Utilitarian Love Poem**

You are aesthetically pleasing,
the reason for which I first noticed in you.
And later I found your personality equally pleasing.
I also noted your chest to waist ratio is suitable for birthing.
Therefore, I think you should live in my house.

Love Compared**

I do not resemble your other lovers, my lady
should another give you a cloud
I give you rain
Should he give you a lantern, I
will give you the moon
Should he give you a branch
I will give you the trees
And if another gives you a ship
I shall give you the journey.

Thanks again America.
Long ago, you sent me to war
prepared to shed my blood.
I was lucky, mine was spared.
But some hitchhikers came home with me:
tiny, wriggling, tropical parasites.
They love my aging body.
They are true like ******.
They cannot leave me till I die.
Occasionally, they decide to dance.
No doubt, they enjoy themselves.
All they cost me is fever
and appetite,
sleep and peace of mind.
After all these decades,
you still want my blood,
but now you are content
to trouble it inside my veins.
Thanks Again America.

I lie down to take a nap
with only a blanket, a cat,
and the image of your perfect eyes.

Plenty enough to keep me warm.

The only thing missing is you.
  ~mce

"every heart, every heart, to love must come, but like a refugee."*


Be wary, little, pretty one:
If you wander too far for love,
you may lose your citizenship
in the country of your own life.
Be sure of the direction you take.
Leave yourself a trail of breadcrumbs.
You may need to find your way back
to the safety of your own sanctuary.
The world already has too many refugees.
You do not want to become one more.
   ~mce

THE MOMENT**

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

Love is a dangerous word.

You should not say it
without consideration.

It contains a promise
that must be kept.

Can you? Will you?
Do you want to?

Don't proclaim what
you cannot deliver.

At least two hearts
may be broken.

Wait for exactly the moment
you know for sure.

When you are certain,
don't say it at all.

Instead, yell it loudly
and linger to hear
its beautiful echoes
wash back over you,
your own voice clearer
than you have ever heard.

Love is a dangerous word.
   ~mce

Morning doves and sunlight;
waking up with a fuzzy head,
logy and still half dreaming,
I remember that
you are real and warm.

Knowing that somewhere
you may be smiling
like a Cheshire angel,

how could I not?
   ~mce

Morning Poem**

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead—
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging—

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted—

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

The Wild Geese**

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. *What we need is here.

Sonnet XVII**

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The gentlest eyes
I have ever seen
but also, I think,
a bit fierce,
like a baby tiger.
Such an exquisite,
elegant contradiction.

   ~mce

Resumé'**

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

The Earth only gets one day?
Seems a bit odd. I mean,
where else do you plan to live?
    ~mce

I concentrate on your name, your face, your words
and throw the coins to call the hexagram,
dipping into The Great Flow for a random answer.

It gives me #46, Advancing, which contains:

There is no need to worry, things will go well.

How cool is that?

Even the universe flows in our direction.

   ~mce

Sorry for peeking into your heart;
Just wanted to see if I was there.

  ~mce

I have not
unleashed my heart
for many years;
it's so old,
it's almost new.
But I offer it
now to you.
Not a perfect
offering;
it has many
cracks.
Be gentle.
It only wants
to rub up
against yours.
   ~mce

When you were born,
I was 25 and had
already been a hippie,
a soldier, a husband.

If I had known
your birthdate,
I would have sent
you a card saying:

Happy Birthday!
I'll meet you
in a few decades.
Can't wait.  Mike

It's a little late,
but here it is.

I miss your voice,
I have never heard;
I miss your eyes,
I have never kissed;
I miss your warmth,
I have never felt;
I miss your body,
I have never touched.

How did this happen;
how is it even possible?

I used to be safe
within my old self,
comfortable, certain
that I'd seen It all.

Now I miss what I've
never known.

As long as I draw breath,
always more surprises.

Life never fails to grin
in my general direction.

Thanks life; back at you.

up country Laos, 1972*

I won't do it, I said. I won't.

It's a direct order, he said.

We stood a few yards apart,
in front of the blasted wire
where the screaming
enemy wounded
were caught like stuck flies.

It had been a long night
of attack and repulse;
the howling wounded
were all that remained.

He was maybe thirty,
an Ivy League ***** wannabe;
I was just a battle weary broken
20-year-old with no silver spoon.

You will get your *** out there
and tap those moaning *****
and you will do it now, another order.

I said, I'm a medic, not a murderer.
They are prisoners. There are lines,
even here. I will not cross this one.

