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Mike Essig Jan 2016
Black silk and white wine;
candlelight and incense.

The secret sounds
that only lovers hear:
the throb of heartbeats
in the velvet night,
silky sighs
and throaty gasps.

Come to me, Love.

We will writhe
like two ***** angels
fluttering our hearts
like wings in tandem
as our souls float away.
  - mce
rp
Mike Essig May 2015
Soft skin,
creamy and
glistening,
wet and ready.
Now there
is the stuff
of dreams.

  ~mce
Take that Shakespeare!
Mike Essig Dec 2015
for Theodore Roethke*

It is dipsetic work,
a gasping kind
of mental sweating,
that takes its toll,
requires forgetting;
the work of words
will drain you dry,
leave you thirsty,
make you cry;
that withered husk,
the writer's soul,
requires fluids
to make it whole;
the desiccated,
wilted heart
craves a drink
to mend its art;
and this is why,
I've come to think,
in vats of whiskey
poets sink.
  - mce
Mike Essig Jun 2015
I am a thirsty man who
has spent long in the desert
dreaming of sweet juices,
succulent, lovely liquids.

You are a chalice of desire
brimming with moist, damp,
fluid lust and love.

I want to drink you dry.

Your legs end in heaven.
Your ******* are gentle hills.
Your lips an ***** of sighs.
Your eyes a green portal.
Your fingers pleasure's promise.
Your dress opens to paradise.

I will slide my lips
along your ivory thighs
and draw you rhythmically
into the torrid night,
where the world's marvels
are all released in joy

then, thirst satisfied,
desire quenched,
fall into life again
safely in your arms.
RLA
Mike Essig Oct 2015
You get up,
drink some coffee
and drive to work.

Taking the controls,
you blow up a wedding,
a birthday party
and a few possibly
safe houses along with
some collateral women
and children. If it's
a good day you may ****
a hundred people, perhaps
including a few bad guys.

Shift over, you drive home
to the safe suburbs,
light a cigarette, pour
some wine and cook dinner.

Solid job, good benefits,
a house, a bright future.

The wars are but rumors.

You are every inch
the brave soldier.

Why ask pesky questions?

Life is good.

   ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
I am at war with time.
At war with. At war.
With time. War. I. Am.
I am at war with time.
Second by second,
I am losing the war.
  - mce
Mike Essig Sep 2015
by Pablo Neruda*

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Sometimes
it's the only thing
between you and
death.

Distillers
have saved more lives
than all
the suicide hotlines
in the world.

Here's to you.

mce
From my younger days. Bourbon was a great comfort that I had to let go.
Mike Essig Nov 2015
a modest red house

two minds dying

age and disease/
grief and despair

two minds crumbling

a small red house

a slow falling away

faint footsteps
on narrow stairs

the patter of death

in a modest
                  red house
  - mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
"Lift me up, Lord,
for my soul is heavy
and my time is near."*

When you were
all shot to pieces
and death
was smiling
and prowling
nearby,
they made
the sweetest
sound in
the world.
   ~mce
Near Nah Trang - 1972
Mike Essig May 2015
Sure, I write for love, beauty and seduction,
but those are just the fun parts.
Mostly I write because it is my duty
to speak words for the innumerable
dispossessed millions who have no voices.
To be an angry pain in the ***** of
power, money, greed and corruption.
I know that I cannot destroy them
but perhaps I can create an itch
they cannot reach far enough to scratch.
Perhaps that itch will make them mindful
and uncomfortable at what they are and do.
If that is true, my duty is done
and I can go back to the prurient pleasures
of love, beauty and seduction
with something like a clear conscience.
  ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
a shotgun rectangle
encircles his life

grey morning
sleek, purring panther
maybe Vivaldi
coffee and cigarette

later, perhaps,
maintenance:
vacuum, dust -
the dreary realities
of single life.

from nowhere
he imagines
hope as a burst
of butterflies
long since flown.

