The first pile
you see is

a burned, ******
stinking, heap
of humans, bloated
and swollen,
swarming with flies,
squirming with maggots

and you puke
like you have
never ever
puked before.

After that,

it's just
another pile
of dead *****.

Don't mean
******* nothing.

  ~mce

steamy humid day
the beating sound
of a helicopter

forty-five years
vanish
in an instant

  ~mce

One autumn day
of mist and drizzle
I stopped at Wounded Knee,
walked to the cemetery
and sat trying
to imagine forgiveness
with no success.
I sat for hours.
No one came but
a native guy
who sold me
a dream catcher
made of beads
from Taiwan for $20.
Guilt money;
an easy mark.
I sat alone until dusk
when the ghosts arrived.
They were not dancing;
they were weeping.
I fled to my car
and drove to Valentine,
got drunk and slept.
They wept in my dreams.
There is no
statute of limitations
on ******.
  ~mce

A black dog
sitting on a dock
staring silently
through the darkness
at the mute moon.

  ~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

Lasciviously
as the wind
blown from afar,
you arouse
my insatiable
eagerness:
a gentle breeze
across bare skin,
naked desire flares.

  ~mce

Days and days
when the only sound
heard in the shack
is the silent padding
of cat's paws
on thick carpet.
Doesn't wear out
the carpet; just me.

  ~mce

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

Sometimes I get lonely
for the old days
when I drank a lot
and didn't think too much.

  ~mce

He stroked
the air
where she
might have
been.

  ~mce

Do we ever
really grow up
or do we just
get tired?

~mce

This story has
been told over
and over forever.

Light a daybreak.
Darkness at dusk.
Leaves in Fall.
Ice in Winter.
Lilacs in Spring.
Storms in Summer.

There are no humans
in this story;

So the story
is pointless.

It simply is
as it has always been
and will be.

  ~mce

I never sought
this calling.

So difficult,
even painful.

The Poet must
find a way
to use words
to create beauty
to keep chaos
at bay.

Chaos never
relents.

Beauty is fragile.

And yet we
soldier on.

Smart women they were.
Knew a lost cause
when they saw one
and fled town
before it burned down.

  ~mce

Like a hug of barbwire,
she pierced my being
in a thousand places.

Like a torturer's lady,
she left me broken
as a heretic saint
in an exquisite
inquisition.

  ~mce

Temagami, Ontario. 1967*

Take out wheat wafers,
spread on thick cheese
and crunch loudly.

Wash it down with
long cool swallows
of Molson's.

Sit by the window
and watch the rain,
smoking a cigarette

and dreaming.

  ~mce

1 - Everything is connected to everything else.
2 - Everything has to go somewhere.
3 - **There's no such thing as a free lunch.

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

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

There has
only ever been
one day
and it happens
over and
over again.

  ~mce

If you knew how much
I want you, you might
run away from my arms
as from a trap.

But mine is not the desire
of possession, ownership
or of "making you mine."

I want us to be
partners in passion;
eyes trading glances,
lips trading kisses,
hands trading caresses.

I want us to be lovers
who share each other
freely and equally,
as the sun and moon
share the same sky
and through their sharing
make it more beautiful.

Two souls intertwined
in a magikal embrace,
testing the limits
of time and space.

  ~mce

For My Cat Jeoffrey*

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffrey
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant
quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his
prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees . . .

For having consider'd God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying . . .

For the English cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his fore-paws of any quadrupede.
For the dexterity of his defense is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually -- Poor Jeoffrey! poor Jeoffrey! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffrey is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in compleat cat.

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

I have heard
the sound of pining;
its original voice,
the song of those
too long alone.
Not the song
of solitude
or loneliness:
the empty voice
of aloneness.
  ~mce

Answers only dull the senses.
Even right answers
often make what they explain
uninteresting. Not knowing
provides a reason to live.

