

We do what must be done,
following her lead,
taking our place,
in the process,
not so different
from grubs or termites
as we might like
to imagine.
- mce
Another Tennessee poem.
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