the circle is
a place on earth
and he is
a man on earth
caught
in the circle

for a while yet

even as the circle
shrinks
with each waning
moon.
  mce
Mike Essig May 2015
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.
And Death Shall Have No Dominion


And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Through they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.
Mike Essig Jun 2015
Weeds are
my favorite plants.
Their bad reputations
attract me the most.
They persevere.
They are successful.
They teach me to disdain
the world's opinions.
They remind me it is good
to be on earth
for no other reasons than
the joy of sunshine and rain.
They live on the edge
where everything
interesting happens.
I am very much a **** myself.
Weeds are something you
can count on to be there.
Not many such anchors
in one life. Take a hold;
pull one out. It will be back.
Count on it.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Well hello, sweet Muses.
How nice of you to drop by
at four in the morning.

Let me make you some tea.

How are you all today?

Oh, I forgot for a moment
that you are goddesses
and are always
exactly as you should be.

I'm fine except my sleep
has become oddly contrary.

But you all know that and more.

You are the magic that
stirs my dreams until
I give up and get up.

You betray me to nightmares,
insomnia, memories and poems
that could certainly wait
for morning if you so desired.

And where have you all been?

For three years, you've been gone
and I have been left mute.

Such fickle ******* you are,
only bestowing your favors
according to your whims.

But we have all, back to Homer,
known how unfaithful you can be.

Now you've returned and I can't sleep.

You know I'm not so young
as the last time you visited.

I need a little rest occasionally,
but you are working me to death
as if no time at all has passed.

There should be a union for poets.

Of course, I will do your bidding as usual.

Calliope, Clio, Euterpe,
Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore,
Polyhymnia and sweet demanding Erato.

It's nice to see you all again,
all so lovely and immortal,

but please remember I am only a man
and a man can only take so much.

So please, try not to show up before 8 AM.

~mce
They really are a hard group to work for. No dental insurance either. Cheap hussies.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
The Earth only gets one day?
Seems a bit odd. I mean,
where else do you plan to live?
    ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
April of 1972*

All that spring,
the choppers fell
like fat, black flies,
swatted by rockets,
their crews tumbling
in abrupt terror,
but I soared on
like Icarus, only warier
of the burning sky
and made it home
  ~mce
Forty-three years ago, I was a bird man. I flew and I didn't fall. Many did.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Seven years
of molt and shed,
people lost,
mistakes made.

We change,
but we live
one person
at a time.


OK, I'm a new man.

But what kind
of man.

mce
Mike Essig Oct 2015
The unarmed
fleeing
  black man
    takes six
warning shots
  in the back.

Ain't that America.

Call it
the Law
   of Supply
     and The Man.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
The leaf-mottled
copperhead coiled
near my woodpile,
rendered sluggish
and harmless
by the cold,
makes no move
to strike.

Its flat eyes
simply stare,
as if to say:
welcome
to the Garden.
  - mce
True TN story. We had snakes everywhere. You had to keep one eye on the ground.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Sonnet: What Lips My Lips Have Kissed*

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more
Wonderful sonnet on love and age.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”**

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied  
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!  
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;  
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,  
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;  
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.  
There are a hundred places where I fear  
To go,—so with his memory they brim.  
And entering with relief some quiet place  
Where never fell his foot or shone his face  
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”  
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
Mike Essig May 2015
may i feel said he**


may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Spring**

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.
Not as hard or weird as people think. The invention of typewriter made a huge impression o cummings as well as Pound and other Modernists. As much as anything, it broke the traditional line.
Mike Essig Jun 2015
Either
you develop
your own private
religion

that allows you
to live on earth

or
you run the risk
of falling off
the world.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jul 2015
Even after
he had touched her
in more places
than she knew she had
he plunged onward
like some crazed explorer
seeking out El Dorado,
looking for that golden city
where rest and consummation
might be possible
for both of them.
No need to hurry.
You can't be lost inside
someone you love.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
The convinced
and the stupid:
too alike to be
accidental.
  ~mce
Thankfully, anarchists don't vote.
Mike Essig May 2015
A storm is coming,
lightening and thunder
consummate.

