Thinking myself invincible,
I tried to break the world.

Instead, the world broke me.

Surprise!

Sometimes, to learn humility
requires taking a beating.

The pain doesn't matter;
what you learn through it does:

be wary of pride;

you are not as strong
as you imagine;

no one is immune
to reality.

Getting my *** kicked,
the only way for me
to know these things:

the price I always pay
for being a slow learner.
- mce

Silk's
soft
sound,
slowly
sliding
skin:
sensual,
******,
sensuous,
stirring
song.
  - 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

It's a shame
to know that
human beings
invented clocks
and now we all
slaves to their ticking.

  ~MCE

If you don't know
your watershed,
the names
of local trees
and plants,
who grows
what you eat,
where your
waste goes,
and what
generates
your electricity,
how do you know
where you are,
much less
who you are?
We are local
or we are nothing
at all.
- mce

Utilitarian Love Poem**

You are aesthetically pleasing,
the reason for which I first noticed in you.
And later I found your personality equally pleasing.
I also noted your chest to waist ratio is suitable for birthing.
Therefore, I think you should live in my house.

No one
is more
qualified
than you
to decide
what
your life
will be.

Don't fight
the power;
be
the power.

On the subject
of you, you are
the only expert
you will ever
really need.

~mce

"I'd strike the Heavens if they struck me!"* - Ahab

Dear god, just a few questions
(I know how busy you are):

Where were you when the stray bullet
found the skull of the little girl
in the sandbox at the playground
(another drug deal gone wrong)

-Were you smelling your flowers?-

or when the machetes flashed and
loped off the hands of the tribal others

-Were you admiring one of your sunsets?-

I know you have never ever visited
the Balkans where men were lined up
and forced to watch their mothers,
wives and daughters being gang *****

-Maybe you had a cold then.-

and I never caught a glimpse of you
in Viet Nam where the ****** fell
like your gentle rain on the innocents
and my partner was cut in half
by a burst from a 40 caliber machine gun

-Were you cutting a ribbon at a new cathedral?-

or later when I went mad and ended up
committed, in jail, alone, broken

-Temporary deafness?-

or when my brother was set up and busted
by a corrupt attorney general
and when my mother died a horrible
long slobbering death by Alzheimer's

-More busy days?-

so I guess I only really have one question:

exactly what good are you?

   ~mce

America**

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need ******* *******.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Naked Lunch*

A naked lunch is natural to us
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.
   From: *Reality Sandwiches

Judge me if you like,
I do not care.
My sins are mine.
Look to your own.
The flesh beneath
my lips is my choice.
Choose what you must.
I am not a saint,
only a man
caught in my desire,
needing what I need
and taking it.
Get your own.
Take what you need.
Leave me in peace.
I will do the same.
This is all any of us
can manage.
  - mce

Only one
thing
for sure:

I am an
easy man
to forget.
  - mce

At some point,
like Jeanne d'Arc
at that crucial moment,
you must trust the fire
and step in.
- mce

We live in an abrupt time
without ancestors.
Those gossamer threads
that bound us to the past
have long ago melted away.
I am a lone man on a bed in a room.
Adjectives do not accrue.
Only your mouth tracing my body
outlines me into reality,
your pretty teeth nip me
into the dangerous present.
And what then shall I give you?
Neither famous nor rich,
I possess only mundane flesh
and a grab bag of words.
These will have to do, lady.
Allow me to adorn you with them:
earrings made of desperate syllables,
a necklace of my broken fingers.
These are the offerings
I place before your body's altar
where I have come to worship
before the magic of your touch.
Only a man on a bed in a room,
everything that is left of me,
waiting with anxious longing
for your mouth to create me again.

Smart women they were.
Knew a lost cause
when they saw one
and fled town
before it burned down.

  ~mce

In any moment,
we become
different people,
born from
thawarted desire,
from what we lack.

Same vase,
different blossoms.

One life,
much need,
untold moments,
many variations,
familiar strangers
birthed within
one life.

