I have
often wondered
how a woman
would react
to an honest
man.

I have
often wondered
how a man
would react
to an honest
woman.

Just to be
naked
does not
ensure
honesty.

Lifetimes
of saying
and doing
what we
think
the other
wants.

Shapeshifting,
veils,
the dance
of deception.

Perhaps
they would be
too stunned
to react
at all.

  ~mce

Each time
I've faced
a major change
in my life,
I was sure
I would die

and I did.

No one
is more
qualified
than you
to decide
what
your life
will be.

Don't fight
the power;
be
the power.

On the subject
of you, you are
the only expert
you will ever
really need.

~mce

Today is
Thomas Jefferson's
birthday.

I'm sure,
if he came back
for a
short visit
he would be

appalled.

It is not
like I haven't
tried hard
to learn
and understand.

I really have.
I passed all
the exams.

School, war,
marriage, kids,
divorce, lovers,
poetry and age:

Yet

After 63 years
of so much
effort and attention

women remain
the great
mystery
to me.
  ~mce

The Task** - Poem by Jane Hirshfield

It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.
We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair -
a robe unfurled
in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.

And yes, it is a simple enough task
we've taken on,
though also vast:
from dusk to dawn,

from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not
be blinded by the praising.
To lie like a cat in hot
sun, fur fully blazing,

and dream the mouse;
and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch
within the deep rooms of the house,
where the leaf-flocked

sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms.

In Mind** - Denise Levertov

There's in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation--

but she has
no imagination

And there's a
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.

Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall**
BY ANNE SEXTON

   Oh down at the tavern
the children are singing
around their round table
and around me still.
Did you hear what it said?

                   I only said
how there is a pewter urn
pinned to the tavern wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be there still.
I said, the poets are there
I hear them singing and lying
around their round table
and around me still.
Across the room is a wreath
made of a corpse’s hair,
framed in glass on the wall,
as old as old is able
to be and be remembered still.
Did you hear what it said?

                  I only said
how I want to be there and I
would sing my songs with the liars
and my lies with all the singers.
And I would, and I would but
it’s my hair in the hair wreath,
my cup pinned to the tavern wall,
my dusty face they sing beneath.
Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said?

                  I only said
how I want to be there,
Oh, down at the tavern
where the prophets are singing
around their round table
until they are still.

“As We Are So Wonderfully Done with Each Other”**
BY KENNETH PATCHEN

As we are so wonderfully done with each other  
We can walk into our separate sleep
On floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies

O my lady, my fairest dear, my sweetest, loveliest one
Your lips have splashed my dull house with the speech of flowers  
My hands are hallowed where they touched over your
       soft curving.

It is good to be weary from that brilliant work  
It is being God to feel your breathing under me

A waterglass on the bureau fills with morning . . .  
Don’t let anyone in to wake us.

We would
lay in a good stock
of wine and
if dinner
didn't pan out,
we would
drink it all
and I would
read Neruda
to you out loud
until the candles
burned down
and we would
eat the darkness
for dessert.

Blue Monday**
BY DIANE WAKOSKI
Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her *******  
and clacking together in her elbows;
blue of the silk
that covers lily-town at night;
blue of her teeth
that bite cold toast
and shatter on the streets;
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens  
hanging like tongues
over the fence of her dress
at the opera/opals clasped under her lips
and the moon breaking over her head a
gush of blood-red lizards.

Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling  
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.

                     You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl.  
                     I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name  
                     is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.

                     Monday is the first of the week,  
                     and I think of you all week.  
                     I beg Monday not to come  
                     so that I will not think of you  
                     all week.

You paint my body blue. On the balcony
in the softy muddy night, you paint me
with bat wings and the crystal
the crystal  
the crystal
the crystal in your arm cuts away
the night, folds back ebony whale skin  
and my face, the blue of new rifles,  
and my neck, the blue of Egypt,  
and my *******, the blue of sand,  
and my arms, bass-blue,
and my stomach, arsenic;

there is electricity dripping from me like cream;
there is love dripping from me I cannot use—like acacia or  
jacaranda—fallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street.

                         Love passed me in a blue business suit
                         and fedora.
                         His glass cane, hollow and filled with
                         sharks and whales ...  
                         He wore black
                         patent leather shoes
                         and had a mustache. His hair was so black
                         it was almost blue.

                         “Love,” I said.
                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.  
                         “Mr. Love,” I said.
                         “I beg your pardon,” he said.

                         So I saw there was no use bothering him on the street

                         Love passed me on the street in a blue  
                         business suit. He was a banker  
                         I could tell.

