People misunderstand
when I talk with my mouth,
so I have decided
to speak with my feet.
Nature is orderly;
words apparently not.
Watch my toes
if you wish to comprehend me.
The feet of morning;
the feet of midday;
and the feet of night
speak different languages.
This is not my fault.
You must make the effort
to learn them.
When you do, our souls
will be in perfect harmony
like two lamprey
that **** then die.

for John Berryman*

How many poets,
by alcohol and despair,
choose to depart
this living air?

The Muse can be
an evil *****:
she'll **** your brain,
she'll make you twitch.

With her it's not
a casual roll,
she wants your *****,
she'll eat you whole.

You strive to strike
the head of the nail;
one blow comes home,
but a dozen others fail.

Soon you despair
to ever succeed:
you open your veins,
commence to bleed.

You give to her,
and give and give,
until it's just
too hard to live.

Then in the bottle
you sadly seek
another day,
another week.

It isn't pretty,
it isn't fair,
and so you depart
down the dying air.
  - mce

The days piled up too high and then collapsed.
Everything was sadder than it used to be.
What we are concerned with here is unhappiness.
It is not a question of enlightenment, but recognition,
that chameleon of vapid disinterested change.
What does it all come down to in the end?
Feeling furtive needs isn't living;
you weary of feeding your needy, mammal body.
We must extricate ourselves from this repugnant spectacle.
The gates of the world open and close to no end.
The cosmos uses your own voice to complain.
The summit sings what is spoken in the depths.
The boulevards of your brain become smaller.
The wars are far away and oddly peaceful.
The lamps we light at dusk are for nothing.
I found this poem in the flea market of old words,
paid for it with the sorry shards of my memories,
and offer it to oblivion with whatever else I have stolen.
Consider it a final toast to everything that didn't happen.

  ~mce

I ran into an Angel
at the cafe this morning.

He looked shabby and sad
as he told me that
he has been unemployed
and at loose ends
since God died.

The stimulus package
hadn't helped
and there was
no unemployment
compensation
available for
the formerly Divine.

I commiserated,
agreed that times
are tough all over,
and paid for his latte.

It seemed the least
I could do.

  - mce

Mostly
my heart knows
the right thing
to do,
but doesn't.

No surprise.

It's only
a stupid muscle
after all.

   - mce

old monk
cold room
early morning
tattered pillow
just sitting

no expectations
no plans
no thoughts
no monk
just sitting

a cat watches
knowing everything
and nothing

monk and cat
no cat   no monk

just sitting

just everything

~mce

Er träumt davon, eines Tages frei zu sein.*

Must I sleep much longer?
Must I sin so dispassionately?
Shall I find an open portal
and leap and splatter?
All of the roads seem sinister
and dogs wag their tails but snarl.
Beneath a dead Elm I witnessed
an Angel weeping and murmuring.
His tears were pearls; his sighs prayers.
A hag with ******* like needles
beckoned to me from near a ruined wall.
I no longer possess an ****** appetite.
Instead, I am gnawing at the sinews of time
which taste bitter as death and bland as chicken.
My brain is a luminous, transparent sponge.
Dare to take a look inside.
I wish to wake in a solid world,
but who heeds my wishes?
Perhaps I must sleep forever.

  ~mce

The very young
like to believe
they will paint
their own lives.
To some degree
this is true,
but many
loving hands
will touch
the brush.
  - mce

Sometimes
my heart
feels the kiss
of ecstasy.

Sometimes
my toes
brush the abyss
of madness.

Sometimes
I can't tell
the difference.

Mostly, I don't
think
there is one.
  - mce

For all the brave lads who want to keep us free and pure. Whether we like it or not.*

We are the Redneck Militia,
marching here in stride,
white is the only color
in which we'll ever take pride.
If you don't like the color white,
we might gut you like a fish
and fry up your private organs
and eat them from a dish;
or maybe stamp out your brains on the street
and leave you there for dead
or hold you down on the pavement
and slowly run over your head.
For we are the Redneck Militia,
we're as wasted as can be,
if you still don't love the color white
we'll cut off your ***** for free.
And if you still aren't with us
we'll hang you high from a tree,
but if you don't like swinging
then a scalping it will be.
So get off your *** and march with us,
march til we've conquered this land,
if you don't like the blood and the bullets
you can always play in our band.
Just be sure to bang the drum loudly,
keep up with us stride for stride,
for we are the Redneck Militia
and white is the color of pride.

