She has it all:

wit, intelligence
and beauty,
but denies them
as if to be special
is somehow
a shame.

She keeps her heart
deep within a castle:
moat, drawbridge,
walls, keep and towers
to keep hurt away.

If you want her you
must lay siege
to the fortress,
slowly break down
all obstacles,
replace them
with trust.

You must win
her by being
patient and worthy.

I am an old soldier
but my will
remains stronger
than most.

I have one
more campaign
left in me.

I will take
this citadel,
overcome
these obstacles
or break my heart
on its walls.

Defeat is not
an option where
such a prize
awaits.

"Once more into
the breach."

   ~mce

At Old Souls Shack
twilight descends.
It is quieter
after the ghosts
are gone.
The lightness
of darkness
takes their places.
Birds sing quieter
as well.
I softly imagine myself
far north of here
drinking wine
and reading poetry
to an older
younger woman.
She is wiser than I
but owns a gentleness
that belies her wisdom.
She makes up her world
and then inhabits it.
She is simply herself
which is a great deal.
She soothes me.
Sometimes I am lucky
and get to visit.
Twilight is uncertain,
so soft imaginings
are good friends
to have.

  ~mce

“I loved you long before you loved me. It's the only thing I have you beat at, and I'll bring it up every chance I get.”*

She was sitting on the beach
wearing the tiniest bikini
staring out at the perfect Adriatic.

She sat alone, which considering
her beauty and elegance
seemed some cosmically bad joke.

Unlike myself, I approached her,
flashed my guileless 17-year-old smile,
and said hello, fully expecting
a giant older brother or even
Poseidon himself to appear
from nowhere and ****** me.

She spoke a lilting English
with an accent I could not name.
She said her name was Marisa
and she was twenty-one.

Next morning, in my two dollar room,
after an exhausting night of abandon
during which she moaned and peaked
three times, she dressed as I lay
shrivelled and worn out
as a mummified banana.

She told me she had come here
to be alone a little because
next week she must marry
an older man whom she did not love
chosen as was custom by her parents.

She said she would remember me
as the last morsel of passion
she would ever know in this world.

She kissed my forehead and left.

I had no words.

I never knew her last name
nor ever saw her again.

The Wheel spins, the particles dance,
we can never know the trajectories
that chance encounter can engender
nor what shapes the next round brings.

The next day I left for Greece
uncertain of what had even happened.

I still don't know. I never will.

But I think I may have met her again...

  ~mce

So, are we good?

We are good.

Good.

Better to hear
sometimes
even than

I love you.

Or perhaps
the same thing.

  ~mce

Old men usually wake up with desire
only for coffee and ibuprofen.

So if you wake up
on a perfect spring morning
with a powerful desire
for that magic crease where her
inner thigh meets  her mystery,

Rejoice!

You have just experienced a miracle
and the day will certainly be
a vibrant and delicious one.

  ~mce

Words are bullets.
Sometimes,
I shoot myself
in the foot.
Be wary where
you point
that weapon.
Think before
you pull
that trigger.
If you don't,
you may not die,
but you will
feel pain.

  ~mce

All languages are a vague, uncertain codes.
Misunderstanding is rampant and hurtful,
probably the most common feature of communication.
We talk and talk, but don't often hear.
We think we are listening, but mostly
we are just using the time to work out
how to respond to what we think we heard.
Precision and effort can make things better.
But until we can hear each other's thoughts,
true connection will remain nearly impossible.
Still, we must continue to try and get better,
knowing that better and perfect are not the same.

  ~mce

Life is too valuable
to be ****** for money.
Poverty, unless crushing,
forced or dangerous,
at least has integrity.
So life's too short
to be a ***** anymore.
I paid those dues.
I am a human; I will
only do it for love.
  ~mce

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

One storm-driven black night
lightening snarled above our chopper
while an artillery battle blazed below.
Suspended between these geminated currents
of fatal power I thought my mortal heart
would explode in terror, but it didn't
and here I am 43 years later
still stuck in the endless quotidian.

