Anonymous English Folk Song.*

A holiday, a holiday
And the first one of the year
Lord Donald's wife came into the church
The Gospel for to hear

And when the meeting it was done
She cast her eyes about
And there she saw little Matty Groves
Walking in the crowd

"Come home with me, little Matty Groves
Come home with me tonight
Come home with me, little Matty Groves
And sleep with me 'til light"

"Oh, I can't come home, I won't come home
And sleep with you tonight
By the rings on your fingers
I can tell you are Lord Donald's wife"

"But if I am Lord Donald's wife
Lord Donald's not at home
He is out in the far cornfields
Bringing the yearlings home"

And a servant who was standing by
And hearing what was said
He swore Lord Donald he would know
Before the sun would set

And in his hurry to carry the news
He bent his breast and ran
And when he came to the broad mill stream
He took off his shoes and swam

Little Matty Groves, he lay down
And took a little sleep
When he awoke, Lord Donald
Was standing at his feet

Saying, "How do you like my feather bed
And how do you like my sheets
How do you like my lady
Who lies in your arms asleep?"

"Oh, well I like your feather bed
And well I like your sheets
But better I like your lady gay
Who lies in my arms asleep"

"Well, get up, get up", Lord Donald cried
"Get up as quick as you can
It'll never be said in fair England
I slew a naked man"

"Oh, I can't get up, I won't get up
I can't get up for my life
For you have two long beaten swords
And I got a pocket knife"

"Well, it's true I have two beaten swords
And they cost me deep in the purse
But you will have the better of them
And I will have the worse"

"And you will strike the very first blow
And strike it like a man
I will strike the very next blow
And I'll **** you if I can"

So Matty struck the very first blow
And he hurt Lord Donald sore
Lord Donald struck the very next blow
And Matty struck no more

And then Lord Donald he took his wife
And he sat her on his knee
Saying, "Who do you like the best of us
Matty Groves or me?"

And then up spoke his own dear wife
Never heard to speak so free
"I'd rather a kiss from dead Matty's lips
Than you or your finery"

Lord Donald, he jumped up
And loudly he did bawl
He struck his wife right through the heart
And pinned her against the wall

"A grave, a grave, " Lord Donald cried
"To put these lovers in
But bury my lady at the top
For she was of noble kin"

let me tell you my friend
about whiskey and ****
a demonic combo
that can lead you to death

whiskey and ****
make you think you are strong
make you feel invincible
you can do no wrong

whiskey and ****
forget all the rules
they were made for weaklings
cowards and fools

whiskey and ****
make night into day
until one is the other
and you lose your way

whiskey and ****
make you anxious for strife
you load your pistols
you sharpen your knife

Whiskey and ****
they cost me my wife
they cost me my children
they cost me a life

whiskey and ****
attract the law
and into it's clutches
you will certainly fall

so that's my story
of whiskey and ****
leave them alone
or prepare for death

sometimes he wonders
why he lives this way

how he came to stay
alone with a silent cat
in rooms without ceilings
no plans less money
and debts to pay

waking to iron silence
at break of day

trying to fill it with words
that dance and play

old friends and lovers
dead or far away

loneliness
he cannot slay

somehow he simply
went astray

there isn't really
much to say

he couldn't tell you
why he lives this way

  ~mce

I am weary
of being at war
with time;
take my hand,
lead me to
a country
without clocks.
  - mce

The overwhelming
importance of beauty.

What could be more brutal
than the meeting of a child
and a bullet?

I have seen it.

There is a choice in this.

Accept chaos and ugliness
or fight back by
creating beauty against them.

Artists are essential.

The only beauty in the world
is the beauty we create.

Taken together, that is enough.

  ~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...

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

"I vow to save
all sentient
beings."

A big order,
worthy of
many lifetimes.

The Dharma wheel
spins.

Lifetimes
fall away.

Perhaps,
after enough
times around
the wheel,
this is possible.

I hope so.