  ~mce

for Theodore Roethke*

It is dipsetic work,
a gasping kind
of mental sweating,
that takes its toll,
requires forgetting;
the work of words
will drain you dry,
leave you thirsty,
make you cry;
that withered husk,
the writer's soul,
requires fluids
to make it whole;
the desiccated,
wilted heart
craves a drink
to mend its art;
and this is why,
I've come to think,
in vats of whiskey
poets sink.
  - mce

Writing,
I weep
these words
into the world.
Reading,
you kiss
those tears
from my cheeks.
  - mce

A man tries
to crawl down
a whiskey bottle's
neck
         finds
no bottom
only finds an
endless ocean
of doom in which
to drown
slowly.

  ~mce

It is usually best to avoid
crushing hopelessness, to swerve
and defer disaster, but even so
the world is well and truly ****** up.

Seek solutions to this conundrum.

Try to avoid curiosity, a pernicious
strain of insanity that conjures up
irrational fears of orangutangs
with meat cleavers, lethally ascetic
Tibetan monks, bathroom carpets
of abandoned razors or Big Macs
rife with E. Coli.

Avoid metaphysical musings that lead
to questions of coleslaw, vegan
water parks, the Team Quadraplegic
Gymnastics squad and the horrors
of the Hilary Clinton Naked Network.

Seek refuge in the present tense to
escape the interrogation of mirrors,
the crafted answer, dacryphilia,
remedial rage, landslides of therapy
and memorizing each month's horoscope.

Consider that mercy is on back order from God.
Remember the best lines of an unread book.
Nap on a battlefield; haggle over imaginary debts.
Set fire to the umbrellas of passing strangers.
Stop to watch the loudness and burn the recovered dead.

Call up new magic for a dying world.
Find beauty in the irradiated glow of burning cities.
Try not to bounce existential checks or notice
the crumbling of distant walls, ruined outhouses,
and the immense bleakness of forever and ever.

Take up training small rodents and lighting holy fires.
Ignore the broken stars, long dead and beyond grief.
Discover the pleasure in erasure, enjoy the biology
of strangeness. Walk many miles without a map
beneath innumerable ladders carefully detouring
around immense flocks of rabid cassowaries.
Throttle the recalcitrant blue sky's silent throat.

Listen to the melody of car wrecks and smashed guitars.
Abandon assumed corpses to dreams of endless cold.
Appreciate futures you cannot believe in but never visit them.
Learn to diagram sentences in Esperanto then speak with toads.
Ignore the slot machine odds against your deepest desires.
Hide beneath the ravenous trees from time's famished maw.
Seek sanctuary in toothy optimism and complete amnesia.

Follow these impossible instructions to the letter
and you will become non-valent, invisible, immune
and no longer notice the world is ****** up
beyond redemption. Go on, give it a try.

  ~mce

Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney sweepers come to dust.*

Poetry conceives no meaning,
it is complete in its creation
as am I, as are you,
as are crows exploding
outside in the fevered air
or inside as worms slithering
in penumbral silence;
it provides no self-help,
no profound apocalypse
beyond delight in genesis
and what is engendered there.
That is enough to deliver
to thoughtless children
dancing and laughing and unaware
that death and decay turn with them
stalking beauty in the carefree air.
Poets speak only words not truths,
speak only to create wonder
from unconstrained imagination
beyond which bounds they may not dare.
   ~mce

First gelid dawn
of the dying year.

A crescent moon
shivers above
achromatic frost.

Four crows perch
like fluffy black
lumps of ice
on taut power lines.

Hungry sparrows peck
the severe ground.

The old poet
fears the cold.

Chilled eyes notice
bare ruined trees
and windshields
waiting to be scraped.

The earth has pulled
the covers up
around its neck,
wakes stiff and slow,
but stays in bed.

Cold's bony fingers
probe the old house
like burglars seeking
points of entry.

Still, the chill roads
point toward the
inevitable return
of warmth;
                  spring sits
silent as a cat waiting
for a door to open,
bidding its time
to counterattack.

Even on the most
algid morning
hope slumbers,
but never dies.