  ~mce

Live too long and friends will become ghosts.
Corpses will fill your address book.
The ghosts show up in the crushing morning silence
and depart into your dreams after the twilight.
They never seem to have much to say.
I often ask them questions. What's it like being dead?
Is it cold? Are there animals. Is there anything to read?
Should I join you or hang out on earth a while yet?
The answers, when there are any, are not satisfactory.
And so I stick to earth for another bruising day.
In the Shack nothing happens and that is more than enough.
It is hard to fall asleep and truly hell to wake up.
I often feel like a road killed skunk that just had electroshock
or a successful suicide who just ****** a shotgun to ******.
Between dawn and twilight exists a pointless purgatory.
Still, heaven remains a vague possibility.
But that is what is meant by life. I'm off to participate.

  ~mce

I have quit deciding who I am.
It's too late to worry about it.
Now I pay more attention to what I do.
Time is running out. The deck
is stacked against me. It is nearly
impossible to consider the world
and yourself at the same time. Close
your eyes and try it. When they open
your children will be grown
and you will have missed your life.
Thought itself is suspect. What do
thoughts bring but mystery and worries.
Better the empty-headed monk scribbling
poems to nothingness than the cranky
scholar insisting on unimportant truths.
The deck is certainly stacked against
the scholar. I haven't decided about the monk.
I guess the question is what to do next
I believe I will take a nap and hope
for a vision. That seems a great compromise.
Nothing is stacked against naps except time
which matters not as we are only here for a moment.
After I wake up I'll invent a new calendar
so that the world slows down and there is
more time to kiss your forehead and keep you safe.
  ~mce

Have you ever noticed that
politicians are always
******* out of their mouths?
What exactly are they saying?
Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus
all said simply, pay attention
and try not to **** from your mouths.
Clearly, something got lost in translation.

  ~mce

It wasn't until the sixth century that the Christians
decided animals weren't part of the kingdom of heaven.
Hoof, wing and paw can't put money in the collection plate.
These lunatic ****-brained fools excluded our beloved creatures.
Theologians and accountants, the same thing really,
join evangelists on television, shadowy as viruses.

My lover is ill and lies far away from my touch.

I challenge you to write a sadder sentence.

My lover is ill and lies far away from my touch.

Give it your best shot.

~mce

Perhaps balance is on the way.
Truly most of them are now poor drunks,
but that is what we wanted and got.
Manifest Destiny = I am going to steal
your land, crush your culture,
outlaw your religion and place you
on worthless scrub in human zoos.
But their tobacco has killed untold millions
and now their casinos take redneck money
from fat racists in polyester wrappings.
Perhaps in the dying American interior
abandoned for the masturbatory
promises of the glittering coasts,
in a few hidden thickets and glens,
their old ways survive and wait upon
a time, the right time, to emerge.
Maybe, when our greed has eaten us,
they will materialize, the buffalo return,
and the Ghost Dance will be unnecessary.
Hey, what goes around comes around...

~mce

The old gods are as useless
as they always were.
The new gods run hedge funds
and order drone strikes
on weddings and birthday parties.
They are busy playing powerful
and have no time for mere us.
Only our own hearts can save us
until their numbered beating ceases.
Believe in that heart. It is closer
than any god and more reliable, too.
Use it for empathy and love.
Share it with others you care for.
Trust it because it is yours alone.

  ~mce

-from After Ikkyu

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don't know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch.

I have wasted so much life
learning the unimportant.
I will spend what's left
sitting and unlearning.
Nothing is as important
as letting the breeze
flow through you like
an ocean current that
only exists to exist.
Current, wave, no-thing.
I am on my way.

  ~mce

Run away with me, Love.
We will build a tiny house
and live a tiny life together
with just us, a dog, a cat
poetry, wine and passion.

We will do only what we wish
and leave the world to itself.
I will love you more
than the stars can imagine
in the time that remains
until the years betray me
and then kiss you and
send you on your way
to what I will not see.

Run away with me love
and we will be happy and free
and content with our quiet,
intimate personal mystery.