So blue trains rush by in my sleep.  
Blue herons fly overhead.
Blue paint cracks in my
arteries and sends titanium
floating into my bones.  
Blue liquid pours down
my poisoned throat and blue veins
rip open my breast. Blue daggers tip
and are juggled on my palms.
Blue death lives in my fingernails.

If I could sing one last song
with water bubbling through my lips
I would sing with my throat torn open,
the blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse,  
and on my lips
I would balance volcanic rock
emptied out of my veins. At last
my children strained out
of my body. At last my blood
solidified and tumbling into the ocean.
It is blue.  
It is blue.  
It is blue.

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII**
BY PABLO NERUDA
TRANSLATED BY MARK EISNER

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,  
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:  
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,  
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries  
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,  
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose  
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,  
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,  
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,  
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

I practice
Pai Lum Kung-Fu,
which at 63
may seem absurd.

Not to be
a tough guy,
those days
are over.

Just to feel
the flow.

A martial art
is like poetry:
you work
your whole life
and never
perfect it.

So what
if the lovely
seventeen-year-old
girl beside me
can stretch
like Gumby
and the lean, mean
twenty-something
kid always
finds my nose.

It is meditation
for the body.

When it works,
it is being,
not doing.

You don't do
the technique,
you are
the technique.

The joy is in
the effort,
not the result.

  ~mce

thirsty pages
gasping
for ink

a Muse
shriven
to whispers

the whiteness
off the Whale
unmarked

a privacy
of sadness
and desire

a dumbfounded world
demanding
a departed
Logos

mostly
disappointed.

   mce

a shotgun rectangle
encircles his life

grey morning
sleek, purring panther
maybe Vivaldi
coffee and cigarette

later, perhaps,
maintenance:
vacuum, dust -
the dreary realities
of single life.

from nowhere
he imagines
hope as a burst
of butterflies
long since flown.

the circle is
a place on earth
and he is
a man on earth
caught
in the circle

for a while yet

even as the circle
shrinks
with each waning
moon.
  mce

All my ghosts
meet me in the morning
for coffee.

We chat about old times,
what's happening,
possibilities, politics,
*** and aging.

It's better
than a book club
because
you don't have
to bring
dessert.

Ghosts
have no
appetites.

mce

My mother
slips to and fro,
mindless and mad
in a nursing home,
unaware
of the Kardashians,
impending financial collapse,
Say Yes To The Dress,
the corpse children
of Syria,
yoga pants
or the impending
asteroid.

Wherever she is,
she's not missing
much.

mce

Rain plummeting
like rivets.

Seated in the mud,
soaked beyond notice,
beside a fried APC hulk,
eating cold C-Rations
with my ***** fingers.

Eyes like vacant windows.

This photograph
can never fade.

  mce

The digital world
makes us lazy.

Music on your phone,
your tablet, your laptop:
instantly and casually
accessible at a whim.

But placing a record
on a turntable
is making love.

It is tactile
and personal.

Your hands must
be steady and
proceed mindfully.

It takes time
and intention.

You must handle it
gently, with care
and pay attention
to the process.

When you do,
you reach its sweet
analog ******.

Effort worthy
of Euterpe, Muse
of music.

She will keep you
coming back for more.

I do.

    ~mce

You Learn**

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
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 open
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn…
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

So you plant your 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 learn…

With every good-bye you learn.

JLB

TWO ENGLISH POEMS For A Woman

I.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.

II.
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghost that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather –just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer her that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow – the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

Seven years
of molt and shed,
people lost,
mistakes made.

We change,
but we live
one person
at a time.

OK, I'm a new man.

But what kind
of man.

mce

One of the best definitions of an anarchist comes from Ursula K Le Guin:

"One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice."

When was the last time you chose, regardless of the propaganda of the state or any other hierarchy, to ignore a stupid rule and accepted the responsibility for your choice? That's when you were an anarchist, whether you knew it or not. The more often you do it, the more of an anarchist you become.

Another comes from Robert Heinlein:

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do"

If you have a heart and mind that long for freedom, you are an anarchist.

Welcome.

TANSTAAFL!

there is nothing
that whiskey can't cure
except whiskey

   mce

deathly morning quiet
an old man shuffles
to the coffee maker
listens to Carter's
Sonata for Cello and Piano
hears the silence sing
between the notes
fumbles for a working pen
creaks onto the couch
and against all hope nurses
delusions of poetry

   mce

I cannot
make my bed;
the cat is dozing
peacefully
upon its ruin.

   mce

It is useless work that darkens the heart. - Rumi*

And what is work for,
beyond survival or
occasionally joy?

