It is hard
to make poetry
out of nothing.

Out of empty rooms
chilly at dawn;
out of a solitary bed;
out of bad food,
poorly prepared,
eaten alone;
out of jobs done
only for the money,
not the work;
out of dead memories
of family and love;
out of no expectations;
out of life's end time.

It is hard
to make poetry
out of nothing,

but I just did.

   - mce

this plain of death

corpse-strewn
stone lonely
smashed objects
broken by

abstractions

what painted this scene?

decisions made
by ample men
in clean rooms
faraway

good reasons
bad intentions

abstractions

orders given
and followed

a soldier
slumps among
the bodies

abstractions

stained fatigues
silent rifle
dead eyes

wondering

how this happened
and who they were
and why

abstractions

no answers

boy, man,
executioner,
victims

abstractions

killer or killed

life will not
go on

   - mce

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

In the alleys
of my hometown,
ghosts jostle metaphors,
but today
I am not seeking
memories or poetry,
crocuses and snowbells
suffice.
   - mce

"I vow to save
all sentient
beings."

A big order,
worthy of
many lifetimes.

The Dharma wheel
spins.

Lifetimes
fall away.

Perhaps,
after enough
times around
the wheel,
this is possible.

I hope so.

After all:

I am
a sentient being
too.
   ~mce

As easy as
accidentally
falling off
a log into
a vat
of ****.

As a poet,
you might
drown.

Watch
your step!
   - mce

A cold has put me on the fritz, said Eugene O'Neill,
how can I forget certain things?
Now I have thirteen bottles of red wine
where once I had over a thousand.
I know where they went but why should I tell?
Every day I feed the dogs and birds.
The yard is littered with bones and seed husks.
Hearts spend their entire lives in the dark,
but the dogs and birds are fond of me.
I take a shower frequently but still
women are not drawn to me in large numbers.
Perhaps they know I'm happily married
and why exhaust themselves vainly to ****** me?
I loaned hundreds of thousands of dollars
and was paid back only by two Indians.
If I had known history it was never otherwise.
This is the song of the cold when people
are themselves but less so, people
who haven't listened to my unworded advice.
I was once described as "immortal"
but this didn't include my mother who recently died.
And why go to New York after the asteroid
and the floods of polar waters, the crumbling
buildings, when you're the only one there
in 2050? Come back to earth.
Blow your nose and dwell on the shortness of life.
Lift up your dark heart and sing a song about
how time drifts past you like the gentlest, almost
imperceptible breeze.

~ short ode to PTSD

Though capable of rage,
I am harmless enough
except when cornered.

If you decide
to visit my life,
just be sure
we always sit
in a circle.
   - mce

for Jim Harrison

The very definition of Exuberance,
life squeezed of life's juices drop by drop.
each lovely female bottom lovingly observed and graded.
every delectable morsel chewed to digestive ecstasy;
wine and bourbon straining like blossoms in springtime;
trout, bear, javelina and ravens known personally;
rivers encountered both above and within;
genuine tears evoked by dogs past;
appetites that won't be denied;
sentences that strike like rattlesnakes;
that lone, probing eye
that even Galileo would have envied.
A Man in the old sense, disappearing,
content with love, nature and war;
what writer could hope
to be anything more?
   - mce

When I was young
my parents got me a dog
to teach me responsibility.
It was a fine dog but
nearly starved.

So they bought me a car
to encourage pride of ownership.
I used it to run away from home
and then abandoned it.

So the got me a job
to teach me the value of hard work.
I took my first paycheck,
quit the job, and squandered the money.

After that, they gave up.

All these years later I remain
irresponsible, own little,
and am often broke.