Every morning I try to unlearn the universe.
It is like a yoga exercise to escape the irons of knowledge.
In 63 years your head fills with so much *******.
There must be a method for purging the excess.
So far I have not been able to discover it.
I will keep trying because I want to see things fresh.
I want to hear babies cry and Mozart exhalt for the first time.
I want to enter a woman anew like a baffled 15-year-old
discovering a pleasure from which he will never want to escape.
I want to forget my over-remembered  life.
I want to rediscover the salty taste of women.
I have been everywhere and am out of destinations.
I ache for the pain of a question lacking an answer.
I want to go to war again and relearn a sense of terror.
I want to experience the baffled euphoria of first love.
I want to reclaim my sense of wonder from jaded life.
Imagine the utter joy of hearing again birds for the first time.
Unlearning is so much harder than learning.
I fear not enough years remain to unknow this burden.
But I must keep at it with a vigor no longer possessed.
It is morning again in the heart of Mike Essig.
And every morning I try to unlearn the universe
simply so I might know the bliss of learning it again.

Love, you are all
that holds my heart
together,
so please take good care
of your own.
   ~mce

Sitting Bull, He Dog, Red Cloud,
Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, Geronimo.

Hunted nearly to extinction
like the buffalo that fed them.

These were gods among warriors;
next to them we are puny imitations.

So when is their Memorial Day?

How far is it really from the murdered children
dead in the snow at Wounded Knee
to the crows eating the frozen eyes of German soldiers
before the gates of Leningrad?
How far from the hanging flesh of Hiroshima
to the piles of bodies at My Lai?
I have watched the news for 50 years
and it all seems like reruns to me.
So on the advice of a frisky, fearless wise woman
I stopped and now although death and destruction persist
I am free to concentrate on the things that matter to me.
Anyway, if the world ends, someone will let me know.

  ~mce

Twilight is ending.

I believe I will
take a walk
to the moon
and sample
some piquant peaches
dripping with light.

I'll bring some back
for you.

We will wantonly
consume them
and lick the juices
from each other's face
until we radiate
their succulent
alabaster perfection
and glow together.

That is the true meaning
of Good Evening.

  ~mce

Today I am holding on tight to nothing
and it is just enough to keep me breathing.
How marvelous to be an ordinary artist
who can survive on so little.
You taught me that a kiss matters
more than all the pain and terror on earth.
I leave the world's problems to its big men.
I am a small man working only on problems
a small man might hope to solve.
Why are there birds? What do dogs think?
Why do cats purr both when happy and sad.
Why do you taste like lost oceans?
These are the mysteries I care about.
The curve of your cheek matters more to me
than stock markets, earthquakes or wars.
My hands caressing your human *******
matter more than tsunamis and revolutions.
Your voluptuous *** speaks ****** volumes
about where the world should pay attention.
I would gladly lie down with you in Eden
smelling of apples and the loss of eternity.
I sing only for helpless humans and animals.
Let the wealthy and powerful purchase their
own poems though I doubt they even care.
I am content to feel the texture of your hair
and celebrate your green eyes with humble words.
We are human, we are warm and we are here.
That's enough for me, maybe more than I can bear.
I am holding on tight to nothing and I do not fear.

~mce

Hold the feathers.
Soon enough
the earth will turn
and it will be
tomorrow
in the only world
I am certain of.
I do not require
anything more
than that.
   ~mce

He took the dagger
from the dead hand
of a Marine Major
on the battlefield
of An Loc
so the tame *****
wouldn't steal it
like the thieving
cowards they were.
Kept it, used it,
smuggled it
back to the world,
has had it for 43 years
and now it sits
on his coffee table,
still talon sharp,
against the day
when he might need
to cut the world's throat.

**** Norman Vincent Peale.
I will say it out loud.
There are mornings
when death would be better;
when you have slept but three hours;
when the dawn silence
crushes your damaged brain
into pea gravel;
when your 28-pound cat
disdains your company;
when you can feel your nerves
pulsing outside your skin;
when your stomach congeals
from unaccustomed food;
when you are nursing
a sixty-three-year-old hangover;
when the sunlight strikes you
through the ***** window
like a ten pound sledge
straight to the temple;
when the ghosts are
as thick as Nebraska stars,
but refuse to explain
why you are still alive;
when there is only one dream left
and she is a country away
and thinks you may be crazy;
when there isn't one
******* thing in the universe
to be positive about;
when you walk past the mirror
and see a landscape of ruins;
when birds and Mozart do not suffice;
and you finally know in your heart,
there really is no fool like an old one
and you my idiot friend are old.

  ~mce

We flew into battle
like young Gods,
but fell from the sky
like shattered birds.