**** lines. What you are, he said, is a *****.

In his hand, a lethal black 9mm Beretta;
in mine a 1911 model Colt 45 automatic.

Both loaded. Both ready to speak. Both angry.
Both anxious. Both with something to say.

You aren't my CO. You're not even an officer.
I refuse, I said. ******* and the Company.

My hand tensed on the 45. The Beretta quivered.

We looked at each other, working out the odds,

Death, for one of us, seemed only a few seconds away.

But he hesitated, lowered his weapon.

It's ******* like you who lost this war, he said.

And it's mad men like you who started it, I replied.

He turned and walked out to tap the wounded,
one by one, ****** after ******.

Delighting in revenge.

I walked back to the chopper, gun in hand,
and nodded to the pilot. We flew away,
at first to more war, but then back to the world,

the world that could never, ever be the same.

~mce

It's nothing personal.

I'm sure your feet
are beautiful
as the rest of you,
but if they
ever walk you
away from me,
I will hate them.

Fair warning...

‘Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands’**
XXVII From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’

Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands,
lissome, terrestrial, slight, complete, translucent,
with curves of moon, and paths of apple-wood:
Unclothed you are as slender as a **** ear of corn.

Undressed you are blue as Cuban nights,
with tendrils and stars in your hair,
undressed you are wide and amber,
like summer in its chapel of gold.

Naked you are tiny as one of your fingertips,
shaped, subtle, reddening till light is born,
and you leave for the subterranean worlds,

as if down a deep tunnel of clothes and chores:
your brightness quells itself, quenches itself, strips itself down
turning, again, to being a naked hand.

Gee, You’re So Beautiful
   That It’s Starting to Rain**

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
     to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
     A

Computer Magic
     A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
     A

Finding out about Fish
     A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
     A+!

Lullaby**

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted *****
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

for a high school friend, dead at 25 in 1976.

She demanded doomed love
( too much poetry)
and she found it;
born with an ungainly
sense of tragedy,
she was a heat seeking missile
perfectly tracking destruction.

He was a hugger and a hitter,
a cheater and a beater,
charming as a cobra to his prey
who reveled in his cruelty
and dragged her down

until the day she realized,
you can't negotiate with evil,
and tragedy isn't comedy
and darkness is very dark

and slit her wrists and got away.


  ~mce

If you were not so far away
I'd catch you in my hungry  arms
and you'd lie down and sigh and stay
if you were not so far away
I'd never want to leave or stray
entangled in your eyes and charms
If you were not so far away
I'd catch you in my hungry arms

At this point my in life as a man
I'm certain I have already heard
every lame ****** innuendo
about women and ***.

The one that obnoxes me most is
"get into her pants."

Not just intentionally crude,
but also illogical.

Unless she is a very large woman,
how would I ever fit?
  ~mce

The day when
a pretty, young girl
says you remind her
of her grandfather.
   ~mce

Just noticed I haven't
looked at my news feed
in over a week.

Either the world
has managed to get along
without me
or it ended and no one
told me.

Either one pretty much
the same.

I remain blissfully
ignorant.

And it doesn't matter.

~mce

Beneath my window
some workmen are blaring
bad 80s rock and, worse,
singing along.

How come
I never seem to have a gun
when I could use one.

This will go on
for mindless hours.

The day's silence but a memory;
It's time for me to flee.

  ~mce

Axis**

Through the conduits of blood
my body in your body
spring of night
my tongue of sun in your forest
your body a kneading trough
I red wheat
Through conduits of bone
I night I water
I forest that moves forward
I tongue
I body
I sun-bone
Through the conduits of night
spring of bodies
You night of wheat
you forest in the sun
you waiting water
you kneading trough of bones
Through the conduits of sun
my night in your night
my sun in your sun
my wheat in your kneading trough
your forest in my tongue
Through the conduits of the body
water in the night
your body in my body
Spring of bones
Spring of suns

After Work**

The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
     on your *******.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
     hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood

we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
            drinking wine.

The Journey**

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

But if I had a daughter, a young woman
I saw drowning in needless pain,

I would say to her:

Are you certain you would be happy,

if only:

you got him back,
or he wanted you back,
or you lived somewhere else
or you were someone else
or were taller, shorter,
thinner, stronger, weaker
just different,
anyone, anywhere, anytime
but yourself?

Sorry, but you are you. Be you.
Insist upon yourself. Be fierce
in your resolve. Men are in awe
of fierce women, really.
Take back your heart.
It belongs to you alone.