It produces surplus
which is bartered,
traded and sold
until it becomes money.

The dark alchemy of usury
piles it into the hands
of the few who use it
to oppress the many

who created it
in the first place.
     mce

Forget the school children
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Or the 1,000,000 dead in Vietnam;
60,000 dead in Iraq;
30,000 and rising in Afghanistan.

How many by our proxies
in El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Chile?

Forget the millions dead
in nameless civil wars
or of preventable
poverty and disease
in various hell-holes
around the globe.

The rest of the world
may be sorry,
but not shocked:
they have come to know
the smiling murderers
we have become.

20 dead of madness
in Connecticut
and the US wallows
in drivel, kitsch,
hollow words,
self-pity, and
media frenzy.

A little arrogance here?

Oh, we love our kids,
(just no one else's),
so let's put black ribbons
on our cars
and call that enough.

Again, the culture
of selfishness, greed,
shallowness
and patriotic stupidity
rears its
predictable head.

No country that murders
the world's children
with a shrug
should be surprised
when that violence
turns inward.

"I am Vishnu
Destroyer of worlds
My name is Death"

You can't have it
both ways.

"We must love one another
or die."

   mce

I'd like to believe
that it will be better
than the past,
but as the they
used to say
in the teachers'
lounges
when I taught
high school:

There Is No Bottom.

mce

Be my breakfast,
lover, and the whole day
will be sweet.
   ~mce

Riprap*

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles--
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

The silence
of morning;
the silence
of midday;
the silence
of evening:
all subtly
different.

I don't
understand
why,
so I'll
just be
silent.

mce

I have chewed
the bitter heart
of loneliness
and found it
surprisingly
sweet.

  ~mce

For a few minutes
you are the Buddha.
A gift to yourself,
though you know
there is no
giver, gift
or receiver,
only quiet and peace.
Not difficult at all.
Sit down; be quiet.
Listen for the nothing
you really are.
It will come and go,
but when it comes,
you will be real
and you will know.

Spring smiles
this morning;
the bright sun
has remembered
warmth.
Even the birds
and buds
seem surprised
and happy.
A morning
for meditation
and temperate
thoughts.
Coffee and
sunshine;
A delight
simply
to awaken
and to breathe.
Serenity;
equanimity,
contentment.
Spring smiles
this morning,
and I with it.

   ~mce

You peer intently
through a window.

What are you seeking?
What are you hoping?
What are your dreams?

Something wistful
attends your face;
pretty but pensive.

The Dharma Wheel spins.

So many Ways for us to go.
So many lives to try again.

Perhaps, in another life,
I will stroll down a street
past a house where a pretty
but pensive woman
peers wistfully
wistfully through
her window

and smiles.

~mce

Please keep in mind
what Jaron Lanier said:

You Are Not A Gadget.

Anything you own,
hardware or software,
that you can't explain
and is smarter than you
makes you
less of a human.

I prefer to be a human;
I hope you do as well.

mce

For 63 years
I have broken
every rule I could:

despised money;
hated power;
loathed greed.

Standing alone
like a radio beacon
broadcasting
my only message
over and over:

I will not provide
aid and comfort
to my enemies.

I will not ******
for desire.

I will not.

  ~mce

They gathered
in skinny packs,
in laughing circles
around him.

He stitched their cuts,
bound their wounds,

gave them,
like some OD Santa,

chocolate bars,
antibiotics,
aspirins and
C-Rations.

They laughed louder,
begging for more,
shrieking and calling him
Doc-san #1.

This phony comedy
made him feel better,
feel human,
even though he knew
at night their parents
would do their best
to take his life.

Decades on,
he knows behind those grins
they must have hated him:
his height, his food,
his round eyes
and the doom
he had brought their world
that no trinkets
could ever allay.

Now, there is nothing to do
but remember and be sorry.

   mce

How I fear for you

(And I have heard
the bullets
whine and miss).

Youth is a necessary fiction
of light and hope,
but fiction nevertheless.

War, death, disease,
disappointment and dread
stalk that silver road
you imagine before you.

I hope you evade them all,
and anyway it is pointless
to tell you to be careful.

Your lives are your own.

May your dreams,
against all my experience,
be just as you imagine.

   mce

Mozart,
Shakespeare,
Picasso.

Auschwitz,
Hiroshima,
My Lai.

Two sides;
one culture.

"Everybody's shouting,
which side are you on?"

   mce

Life slips away;
its scars remain.

