Errands to run
decisions to make;
clothes to wash:
the endless
trivial particulars
that weigh life down.

Where is my
personal assistant,
my life coach,
my hot French maid?

****, once again
I've woken up
in the wrong life.
  - mce

You make
wearing nothing
seem ******
fashionable.

  ~mce

In it, all the debris of a life:

lost loves, pieces of
a broken heart, the smiles
of friends since gone,
a marriage, children,
jobs, cars, houses,
the shards of dreams,
various rainbows, sunsets,
thunderstorms, poems
never to be finished,
the chaos of battle,
squandered opportunities,
misplaced lusts,
the best *******,
the deepest kisses,
the worst disappointments,
betrayals, dashed hopes,
many resurrections,
bundles of broken promises,
and endless other items,
large and small.

It is the messy drawer
of a very messy man,
rarely opened anymore.
   - mce

Let my
tongue
touch the
very why
of you
so that
I can
hear your
soul
make its
sounds
out loud
in the
world.
  - mce

In the language
of love
there is no word
for impossible.

Improbable, yes.
Unlikely, yes.
Uncertain, yes.

Impossible, never.
  - mce

You can write
all the love poems
you want to
as long as you
don't mistake
love for ****.

   ~mce

My heart is a
crumbling mansion.
Hard to heat,
hard to cool,
dangerous wiring,
dubious plumbing.
It looks OK
in a haunted way.
It's dangerous
to let others in.
So I rarely do.

  ~mce

What doesn't **** you makes you stronger.*

What doesn't **** you
maims you.

What doesn't **** you
makes you an *******.

What doesn't **** you
makes you afraid of life.

What doesn't **** you
makes you afraid to love.

What doesn't **** you
makes you meek.

What doesn't **** you
scars your soul.

What doesn't **** you
should have.

  ~mce

I only want to
be your heart's physician
keeping our love strong.

  ~mce

Two Turkey
Buzzards sit on
the utility wire;
another glides
in to join them.
they appear to be
considering me,
but I'm hoping
they are early.

   ~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

The moon has poured
a welcome mat
of light before
my bed.
      Wipe your feet
in radiance
before you join me,
lover.
       We will
merge in incandescent
ecstasy and glow
white hot with
the night's fervid,
perfect photons,
one where once
there was two.

   ~mce

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

  ~mce

The poetic cranium
is packed with stories,
most of them
too sad to be told.

  ~mce

She doesn't
have a clue
how sweet
she is.
My job is
to melt
that gelid
heart and
open her
like a
blossom
to her own
delight.
I'm on it.

  ~mce

When you are old
and looking back,
your regrets
will be the things
you didn't do,
not the things
you did.
   ~mce

Love, when distant,
hurts the most.
Not the good hurt
of too many kisses
but the bad hurt
of too many miles.
Yearning, burning,
waiting, hoping.
Like a toothache
always there
that you hope
won't go away.

  ~mce

I trace my family
back to the
first slimy critter
that crawled up
onto a beach
and took breath.

Beats the hell
out of the Mayflower
doesn't it?

   ~mce

Even after ten years
of living alone
the coal mine depth
of the morning silence
stuns me.
Time was, it could be
pierced by Mozart,
birdsong, poetry.
Now it has become
an impenetrable,
invisible wall
that I strain at
but cannot
hear through.
I accept that it
is permanent.
I know that when
the silence ends,
I will too.

My life has been
upside down
for so long that
I can now walk
on the ceiling
without leaving
footprints.
   ~mce

by Randy Newman*


Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
With frozen smiles to chase love away
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Lonely, lonely
Tin can at my feet
Think I'll kick it down the street
That's the way to treat a friend

Bright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

by John M. Ford*


The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

by E. A. Robinson*

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
  We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
  Clean favored, and imperially slim.
  
And he was always quietly arrayed,         
  And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
  "Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
  
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
  And admirably schooled in every grace:   
In fine, we thought that he was everything
  To make us wish that we were in his place.
  
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
  And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,   
  Went home and put a bullet through his head.

by Veronica A. Shoffstall*  

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean possession
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept
your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
burns if you get too much so you plant your
own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn...