After all:

I am
a sentient being
too.
   ~mce

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

If you shout
long enough
into oblivion,
eventually,
nothing replies.
  - mce

each one,
a mystery

(yielding
inviting
opening)

each one,
a portal

(warm
wet
dark)

each one,
a disaster

(sultry
siren
song)

oh when
will I learn
to just
say no...
  - mce

A man sits
along a dry creek
in an unmoving desert
with a fishing pole.
Every day he returns
to that bank,
drops his line
into the sand
and catches nothing.
The sun does not blink.
No water flows.
Not a cloud
disturbs the sky.
He continues to fish.
This is the definition
of hope
and
of insanity.
It is what
keeps us going.
  - mce

I have grown
a beard,
luxuriant
in its whiteness.

Whenever I encounter it
in my mirror,
it says, sensibly:

Behold, Mike,
time is short.
Grow up,
find a place,
take a wife,
be an adult,
settle.

To which I reply,
delighting
in my recalcitrance:

No way, beard!
The difficult
is my destiny.
Be my beard
Black or white,
I will always
be a pirate.
- mce

Living alone,
I am randomly
eccentric.

It's not a quirk,
if no one sees.

Often at odd hours,
day or night,
I sneak a glance
at my mirror
hoping
to be surprised
by a young
and happy
reflection.

Never happens.

   mce

Describe experience
and you get a novel;
distill experience
and you get a poem.

  ~mce

Life says no
in a million ways;
yes in only a few.
~ mce

(This page
has been left
intentionally
blank.)

   ~mce

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in **** and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and ****** rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
—Wisława Szymborska

Since
she left me,
I have never
really
been able
to unpack,
not once.
- mce

Lovers weave
the fabric
of creation.

Entering you,
I return to Paradise.
When your flesh
surrounds me,
the Garden
is restored.

Together
we become
much more
than each other -
one tapestry
woven
of two threads.

How many
existences
to arrive
at this life?

The particles dance,
rearrange, renew;
a universe
constantly reborn.

All of this
endless majesty
that my head
might find
the pillow
of your belly,
that my ears
might feel
the beating
of your heart.

Every breath,
divine
and precious;
each moment
a new world.
- mce

Love and war
are much alike.
Both are exhilarating,
both frightening,
neither last.

~ mce

by Walter V. Holloway**

When the trembling East is beginning to blush

With the rosy red of morn,

And the World holds her breath in a solemn hush

As another day is born.

I am startled from sleep's illusive dreams

By the factory whistle's imperious screams,

Which seem but an echo of yesterday --

So soon has the short night passed away.



A child was I in my beautiful dream,

In my old home far away,

Where I strayed on the banks of a laughing stream,

Through the slumb'rous summer day,

And gathered the flowers that blossomed there,

With never a thought of work or care.

While the birds above in the murmuring trees

Poured their joyous songs on the perfumed breeze.



Why is it, I ask, that the birds are free

To flit over vale and hill,

While I a life-long slave must be

In a noisy, squalid mill?

Does God love the birds, and hate me so

That He fills my life with work and woe?

Or can it be that there is no God,

Save the factory master's cruel rod?



But God, or no God, I must be in my place,

When the heartless wheels begin

To turn the machine in its tireless race,

More wealth for its lord to win.

From my hurrying hands, with a fiendish roar,

It snatches its food and shouts for more --

"More food, more food, for my sateless maw;

More gold, more gold, is my master's law."



No matter how weary my arms may grow,

No matter how numb with pain,

If I slacken my pace the machine seems to know,

And shrieks in its wrath again:

"More food, more food, for my sateless maw;

More gold, more gold, is any master's law."

Till the soul of the ghoulish machine, to me,

Seems to laugh at my helpless misery.



All day the demon laughs and leers.

Till my heart grows sick with fright;

And ever the taunt rings in my ears --

"I will have your soul to-night;

For my Soul and the master's soul are one,

And I'll come for your soul when the day is done.

More food, more food, for my sateless maw;

More gold, more gold, is my master's law."

I have fallen in
jungles, desserts,
heat, cold, on hills,
in valleys, by streams
in cities and towns,

but always I have
fallen for you,
dear citizen,

and so my blood
is always on
your hands.

  ~mce

What falls away is always. And is near.* - Theodore Roethke

It begins when you are small:
some marbles, a jack knife, lunch money,
simply seem to vanish.

Older, the stakes go up:
lovers, chances, a bag of primo ***,
disappear without explanation.