  ~mce

Thanks for the title, Boss.*

When I was a kid
my hometown
basked in that
(uncertain) period
of peace and
prosperity between
Korea and Vietnam.

It bustled
with busyness
and it seemed like
everyone knew
everyone and there
was always more.

Even the poor
felt included.

Half a century later,
peace has fled
for good and
prosperity too,
leaving only
vacant storefronts
and neighbors
who do not know
each other.

Perhaps this
was inevitable;
perhaps it is
progress.

But there are
moments when
it feels like
a lifetime is
just too much
to witness,
just too long
to live.

Nobody loves
a corpse.

~mce

In warmth and safety,
the lucky few
argue about slogans
on coffee cups,
red, green and blank.

On a frozen
Syrian mountainside,
caught in
a season of hate,
men are tortured,
women are *****,
and children starve
like trapped
forgotten vermin.

A world away,
angry arguments
about which words
to best mark this
season of love.

Whose side are
you on, God?

Hallelujah.

  ~mce

So many calling out for blood
who have never tasted it.
I have tasted it. It is bitter.
It smells like copper
and tastes like doom.
If they shed it, it won't wash off.
And they will never be innocent
again. If they hire others to shed it,
in their secret hearts they
will forever be ashamed
and the word coward
will  always whisper
in their ears.

As it should.

  ~mce

An old man's head:
a bucket full of lies.
A vortex swirls there like
confetti at the ticker tape
parade of a traitor.
Fragments adhere and disperse
becoming ephemeral poems
that mean nothing for a moment.
Whoever and whomever become
a jaded lump of whatever.
That empty head contains
multitudes of nothing that
never quite achieve something.
Poems made of offal.
Thoughts never finished.
Whenever he is, he has been,
he will be. Vortex like
water in a flushed toilet,
disappearing into ****.
Unspoken words sounding loud
in a cistern of silence
where nobody pretends to listen.

  ~mce

They sit down and order beers,
but soon quarrel over whether
crows can speak or are telepathic.
Things turn ugly. They slip from
their stools and circle each other.
Anger has sharp blue eyes
and produces a fine-edged blade.
Rage is the epitome of cool,
his eyes are grey, he knows Kung Fu,
he waits for the fatal opening.
The crowd howls and eggs them on.
Then Death arrives brandishing
a loaded gun. Shots ring out.
Anger and Rage bleed out on the floor.
The crowd turns back to drinking.
Death calls for a round
of blood for the house.
Every weapon is relative;
But ****** is absolute.

  ~mce

Poetry is so hard to find,
quite like love.
When you do, you must
write it like a check
you owe for allowing it
to express how the world
comes to mean anything at all:
to cover the debt you pay
for being, for flashing brightly
before the day begins
to crumble.

  ~mce

These are adaptations in Ezra Pound's tradition, not exact translations. - mce

I

The moon is gone,
the Pleiades vanished,
my youth deserts me.
In night's darkest heart,
time streams on
and yet I sleep alone.

II

On feather beds,
we spent our desire,
dancing within
each other
until no holy place
remained untouched.

III

The Muses instructed me;
My honor is their craft.

IV

We shall enjoy
each other, Love;
let stillness and sorrow
stalk those
who disapprove.

V

No warning!
A torrent strikes
the stout oak
as love strikes
my heart.

VI

Stars hide their faces
when the moon's splendor
smiles and shines
upon the earth.

VII

Taking the lyre
into my hands,
my fingers
invited it
to speak
a lover's voice.

VII

You
have set
my heart
alight.

IX

I thirst
and
I burn.

After being discharged,
he installed a stone lion
in his heart to ward off evil;
sadly, it scared off good, too.

  ~mce

Our deaths will be
transformed into
driftwood washed up
on terra incognita
and gathered
for firewood by
savages who cannot
imagine what we were
but will enjoy the
anonymous warmth
we have gifted them.

  ~mce

The people are mute
and enchanted by lies.

Only Capital speaks now
and shouts down
all resistance with the chant:
buy, buy, buy, buy!

Democracy but a
brief, bewildering moment.

Gone for good.