  ~mce

Check every treeline,
the enemy lurks there.
Get used to people acting
like you are tainted.
Scan the rooftops when you walk;
examine the bushes.
When entering a public space,
look for an alternative exit.
Notice every face you see;
especially children, you never know.
Self-medicate. Whatever it takes.
Whiskey for breakfast, speed for lunch,
****** for dinner. **** their opinions.
Spend endless hours talking
with clueless shrinks and doctors.
Spin violently when anyone
taps you on the shoulder.
Strain your ears for the sound
of long silent mortars.
Never sit with your back to a door.
Remember Wild Bill.
Keep a weapon nearby when you sleep,
if you do.
Cringe like a beaten dog
at every loud noise.
Worry about everything because
you know the world wants to **** you,
because you know what expendable means.
Repeat all of this and more for 45 years
until your brain feels
like sloppy scrambled eggs.
And, of course,
don't forget to love your country.

  ~mce

Woke to sunshine and lawn mower song;
either the world is speeding up
or I am slowing down.
I daydream of being the beloved dog
of a wanton ***** in Ontario
and no one is less Canadian than I.
It takes longer than ever
for my discordant head to awaken fully.
I planned to be a Pirate, but I got drafted
and the ship left without me
and now I am stuck ashore in Pennsylvania
without even a scar or tattoo.
It needs coffee, cigarettes, Mozart and time.
Still, it's the only world there is
and eventually I must clamber back into it.
Let us prepare for anything. Semper Paratus.
The apocalypse could happen today.
I would hate to miss out.
Or the Second Coming; I missed the First.
It is all mumbles and blather and babble,
so I am still working on a new language.
Difficult to understand, is it not?
The sky is vivid blue but not in a bad way.
Let's call it a day and just show up.
God morning Blues; Blues how do you do?
If you find this poem incomprehensible,
rejoice, for you are probably sane.

I grew up in a country
now I live in a business.
America has been stolen
and morphed into
a fascist Disneyland.
Our women are told
if they don't look
25 when they are 60
they don't exist.
Our children are taught
not to ask questions
or defend themselves.
Our young people
are commanded to go
to college, get on
the endless treadmill
of the American Nightmare
or they are failures.
We warehouse our parents
at great expense
so we don't have to face
the reality of death.
Our men sell themselves
for money and power
they can't take with them.
Courage, thrift, honor,
all replaced with greed,
the last recognized virtue.
The only remedy is to say no.
Try to remember what is important:
protect your loved ones,
love your friends,
reject the latest and greatest;
turn off your TV.
You won't change America,
that is lost for good.
But you might change yourself
which is much more important.
The rich will stay rich,
the powerful will keep their power,
the business will keep on chugging,
but you will be yourself,
a sane person in a country gone mad.
  ~mce

Let us make Spanish the official American language.
All Spanish speakers have a touch of the poet in them.
There is a bit of Neruda in every humble trucker.
It is a mellifluous and sonorous tongue.
If you want her in your bed, te amo is more likely than I love you.
English, on the other hand, is a language to make deals in.
How much? is probably the most repeated phrase in English.
English is the language of ******* people over.
English is the language of conquest, money and ******.
We insist that the world speak it so that after
we bomb them, invade them and **** them they can thank us in English.
Let us make the change official. What have we got to lose
except our insufferable indifference, arrogance and greed?
On top of which, siestas will become the national pastime.
I am taking this to the UN. I have no hope but it's worth a try.

   ~mce

Life offers no real advantage to anyone.
Even the rich and powerful bleed and die
which brings some comfort to the poor and weak.
Every day we wake up
to an enormous jigsaw puzzle
containing billions of pieces
but missing the most essential.
Vainly we struggle to complete it
so we can think we master reality
as if our brains are really
that intelligent or we that important.
Of course, we fail and curse god
because it couldn't be our fault.
Life is ordinary and few people
can admit that to themselves,
although I have noticed that those who do
are happier than those who don't.
Forget perfection: the perfect job,  
the perfect lover, perfect ***, perfect anything.
It doesn't exist and the pursuit
will waste your time and
plunge your heart into darkness.
Try to be a bit humble
in this obnoxiously haughty world.
Consider the inevitable shortness of life
and revel in its imperfections.
Notice the drunken Indian, the hungry children,
the innocent murdered masses who have always been,
but accept that evil and destruction
have stalked the land hand in hand since Man began.
Do what little you can and forget blame.
Try to forgive ******, Stalin, **** Cheney
but remember your own sins, too.
Lift up your fractured soul and
let it sing a mortal song about how time
passes like a gentle, sweet,
nearly imperceptible breeze.
Be thankful for your breath,
take a deep one and move on.

