Sometimes words
cease to be a joy
and become a burden.
Sometimes you
must set them down
and take a rest.
The poet is a mailman
lugging a load of life,
carrying bundles
that most people
don't even want
to think about:
heavy thoughts
on weighty subjects.
Occasionally, even a
metaphorical mailman
needs a holiday.
  - mce

Just the memory
of the crook
of your knee
is worth
an entire life
to me.
  - mce

I am seeking
a Mechanic
to mend my heart.
She must be
adept, versatile
and competent.
Hopefully,
she will listen
to Scarlatti
while she works.
She will need
to carefully
disassemble the
damaged vessel
and be able
to reassemble it
whole and intact.
Can't pay much,
but other benefits
are available.
I have tried
Craig's List, Ebay
and the yellow pages.
So far, no luck.
Oh where have all
the Mechanics of Love
disappeared?
Call me,
if you know one.
  - mce

She was
the Queen of Spring;
even her softest sighs
could sing.

Daffodils sprouted
from her lips;
Lilacs grew
around her hips.

Tulips blossomed
in her eyes;
Forsythia
bedecked her thighs.

Oh, she really was
the Queen of Spring;
even her softest sighs
did sing.
  - mce

Last night up on the ridge
a whippoorwill sang
its incessant sweet song
in the thick, firefly darkness.
Dante was right to make Hell
a place without birds.
They fill the world with music
and ask nothing in return.
The purity of sweetness
without the demand for profit.
What a lovely notion.
- mce

Not an easy thing
to be the father of sons,
(of daughters I have none).

Inevitably, you must
disappoint them;
inevitably, they must
turn away from you.

Embrace the necessity
of this distancing.

Do not become
an impediment
to the world
they must inherit,
the world that
you can never know.

Be joyful.

Trust that what
you have planted
will flourish
beyond your reach.

Dream the futures
you will never see.
- mce

Three ravens
perched on
a bare branch
above the creek
stare at him,
but say nothing.

An old man
shivering
in the cold,
with many
questions and
no answers,
stares back.

They sit like
mute black oracles.

The truth
of the world
cannot be spoken
by the world.

An old man,
shivering;
three ravens
perched on
a bare branch.

Nothing but this
can be known
for sure.
  - mce

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed:
The poor stay poor; the rich get rich.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

On the borrowed
coffee table,
four candles lit
against the dark
share space with
a pack of Camels,
a glass of bourbon.

A Bach sonata
fills the evening
with elegant
notes and silences.

An old man,
remembering
the absent,
sits alone
and smiles.

He is forgotten,
but he is free.

Call that a
New Year's Eve
party:

he does.
  - mce

Winter knows
when a man's pockets
are empty.

Am I drinking
the whiskey
or is the whiskey
drinking me?
Hmm...
- mce

Good morning,
gentle readers.

If I could,
I would
bring you
flowers and
latte and kiss
your blues
away.

Really.
    ~mce

This morning,
looking at a stand
of broken trees,
fallen and strewn
randomly about
by the storm,
I remember
battlefields and
the futility of war.
  - mce

If you were here
and warm,
I would inhale
your breath,
hold your spirit
in my lungs
and become
young again.
  - mce

I was born poor.
Sixty-three years later,
I am still poor.
Somewhere in between,
there must lurk a lesson
I haven't learned.
  - mce

I move south,
away from winter.

Middle-Tennessee
experiences
the longest streak
of sub-freezing days
in twenty years.

These two sentences
contain the story
of my life.
  - mce

"A college professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep." - W. H. Auden

Off to teach once again.
Another semester beckons.
Students who don't read,
respect or understand words.
Colleagues mostly
young enough to be
my own children.
Migrant worker wages.
If only I had learned
a decent, honest trade,
like mortician or plumber,
I wouldn't be in this fix.
Oh well, we must all do
what will feed us.
Once more, into the breach.
  - mce

I have been
cold so long
that warmth
is just
a memory.
Come to me,
Lady,
and build
the fire
that will
warm
my soul.
I will love you,
even amidst
flames.
  - mce

If you shout
long enough
into oblivion,
eventually,
nothing replies.
  - mce

Sometimes
I wake up
feeling lethal
after old war
nightmares.

To sooth myself
I slowly
sharpen
my K-Bar.

Weird, but
the motion
drives away
the toxic
memories.

Sometimes,
it takes a knife
to **** a dream.
   ~mce

My laptop's
harddrive
sounds like gears
grinding.

I think
its time
will be soon.

How sadly mortal
these machines.

Announced
in glory,
soon they die
in obscurity.

I'd feel sad
if I didn't
hate them so.
  ~mce

"To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say. For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime."

Trying in vain
to keep warm,
he accidentally
burned down
his shack.
As the flames rose,
he attained
enlightenment.
Such brilliance!
- mce

She tells me,
as I unbutton
her dress,
that she no longer
believes in love;
I murmur
agreement,
but stick to
the task at hand.
  - mce

If I can but
squeeze through
the narrow Bardo
one more time,
perhaps
I'll get it right.
  - mce

The turns of life
are imperceptible;
without knowing how,
some morning,
you find yourself
just where
you are.
  - mce

~for JLB
I thought when you left
that it was just the end of you;
of course, I was wrong.
It was the end of me, too.
  - mce

This explains our love:
not the first love,
perhaps the last love,
certainly the best love.
~ mce

Take the
flowers,
woman,
and dance
with me...
soon.

