by W.H. Auden*

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly ******* they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings ***** the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Odd that Auden
who never heard
a shot fired in anger
wrote the best poem
about the coming of WWII.
This only proves
that you don't have
to be a warrior
to understand war.
War is a corruption
in the hearts of men.
If you know the human heart,
if you understand
that infection,
you know all you need
to know about war.

He smells like his life:

weary smells of
whiskey and leather,
the dead stink of
too many cigarettes,
the mingled perfumes
of many lovely women,
the dark, sticky
whiff of lust and ***,
the acrid stench of
cordite and ******,
the copper reek of blood,
the honest sweat of work,
with just a hint of ink
and **** thrown in.

This effluvium may not
be sweetly attractive
or call to butterflies
and hummingbirds,

but it is the aroma
of a life lived alive.

   ~mce

I'm sorry but it's 5 AM
and all I can think of
is your warm soft hands
and deep wet mouth
leaning over my body
wishing it a good morning
with your talented tongue
starting the new day
the best possible way.

  ~mce

She kissed like barbed wire,
bruised his kidneys
with her vise grip thighs,
clenched his ****
like an anaconda,
climaxed like a volcano
spewing screams,
moaning like a torture victim;
always wanted more, deeper,
faster, harder, now.

She was the wanton
wild, *******
every guy longs to meet,
ravaging his bed,
bruising his body,
******* him dry

and he couldn't run away
fast or far or soon enough.

  ~mce

Consider:
every time you think
you have met the One,
he is probably
just One more
before the Next One.

   ~mce

The fake blond
with low standards
sits on the bar stool
in a dress so short
it immodestly
screams take me home,
but I think she would
really rather have
a home of her own
and not have to hunt
a new man each night.

Even in my seventh decade
enough remain:

impatience, ****, whiskey,
too many cigarettes,
lust (eternal and bright),
driving carelessly, laziness,
not being Buddhist enough,
preferring my own silence
to the chattering of humans
and others that come and go.

I once hoped to die pure,
but I know now these blemishes
will stick to me like true love
and follow me into the grave.

Such terminal devotion,
so rarely to be found
in this fickle world.

Friends to the end,
womb to tomb.

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

She tilted
her red head,
her green eyes
smiled as
her mouth said
Uh, huh...
and you slowly
undid every
button
on her dress.

  ~mce

Who doesn't want
a secret life of adventure
beyond the day's work,
something decadent,
wild, preposterous,
lustful, dangerous
and enduring as
the babble of
poets and philosophers
who talk a good game
but rarely get around
to living.

   ~mce

Hands are shaped by
what they hold and make.
Sometimes, I hold your body
tight as a cotton summer dress
on a torrid, sticky day;
Sometimes, my fingers slowly
tracing make it writhe and moan
like a gasping, shocked goddess.
Tell me that my hands are
shaped like love and lust.
Tell me how to touch you
again and forever.
Make my hands
the shape of your desire.

   ~mce

by Kim Addonizio*

Address older people as Sir or Ma’am

unless they drift slowly into your lane

as you aim for the exit ramp.

Don’t call anyone *******, *******, or *******;

these terms are reserved for ex-boyfriends

or anyone you once let get past second base

and later wished would be ****** into a sinkhole.

Yelling obscenities at the TV is okay,

as long as sports are clearly visible on the screen,

but it’s rude to mutter at the cleaning products in Safeway.

Also rude: mentioning ****** functions.

Therefore, sentiments such as “I went ***** to the wall for her”

or “I have to **** like a chick with a pelvic disorder at a kegger contest”

are best left unexpressed.

Don’t’ say “chick,” which is demeaning

to the billions of sentient creatures

jammed in sheds, miserably pecking for millet.

Don’t talk about yourself. Ask questions

of others in order to show your interest.

How do you like my poem so far?

Do you think I’m pretty?

What would you give up to make me happy?

Don’t open your raincoat to display your nakedness.

Fondling a ***** in public

is problematic, though Botero’s black sculpture

of a fat man in the Time-Warner building

in New York, his ***-*** rubbed gold,

seems to be an exception.

Please lie to me about your *******

and the permafrost layer.

Stay in bed on bad hair days.

When the pulley of your childhood

unwinds the laundry line of your dysfunction,

here is a list of items to shove deep in the dryer:

disturbed brother’s T-shirt,

depressed mother’s socks and tennis racket,

tie worn by ****** father driving the kids home

from McDonald’s Raw Bar. If you refuse

your host’s offer of alcohol, it is best to say,

“I’m so hung over, the very thought of drinking

makes me feel like projectile vomiting,”

or, “No thank you, it interferes with my medications.”