  ~mce

"The poem reveals itself
only to the ignorant man."* - Wallace Stevens

Become a child again;
indulge yourself
in ignorance and wonder;
be open to paradox,
uncertainty and amazement.
Recall the very first time
you noticed fireflies
blinking out rapturous glory,
the mystery and grandeur
of that innocent instant.
Return your heart to that state
of spontaneous marvel.
The world will reveal itself,
transformed and articulate,
into small, exquisite fragments
manifested as poems,
a wholly fresh vision
of the same old universe
experienced through
the welcoming eyes
of an idiot.
- mce

The squirrel
that regularly
visits my deck,
blinks at me
through
the *****
plate glass,
unconcerned
as a fat, gray
Buddha,
just going about
his business,
casually and
without concern.
I can almost
hear him thinking:
what is that
in there?
- mce

Time does not erase
nor can it heal,
it dulls, like whiskey,
the edge of real
sins and griefs,
but they remain,
living souvenirs
of our human pain.
Try as we must
to drive away
the debts of hurt
and not to pay
any attention
to the lingering woe
of scars incurred
in the long ago,
the best we can do,
with a brave face,
is bind them tight
in a secret place,
in a shabby box
that sits apart,
in the dusty attic
of our mortal heart.
  - mce

I love
the way
zounds
rhymes with
hounds.
Sadly,
it is not
the sixteenth
century,
and I don't
own dogs.
  - mce

Do not
describe
the thing,
become
the thing,
and then
tell its story
through
its own
mouth.
That is what
poets do.
- mce

Many folks
wouldn't read
a poem
unless you put
a gun
to their heads.

I am that gun;
these words
are my bullets;
exactly
those people,
my target
of choice.
  - mce

each one,
a mystery

(yielding
inviting
opening)

each one,
a portal

(warm
wet
dark)

each one,
a disaster

(sultry
siren
song)

oh when
will I learn
to just
say no...
  - mce

Ever the lady,
she neatly weaves
the tattered threads
of her torn life
into a pattern
of false smiles
displayed
convincingly
so that no one
will notice
she is just barely
holding it together
  - mce

Someone recently
said to me,
"there is an epidemic
of loneliness."

There it is!

Now I know why
my heart flutters
when dusk approaches
and my soul
shivers at dawn.

I forgot to get
vaccinated.
  - mce

Aren't I a nice girl, she said? You are, he whispered, and when you stop trying so hard to be so nice, you'll be a nice woman.
  -mce

If you make yourself
as tough as a nail,
you become a nail,
and should be very
wary of hammers.
  - mce

for Paul Brandt and Patrick Dunnigan

Somewhere,
the choppers
still beat
the air.
  - mce

Three crows
perched above
the newly
planted corn;
how the world
mocks our plans.
  - mce

The man with no eyes
fixed his vacant gaze
hard upon me and said:
You don't look so well
today, my friend.
Honestly, I replied,
I do feel a bit blank.
- mce

He wants
so much
to remove
his armor
and rest
awhile
in arms
safer than
steel.
  - mce

Let my
tongue
touch the
very why
of you
so that
I can
hear your
soul
make its
sounds
out loud
in the
world.
  - mce

Sometimes,
my shoes will
suddenly decide
to go for a walk
without me.

See you later,
they say;

so long,
I reply.

I never worry
about them.

They know
the way home.
  - mce

So much
depends upon
a 1997 Saturn
firing up
when I turn
the key.
  - mce

One morning
he woke up
disconcerted
to discover
that overnight
he had become
a merely
ambulant footnote
to his own life.
  - mce

The best lesson
to learn
from the past:
pleasure
is fragile,
but pain,
built to last.
  - mce

swirling
     vertiginous
downward
    tumbling
freezing
    firey
gyre

  - mce

Today I saw a blurb
that said: 20% off
on sheet sets
for all veterans.

Ain't that America?

The blood of millions
transformed into
an advertising opportunity.

  ~mce

I have fallen in
jungles, desserts,
heat, cold, on hills,
in valleys, by streams
in cities and towns,

but always I have
fallen for you,
dear citizen,

and so my blood
is always on
your hands.

  ~mce

People seem to be
          sincere
when they say
to me
          thank you
for your service.

Perhaps they are.

But if they knew      
what I
          know...

Heard men screaming
for their mommies that I
          still hear,

Smelled
the ****** and
charred flesh I still
          smell,

dreamed
the dreams of gore,
not glory, I still
          dream,

I think
they would
          tell
the truth:

better you,
          than me,

Which may be
all they are really saying
          anyway.
   _mce