Dumbrowski was a 6 foot 5 giant
from some hell hole mining town
somewhere south of Pittsburgh.
All sinew and bulging muscle
he looked like a painting
of the perfect, invincible warrior.
Perhaps he heard the incoming
whistle of his private RPG.
He opened his arms as if
to welcome its deadly embrace.
I was circling low overhead
in the waiting medevac chopper.
The round took him directly in the chest.
Every part of him took off
in hilarious random directions.
Arms went east and west. Head skyward.
Legs and boots travelled south.
His entire thorax just vanished.
Blood, brains and skin
splattered everyone nearby.
Later we picked up the pieces
and bagged them for his ride home;
the torn shreds of a man who had been
human one minute and meat on the ground
just a few minutes later.
Invincibility is clearly relative.

Because it's not the hollow life
of 8 to 5 in some cubicle hell.
No one feels more alive
and outside the banality
of plain old existence
than when surrounded
by violent, random death.
The ultimate rush of being.
Stronger than amphetamines,
*******, the best ****** ever.
Terrified, horrified, fascinated,
but more alive than you'll
ever be again.
If you survive, in your
secret heart you will
always miss it.

  ~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

Words, words, words, but powerful,
they dig deep into a boy's mind
and become the standard he comes
to measure himself by, who he is,
who he must be, must live up to.

Real men never cry. Real men never cry.
Never, ever hit a girl no matter what.
Bullies are all ****** little cowards.
Never back down. Never back down.
Always demand the most of yourself.
Never blame anyone else if you fail.
Never back down. Never back down.
Play fair but play to win.
Show no mercy, take no prisoners,
have no regrets, never complain.
Never back down. Never back down.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
Real men never cry. Real men never cry.
Pain makes you stronger. Life's not fair.
Don't be a baby. Stop acting like a girl.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
**** it up. It doesn't hurt. Be tough.
Nice guys finish last. Shed no tears.
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Be a man. Be a man. Be a man. Be a man.
Real men never cry. Real men never cry.

We believed deeply in all this ****
and when the time came, took it to war.
Very little made it back to the world.

  ~mce

Aside from loving you,
I feel more nothing
than anyone
you will never meet.
  ~mce

for all the names on that granite wall and many others...

I  Prelude

Vietnam broke my mind.
Now it runs like a cheap watch
always leaping about in time.
It pulls me backward into
strange visions of a world gone mad.
My life is time borrowed from corpses.
It is hard to lead your life
while you are stuck in another.
Time, the great healer,
only seems to make this worse.
Self-medication, legal meditation,
nothing seems strong enough
to stop the pounding of the rotors,
the screams of the men and the monkeys.
I have never been able to **** the demons
hidden in the tree lines of my mind.
Forty-three years later I'm still hiding
nauseous and naked in the napalmed jungle.
But my high mileage body clings to life:
the quest for immortality knows no shame.
Now I am a poet drunk on words,
stumbling over the illusion of art.
The more I know of language,
the less I understand life and loss.
And still the mortars rain down
in an eternal, inescapable monsoon.


II Place

Imagine a land that smells entirely of ****.
Only 70 miles wide in some places.
I flew above the abandoned bases of a war
that had been abandoned as well.
Places given up to the jungle
where 60,000 Americans died for nothing.
An implacable enemy that had fought
the Japanese and French before us
and had no doubt they would prevail.
A very beautiful place seen from the air
if no one was trying to eradicate you.
Skinny children, old women, many ******.
A place where real tigers might well
leap from ambush and eat you alive
and snakes so deadly that once bitten
you only got two steps before death.
Breathtaking sunsets and sunrises.
And the possibility of doom everywhere.
Rice paddies, mountains, triple canopy jungle.
Gorgeous beaches and an ocean laden
with sharks and sea snakes for company.
A place where death picked his teeth and smiled.


III Action

Stark terror is the mother of combat;
the rage of Peleus son Achilles
drives the soldier into the filed teeth
of impossibly horrible situations.
Not for America or the Stars and Stripes
but for the man next to you
whom you probably didn't even know.
Never ask why one man dies
and the one beside him lives on.
I shot an NVA regular from 20 feet
with a Colt Model 1911 45 automatic.
Got him exactly in the chest.
He looked very surprised to be dead.
I was surprised I didn't miss.
At An Loc a Huey 20 yards from mine
loaded with 18 hopeful human beings
took a rocket up the *** and
disintegrated into a debris cloud
of metal fragments and pink mist.
No bodies to be bothered with,
no pieces large enough to identify.
A CIA officer executing the wounded.
A tame **** torturing his countryman.
The exquisitely horrific moment when
you know you are falling, not flying.
The partner cut in half by a machine gun
five feet from where I stood.
Do not try to make any sense of this.
Fall back on the mantra: *don't mean nothing.
Cling to that and you may stay sane.
Apparently, God was busy for ten years
and never bothered to visit Vietnam.