You do not need to be fixed, so don't
look for someone else to do the job.

Remember: "You're only pretty as you feel,
only pretty as you feel inside."

And on that there are no limits
except the ones you create.

But then, I never had a daughter,
so what do I know?

   'mce

Fly, little poem.
Make your way
into her heart
and wait for me
to join you there.
I'll be along
as soon as possible.
  ~mce

You make me want
to be more:

An unlikely knight
unpacking my shining armor,
smiling at dragons
as yet unslain,

fearless before your eyes.

It's OK that the world
wants to read my work,
but the only poems
that matter to me
are those I publish
in your heart.
   ~mce

The weather guessers
are calling for
severe thunder storms
tonight.
That's the job for me.
Get it right half the time
and still get paid.
   ~mce

After 63 years
of living hard and
hard work at living,
I do know, quite clearly,
that I don't know
much.

~mce

I am here and you are far away,
beyond this strong relentless pain,
there's really nothing more to say.
For here I sit at break of day
beneath this darkened sky of rain:
I am here and you are far away.
And though I sigh out loud all day,
I know it in my bones and brain:
there's really nothing more to say.
There's little that I wouldn't pay,
but nothing I could hope to gain:
I am here and you are far away.
If I begin to dream and play,
to soothe my soul and keep me sane:
there's really nothing more to say.
Though I must find some other way,
the problem's easy to explain:
I am here and you are far away,
there's really nothing more to say.

Sunlight slants
on pale pink
cherry blossoms;

for exactly an instant,

I really See.

~mce

Sit down on your pillow.
Cross your legs, close your eyes
and breathe.

Nothing mystical here;
only practice.

In your own good time,
things begin to fall away.

Needless worries, anxieties,
agitation, even poetry
slowly dissipate
until there is just you sitting

and finally there is no you;

there is just sitting.
   ~mce

Not such a bad place,
although it can take
many lifetimes
to get the hang of it.
  ~mce

"Just to wake up is to make a separate peace."*

They come and go, each
the same and different.
The night of
tempestuous dreams
opens to a morning
of vague dread.

Ghosts have tracked you
into the waking world:
old lovers, dead friends,
battles fought and lost
a grinning death's head.

You must recover
your center,
find the unwobbling
pivot of existence,
the still point
to calm the monkey mind
and allow you
to reenter the world
of phenomena.

Go to your pillow and sit.
Just breathe, just breathe.
Just be here now.

Let the hyenas of night
slink back to their lairs.

Somewhere, she is warm
and lovely.  You feel
her soothing warmth
from a far away land.
Distance is only illusion,
Maya barking in your
trembling mind, but you
never really are alone.

Don't think; thought
will not suffice.
Only sit and breathe,
only sit and be.

The night terrors
retreat into the darkness.
It is light now and
you are still alive.
That is something
to be grateful for,
breath is a living gift.

Sitting there quietly,
the earth stops spinning;
the new day awakens
in the remains of your heart.

You get up, still broken
but better, and walk off
into what some mistakenly
call reality to meet
whatever must  be and,
perhaps, even to smile.
   ~mce

If you were
a pirate Queen,
I'd be your first mate
and we would
sail the seas
bouncing the waves
forever.
Let the crew
think what the may.
  ~mce

Don't try to hide your scars.
They are the signatures of your life.
They speak a secret language
that reveals who you are to yourself.
No one else can ever have them.
Only you can know what they mean.
Wear them with a lover's pride.
It doesn't matter how you got them,
only that you have them.
They are secrets you whisper
into your own ears.
Listen to them closely.
As a wise man once said:
"A scar is what happens
when the word is made flesh."

~mce

A poet must be willing
to walk naked through crowds,
hoping they are blind
while knowing they are not.
   ~mce

Is there anything
more pathetic than
a smitten old man?

Is there anything
more wonderful?

   ~mce

Though not
from the generation
of tattoos,
I think
I would
love to kiss
all of yours.
  ~mce

"If everything
you thought you knew
makes your life unbearable
would you change?"*

A cool spring morning,
trees explode
with life and color.

I sit and meditate.

Everything I have
ever been,
everyone I have
ever known,
has brought me
to this exact
perfect moment.

Sitting with
this new life,
with my new life,
among these new leaves
and blossoms,
I know I will change
and remain the same.

Sure of nothing
and everything.

Sitting exactly
in this right place,
sitting exactly

where I am.

  ~mce