  ~mce

Forty-three years ago
I was expendable.

Expendable means:
cannon fodder,
unimportant,
food for powder,
victim, target, pawn,
disposable, superfluous,
replaceable.

Not an appropriate
term for humans.

Once you have been
expendable,
you can never be
quite human again.

  ~mce

There is a Lady in my head.
She has been there since Easter.
She moved in before I even noticed.
She has Tiger green eyes, red hair
and dangerously voluptuous curves.
Since she arrived I can't sleep;
days and nights, awake and not
are blended into a fine mist.
I have lost Twenty pounds without trying.
I wander around in a puppy dog fog
like some drooling, smitten 17-year-old.
I listen to music I haven't heard in decades.
I write poems even I can't understand.
I experience lust that consumes like ******.
The world around me seems to be fading.
Books no longer speak my language.
There is a luscious Lady in my head.
She does all these things to me and more.
And I never, ever want her to leave.
  ~mce

For two million years
we didn't live outside,
we existed outside.

Things have changed.

Now outside is something
we see on TV or in photos
or on the internet.

We chose central heat
and plumbing over
rivers and trees.

We dreamed of safety
and chose not to know
the world.

Most folks would die
in two short weeks
without grocery stores.

How this will play out
remains to be seen.

The omens are not
auspicious.

  ~mce

We are all waiting
for a miracle
and then one
shows up
and you find
it makes your life
extremely difficult
and confusing
but delightful.

One hand slides up your thighs,
my tongue reaches down your throat,
the other hand fondles your breast,
but the real ***, the deepest ***
is the love passing between our eyes.

~mce

Take a minute.

Click on my
portrait picture.

Forty-three years
since that was snapped.

Look how skinny,
how starched.

Look how hard I'm
trying not to show
my terror,
the absurdly
casual stance.

Look at a child
of twenty
sent to die
for old men.

Look at a picture
taken thousands
of times since.

Think of the pictures
of the lost who never
came home or in pieces
or mentally broken.

America
you demand
too much.

  ~mce

Although I want your body
what I need is to make love
to every piece of your soul.

Your body is the icing;
your soul is the cake.

I want to lick the icing,
but I need to eat the cake.
  ~mce

I will sneak up like a cat
behind you in the kitchen
and cup your *******
in my living hands and gigil
them gently and with intention.
After that, anything on earth
that we can imagine is possible.

~mce

The miles between us
are like sewing needles
each with a thread
the exact color of sadness.
  ~mce

The lonely silence of five in the morning.

The cat sprawls upon the bookcase
dreaming whatever cats dream.

Only the waking birds sing out.

Another morning in the same room.

In Zen they say: sit where you are.
External circumstances don't matter.

But I am sorely vexed by this room,
this quiet, these walls, reality.

I do not wish to wake to this again.

In Vietnam, my first conscious thought
upon waking was, "****, I'm still here."

Once more it has come to that.

A prison is anyplace you don't want to be
and can't leave. I am locked in prison.

Age and circumstance have sentenced me.

Nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.

Only the difficult admonition: sit where you are.
And settling upon the cushions, I try and try.

If you know of anyone who needs the services
of a broken, old, poor, poet monk, call me.

   ~mce

He is a General making
a crucial decision.
His lips are on her belly:
does he ride north
to the mountains
or south to the valley.
Or should he split
his forces and with
mouth and fingers
descend on both.
So much depends
upon his decision.

~mce

Make me your blank canvas.
Cover me with your juices,
your drippings, your burgundy,
place me beside your washed blue,
I will smear it with my kisses
until they become masterpieces
only understood by we two.

  ~mce

You make me want
to forget sixty-three
years of lessons
about women so I
can learn what
I only need to know
from only you
only to please you.

~mce

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

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

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

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

  ~mce

What can your lips
do for me, lover?
They can smile at me;
they can kiss my lips;
they can hold my manhood;
they can make me shudder;
they can tell me stories;
they can deliver to me
the only hope that matters.

~mce