Solitude is a fine thing before it tips into loneliness.
Loneliness and solitude live in the same house
and balance until lonesome perfection prevails. Then,
isolation, black and deadly, squeezes from the heart
a choked scream of gasping need, until, finally emptied,
all that remains is a ruined cavern bereaved of light.

  ~mce

Good morning,
gentle readers.

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

Really.
    ~mce

Watching my
demented mother
water plastic flowers
on her porch,
I come near
to seeing my face
before I was born.
~ mce

Try to remember
that poetry chooses
the poet and if chosen,
beware, for she
can be a real *****
and will rarely provide
a cup of coffee
much less groceries.

Do not think poetry
or fiction will supply
a living, they won't.
Plan accordingly.
Make hard work
and frugality
your floorboards.

Stay rooted.

The coasts are
foreign countries.
America is in the middle.
Nebraska is real;
LA is certainly not.

Talk with poor people
wherever you go.
They know great stories
and because they know pain
laugh more often
than the comfortable.

Find some other work
to hold onto.
Lay brick or landscape.
Write complex software.
Anything physically
or mentally exhausting.

If you are foolish
enough to introduce
yourself as a writer,
ninety-nine percent
of the people you meet
will think you mad,
stupid or simply lazy.
Garrulity marks
the mediocre. Listen.

Keep your true love
separate and secret.

Keep at least one toe
in the natural world.
Fish, hunt, pick berries.
Avoid war and commerce.

Make your poems; craft them
like the things they are,
sparse and flinty,
made of nouns and verbs.
Adjectives and adverbs
are only spices; use only
the fewest and freshest.
Modifiers are poetic;
poetry is not.
Avoid irony like
the plague it is.
Say what you mean.

Do not be disappointed
by misreadings
and misunderstandings
for consciousness
can never be fully shared.
They gets it or they don't.

Drink if you must but
remember that alcohol
is the writer's version
of black lung disease.
It will end up swallowing you.

Mostly just do your art
and try to be kind.
You are just another
sentient being
babbling into the Void.
Modesty and humility
might save you
from the angry gods
but it's no sure thing.

Although you were chosen
for this you are responsible
for your own salvation
or destruction.

How great is the darkness
in which we *****?
Remember:
you can't step into
the same river,
not even once.

If this seems altogether
too much, consider
investment banking
before it is too late.

   ~mce

I do not write these thoughts
only because I love you. I do.
But I cannot create perfection.
It is your spirit calls them forth.
Your eyes flutter them into being.
Your lips smooth and polish them.
Your fingers shape and craft them.
I'm just the simple monk who writes
them down and returns them to you
as an offering to your inner beauty.

~mce

Every step taken
contains the possibility
of an adventure,
when seen with
the heart and eyes
of an explorer.
- 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

An obvious homage to AG*

America it is time for an update.
I am still sick of your insane demands,
just shut up and try to listen.
America, it's 4 AM. November 5th, 2016
and you have become a shambling giant
crushing us all as you stumble on.
America we have come to a parting of the ways.
America your founding fathers
were rich white men who sold their truths
for power and then ***** their slaves
and whipped the People into shape.
America Clinton and Trump
really are the best you have to offer.
America I am voting NO!
I no longer accept your vicious lies.
The Wobblies and anarchists were right.
To rise from the ashes something
must first burn and die.
America I am holding a Zippo.
America I am thinking about you.
Your cities are scoured by ******;
your heartland drenched in ****.
Your jails overflow with potheads.
Your police have become assassins
who cry like little girls
when their victims shoot back.
Your banks have stolen
all the money in the world
yet I am broke as usual.
In the 60s I actually thought
there was some hope of redemption.
Youth and drugs create such illusions.
Now I live alone with a sociopathic cat.
My friends are dead or scattered.
I am a poet in a country that can't read.
America your brainwashed minions
stare into their TVs, awaiting further orders.
America I don’t own a TV.
America we are well and truly ******.
America once I fought a war for you.
I would never do that again.
America you have turned your guns on hope
and devoured it, feathers and all.
Now that is a Thanksgiving dinner.
America don't you ever weary
of eating your citizens' dreams?
America let me get to my angry point.
I am declaring my independence from you.
I am in you but not of you.
Stick your baubles up your ***.
You have enough slaves. You don't need me.
So long America. I gave you an honest chance.
America, don't call me, I'll call you.