   ~mce

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front*
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

"Helen, the radiance of women..." - Homer

Had Helen of Troy been a modern American woman,
she would have checked her email, called her boss,
updated her Facebook page, looked at her calendar,
gone to the gym and talked with her therapist
before running away with Paris.
She would also have consulted her girlfriends
to determine if he was really that into her
and examined a bevy of relationship
self-help books just to make sure.
Certainly, she would have googled him,
had a friend perform a credit check,
and demanded an STD clearance from his doctor.
When the ships and soldiers arrived
to redeem her honor and rescue her,
she would have told them in a huff
that she was an independent woman
quite capable of taking care of herself
and didn't need the help of any men,
before stepping over the dead male bodies
and accepting a free ride home.
Later she would write a wildly popular
estrogen drenched memoir about her trials
filled with spiritual advice, travel notes and recipes.
Paris, of course, would be conveniently dead.
Some stories do not improve when updated.
  - mce

I do not know
if you can love me
or even like me.

An old monk who
lives in a shack
with a fat cat,
without money,
fame or ambition.

Like Han Shan
on Cold Mountain
I contemplate and
try to sum up
a lifetime
in poor poems.

I am not a catch.

I do not know
if you can love me...

   ~mce

Forgive me, love.

My affection for you
cannot be conveyed
in words or poems.

It is a well that
must be drunk from
by your own lips.

It needs the language
of fingers and kisses
and skin and sighes.

When we reach
the moment
when we can speak
the tactile tongue
of love face to face,
you will know just
who I am and why
I need you in my life.

Until then, these
poor words must suffice.

Take them, a part of me,
and all I can give
in this moment.

The mysterious pregnancy
of the present moment.
Call it hazard, randomness
whatever you like.

Contained in that moment,
all the possibilities of life.
The locus of existence.
Whatever you do could
change everything.

You are 21 and sitting in a bar.
You walk out the door and turn right.
One life looms. Hazard.
You walk out the door and turn left.
A different life. Hazard.
You stay at the bar;
someone sits down beside you.
A third life opens up. Hazard.

Forget choice. You didn't choose,
you just unthinkingly did.
Yet so many possibilities
in that innocent instant.
Mythic, timeless, un-contemporary.
Powerful as a Black Hole.

We speak of good choices,
bad choices, as if we control
our lives absolutely.

Wrong. Worse than wrong: absurd.
Ego. You believe yourself a god?

First comes the random hazardous moment,
numinous and fecund with an unknown power.

Choice only follows that moment.
You choose within the arena of hazard.

Only then, thumbs up or down.

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

You make it real.
   ~mce

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.

Your lips
slightly parted;

pure smile
of ancient Greece
seen on endless
broken statues.

Smile of sun
and knowledge.

Smile of Artemis
and Athena.

Smile that smiles
in the endless
moment.

Eternal
feminine
smile of
the mysteries.
  ~mce

Listen for the silences,
intervals between notes;
silence engenders song;
without it mere cacophony.

Poetry is no different:
what is not said
often says the most.
  ~mce

Low clouds scud;
rain pounds down;
trees tear the mist:
chilly, drear and lonely.

The only warmth
in my heart,
from your heart,
jumps across the miles
and brings me smiles.

Once you understand
there is no truth
beyond magick,
you know
that sometimes
silence is a poem.
   ~mce

He spent his day in
hell's reading room,
so now he is trying
to put out the flames
in his brain
which threaten
to consume it
entirely.

He does not try
very hard.

His mind wanders
to death
at a crossroads,
names without meaning,
how so much love
fossilizes in the air.

It grows hotter
and hotter.

His nervous system
recoils in horror
like a defiled angel.

Purity seems the
better choice.

Even though
the flames stretch
out tortured hands,
he tries no harder.

He is lost
in the kingdom
of words.

A kingdom
only burning cleanses.

He hears Cerebrus
barking.