Hard as it was,
I learned those lessons well.
   - mce

The nervous afflictions
of poets drive
doctors to dismay;
it is difficult
and dangerous
to diagnose
a chameleon
in a thorn bush.
   - mce

Clocks like feral vultures open wounds with fatal, ticking beaks. Their hands take you by the throat, choking off thought. Clocks tell many lies: no time to lose, time heals all, time will tell and, most despicable, time is money. Time isn't money. Time is your soul bleeding out onto your socks. Money is just an inferior brand of toilet paper. Use it for what it's worth. Middle-class zombies buy these lies, confusing time with tempo. The measure it out like expensive coffee: four years of college, forty hours a week, thirty years of mortgage, five years of car loan. They buy their lives on time. The usurers have propagandized them to equate payments with ownership, success with things. This keeps them too busy to ask questions. When time runs out they die, ignorant of having lived a lie. Time laughs last. Always.
  - mce

for Leonard Cohen

That holy voice that undoes the buttons of dresses
whispering them off shoulders onto the floor;
songs that celebrate the pellucid sky of Greece;
the dark confessions of hustlers and junkies;
Abraham poised with the knife of obedience;
the desperate Hallelujah of broken kings;
razors in the hands of beautiful losers;
generous assignations in dingy hotels;
the singular Glory of the god of Art;
speaking in the minor chords of death;
celebrating the discordant mystery of life;
dancing to the very end of love, never missing a step.
   - mce

~ for FK

He fell asleep a defunct and uncertain mortal,
but in that night of wavering visions
he dreamed of crocodiles and lilacs
each blossoming according to its own nature.
That made a sort of sense.
Telephones rang and creditors questioned.
Fishermen returned from the sea with boats full of water
which they easily traded for vast quantities of oxygen.
The crocodiles were fragrant and the lilacs smiled.
That, too, made a sort of sense.
One melancholy action flung itself upon the stars
and vanished from the satisfied earth.
He loved God and Satan simultaneously
and in their delight they reopened the Garden
feeling once more the necessity of affection
and directed him to eat his fill.
Who can argue with such divine logic?
All his ex-lovers sent telegrams expressing regret.
The gold he never had swelled his coffers.
He decided this dream was too lovely to end.
And yet, how to make sense of this gloaming cornucopia?
The answer struck him obvious as an earthquake:
forget the prisons of words; take new orders;
laugh with the crocodiles; dance with the lilacs;
become a man of action; imbibe Ambrosia for breakfast;
devour Manna  for lunch; **** astonishing flowers.
This makes perfect sense.

  - mce

These former treasures
now transformed into
anonymous junk.
Where did their history flee?
I stroll this flea market
with 10 dollars and no plan.
How many lives held these items?
Like mute Zen Masters
each has found its original face;
the desire that attached them
to life has evaporated.
They are only sad things in boxes
waiting for new hands
holding disinterested dimes,
seeking meaningless curiousities
to gather dust on lonely shelves.
This is what stuff comes to.
   - mce

The Iraq War cost
three trillion dollars.

Tonight a mother
and her  two children
sleep in an
abandoned car
in Detroit.

Something doesn't
add up.
  ~mce

Reality resides in the mind,
all dark shards and sharp edges;
the imagination
smooths and softens them
into something
bright and better.

Poetry is the great shaper;
the focusing lens.

To be a poet is to see
not what is
but what ought to be
with holy, burning intensity.
   ~ mce

The silence of words
or the silence of no words:
difficult to know
which screams the loudest.
~ mce

What worse sentence
can the world pronounce
upon your soul
than to wake up in
a silent room
alone?

Year after year,
that sudden waking jolt
of pure loneliness.

Fight it.

You know the drill:
coffee, cigarettes,

Bach, Mozart,
Vivaldi or Telemann
to drive away
the quiet despair.

Sometimes, success.

But sometimes nothing works.

You are just an aging man
alone in an apartment
wondering how you got there,

wondering if anything
ever comes next.
~   mce

Watching my
demented mother
water plastic flowers
on her porch,
I come near
to seeing my face
before I was born.
~ mce

Craving beauty,
we can only steal;
it fades
in the moments
we watch

and then nothing.

We live
in the flesh,
if we live
at all.
~ mce

My true love
made me a gift
of an exquisite
Swiss watch
for my birthday.

If only the
elegant seconds
it perfectly
ticks off
were spent
with her.

~ mce

The cosmos is deaf,
and mute, too.

We are the beings
who strut about
muttering words
we turn into stories.

We then call these tales
our lives and blame
them on the cosmos.

The cosmos can't hear
our pathetic laments
and wouldn't care
if it could.

It is too busy
just being the cosmos.

~ mce

I would like
to write
a million poems
before I croak,
but given alcohol,
nicotine, the state
of my liver and
general bad luck,
I don't see it happening.

Don't mean a thing.