IV Comrades

Forget that band of brothers *******,
we were more like a desperate rabble
with no one to count on but each other.
Sometimes a brother shares the blood
in your veins; sometimes you know him
by the blood that flows from his.
You scream, you curse, you try so hard
and he dies like a huge baby in your arms.
Vietnam was a club you could only join
by being there deep in the ****.
Now we are old men but our memberships
will never expire until we do.
And who will remember us then.

V Aftermath

Treated like lepers, we slunk home,
each to do the best he could.
Many died in the denouement of
drugs, alcohol, homelessness, suicide.
When I got home I wanted to be alone,
to be with people, lots of *****,
but only with no emotion attached,
an ocean of Jack Daniels, lines of coke,
mountains of ***, electro-shock therapy,
calm sleep without nightmares
and sometimes the comfort of a quick death.
Not much different than most I think.
Saigon fell. Don't mean ******* nothing.
Only some of us remember and want you to know
so you won't be fooled again.

train to Chicago...*

See it from a train.
Should have called it
the Rust Apocalypse.
Endless piles of industrial
woolly mammoth skeletons
turned red by the rust
that never sleeps or blinks.
Miles and miles of factory,
mills, and foundry corpses.
The workers long scattered
to $10 per hour ***** jobs.
Businesses gone with the workers.
Globalization at its finest.
The end of the people's value.
Amerika crumbles of dry rot.
Enjoy your stuff, good citizen.
This will all come to you.
There is no immunity
to endless, mindless greed.

   ~mce

Two people, one life.
There is no knowing.
Deal the cards.
All you can ever do
is trust and try
and hope you
come up all aces.
   'mce

for Uli*

I am divorced,
but not stupid.
Time was, I was a
mentally unstable
*******. That is
why my wife divorced me.
She did what was necessary
to protect herself
and our children.
I don't blame her,
I am grateful
for her courage.
I tell people
I will never marry again
because I couldn't
find someone better.
That is true
and from the heart.
You can't be sorry
about 30 great years.
Sadly, not all endings
are fairy tale happy.
I can only sincerely
wish her happiness
and I do.

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

Written by Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger; adapted by Mike Essig.


Halfway around the world tonight
In a strange and foreign land
A soldier packs his memories
As he leaves Afghanistan

And back home, they don't know too much
There was just no way to tell
You know* you had to be there
To know that war was hell

And there won't be any victory parades
For those that's coming back
They'll fly them in at midnight
And unload the body sacks

And the living will be walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seems to care these days
When a soldier makes it home

Somewhere in America tonight
In this strange and foreign land
A soldier unpacks memories
That he saved from Vietnam

They said it wasn't easy
Just another job, well done
Then the government in Saigon fell
To the sounds of rebel guns

And the faces of the comrades
Who were blown out of the sky
Leaves you bitter and disgusted
That they didn't have to die

The old men who planned that war
You know they all died safe in bed
With none of their rich and privileged sons
Ending up torn or dead

Back home they didn't know too much
There was just no way to tell
You know you had to be there
to know that war was hell

And there wasn't any big parades
For those that made it back
They flew them home in secret
and told them to make tracks

And the living were left walking down
A long and lonely road
Because nobody seemed to care back then
When a soldier made it home

The night is coming quickly
And the stars are on their way
As I stare into the evening
Looking for the words to say

That I saw the lonely soldier
Just a boy that's far from home
And I saw that I was just like him
While upon this earth I roam

And there may not be any big parades
If I ever make it back
As I come home under cover
To a world that can't keep track

Of the heroes who have fallen
Let alone the ones who roam
Guess that's why nobody seems to care
When a soldier makes it home

Different places, different ages.
Space time dilemmas.
You have a plan;
I have a past.
Where in this
phenomenonal  world
can our paths cross?
No answers,
only hope and questions
and time to think.
  ~mce

Not used to
The 13th floor
Of anything.
The lowlife
Calls me home.
Piercing loneliness
Of a hotel room
Where there was
A presence.
We know so little,
Suffer so much.
Nothing to do but
Breathe and hope.
Catch your train.
Make it through
Another day.
   Mce

For Louise*

When we meet,
we will know;
there is no fast,
only slow.

  mce

Thank you, Al.*

I was born poor, came up hard,
learned early to fight. I didn't die.