~mce

~ menu fixe for Chez Revanche

Anxious Anaconda Antipasto.
Mega Shark Soup.
Grinning Crocodile Fillets.
Prodigious Python Pie.

All served up like revenge,
appropriately cold.

Presentation is everything.

Tuck in, before they do.

   _ mce

Properly nurtured, it alone will last;
enduring blossom of the wilted past.
   - mce

Paradisaical PawPaws
decorate bland trees;
few know their
delightful texture.
If a fruit grows
and no one knows
its virtues,
does it exist at all?
Forget unheard trees falling;
this is a much more
pressing question.
To Paw or not to Paw:
the great southern question.
   - mce

wake late
into slatted sunshine

force your mind
to gather fragments
and embrace chaos

take a shower

become a shark

swim in water
you do not understand

play Vivaldi

let the lute notes
wash over you

feel the feather
plucking your heart

vibrations in rented rooms
resonate and vanish

listen intently
to the wisdom
of a cat
who says nothing

the coffee cup looms empty
the ashtray overflows

dust motes in a sunbeam
regularly portend disorder

disregard them

clarity is a fiction

be still and grateful
content to know
you cannot know
which way
this day will go

until the circle
closes tight

until this day
returns to night
   - mce

They swim the cesspit
of greed and usury
mouths wide open
hungry always
for more
and deserving it,
too.

~ mce

Most folks
live in small yards
circled by walls;
eventually the walls
become reality.

This is known
as death.

Electrons whirl and leap
able to be in more
than one place at a time.
They move between
many worlds with ease
sometimes more than one
at a time.
Many lives;
many worlds.
Nothing ever as simple
as it appears.

~ mce

In France
they know that women
like wine
only improve
with age,
that sixty
can be ****.

In Amerika
we are taught
to lust
after impossibly
perfect,
young
Barbie Dolls.

At my age,
I'd rather be
French.

   -mce

I have lived alone
so long that
I have learned
to hug myself
and enjoy it.
  - mce

All these decades
thirsting in the wilderness
and still I refuse
to drink the kool-aid.
   - mce

~ for William Carlos Williams

The perfection of that
******* red wheel barrow
that caused such grief;
those ****** white chickens
that brought no relief.
How many readers foundered
upon these images?
How many would be poets
took to truck driving
and went completely daft?
   - mce

If luck falters
and I am taken tonight,
at least I will go knowing
I was never
another man's meal.

   -  mce

Once his eyes adjusted
to the light,
he realized
he was blind
and colors
gushed forth
from his heart:
never before
had he seen
so vividly.

  - mce

Sometimes
when all my
broken places
ache at once;
I feel
a singular,
optimistic
kind of joy.
~mce

"And love
is not
a victory
march
it's a cold
and a very
broken
Hallelujah."

the hippie life:
**** and acid;
the blues life:
****** and whiskey.

one a party,
the other
a funeral.

good times,
bad times,

but oh,
what
a Time.
   ~mce

OK, the depressive part
can be a problem:
nothing to do but lie around,
immobile, counting ceiling tiles,
waiting to die, and afraid you won't.

But mania! Oh, sweet muse!

The gods kiss you with fiery tongues;
they burn their hissing brands
into your gelid, grateful brain.

Volcanoes of metaphors;
tsunamis of words;
earthquakes of images.

Every moment pulsates;
every instant an ******.

Shrinks agree that
most artists are
manic-depressive
to some degree,
but to us it is a portal
to the godhead.

Give the meds to the rest;
the agitated, anxious sheeple
striving to be normal:
to them it is a disease.

But for those of us
who lust for Art,
it is the necessary,
not to be missed,
divine, exalted,
madness of creativity.

Consummate
Promethean
benefaction.

   - mc

The poem is not
the words on the page.

The poem is not
reading those words.

The poem is
what resonates
and lingers
in the mind's silence

just after.

   - mce

I wrote a poem on the back
of an overdue electric bill.

It was a good poem.

Certainly that makes us even.

   - mce

When life offers up
the inevitable two choices,
say *******,
invent a third,
and make it your own.
   ~mce

One morning he found that age
had arrived and moved in to stay
like some unwelcome relative
whose existence he had always doubted.
Suddenly, the past retreated into
a vast, unimaginable distance
and youth became someone else.
Even midlife was a stranger.
Old things began to happen:
his wife had a new husband and life;
his grown children had futures
and didn't come around much;
the news became frustratingly familiar;
*** devolved into ritual;
the best cats were all dead
like more of his friends each year.
He woke for good at four AM
after thin, elderly sleep
and spent the early hours
with bourbon, coffee,
cigarettes and jazz.
Age just smiled, had another drink,
and made no move to leave.

   - mce