Soon, it will be
on top of me.

If only that storm
was your electric body.

I would wail out a thank you
and place flowers
on Ben Franklin's tomb.

   ~mce
Mike Essig May 2015
He lived.
He pleased himself.
Small things
amused him.
He endured.
He smiled.
Life was as good
as it could be.
That was enough.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2016
1 - Sweep out the International Space Station.
2 - Eat Kale every day and like it.
3 - Learn to know and like a republican.
4 - Become a Mixed Martial Arts champion.
5 - Be kind to extinct wolverines.
6 - Develop at taste for Rap music.
7 - Explore gastronomic excess with you $16 in food stamps.
8 - Teach the cat how to vacuum and dust.
9 - Find the last person under 30 without a smartphone.
10 - Figure out why God created Twitter.
11 - Solve the riddle of what women really want.

12 - Give up on all the above by Ground Hog Day.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2016
~for Gary Snyder*

Beyond the edges
of the dying cities
the human
reasserts itself.
Shacks and gardens,
hermits and wise men,
woodsmoke rising -
flickering flames
of a new dawn.
  - mce
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Why this worry
about who
you really are?
Confusion
and creation
are twin sisters.
Embrace them.
Accept them both.
Enter them.
Surrender.
It's a *******
or nothing at all.
  - mce
Mike Essig May 2015
You see it all around:

on school playgrounds,
at high school dances,
thirty-something bars,
in nursing home doors.

The certainly accidental
cohesion of two souls
and bodies colliding
and releasing
so much unknown energy
that terror and happiness
explode simultaneously
in the dumbstruck hearts
of the afflicted.

Lives are altered
for better, for worse,
forever.

The emotional apocalypse
we call love.
Love: The Hiroshima of the Heart...
Mike Essig Jan 2016
Demanding happiness
requires standing
in an endless line
hoping that
something good
waits ahead of you.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jan 2017
The mundane world
must yield to imagination.
Eyes are not microscopes,
nor lips but for drinking.
Facts do not make a life;
events alone cannot explain
a single, beating human heart.
Nothing exists so basic that
it cannot be expanded and exploded
by whimsy and effort.
A butterfly is just an insect
until the tale teller awakens its potential;
a lover is just a lump of flesh
until a story renders her beautiful.
Our fictions generate a reality
beyond the dreary limitations of mere truth,
and truth is always mere,
always waiting for the magic touch of more.
Knowing only the particulars
amounts to knowing nothing.
Lift your hand to the world
like an astonished magician
and cast your soul’s spell,
ensorcell the ordinary;
lift your brush and paint a scene
with huge, wild brush strokes;
shout your words into the chaos,
bring about a new order,
a vivid, lush world,
a world that echoes, on and on…
Mike Essig Apr 2015
I have heard
there is not enough
love in the world.

I don't believe it.

There just aren't
enough lovers
in the world.

See, we can make
the world a better place.

(And enjoy the work!)

   ~mce
Mike Essig Sep 2015
There are still places
where you can get lost.
A couple, for example,
making love for the first time,
falling into each other,
falling like autumn leaves.
They are brave and
believe in adventure
and footsteps
heading their way.
In the morning, nerves are strained;
they adjust to swimming
in uncertainty.
They try out new voices
to recall what happened:
Speak to me, he says.
She speaks the language of love
with her wetness and urge.
The wonder of two
enfolding each other,
becoming one.
They close their eyes
to know the leaves that
brush across their faces.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Feb 2017
after Ezra Pound*

Fly, my songs,
to both young and old.

Sing only the true
and beautiful things.

Do not betray me
as the lost
and lonely loser
I have become.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Forty years ago today Saigon fell.
I wonder what my 60,000
fallen brothers would think
of the country they died for
if they could see the prison
it is becoming now.