Streaming fire struck me three times
from the sky; I didn't die.

I lost my money, wife and children
to a bout of madness; I didn't die.

Many drugs, much alcohol, dead friends,
despair and depression; I didn't die.

Life is what I overcame and survived.

Life is the practice of suffering and joy
that I will continue until I die.
   mce

Thank you, Willie*

Where are the loves of yesteryear?
Safely stowed in my careful heart,
where though long ago lost,
they still radiate warmth and beauty
and whisper to me what is possible
and why desire must never end.
  ~mce

From nothingness I fell
into the world of substance,
into the world of becoming:

and became, a toddler, a teenager,
a soldier, a husband, a father,
a professor, an old poet.

Sixty-four orbits of the sun;
over 37 trillion miles so far.
It should feel longer than it does.

Thirty-seven trillion miles of
Reality, Maya, Monkey Mind,
the inevitable, unceasing chatter
we call existence; all the pieces
of this enormous jigsaw puzzle
I have given up try to solve.

You cannot solve life
as if it were just a calculus problem.

Too many variables.

Instead, I try to compose
a kind of music I cannot understand,
only enjoy and share with strangers;

an often futile attempt to harmonize
the discords of living while
getting  a little peek of insight.

Poetry: an attempt to part
the reeds and see what there is
swimming behind the behind,

before the orbits finally end.
   ~mce

This morning I enrolled
in the Nihilist University,
but I don't believe
that I will attend.

  ~mce

It is
a long day
since
last night.

  ~mce

No one has
ever given me
anything greater
than time, light
and silence.

Time to work.
Light to see.
Silence to think.

What could mean
more than these?

   ~mce

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

Time has lost track of me.
Daytime, night time, no difference.
Go to bed imbibing the right drugs.
Still no sign of sleep.
Finally at 3 AM I say **** it.
Get up, smoke a cigarette,
get out the cushions.
Twenty minutes of ZaZen.
I sit, I breathe, I wait.
The meditation concludes.
My knees and hips hurt.
Another cigarette, write this poem
and back to bed. Will I ever sleep again?
No way to know, no way to know anything.
I am a poor Monk lost in time.
The monkeys chatter, I am getting old.
I love a woman who frightens me.
My body deteriorates year by year.
My friends age, sicken, die.
Should I worry or just let it go?
Am I a fool or have I followed my Karma's path?
No way to know. Know way to know anything.
I am going back to bed to try again.
Only one thing for certain:
There are no more days in my life.
Every day is just the same ******* day.
Nothing to do but hit the sheets and hope.
Hope that today will be better than today.
Hope to keep breathing. Nothing else exists.
Night thoughts of an insomniac Monk.
Silence and submission, signifying nothing.

  ~mce

He has devoted his life
to a Ph.D. in Uncertainty.
Now he is aging
and thinks it nearly done,
but he just can't be sure.

  ~mce

Age blunts
the fine edge.
Distinctions dissolve.
Solids deliquesce.
Each day becomes
a struggle
just to feel.
But if you struggle
hard enough
you can delay
the inevitable.

For a while yet.

  ~mce

TN 2008

There is a girl in my cabin.
She sits on my 70s brown, velour
*****-couch with her long legs
tucked beneath her
like folded promises.
She wears nothing but a pair
of wool socks and an old, flannel
shirt of mine.  The wood fire blazes.
Her honest blond hair
cascades to the small of her lovely back.
Her skin is the flawless pink
of an unexpected spring sunrise.
Her eyes are emeralds that blaze
like novas when we make love.
Botticelli might have painted her.
I am reading Harrison to her aloud.
She imbibes his words like a toddler
learning language for the first time.
I light her cigarette and she laughs,
radiating the shameless pleasure
only the very young experience.
She expects nothing of me,
but this one evening,
and that is all she will get.
She tells me her name;
she is all of twenty-one.
Perhaps I am a ***** old man;
perhaps I am incorrigible;
perhaps I will burn in Hell;
perhaps I am a casualty of Eros;
or, perhaps, I am simply
still alive.
- mce

Imagining two bodies
becoming one
delights the mind;
two bodies actually
becoming one
is less delightful,
more difficult.
The transition
from ideal to real
defeats most.
Imagining and effort,
not always the same.
Spirit and flesh
do not merge easily.
Often it is easier
to meander on
to the next imagining
and dream away
your chance at love.

   ~mce