~mce

Consciousness rears its reptile head;
Medusa in the morning gloom.
You wake to iron silence,
a tourist in a rented room.
I have never feared death
but often been terrified of life.
Chaos theory is not a balm
when the unexpected fall begins,
the sudden plummet into strife.
Life says no so often and loudly
we begin to doubt the yes.
The performance begins anew;
the usher guides you to your seat.
The mortal day coiled like a viper
ready to strike and poison.
Wise souls move through the murk
one careful step at a time.
When you rise, check your weapons;
be careful where you place your feet.
   ~mce

a crisp white t-shirt
my lover's pensive green eyes
surely paradise

  ~mce

When I was a kid
and ****** something up,
my grandfather would say:
"If you choose to live
on the railroad tracks
you can't be surprised
when a train hits you."
All these years later,
I've been hit by so many
I no longer notice them.
And I still haven't
moved off the tracks.
   ~mce

Take my hand, Love,
lead me about the world
you have brought me back to.
It is so warm and beautiful
to be in it with you.

    ~mce

“Here is a secret you won't learn in your temple.
The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal,
because any moment might be our last.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.”
~ Achilles

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

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.

There are moments
when the world
becomes so hard
you can only
stand to see it
through stone eyes.

  ~mce

Last night he was eighteen
when he fell asleep.

The darkness filled with
insubstantial events,
visions of women and war,
marriage, jobs, divorce,
disasters and recovery.

When he woke up he was 63.

Life is but a dream.

An old man smitten against the odds;
what could be more pathetic?
He knows a lot. He knows better than this.
He has been to war, married, divorced.
He knows all the games from both sides.
He knows she is young, beautiful, far away.
He knows that she chooses whom she wants;
that she runs the game.
He knows he brings nothing to her
but empty hands and a worshipful soul.
He has stayed alive this long
by knowing and covering the odds.
In that, he has always been smart.
Never play the other man's game.
Keep a clear head. Surprise your enemies.
Know when to laugh and walk away.
And yet, he wants nothing more
in the world than a seat at this table
in this most unlikely game.
A chance to win what can't be won.
A chance to have what can't be taken.
One very much last chance.
An old man smitten against the odds;
what could be more pathetic?

  ~mce

The stranger said "Love it can cry you a river -
Me, I'm a loner cause I can't take the heartache
And sometimes I'm a fighter when I get too much whiskey -
Here have a little whiskey, pretend you don't give a **** -*

I am a loner and
sometimes a fighter,
but there is
not enough
whiskey in the world
to drink you
out of my heart
or  allow me
to pretend
I don't give a ****
or to ignore
the heartache.

I take my pain
like a warrior:
straight up.
  ~mce

We are different. Why not?

But we are so much alike.

An aging monk, I long ago
left the importance of opinions
and the world's judgements behind.

For me, that was difficult.

First, the world beat me
to a ******, barely breathing
husk of a man.  I took many
punches; I struggled up
and learned a new way to live.

You are young and what
had to be beaten out of me
seems to come naturally to you.

Now, I take my chances
and live with the results.

All I ask of you  is a chance.

Whatever happens will happen.

Two souls that kiss
can overcome many differences
because, soul to soul,
they create their own world
outside of time and space.

Maybe not forever, but in
a mortal world, what difference?

Forever is you in my arms,
the still point in life's
hurricane, for as long as
you are content to be there.

I didn't storm your world;
you let me in. I can't win
your heart; you aren't a prize,
you are a person, a woman.

You will choose to offer it
freely or you will not.

Your life, your heart, your choice.

I am here, a man, waiting to see
how the cards get dealt and then
play the hand I am given.

I am hoping to get
the Queen of Hearts.

Here's to good cards and good luck.

  ~mce

At four AM,
the hour of the Blues,
you will think
you want to escape
from the world.

By dawn
you will know
you must escape
into it.

Where shall you go?

Wherever your
heart leads.

Listen to it
and be on your way.

  ~mce