No knowing.

But I think: sad and angry;
especially angry,
and perhaps, vengeful.
  ~mce
Just another day.
Mike Essig Jan 2017
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen."

Young, we understand
the world, but not ourselves.
Old, we understand
ourselves, but not the world.
Between falls the mysterious
and baffling substance
of our lives. Confusion
marks any real life
of consciousness.
Certainty is the lie
we believe in to smooth
the transition. Death
is the period that punctuates
the end of our sentence,
when we finally know
what we really know
in silence.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
I do not know
what rivers mean,
how buzzards think,
what the sun imagines,
or how snowdrifts feel.
This is sad and puzzling.
You would suppose
that in sixty-three years
even a crazy man
might learn something
of consequence.
- mce
Mike Essig Oct 2015
for Sharon Olds*

No one
in our time -
except perhaps
Leonard Cohen -
has written
so exquisitely
of Love, Lust
and Loss.

It is as if
you have
commandeered
God's voice.

What must
it be like
to know
the Human
so well?

Sweet Poetess
of illuminated
darkness;

your words
fall like stars
into the
dusky world
and brighten
each obscure
corner.

Such a gift
to be given;
such a gift
to give.

  ~mce
If you haven't read her, you must.
Mike Essig Jan 2017
Kiss me Goddess.
I want your tongue
in my human mouth
filling it with words.
I want your breath
in my lonely lungs
inspiring me.
Haptic Lady,
I want your legs
around my waist
urging me to creation,
undulating ecstasy.
Make me dizzy
with your passion
and I will sing
your holy songs
to flawed creation.
Oh ****** Muse
of the holy body
and the broken,
profane heart,
come with me,
and laugh aloud
when you do.
We will name
our children poems
and send them
into the mortal world
where they will
walk in beauty
and make us proud.
Mike Essig May 2015
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda**

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me **** over ***
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to **** tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?
Best song about war. Listen to the Pogues' version.
Mike Essig Oct 2015
He stuffed
an imaginary cat
( along with
some other
imaginary stuff)
into an
imaginary box,
thought about it
and suddenly,
the seemingly
very small world
became vast with
potentialities.
  ~mce
Mike Essig Mar 2018
"Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky." WHA

Easy to escape what you hate;
difficult to find what you love.

Handsomely equipped to fail,
we sail out into the world.

Disillusion follows disillusion
until disillusion becomes disillusion,
it's own gray Shade of life.

The old know they have failed.
They young suspect they will.

Take wing against the dead.
Craft waxen wings. Seek the sun.
Soar against all despair.

Better to tumble than not to try,
to fall far and furiously alive.

Try to breach that pure, Attic sky
where light and hope may reside,
once before you wither and die.
Mike Essig Oct 2015
Nothing to worry
about says my Doc.
Quite common.

Maybe so but
seeing me try to
read a newspaper
is like watching
a DoDo flap its
wings to fly or
a ***** attempt
to hold himself
together in
an earthquake.

Essentially,
I could easily
do without
these tremors.

  ~mce
Mike Essig Jun 2015
The women of ancient Greece
sang songs and stories
as the worked their looms.
Tales of heroes, great deeds,
love, desire, war, conquest,
gods, mortals and demigods
and not one ended in happiness.
The women change;
The looms still weave;
stories are still sung;
the endings remain.
  ~mce
Mike Essig Dec 2015
I ran into an Angel
at the cafe this morning.

He looked shabby and sad
as he told me that
he has been unemployed
and at loose ends
since God died.

The stimulus package
hadn't helped
and there was
no unemployment
compensation
available for
the formerly Divine.

I commiserated,
agreed that times
are tough all over,
and paid for his latte.

It seemed the least
I could do.

  - mce
Mike Essig Oct 2015
Sometimes
silence
is a gift
to be
savored.

   ~mce
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