It seems to have spontaneously combusted, but it didn’t. The disease struck long ago, brewed in the petri dish of Depression, WWII, and convergent technologies. Well before that, really, but that was the point of critical mass. By the 1950's, it was an epidemic. The independent Republic of individuals, small towns, coherent communities, distinct cities, local diners, shops and stores tied together with two lane blacktop was crumbling. Things only got worse faster. It was a disease of toxic, lulling dreams. American Dreams. And standardization was its crushing foot that flattened everything and left a homogenized wasteland in its trail. The old gods vanished and the new became despots. Go anywhere in America, Boston or Biloxi. You can’t tell where you are. Most shop at the same stores (real or virtual), eat at the same chain restaurants, wear the same clothes, gulp from the same Internet, swallow similar information, and think (within acceptable variations) the same thoughts. Even sin has become tediously consubstantial. Knowledge has been supplanted by content. Words are squeezed of meaning. Everyone is an expert and no one knows anything. Except Siri and Alexa. The Dreamtime of consumerism, consumption and conformity dominates. All that remains to come is the dominion of AI. Then we will all be watched over by machines of loving grace, free to graze in bovine bliss in the cybernetic meadows of bland utopia.

While teaching at a local
community college,
A 19-year-old man
announced to my class
there was no reason
to learn foreign languages
because if English
was good enough
for Jesus, it should
be good enough
for everyone.

Once you find
your true niche
as a cog within
the system,
your soul turns
to steel, your
mind freezes,
you are caught
on the treadmill
and already dead.
Enjoy your
commute.

  ~mce

Obese women
in yoga pants
with garish
tattoos
sweating
like bovine
demons
while
screaming
at their
doomed
brats.

  ~mce

Let us make Spanish the official American language.
All Spanish speakers have a touch of the poet in them.
There is a bit of Neruda in every humble trucker.
It is a mellifluous and sonorous tongue.
If you want her in your bed, te amo is more likely than I love you.
English, on the other hand, is a language to make deals in.
How much? is probably the most repeated phrase in English.
English is the language of ******* people over.
English is the language of conquest, money and ******.
We insist that the world speak it so that after
we bomb them, invade them and **** them they can thank us in English.
Let us make the change official. What have we got to lose
except our insufferable indifference, arrogance and greed?
On top of which, siestas will become the national pastime.
I am taking this to the UN. I have no hope but it's worth a try.

   ~mce

I have quit deciding who I am.
It's too late to worry about it.
Now I pay more attention to what I do.
Time is running out. The deck
is stacked against me. It is nearly
impossible to consider the world
and yourself at the same time. Close
your eyes and try it. When they open
your children will be grown
and you will have missed your life.
Thought itself is suspect. What do
thoughts bring but mystery and worries.
Better the empty-headed monk scribbling
poems to nothingness than the cranky
scholar insisting on unimportant truths.
The deck is certainly stacked against
the scholar. I haven't decided about the monk.
I guess the question is what to do next
I believe I will take a nap and hope
for a vision. That seems a great compromise.
Nothing is stacked against naps except time
which matters not as we are only here for a moment.
After I wake up I'll invent a new calendar
so that the world slows down and there is
more time to kiss your forehead and keep you safe.
  ~mce

Sometimes
the dice
simply cry out
to be rolled:
pass them bones
over, God;
baby needs
a new pair
of shoes.

_ mce

I will sneak up like a cat
behind you in the kitchen
and cup your *******
in my living hands and gigil
them gently and with intention.
After that, anything on earth
that we can imagine is possible.