Ten or a million,
we do not sing to count,
we sing to sing.
  ~ mce

Every morning
I look in the mirror
and expect to see
the face that used to be.
Life passes
short as a shiver.
Yet ineluctably,
all those missing moments
belong to me
as surely as
thousands of pieces
of luggage
lost by a bankrupt airline.
Every morning
I hope in vain
that they will
be on the carousel
and find their way back
to my mottled hands
one more time.
   ~ mce

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

Those moments
when you want
to crawl back in
to the metaphorical
womb and
close your eyes
and pull the covers
over your head
and pretend
the monsters
can't see you,
but they always
do.
~ mce

Sometimes naked,
Sometimes mad,
Now the scholar,
Now the fool,
Thus they appear on earth:
The free men.

Obviously,
the path
to salvation
took a detour
and missed
my house.

That's OK:
rather Pirate Hell
than Christian Heaven.

Finer wenches
down there,
better beer,
and anyhow,
I am allergic
to clouds.
  ~  mce

There's birth,
there's death,
and in between
there's maintenance.

****, shower, shave;
how boring
sometimes
to be a primate.

Enforced ritual
*****.

Perhaps
the meaning
of life really is
just to floss
your teeth
while waiting
to croak.

Now there is
a wonderful
cosmic joke.
  ~ mce (with a nod to TR)

and there comes that moment call it the first adult moment at 17 from heartbreak or at 20 fighting a lost war when the realization of emptiness attends you and you know in your testicles or ovaries that god is deaf chaos rules eternally the universe stands indifferent and you are but a carbuncle on the cosmos' *** alone and forever alone and that moment may be debilitating or delightful enslaving or freeing and your life is launched upon a trajectory that you can never escape it is a moment of depression or bliss depending on your malleable personality and temperament and you will never ever be the same again...

The world worships nascence; only the young are seen as truly alive. The old become transparent and obsolete as ghosts. It is not the event of death we fear so much as the slow fading away that proceeds it. To be old in a world where the young no longer see you: that is one definition of loneliness.
~ mce

If you leave me,
my heart will break
and the crash
of crystal on brick
will resonate
to the end
of the universe.
  ~ mce

**** old age:
who cares?

For decades
the world
has crushed
your shoulders,
but is no longer
a burden.

Revolutions,
pestilence,
family squabbles
prove nothing
but that life
goes on and
not everybody
has freed himself
yet.

No need
to fear death:
it won't help.

Life is inevitable;
there are no escapes.

Breathe while you can.
  ~ mce

Those
who think
in the
passive voice
have no
souls
and yet
they run
the world.
  ~ mce

~ for W L Winters

Never *******
a buffalo,
a grizzly,
a moose,
or an
ex-wife.

If you do,
run
as fast and far
as you
possibly
can.

   mce~

Waking up
where
you don't
want to be;
slice it
as you like
baby,
sounds like
prison
to me.
  ~ mce

Whenever
you enter
a room,
your
whole life
enters
with you.

---

Once I wandered
into the labyrinth
of madness.
I spent
some quality
time there.
I don't know
that all of me
returned.

---

We were as gods then, he said, but the clocks came and rendered our lives into pieces.

---

People misunderstand me;
I only mean what I am.

---

On good mornings
I wake up
and sincerely vow
to change my life
for the better
which never
seems to happen.
On bad mornings
I realize that
I am what I am
and even
in America,
land of
mindless optimism,
endless second chances,
tsunamis of self-help books,
and an infinity
of religions,
that is all
I'll ever be.

---

If something
we value
means nothing,
then more
of something
becomes
an excess
of nothing.

---

Life without
a woman
to temper
my stupidities
is difficult
indeed.

===

It is easy
in stray moments
to forgive
yourself.

---

Don't be afraid of the world;
it isn't afraid of you.

---

Love rarely suffices;
friendship often does.

---

You are
the only sunlight
on my skin;
when you go,
I slip
into darkness.

---

The future
is a patient
dog,
always beside us
waiting
to be noticed.

---

I would die
for your eyes.
   ~mce

Although I am
the most radical
of atheists,
each night
I fall asleep
praying to
whatever gods
may be
to send you
in my direction.