Hold your liquor whenever it is fearful

and lonely, whenever it needs your love.

Don’t interrupt me when I’m battering.

Divorce your cell phone in a romantic restaurant.

Here is an example

of a proper thank-you card:

Thank you for not sharing with me

the extrusions of your vague creative impulse.

Thank you for not believing those lies

everyone spreads about me, and for opening

the door to the next terrifying moment,

and thank you especially for not opening your mouth

while I’m trying to digest my roast chicken.

by Kim Addonizio*

Even when you know what people are capable of,
even when you pride yourself on knowing,
on not evading history, or the news,
or any of the quotidian, minor, but still endlessly apparent
and relevant examples of human cruelty–even now
there are times it strikes you anew, as though
you’d spent your whole life believing that humanity
was fundamentally good, as though you’d never thought,
like Schopenhauer, that it was all blind, impersonal will,
never chanted perversely, almost gleefully,
the clear-sighted adjectives learned from Hobbes–
solitary, poor, nasty, brutal, and short—
even now you’re sometimes stunned to hear
of some terrible act that sends you reeling off, too overwhelmed
even to weep, and then you realize that your innocence,
which you had thought no longer existed,
did, in fact, exist–that somewhere underneath your cynicism
you still held out hope. But that hope has been shattered now,
irreparably, or so it seems, and you have to go on, afraid
that there is more to know, that one day you will know it.

by Kim Addonizio*

Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you're still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don't you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of ***** and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn't the backyard
that you're so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —
don't you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren't you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven't they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn't it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it's time. You've rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there's one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they're howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors' dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won't shut up.

by Patricia Smith*

Poseidon was easier than most.
He calls himself a god,
but he fell beneath my fingers
with more shaking than any mortal.
He wept when my robe fell from my shoulders.

I made him bend his back for me,
listened to his screams break like waves.
We defiled that temple the way it should be defiled,
screaming and bucking our way from corner to corner.
The ***** goddess probably got a real kick out of that.
I’m sure I’ll be hearing from her.

She’ll give me nightmares for a week or so;
that I can handle.
Or she’ll turn the water in my well into blood;
I’ll scream when I see it,
and that will be that.
Maybe my first child
will be born with the head of a fish.
I’m not even sure it was worth it,
Poseidon pounding away at me, a madman,
losing his immortal mind
because of the way my copper skin swells in moonlight.

Now my arms smoke and itch.
Hard scales cover my wrists like armour.
C’mon Athena, he was only another lay,
and not a particularly good one at that,
even though he can spit steam from his fingers.
Won’t touch him again. Promise.
And we didn’t mean to drop to our knees
in your temple,
but our bodies were so hot and misaligned.
It’s not every day a gal gets to sample a god,
you know that. Why are you being so rough on me?

I feel my eyes twisting,
the lids crusting over and boiling,
the pupils glowing red with heat.
Athena, woman to woman,
could you have resisted him?
Would you have been able to wait
for the proper place, the right moment,
to jump those immortal bones?

Now my feet are tangled with hair,
my ears are gone. My back is curving
and my lips have grown numb.
My garden boy just shattered at my feet.

******, Athena,
take away my father’s gold.
Send me away to live with lepers.
Give me a pimple or two.
But my face. To have men never again
be able to gaze at my face,
growing stupid in anticipation
of that first touch,
how can any woman live like that?
How will I be able
to watch their warm bodies turn to rock
when their only sin was desiring me?

All they want is to see me sweat.
They only want to touch my face
and run their fingers through my . . .

my hair

is it moving?

I was a kid during
the Space Race
and loved all things
aeronautical.

Wanted to be
an Astronaut
or an ace
fighter pilot.

Then I went to war
and spent every day
in the Unfriendly Skies
of sudden death
hoping not to meet
the ground in pieces.

These days,
I prefer to drive.

   ~mce

Let us get naked
and frolic blue lipped
in the gelid waters
of Lake Michigan
and warm each other
on the fine white sand,
your painted toes
pointing out clouds
in the pellucid sky.

Call that a date.

  ~mce

By Kim Addonizio*


I like to touch your tattoos in complete

darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of

where they are, know by heart the neat

lines of lightning pulsing just above

your ******, can find, as if by instinct, the blue

swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent

twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you

to me, taking you until we’re spent

and quiet on the sheets, I love to kiss

the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until

you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists

or turns to pain between us, they will still

be there. Such permanence is terrifying.