In war, it's your comrades,
your lighter, perhaps your sanity,
gone in a ****.

And then the big stuff leaves:
wives, children, careers,
down the cosmic rabbit hole.

It's not all bad. No one misses
a mortgage, car payments or taxes.

But then your body retreats:
a hip replaced, wobbly knees,
no more rock hard erections,
the creaking back and bad omens.

Until, at last you are an old man
- sitting with a beatific grin -
        alone, broke, bored, yet
                                        curiously joyful
at having nothing else left
                                         to lose.

Looking down, you find a missing marble.

  ~mce

Sometimes
she is all kisses
and warmth;
sometimes
she is distant,
unresponsive
and cold.
Does she want
to be wooed
or left alone?
No man can know.
It is no accident
that the muses,
like wives,
are female.
- mce

Poetry is powerful
because it is real;
it grabs our throats
and makes us feel.

Real as the dead cat
upon the road,
at noon, smashed flat.

Real as the wounded men
I have known,
who will never walk again.

Real as the broken heart
that, having stopped,
will not restart.

Real as the delight
with which your body
fills my night.

Real as your love
nestled in my heart,
soft and gentle as a dove.

Real as death
whose siren call,
forgets, in the end,
no one at all.

Poetry is powerful
and real, indeed,
it grabs our throats,
it makes us read.
- mce

by Kim Addonizio

I have been one acquainted with the spatula,
the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula

that lifts a solitary hamburger from pan to plate,
acquainted with the ******* known as the Pocket Rocket

and the ***** that goes by Tex,
and I have gone out, a drunken *****,

in order to ruin
what love I was given,

and also I have measured out
my life in little pills—Zoloft,

Restoril, Celexa,
Xanax.

I have. For I am a poet. And it is my job, my duty
to know wherein lies the beauty

of this degraded body,
or maybe

it's the degradation in the beautiful body,
the ugly me

groping back to my desk to ****
on perfection, to lay my kiss

of mortal confusion
upon the mouth of infinite wisdom.

My kiss says razors and pain, my kiss says
America is charged with the madness

of God. Sundays, too,
the soldiers get up early, and put on their fatigues in the blue-

black day. Black milk. Black gold. Texas tea.
Into the valley of Halliburton rides the infantry—

Why does one month have to be the cruelest,
can't they all be equally cruel? I have seen the best

gamers of your generation, joysticking their M1 tanks through
the sewage-filled streets. Whose

world this is I think I know.

Wanting makes weary:
only the flutter
of your eyelids
saying yes
can deliver me
to the end of desire.
  - mce

She drops her dress
like a bouquet
and steps like a bride,
naked and trembling,
brave and eager,
onto a new path,
into a new world
beyond imagining.
- mce

He was born
not to cooperate
with the world;

to be proudly
contrary and
indifferent.

He tried
the straight
and narrow
just long enough
to discover
the axe finds
the necks
of free men first.

He thought
about it
and decided
life is better
if you are
no one's victim
and that he
did not want
to **** his
away on nonsense.

Contact with
humans had
fried his brain
into a remnant
of carnage,
a napalmed city
or forest,
cold scar tissue.

He had to unlearn
the universe.

Naturally
he became
picturesque
and poor.

Men thought him
lazy or crazy;
women, mostly
interested in
money and power,
avoided him.

It was easy
to become a hermit.

He wanted a life
as free from
other people
and consequences
as possible.

He hides out now
in the edge places,
the waste places,
where no one
looks or cares.

You might
find him there,

but you will
never catch him.

  ~mce

The future is a portal,
invisibly outlined,
through which time rushes
like a flooded river
sweeping on its torrent
the flotsam of our lives
and the years
swallow themselves
and disappear
forever into forever.

  ~ mce

Sometimes
my heart
feels the kiss
of ecstasy.

Sometimes
my toes
brush the abyss
of madness.

Sometimes
I can't tell
the difference.