~mce

Out of the depths I cry to thee...*

wake into difficulty
from lovely sleep
of night's negation

to news from the
bird world sung
and insects that know

what finds its way
early into this
familiar room

two of gloom mornings
in glued sequence

sunrise of grey
clouds scudding

of light opaline
through windows
diffused

are windows only
worlds of open

is rain a form
of loss

and truth but
power moving

all melts and
can be replaced

the soul sinks

a day of grey
makes a day
of blues

death spiral
         of the spirit

when did I
become so weak
against the intractable
what is of daybreak

cruel the new has
become

and terrifying
and
continual effort

time not a friend
as clocks threaten
actions untaken

the mereness
of mortality
disappoints

sand mostly gone
to the final
hourglass' bottom

distance incomprehensible
away a way which way

each day a fainter path

fading notes of
unstruck chords

save me from

this cruel unwritten
poem of morning

this syntax of unbidden
meteorology

oh lift me up
and desire
make young

break my human fall

beauty and joy
cannot be sundered

we live by grace
or not at all

allow me survive
what must arrive

for every broken
poety fool

that famous final
Day of Decide

******, war,
marriage, divorce,
madness, freedom:
who knew the last
would be hardest
to survive?
- mce

Take me,
draw me in,
swallow
me whole
in those
peridot eyes.

I will not
cry out for help.

Only with pleasure.

  ~mce

It's all in The
Formula, boy, and
I have perfected
the formula.

It has worked on
women from
seventeen to seventy.

It even works
when you are older
with grey hair,
a (small) gut
and no money.

Start with the smile,
(still boyish),
self-deprecating
and selfless.

The look of a victim
that says I've
been hurt many times,
but for you
I'll risk it again.

Listen engrossed to
their every mortal word
with the intensity
of a fortune teller
and gaze deeply
into their private eyes
to see what is
really there.

Make them feel they are
the sun you circle around.

But mostly it's about
the poetry.
           You write
them a poem and
they melt like sugar
in a microwave.

'You wrote that for me?'

(Soulfully)

'Every woman is a poem
waiting to be written.
All I did was write you down.'

Offer them your
heart as a hostage.

Bingo!

Make love slowly,
their pleasure predominant,
and gently open them like
petals on a fresh flower.

Then, in bed, read them
a few lines from Neruda
or Lorca.

All cakes need icing.

Say a few wistful things
about war and
'back in the day.'

Few women can resist
a wounded warrior or
the Magick of nostalgia.

But what you must
absolutely remember,
boy, is that this is
not some scam.

Even if it's only
for a moment or a week,
you have to really
mean it all.

That is the
secret ingredient.

Make them feel special;
own their hearts.

It took a lifetime
to discover this recipe.

Use it well and
often and
you will decrease
the loneliness in
the world, if only
for a while.

That is true Magick.

And no one ever
hates you for
making them happy.

Women come and go,
but The Formula
is eternal.

Good luck, kid.
You won't need it.

  ~mce

Risk**

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

politics = soiled
toilet paper
best flushed
and forgotten

parties, manifestos,
attack ads, slogans,
talking points, blather

don't put your faith
in other people's ****

robots stand in line
to vote imagining
they have a choice

same old arguments
among ghosts

only lonely resistance
is fit for a human

the silent blow
against the masters

even when it
makes no difference

especially then

   ~mce

Let me help you
get that dress
over your head.

Wait a minute:

Let me take you
while that dress
is over your head.

I'd like to be
more helpful,
but lust strikes
powerfully,
hard and deep.

Please pardon
my greed,
but I can see
what I need

and right now,
I need you.
~mce

The nervous afflictions
of poets drive
doctors to dismay;
it is difficult
and dangerous
to diagnose
a chameleon
in a thorn bush.
   - mce

The universe has
a millions signs
that say no,
but
only a few
that say yes.



Everything is fragile
except the rope
around your neck.



Just another
day in paradise:
exciting as a
hole in the ground.



Please send me
a difficult woman
with a mind
like a razor
and a kiss
like a shotgun
blast.