So I touch them in the dark; but touch them, trying.

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.

By  Diane di Prima*


Extract the juice which is itself a Light.


Pulp,   manna,   gentle

                    Theriasin, ergot

like mold on flame, these red leaves

bursting

                    from mesquite by the side

of dry creekbed.         Extract



the tar, the sticky

substance

                    heart

                                of things

(each plant a star,        extract



the juice of stars

                                by circular stillation

smear

            the inner man w/the coction

till he burn

            like worms of light in quicksilver

not the false

            puffballs of marshfire,      extract



the heart of the empty heart

                     it is full

of the star soul that paces fierce

in the deeps of earth

                       the Red Man,

                                                 healer

in furs

            who carries a club

who carries

             the pale homunculus

in his belly.

                         For you are angel, you call

the soul from plants



                      or pearls of ambergris

out of the grudging sea.

                       Extract arcanum.  Separate

true Archeus from the false

                       the bitter

is not less potent—nor does clarity

bespeak truth.



                        Out of the heart of the ineffable

draw the black flecks of matter

                               & from these

the cold, blue fire.

                               Dry water.   Immerse

yourself

              though it be but a drop.

                                                           This Iliaster

flowers like the wind.

               Out of the ash, the Eidolon of the world



Crystalline.

                  Perfect.

Wake me
with love

Touch me
with hunger

Take me
with fire

  ~mce

Slide that dress up
over your hips,
part your thighs
like a promise,
pull your knees up
in welcome.

I am a thirsty man
who needs a deep drink
from paradise.

You are a woman
who understands
and quivers
at necessity,
who loves to have
her liquids lapped.

Tongue on secret lips,
we nourish each other.
Love and lust,
the perfect marriage.

  ~mce

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.

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

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.

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

I miss you in
tiny underground
nuclear explosions
that burn my feet
and send me
running towards you.

  ~mce

It’s not that a photon can be in two places at once, it’s that a photon is everywhere at once.*

We are
two photons
apart, together,
everywhere
at the same time,
different but
the same
yet always
radiant.

  ~mce

I will gladly
build you
a new
universe
if you will
kneel
between
my legs
and pull me
out of this one.

  ~mce

In a perfect world  
I would adore you
without guilt.
I would call you
trembling.  
I would ****** you
with poems,
eyes, hands, lips,
a famished tongue.
loud as lightening,
I would cry out
all the names
of your hidden lusts,
perfect them
and hand them to you,
day after day
until you are
a bundle of
potential *******,
throbbing
and burning for
my touch
to make you
shudder and scream.

The mad poet of the glade
sits at leisure in the shade.

He spends the measure of his day
recalling women gone away.

Women dressed in barbed wire
who set his anxious heart on fire.

Women in satin, women in jeans,
women far beyond his means.

Women who sang, women who swore,
each the ******, each the *****.

Women of flesh, women of soul,
who touched his life, who made him whole.

Women of mind, women of heart,
all a mystery at the start.

Women who loved the words he said
and fell like blossoms on his bed.

Women whose dresses slid to the floor,
he lifted them up, he made them soar.

Women who sighed, trembled and came,
each one different, each the same.

Women lovely as springtime flowers
with silken skin and magick powers.

Women who lusted, women who dreamed,
women who loved him, women who schemed.

Women who broke his willing heart,
caressed his flesh, inhaled his art.

Women who finally came to fear
the cost of keeping him too near.

Women who all loved to play,
but could not bring themselves to stay.

Now he dreams those bygone times
and turns them into lines of rhymes.

Oh, the mad poet of the glade
he sits at leisure in the shade.
  - mce

Life is hardly a heap of joys;
ignorance works overtime here
in sheeple country.
The universe uses your own voice to complain.
The needy, tedious body diminishes,
but that devouring voice rattles on.
We wax eloquent in extinct languages
describing marvels to the dead
who are not impressed.
We recite entire dictionaries
of universal incomprehension
through every imbecilic night
until the very ears of heaven
drip weary blood
as every explanation punishes.
You cannot separate
what you have chosen
from what chose you.
So easy to know how to begin things,
unknowable how they will end
other than in a heap of not joys
or a prolonged spasm
of quivering delight.

it's a long time
since last night.

  ~mce

is a knot
we unravel
with something
other than
our fingers.