~ mce

This was just published so it is copyright 2015 by Holy Cow Press ~ mce**

Poverty is the fence around your life. Poverty wakes you up at 4 AM only to whisper meaningless slogans in your ear. It is the school of Piranha nibbling at the back of your brain. It is two hours waiting in the anteroom of despair for $22 worth of food stamps and being glad to be there. It is changing your phone number frequently because bill collectors are such boring conversationalists. It is the empty space your heels used to fill. It is letting your hair grow long and scraggly and your grizzled beard sprout because you know that although you sleep in rented rooms tonight, the street is not far off, and you want to fit in when you arrive. Poverty scalds the lint from your pockets. It is your private Treblinka within which you rage but are crushed. It is desperate prayers against dental catastrophes, blown tires, surprises of any sort. Poverty is when everything you own is frayed including your nerves from sleepless moments spent trying to solve the equation that will make X number of dollars cover X + ? number of bills, knowing that such math would defeat Newton or Einstein. Poverty is eying the cat's kibble imagining that with a bit of sugar and a splash of milk it might be fine and then eyeballing the cat himself thinking of protein of last resort and trying not to measure him against the microwave door. You ration your cigarettes; whiskey is a fading memory. Passing a diner on the street, you catch a whiff  of burgers too expensive to consider and experience a Pavlovian  moment. Poverty is trying to keep your head up and then remembering you pawned your neck. Poverty is watching the needle eat your last few gallons of gas. Poverty is the archeology of despair. It portends the death of irony. There is nothing ironic about a car with 217,000 miles and no insurance on it. Facts are facts in the world of poverty. Poverty is the last quarter reclaimed from beneath the cushions. It is too much time and not enough quarters. It is the specious logic of the self-righteous proclaiming that you deserve to be poor because you are, which in Amerika passes for wisdom. Poverty makes each day like the next because nothing does not vary. It is who you are and where you are going, although you won't get far. It is the life you lead inside the fence. It is the sum of what you lack. It just is.
   - mce

At twenty
I was a soldier
terrified to drop
into a hot LZ,
but still certain
I was immortal.

Now, at sixty-three,
I hear the sound
of chopper
and know
the time is coming.
soon.

~ mce

All day,
everyday,
people try
desperately
to tell us
who they are
and we
ignore them
because
we want them
to be someone
else.

~ mce

Let me be drunk
on your beauty.
Let me be warmed
by your touch.
Let your arms
enfold my heart.
Let your grace
wash over me.

Do not withhold
yourself, Love.

Death hovers
wearing
a patient grin.

So little time
and none
to waste.
- mce

When I die
my words will scatter
like fallen leaves.

All I have made
blown carelessly
to the four corners.

This is both
heartbreaking
and amusing.

They are
not really mine
anyway.

Hold on to nothing,
you become free
to do anything.
  - mce

I am weary
of being at war
with time;
take my hand,
lead me to
a country
without clocks.
  - mce

Lovers live hard lives;
always in that no-man's land
between self and other.
  - mce

aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what

is more did tell you just

what everybody was fighting

for,

my sister

isabel created hundreds

(and

hundreds)of socks not to

mention shirts fleaproof earwarmers

etcetera wristers etcetera, my

mother hoped that

i would die etcetera

bravely of course my father used

to become hoarse talking about how it was

a privilege and if only he

could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly

in the deep mud et
cetera

(dreaming,

et

  cetera, of

Your smile

eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

If they will
make your fortune
or get you laid
or just charm
someone beautiful,
go ahead and steal
my poems.

I'm 63 and
don't care.

I'd prefer
them used
rather
than dead.

Information
wants to be
free.
   ~mce

Be very careful.

You really don't
want
to catch this!

Could be fatal...

Certainly painful.
   ~mce

Tending the fire
is tedious,
but necessary.

Money is very handy
when your tooth aches.

Everyone quits smoking
when they die.

Love hurts:
loneliness hurts
worse.

Whiskey may not be
warmer than her *******,
but is usually more available.

When someone tells you
something is better than ***,
they are lying.

Every newborn
has the Buddha nature...
for about thirty seconds.

Asking if this spiritual path or that
leads to God is like asking
if a photon is a wave or particle.
The answer is always yes.

Death is the answer;
the difficult part
is figuring out the question.

Say good-bye to love
and you say good-bye
to your life.