   - mce

No matter the decoration,
they remain bleak as Antarctica,
empty as the Sahara.
Stuff will not suffice;
bric-a-brac remains invisible.
Even the best music merely echoes:
Mozart, Vivaldi, even Beethoven
cannot fill the emptiness.
Clocks clang like church bells
and every muted footfall
screams out loneliness.
They are places to pass through
where you reside but do not live.
Even the most asinine Realtor
couldn't call them home
with a straight face.
They are the shelter for those
who have not quite descended
to the bridge abutment.
They are where you wake up
alone into loneliness
and pretend each morning
you are still alive.
They are the difference
between survival and life,
breath and inspiration.
They are the preordained
end of the game
you were forced to play
and doomed to lose.
We each get but one home
and if by folly or disaster
we destroy it,
wherever we go
we remain homeless
in the wilderness
of rented rooms.

   - mce

Once again I am
entangled
in a *******
with Chaos and Doom.
Nothing **** or new
about this trysting.
I have known them
since chopper nights
thick and dark
as blood fudge;
since divorce nights
of keening despair
and humbling rage;
since madhouse nights
of weirding drugs
and weeping angels;
since jail nights
of lonely screams
and obscene rants.
We go way back,
and here they are again
old, grim lovers,
demanding and deadly,
but oddly comfortable.
From morning until evening,
they smile and taunt
until night comes,
we snuggle up,
and I escape into dreams,
the only privacy
I own.

   - mce

David Foster Wallace told a tale of three fish. A large old fish and two young fish were swimming toward each other. When they met, the old fish said to the young fish, "How's the water. They swam on. Finally one little fish said to the other, "What's water?"

This is as important a parable as Jesus ever uttered.

While none of the fish can escape the water, the crucial thing is to be aware of it. We can't escape the water of usury founded capitalist consumerism, but we can become aware of it and change how we swim.

Minimalism is a way of saying ******* to the water. It is a way of saying, I may have to swim here, but I will consciously choose how I swim. That's huge.

A minimalist says I will live on as little as possible. I will participate in proletarianized labour as little as possible. He says to the usurers, I will not feed you through debt. He chooses to live (well) on the cast-offs of consumer society. He says I will not watch your lies on TV. I will avoid the State as much as I can. I will fly (as much as still possible) under the radar. I will live my life. I will live my truths. I will be me.

This cannot be done perfectly. It can be done in many ways and to many degrees. The trick is to realize how it suits you and then do it. Learn to swim as you wish. Be your own fish.

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes”

More and more, I find myself waking early in the morning. Four AM; geezer time.

Time to be alone in the world. Time to remember dead friends and lost loves. Time to consider what went wrong and right and how I came to be here. Time to remember the scars of war and peace.

Time for the blues:

"Nobody loves me but my Mother and she could be jiving too."

Time to write and think.

Geezer time. All that's left. All the time in my world.

My ancient cell phone died.
Had to replace it with a smart-phone.
Samsung Galaxy. No Choice.

Smart-phone my ***;
nothing but a hassle
since I got it.

Phones should
make phone calls.

I don't want the weather
in Ukraine.

I don't want people
texting me.

(What the hell is texting?
***, LOL. IMHO.)

Don't want to play games
or listen to music.

Sure as hell don't want
to watch movies.

What kind of *****
watches movies on a phone?

Ned Ludd where are you?

Call me if your phone works.

We need to make some plans.
   ~mce

Dead people are no doubt bored, so I'm sure these folks would be happy for free food and conversation. Of course, this is just a partial list, subject to addition and deletion. Feel free to add your own in comments.

Buddha, but a light lunch.
Jesus, but kosher of course.
******, come on, who wouldn't.
James Joyce, just to mock him.
George Washington, to try to catch him in a lie.
Hemingway, but just for drinks.
Reagan, to deliver some Depends.
Bakunin, for mutual aid.
William Butler, my ancestor who survived The Wheatfield at Gettysburg.
Audrey Hepburn, but a date, not lunch.
Ingmar Bergman, just to cheer me up.
Ervin Schrödinger, about that cat.
Shakespeare, because I've always wanted to meet an extra-terrestrial.
Ezra Pound, to tell him he was right about usury.
God, to let her know how disappointed I am.
Richard Nixon, so I could drive a stake through his heart.
Julia Child, just to hear her voice again.
Lenin, because he was a self-starter.
Mozart, because he would be fun.
Emma Goldman, to dance.
James Dean, as we look so much alike.
Janis Joplin, because I might get lucky.

Come on, I'm sure you can add to the list. Don't be shy, try.

mce

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
---Those dying generations---at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity**.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My ****** form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.