Each time I enter
you scream my name
with each inch of me
as if imagining
every stroke
a new beginning,
a new discovery
of writhing,
delightful desire
and dripping, stunned
satisfaction.

BY MARILYN L. TAYLOR*

A reflection on my students

They are so beautiful, and so very young
they seem almost to glitter with perfection,
these creatures that I briefly move among.

I never get to stay with them for long,
but even so, I view them with affection:
they are so beautiful, and so very young.

Poised or clumsy, placid or high-strung,
they're expert in the art of   introspection,
these creatures that I briefly move among—

And if their words don't quite trip   off the tongue
consistently, with just the right inflection,
they remain beautiful. And very young.

Still, I have to tell myself it's   wrong
to think of them as anything but fiction,
these creatures that I briefly move   among—

Because, like me, they're traveling   headlong
in that familiar, vertical direction
that coarsens beautiful, blackmails young—
the two delusions we all move among.

Instead,
of birdsong,
the endless,
grating drone
of idiot
homeowners
grooming their
perfect,
unnecessary
lawns:
mindless
*******
by leaf blower
  - mce

Suffering
is the landscape
of life.

Hope is
the sustenance
of life.

To avoid suffering
is to avoid life.

Love yourself.

Love other's
even though
they don't
deserve it.

Be gentle
with yourself,
even when utterly
fatigued and
victimized.

Make you life
a poem that
you create
and hold it
close to your
heart.

The best
you can do
is all you can do.

  ~mce

Let me cast
my heart
like a net
of desire
upon the body
of your soul.

Let us
struggle,
gently,
within it.

Let us
writhe
and turn
as one.

Let us
be caught
together.

Sweetest
*******.
  -mce

Loneliness
and solitude.
One coin,
two sides.
Always in
my pocket
ready to be
flipped.
  Mce

One of the best definitions of an anarchist comes from Ursula K Le Guin:

"One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice."

When was the last time you chose, regardless of the propaganda of the state or any other hierarchy, to ignore a stupid rule and accepted the responsibility for your choice? That's when you were an anarchist, whether you knew it or not. The more often you do it, the more of an anarchist you become.

Another comes from Robert Heinlein:

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do"

If you have a heart and mind that long for freedom, you are an anarchist.

Welcome.

TANSTAAFL!

Birdsong and Mozart,
perfect morning music.
Wake to it; wake with it.
The uncertain night has fled.
Sunshine floods my living room.
Sunshine and possibilities;
Birdsong and Mozart.
Anything might lie ahead.

I will take this day
into my arms
like a sleepy lover;
I will embrace her
and walk into whatever
she may bring,
enveloped in
birdsong and Mozart,
together.

~mce

The stillness
of Sunday mornings
always makes
me feel like
an amnesiac
jumping down from
an uncomfortable train
after a long ride
onto the platform
of a station
in a town
I can't remember
where no one
is waiting for me,
another deadly step
into an impossibly
inevitable future

  ~mce

"If everything
you thought you knew
makes your life unbearable
would you change?"*

A cool spring morning,
trees explode
with life and color.

I sit and meditate.

Everything I have
ever been,
everyone I have
ever known,
has brought me
to this exact
perfect moment.

Sitting with
this new life,
with my new life,
among these new leaves
and blossoms,
I know I will change
and remain the same.

Sure of nothing
and everything.

Sitting exactly
in this right place,
sitting exactly

where I am.

  ~mce

A man tries
to crawl down
a whiskey bottle's
neck
         finds
no bottom
only finds an
endless ocean
of doom in which
to drown
slowly.

  ~mce

Every morning
I wake up to
a different world.
Sixty-three years
and each day
a new beginning.
Somehow it
never gets old.
   ~mce

~for JLB
I thought when you left
that it was just the end of you;
of course, I was wrong.
It was the end of me, too.
  - mce

I am a contributor to a new Anthology called Out of the Depths: Poetry of Poverty, Courage and Resilience, which will be published on April 15th. You can find it on Amazon.

Alas, in my little bio it says I died in 2013.

What a surprise! I guess I died for Art.

Am I dead or aren’t I. Being dead would have benefits: cheap, no need for healthcare, food, housing, clothing or transportation. No taxes either.

But I think it might be too dull. Even at 63 I enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. I think I’ll just hang around here and pretend to be alive.