Mostly, I don't
think
there is one.
  - mce

Experience a
saboteur:
you already
know
they will
abandon you,
betray you,
break your heart
or die.
  - mce

A few moments ago,
my computer crashed
and I lost a poem
I had been writing since dawn.
Why did it vanish?
Where did it go?
Possession
is a comfortable illusion,
but uncertainty
rules the universe;
we own nothing in this life,
not even our words.
- mce

I'd like to believe
that it will be better
than the past,
but as the they
used to say
in the teachers'
lounges
when I taught
high school:

There Is No Bottom.

mce

I do not understand
the geography of love.
Perhaps I dozed
through that class.
Again and again,
I lose my way
in Love’s wilderness.
When I ask directions,
women answer
in languages
I can’t understand.
So many wrong turns.
So many dead ends.
Sister, if you
know the way,
show me the way.
  - mce

~ short ode to PTSD

Though capable of rage,
I am harmless enough
except when cornered.

If you decide
to visit my life,
just be sure
we always sit
in a circle.
   - mce

My true love
made me a gift
of an exquisite
Swiss watch
for my birthday.

If only the
elegant seconds
it perfectly
ticks off
were spent
with her.

~ mce

for Matthew and Richard*

Your children are not yours.
They are a gift on loan
from a generous universe.
They honor you with their presence.
They bring you laughter, joy
and sometimes worry and tears.
They are not your life,
but they are the substance
of the best part of it.
You try to raise them with love.
You would take a bullet for them
and smile as you died
knowing your brothers
would take revenge.
And when they are grown
you regift them to the world,
but you never stop worrying or hoping.
You know, that with luck,
through you, they will make
the world a richer place.
You hope they will always love you
and hold you in their hearts
because you know you
that you can never let them go.
You know you weren't perfect
and hope they will forgive you.
You pray that someday
they will speak of you
to their children with affection.
War, friendship, madness, romance,
nothing can compare
to the time they were in your lives
and nothing ever will.

  -mce

Every man has one. You notice her when you are sixteen and she still inhabits your heart at sixty. She is the angel always just out of reach. Her scent is of Ivory Soap and lilacs and spring and youth. You never quite forget her. She becomes the template of desire. You tremble for her flesh, but wouldn't know how to touch it.You spend your life wishing she would invite you up to her room to play, knowing that she never will. You want to embrace the texture of her being. You want to brush your tongue along the thighs of her most secret longings. You want to hear her moans echo in your own throat. You measure all the women you will ever stumble into against her. Some fit; most don't. You believe she holds the answers to all your unasked questions, the dark ones your soul is afraid to speak out loud even to itself. Sometimes you wish she would release you, but that can never be. She is the Queen of your dreams. You are her subject. You will always kneel before her. You will always believe that her touch could heal your deepest wounds. You will be her Fool forever and be glad of it. On your deathbed, you will catch her scent one last time, smile and carry her with you into infinity. Every man has one.
  - mce

He had only been home from the war for six days when she knocked on his door. He had been contemplating suicide. Sworn to secrecy by law and strange spooks with dead eyes, he couldn't tell her that. Whatever wounds he had suffered were his to bear alone and would be for many years. Still, his world was so turned upside down by the madness he had just escaped that her unexpected arrival seemed appropriate.

San Francisco, 1972; not the halcyon hippie days, but the lull shortly thereafter. It was a good place to be, safe and cheap. Much better than upland Laos with its piles of dead ***** and terrifying firefights. His apartment at Geary and Van Ness cost $275 dollars a month and felt like a sanctuary.

And there she stood, even more beautiful at nineteen than she had been at fifteen when they first made love on the grass in their hometown cemetery beside the Civil War memorial near the pile of cannon *****. You don't turn down a vision.

Come in, he said, and she didn't so much enter as flutter back into his scarred life. Her traveling companion, a nondescript hippie wannabee, stood beside her. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand and he disappeared.

That night, they made love like tigers. All the unspent lust accrued in battle erupted out of him and flowed into her. He wasn't gentle or considerate or skillful. When they ******, he smelled cordite, heard choppers beating and saw bloated corpses. It was like another deadly encounter in the bush, ferocious and abrupt. What she made of it, he couldn't tell, but she was more than game.

He had orders for Germany, but that was weeks away. They spent those weeks mostly in bed, as only the very young can manage, doing it every way they knew or could imagine. That tornado of desire took the edge off his rage and sense of betrayal. It may have saved his life.