  ~mce

Forget everything
you know about life
and write down
only what you imagine.

  ~mce

Some lonely mornings
it is raining in the corner
of everyone's empty
bedroom.

  ~mce

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

You wake
in a warm bed
and feel her
female presence;
she wakes,
opens her eyes,
and smiles.
What is more
lovely
and reassuring
than waking up
next to a lover
who wakes up
smiling?
The entire
coming day
seems to smile
along with her.
Small instances
like this
make the world
not only bearable
but beautiful.
- mce

I found a note
from the Muse
this morning.

It read:

I've gone to Aruba
to work on my tan;
you're on your own,
do the best you can.

Capricious *****.

She knows
I'll wait for her;
I always do.

How very like
a woman;
so certain
of her charms.

But I don't have
to like it.

When she returns,
I'll sulk a bit.

It stings to be so
taken for granted,
even by a goddess.
  - mce

I am a pirate
pacing a quarterdeck
before a battle.
I am Adam
beneath the apple tree
waiting to bite
into the New Order.
I am a hopeful heretic
praying for immolation
but unable
to strike a match.
I am a corpse
writing a will
in blood and *****.
I am a soldier
watching a friend
erupt in a fog
of pink viscera.
I am a madman
twitching on a couch,
forgotten in a corner
of a windowless chamber.
I am a hero
slaying griffins,
destroying dragons,
ravishing maidens
as my rightful reward.
I am a lover
to whom ladies
open their thighs
and abandon
their honor,
willingly.
I am a tone deaf poet
singing a defeated song.
I am the amateur torturer
carefully sharpening
his instruments,
but then unable to find
meaningful work.
I am a ****** priest
hearing my own
confession
and finding it
absurdly tedious.
I am all of these
impossible people.
Who are you?
  - mce

He's sitting in
these rented rooms;
he's waiting
for the end.
He knows that
there are things
he knew,
he'll never know again.

The parting of
your lovely knees;
the glistening
of your lips;
the way your *******
reached out for him;
the lilting of your hips.
The time of lust
has drained away,
there's little
left to trust.

He's sitting in
these rented rooms;
he's waiting
for the end.
He knows that
there are things
he knew,
he'll never know again.
   -mce

This morning
no ordinary words
will do,
I want the poem
that is you.

The poem
of your lips,
the poem
of your eyes,
the poem
of your hips,
the poem
of your thighs.

These are the only
words that will do,
the fleshly poetry
of the woman
that is you.

  ~mce

Even if you
have convinced
yourself
(wrongly)
that you are
nothing special
you should
still insist
on a Tsunami
of love.

  ~mce

The sun went down on me
right when you went down on me.

Sweetness explodes
when the planets align.

I did not know
that sunsets could scream.

  ~MCE

for Anne Sexton**

I dream of writing words
that conjure screams and sighs,
that force my readers
to turn away and look back,
fascinated and repelled,
locked and paralyzed
by my serpentine stare,
by my hypnotic intensity.
Screams and sighs like those
that exploded from your pages
like verbal ******
illuminating the naked horror
of the life that led you
to take your own.
You were a wise, wild woman
whose fierce, fearless words
sprang from a fountain
of uncertainty and chaos;
but your pen never faltered,
not until the weight of living
became too much to bear
and drove you, disconsolate,
to the locked garage,
the running engine,
suffocation and death alone,
without screams or sighs.
The critics and the madness
that plagued your soul
are vanished now.
Only your white hot
woman's words survive,
searing my brain,
the living brains of many.
I hope you have found respite,
far from screams and sighs.
Be at peace, Sister.
- mce

It begins with
nervous laughter,
creaking springs,
builds to
loud supplications
to Jesus and God,
ends in final
melting moans.

Funny how little
the notes vary;
more classical
than baroque;
more advertising
jingle than
hallelujah.

The simple sounds
of who we are,
where we come from,
what we do
to each other

played on mortal organs
by ardent amateurs,
overheard through
thin motel walls.

   - mce

Mykonos, 1969 - for H.M.
"Memory is a kind of accomplishment," - William Carlos Williams

Forty-five years later
I still see you
standing on that
dazzling Greek beach
wearing nothing
but your bikini bottoms
and an innocent grin.

A vision like that
can last a man
a lifetime.

Where are you now
smiling Venus?

Where am I?

   ~mce

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

  ~MCE

I'd like
to get
deeper
inside
your head
she says.

I'd like
to get
deeper
inside you,
he thinks.
-mce