~mce

"the sound of rushing waters..."*

Give me the apocalypse,
give me prayers upon my lips,
I've come to know
what lies outside tradition.

Each time I've tried to change the past
I've heard a trumpet's mighty blast,
I know that morning will not help,
it's ending.

The vain escape from the womb
has only led us to a tomb
and in between just shadows
and delusions.

Life is hard and life is smart,
it drives the dagger into your heart,
it doesn't care at all
what you wish for.

Take the lovers, accept the gold,
do exactly as you're told,
fall in line, you know you're nothing
special.

Take up your apocalypse,
lift those prayers from on your lips,
no one's listening anymore,
it's over.

See all the breaches in the wall,
this culture is about to fall,
thank those cold barbarians
for closure.

Do not resist and do not fight,
your time is over and now it's night,
be grateful for the darkness
and the silence.

We tried so hard, we tried so long,
it wasn't worth a line of song,
accept your fate, it's over now,
surrender.

Woken by nightmares
of falling choppers,
into another day.

They died like soldiers,
but I, in between,
here must stay.

Until the darkness
comes, when again,
I will fall away.

Your pretty dress
pushed up
to your hips;
your boots kissing
the small
of my back;
that is a ride
I want to take,
a picture
to hold close
forever.
   ~mce

Her eyes are
intoxicatingly
limpid pools.
Dive in.
Get drunk.
Enjoy
the best
hangover
ever.

Her eyes are
intoxicaitingly
limpid pools.
Dive in.
Frolic. Romp.
Revel.
Get drunk.
Then enjoy
the best
hangover
ever.

Doesn't matter
if your eyes
are brown,
hazel or green;

they remain
pellucid pools
into which
I want to dive;

living
possibilities
I yearn
to explore;

mysteries
only I can
illuminate.

Allow me
to try.
   ~mce

Odd, how fast it happens.
An hour ago you felt
like a man on a mission from god.
Then, it strikes like lightning
from an impossibly cloudless sky
and your heart explodes into
a confetti puff of darkness.
Suddenly you feel
like a bleached out
pile of cat **** in the rain.
"Good days and bad days
and going half mad days."
It never lasts, but that
doesn't make it any less real.
Attachment breeds suffering.
Let it go and it will,
until your next turn at bat.
Till then the sun will shine down
on the nothing new world
again for a little while.
Enjoy the warmth while it lasts.
   ~mce

I Am Vertical**

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
******* up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them —
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Once, I knew
a woman so
utterly lovely
in spirit
that her laughter
invoked images
of seeds germinating,
of buds bursting,
of flowers blooming.

That was years ago,
but whenever
I encounter a freshly
opened blossom,
I still see
those sounds.
- mce

People misunderstand
when I talk with my mouth,
so I have decided
to speak with my feet.
Nature is orderly;
words apparently not.
Watch my toes
if you wish to comprehend me.
The feet of morning;
the feet of midday;
and the feet of night
speak different languages.
This is not my fault.
You must make the effort
to learn them.
When you do, our souls
will be in perfect harmony
like two lamprey
that **** then die.

deathly morning quiet
an old man shuffles
to the coffee maker
listens to Carter's
Sonata for Cello and Piano
hears the silence sing
between the notes
fumbles for a working pen
creaks onto the couch
and against all hope nurses
delusions of poetry

   mce

Trying to will a new life
is as absurd as reasoning with death,
weighing the heart of beauty
or throwing stones at the moon.
No one is allowed to start over.
Everything is exactly what it is
and nothing is like anything else.
The effort to begin anew
is as hopeless as trying
to erase the stars.
Only keep moving. Wake up,
put your feet on the floor,
take a step, take another.
There is your new life.
Just whatever happens today.
   ~mce

Each day
when I take
my morning walk
along the creek,
everything
is different;
some things
never change.
- mce

From whence springs his or her story?
Just what drives the wave to surge and break.
Evolution, not revolution, determines destiny:
Lungfish gasping in a mudflat. Initial syllables.
Every beginning begins at the beginning.
Only victories allowed to repeat themselves.
This is the way the way the word begins.
Endless repetition until only Now remains.
Homer, Dante, Shakespeare: one human voice:
One song sung sighing across the sky.

up country Laos, 1972*

I won't do it, I said. I won't.

It's a direct order, he said.

We stood a few yards apart,
in front of the blasted wire
where the screaming
enemy wounded
were caught like stuck flies.