Later, when he flew away, she stood and waved, astonishingly lovely in a miniskirt, her long chestnut hair flowing. She had no idea what she had done.

Things changed. It was decades before they really talked again. By then not even her name was the same, if she even really had one. Although their lives had long diverged, the connection remained, name or not. When he saw her, after all that time, all those bodies, all those endless miles, she was exactly the same girl who had knocked on his door those thirty-six years gone and he knew in that instant that nothing true ever really dies.
- mce

To stand alone
before the Burning Bush.

No Jesus, no Buddha,
no Muhammad,
no intercessors.

To stand alone
before the Burning Bush,
to hear the Voice,
feel the Fire,
to be penetrated
by its Light.

Madness,
enlightenment,
realization,
revelation.

To stand alone
before the Burning Bush.

To become One
with the Am that Is.
  - mce

Three times the gods of war
snatched me from the sky;
three times the gods of war
decreed I shouldn't die.

The gods of war knew full well
that I must live til I met you;
the gods of war knew full well
that we would be divinely true.

The gods of war are not often kind,
A man to them is but a fragile toy;
The gods of war are not often kind,
But they spared me to discover joy.

All praise to you Aries and Mars
for sparing me to kiss the stars.

  ~mce

It’s all smoke and mirrors,
he declaims in Caesar's voice.
Do nothing until you hear from me.*
The yokels weep sincere tears.
Women get wet and men tumesce.
He mounts a gilded Mercedes,
glances over a shoulder with disdain,
and motors away, counting the take.

The man of deeds who lacks the word
is simple, stupid and absurd.
He works and struggles all the day
for nothing more than mindless pay.
He loves the rich and thinks them smart
for gaining through their lack of heart.
He loves his boundaries; worships rules;
considers those who break them fools.
His mind is closed; his world is small;
he has no words to think at all.
His conversation tends to stink
because he never learned to think.
His only drive is buying more;
he's little but a Hoople *****.
He does and does and that's enough,
if he can just keep buying stuff.
He never questions what he's told;
he's just a thing that's bought and sold.
And when it is his time to die;
he'll lack the words to wonder why.
- mce

You sit in front
of your computer
and telephone
thinking of the wife
(or husband),
the kids, your IRA,
making money
for other people.
Who loves you, baby?
How long has it been
since you could call
your life your own?
Do you possess
what is your's
or does it
possess you?
Obligation
is not a virtue.
Does your heart dance
or does it merely labor?
There is still time.
Reject the full catastrophe.
Dismiss obligation;
embrace possibility.
There remains
a beautiful world
out there:
hoist the black flag,
live like a pirate,
get naked,
dive in,
be alive.
-mce

I didn't know him well.
I was only just twenty.
He was the first Indian
I had ever met though
he called himself a Skin.
Came from northern Nebraska.
He was tall, strong, quiet
and soft spoken
with a strange authority.
Somehow, he could sense fear.
At the end of the first day
over An Loc I was
well beyond fear, beyond
terrified, barely functional.
While we refueled
he came over and told me
not to worry. Every day,
he said, was a good day to die.
First time I ever heard
Crazy Horse's famous phrase.
In the morning, his waddling,
overloaded chopper took
a SAM missile up the ***
and totally disintegrated:
no wreckage, no bodies,
no anything left at all.
There's nothing
really left to say
except I hope that for him
it was a very good day.

  ~mce

I rejoice as
this soft breeze
caresses my naked,
mammal body.
The wanton
sensuality of it,
like feeling
the touch
of a thousand
angel fingers.
I may not
be beautiful,
but, oh,
I am alive,
a living man
in a lovely world.
Ah, the joy
of being flesh
on this cool,
fall morning.
This magical
conjunction
of skin and air;
how it awakens
my heart!
- mce

RPW*

There are moments
in life when
unconsciousness
seems your truest friend.

And now
I lay me down
to sleep.

To what
unimagined world
will I awaken?

Unless, if I
should die
before....

  ~mce

Paradisaical PawPaws
decorate bland trees;
few know their
delightful texture.
If a fruit grows
and no one knows
its virtues,
does it exist at all?
Forget unheard trees falling;
this is a much more
pressing question.
To Paw or not to Paw:
the great southern question.
   - mce