If you think
with your ****
expect a few
headaches.



All the world's misery
is caused by people
who wear suits.



Sometimes, you must
must open a window
in your soul
just to let a little
oxygen into your life.



My anscestors
marched to war.
I flew.
Maybe there is
such a thing
as progress.



Why do we
fall in love
instead of
rise in love?
Because there's
no such thing
as a rise with
a thud at the end.



Cat's know everything
but divulge nothing.




Death waits
patiently as
a dead cat.



Enough now,
I am moving to
Lake Michigan
where I will
hunt wolverines
for a living
and learn
to eat ice.



Have to flee,
there is a warrant
out for me for
everything I
never did.



So difficult
some mornings
to face the
ugly emptiness of
the sober page



Wanted:
a future
without
a perhaps.



If you turned
wine into water,
made the living dead,
and called in demons
would these
be called miracles
and you hailed as
the new messiah?
Might be dangerous.
Listen: the sound
of hammers and nails
calling your name.



The Law is the Law;
**** is ****;
do the math.



Try not to **** away
your life on nonsense.



While I wasn't looking,
the whole earth was
zoned commericial.



There is always
another corner
around the next
corner.



Never let clocks
control your life.



Waking up
every day
is another
chance at
Spring.



Wherever you go
you carry along
all the places
you've ever been.



We are
breeding people
who will
have no place
in the world.



It takes
a life's work
to recognize
the mystery
of the obvious.



Much that you see
isn't for your eyes.



Exactly how long
does forever last?



I keep waiting
unsure of what
I am waiting for.



Sometimes, you walk
through doorways
in you mind
and can't get out.



When you are sure
you can't stand more,
the worst is just beginning.



We must learn to appreciate
our fatal savagery.



Don't disrespect alcohol.
It provides consolation
for the inconsolable.
Not a small feat.



Sometimes, art must be foul
in order to scrub the soul clean.

*

There are no
brave, new worlds;
just this one,
over and over,
until seen clearly
at last.

It is astounding
how long you can survive
on a large assortment of nothing.
Each of us must find
our own way to live.

  ~mce

And so, an ending, just one,
before another beginning.
How much do you need to know
in any lifetime, long or short?
Do not fear death. Breathe deeply.
Embrace multitudes. Love whom you can.
Speak truth to power. Try to be
the best person you can be,
however imperfectly. Be willing
to fail with great joy;
to succeed with gratitude.
There is no best time to live.
There is only being alive.
Each moment leads only to
another present. Be in it. Be it.
And then, soon enough, be gone.

In the year
of our lord
865 CE,
at the council
of Agde
(after intense
debate)
the Bishops
decided that
women have souls.

In their silent
secret hearts,
many men
still question
that decision.

   ~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…

Love, my loneliness
is a necklace of diamonds
wrought from the crystal
of my soul's tears.
Take it, wear it, transform it.
I long to admire
the work of my pain
remade into beauty
sparkling at your neck.
Not much of a gift,
but all I have to offer.
- mce

Be very careful.

You really don't
want
to catch this!

Could be fatal...

Certainly painful.
   ~mce

man sees crow

man writes
about crow

ain't no toad
but a crow
in the road

writing makes
Crow real

man eats crow

what else
remains
to know

  ~mce

She was the
heavenly centerfold
in the magazine
of his imagination.
Taunting angel ****.
Too unreal to touch,
too real not to try.

  ~mce

They sit down and order beers,
but soon quarrel over whether
crows can speak or are telepathic.
Things turn ugly. They slip from
their stools and circle each other.
Anger has sharp blue eyes
and produces a fine-edged blade.
Rage is the epitome of cool,
his eyes are grey, he knows Kung Fu,
he waits for the fatal opening.
The crowd howls and eggs them on.
Then Death arrives brandishing
a loaded gun. Shots ring out.
Anger and Rage bleed out on the floor.
The crowd turns back to drinking.
Death calls for a round
of blood for the house.
Every weapon is relative;
But ****** is absolute.

  ~mce