It had been a long night
of attack and repulse;
the howling wounded
were all that remained.

He was maybe thirty,
an Ivy League ***** wannabe;
I was just a battle weary broken
20-year-old with no silver spoon.

You will get your *** out there
and tap those moaning *****
and you will do it now, another order.

I said, I'm a medic, not a murderer.
They are prisoners. There are lines,
even here. I will not cross this one.

**** lines. What you are, he said, is a *****.

In his hand, a lethal black 9mm Beretta;
in mine a 1911 model Colt 45 automatic.

Both loaded. Both ready to speak. Both angry.
Both anxious. Both with something to say.

You aren't my CO. You're not even an officer.
I refuse, I said. ******* and the Company.

My hand tensed on the 45. The Beretta quivered.

We looked at each other, working out the odds,

Death, for one of us, seemed only a few seconds away.

But he hesitated, lowered his weapon.

It's ******* like you who lost this war, he said.

And it's mad men like you who started it, I replied.

He turned and walked out to tap the wounded,
one by one, ****** after ******.

Delighting in revenge.

I walked back to the chopper, gun in hand,
and nodded to the pilot. We flew away,
at first to more war, but then back to the world,

the world that could never, ever be the same.

~mce

Though not
from the generation
of tattoos,
I think
I would
love to kiss
all of yours.
  ~mce

The day breaks like frayed shoe laces
and the situation only gets bleaker from there.
Poems written, bed made, dishes done,
it's eleven AM and the day is shot.
Not to say it couldn't redeem itself.
The mailman could deliver a bag of dead rats.
The food stamp Nazis could drop by
to ensure I am still appropriately thin.
Armies of angry squirrels could mass
outside my door preparing to begin their
drive for world ******* with me.
My cat might finally begin to speak,
albeit in a language I don't understand
or things could get really interesting
and it might just begin to rain.
After all, hope is a rabid dog that dies hard.
But none of these surprises  are very likely.
Physics says that inertia overcomes motion
and we are as rarely strong as our imaginations.
Don't fret, soon enough it will be evening
and you can fall asleep, best part of the day.

  ~mce

Not
one
heart
ever
stuck.
  - mce

It's nothing personal.

I'm sure your feet
are beautiful
as the rest of you,
but if they
ever walk you
away from me,
I will hate them.

Fair warning...

The frozen meadow
is a hard, white
**** carpet.
Seven wild turkeys
arrayed in a
gobbling skirmish line
pick their way
carefully across it.
I stand silently
on the frozen deck
in my bare feet
and watch.
The algid world
contains us all,
no exceptions.
Strutting fowl,
the flaneur
who watches,
no one escapes
this brumal vista.
The God of heaven
is simultaneously
the God of phenomena.
Skepsis slips away
when your toes
are cold.
  - mce

All the women
in his life,
until her,
came from
the same
temp agency.
  - mce

Tending the fire
is tedious,
but necessary.

Money is very handy
when your tooth aches.

Everyone quits smoking
when they die.

Love hurts:
loneliness hurts
worse.

Whiskey may not be
warmer than her *******,
but is usually more available.

When someone tells you
something is better than ***,
they are lying.

Every newborn
has the Buddha nature...
for about thirty seconds.

Asking if this spiritual path or that
leads to God is like asking
if a photon is a wave or particle.
The answer is always yes.

Death is the answer;
the difficult part
is figuring out the question.

Say good-bye to love
and you say good-bye
to your life.

When he walked into that room, he carried his whole life with him.

There is something.

It all began when the umbilical was cut.

After that conversation, he just wanted to drink and be whole again.

She sighed with pleasure and slipped the bonds of the appropriate.

He was as nervous as a ***** in an earthquake.

A thousand years ago, he would not have made that promise.

Jesus, get that thing out of here!

Life was good; he had just gotten an NSA grant to study the speed of darkness.

Sure, I knew your mother; she was great in bed

From the pellucid
night sky,
a waning half-moon
spills frozen light
on writhen branches
of forlorn trees.
Two owls
hoot conversation.
A distant coyote
attempts to join in.
I am the amanuensis
of early morning:
if I do not
write this down,
no one will know;
this useless,
frigid beauty
will disappear
unnoticed
with the dawn.
  - mce

Thoughtfulness
and kindness
will always
bring you more
than money.

Honor is a word
that is disappearing
from our vocabulary.
When it is gone,
we will be gone too.

Love is a word
said too much
and meant too little.

Freedom means privacy;
this is no longer
a free country.

When you run out
of alternatives,
life gets interesting.

We are all immigrants here;
remember that before you hate
someone who just happened
to arrive after you did.

When the choice
is between war and peace,
always choose peace,
but be ready for war.

A veteran is a person
who had to hold a gun
so you wouldn't have to.
Don't say thanks, say sorry.

If you don't see
your own beauty,
you will never see
the world's beauty.

Women are powerful,
men are just easy:
forget that at your peril.


   ~mce

Every rope
has an end;
the question is:
do you hold on
once you've
reached it
or do you
make a noose?
  - mce

Be thankful
for your breath.
Everything and
everyone else
will leave you;
when your
breath departs,
it won't matter.
- mce

I wake, you sleep on.
Your body in white
tight against mine
shares its warmth,
reminds me
of what I'd lost:
there is a world
and a life
worth living.

You make it real.
   ~mce

Most every day
for years now,
I have taken up
Finnegan's Wake
and read a page
chosen randomly.

No doubt, I
have read
it through
at least twice.

I still have
not a clue
what it means,
but, oh, what a
magical stream
of consciousness
in which
to plunge,
to frolic
and to swim.

  ~mce

When I look into her eyes,
I see my face before I was born.

Ha! Take that Zen Master.

Throw me a hard one next time.

   ~mce

There's birth,
there's death,
and in between
there's maintenance.

****, shower, shave;
how boring
sometimes
to be a primate.

Enforced ritual
*****.

Perhaps
the meaning
of life really is
just to floss
your teeth
while waiting
to croak.

Now there is
a wonderful
cosmic joke.
  ~ mce (with a nod to TR)

Six AM this
chill morning,
I bear witness
as a single maple leaf
floats to earth.

Winter prepares
to keep her
infallible promise
once more.

  ~mce

The real deserts are outside of tradition.* Leonard Cohen

Cloze reading does not run in jeans.
The eyes must fasten; synapses fire.
Practice, the way to Comprehension Hall.
Reading marks more than mere seeing.
The need to get a hold of yourself.
You must know stone to take up mining.
You must know the way of digging.
Pound your way to the Chapel Perilous.
No tradition equals no understanding.
Meaning illustrates a point in a process,
not an arrival at a place. Not home.
Volunteer yourself to be committed.
Engage the hard work first. Learn.
Forget the desert of individuality.
Follow the songlines of Culture.
They will lead to the Knowing of Know,
the springs and sumps of understanding.
Nothing easy, but all necessary.
Discover the way to where you must go.

In the Beginning, God touched the world;
not Logos but the embrace of tactility.
God pressed himself into creation, every
animal, vegetable, and mineral imbued with
the exalted power of consecrated touch,
leaving marks that remain for us to discover
like marvelous pieces of a sacred crossword puzzle.
A celestial charter, holy Magick, necessary theology.
But seeing is difficult and knowledge is demanding.
We are shattered, splintered, fractured lenses,
mirror fragments of  broken insight.
Rational and credulous, we see only what we want.
To read God's fingerprints we must first of all burn,
burn away the human barriers of debate and common sense.
To meet the transcendent requires clear-headed madness.
Unshackle yourself from argument and logic,
the Magick focuses into a massive corona of power.
Dross and gold separate when touched by that flame
and only the purest, precious metal remains.
You must connect directly to the mystical
to access such bold, terrifying, inhuman force:
only stolen fire or knowledge contains this power
and that theft demands sacrifice of great pain.
But with them you can meet angels personally,
discover the Soul's hidden treasure horde,
speak with corpses, become animals and plants.
No longer chained by causality, you fly free,
in danger of igniting and dying of gladness.
Only walk through the fire and reclaim your birthright:
to see God's imprimatur on every earthly object
and to know that fingerprint is set upon you too.

  ~mce

Poetry is solely
the archeology
of consciousness,
the ***-shards
of a mind
whose true
experience
can just be
guessed at.
When you read it
you discover
mere pieces,
not the original
arrangement.
You try to wonder
them back
together,
but can't quite.
When you write it,
you leave clues
for scientists
yet to arrive
who will never
fully understand
who you were,
which is OK
because you
never did either.
  - mce

That's where he lives
and he spends his days
nailing up perfectly framed
pictures of nothing.
  - mce