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

Grab Your ***** And Hide The Starch!*

Begin the day with a lean and hungry cook. Seize her.
Catch the tide or lose your dentures. Vault of jars.
Cry "Amuck!" and let slip the hogs of yore.
Bid me done, and I will thrive on the impossible.
This foul **** shall stink above the hearth.
Pardon me, you breeding piece of worth.
You crocks, you crones, you worse than senseless things!
Consider the I'd's and beware of scam.
Perhaps by dusk you can say: This was a yam!

  ~mce

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

Your pretty dress
pushed up
to your hips;
your boots kissing
the small
of my back;
that is a ride
I want to take,
a picture
to hold close
forever.
   ~mce

Random stones huddle
close as lonely turtles
in the morning rain.

~mce

You are no longer the
tortured tumescent terror
you were at twenty.

After sixty, the ****** urge
waxes and wanes,
but still arrives
promptly when called upon.

A kind of peace lives in this.

Arousal now requires love,
whereas when young
it arrived at the glimpse
of a leg or a skirt's flounce.

This is more personal
and more satisfying.

The young deserve lust and
the tempestuous heartbreak
it inevitably brings
when mistaken for more
than it can ever be.

Those older need the touch
of a beating heart
as much as the touch
of simple, hot flesh.

No time remains
for the merely casual.

Your desire reminds you
of ruins, fallen towers,
the pressure of mortality.

You want the body beneath you
to touch your soul as well.

You want to touch it back,
to make it gasp and moan
but to hear it in your heart
as well as in your ears.

You want to hold it close
and keep it near forever,

remembering that forever
is not nearly as long
as it used to be.

No time to fool around;
find someone real
and clutch them as if
they were your last chance,
which they may well be
at any age.

Seeing a future that does not exist.
Dead child. Lost mother. Empty cradle.
Loveless heart. Soul minus zero. No companion.
Friends far away. Leaden morning stillness.
Noun without verb. Lonely adjective. Period.
Days upon days upon days of endless same.
Dysfunctional GPS. Maps that lead nowhere.
Rooms of the void. House of many sorrows.
Untold story without ending. Unwritten poems.
Homeless veterans. All soldiers at night. Fear.
Imaginary kisses. Touches of air. Lost caresses.
Knowing that everything that comes next is nothing;
     knowing that you really know that.

  ~mce

The mad poet of the glade
sits at leisure in the shade.

He spends the measure of his day
recalling women gone away.

Women dressed in barbed wire
who set his anxious heart on fire.

Women in satin, women in jeans,
women far beyond his means.

Women who sang, women who swore,
each the ******, each the *****.

Women of flesh, women of soul,
who touched his life, who made him whole.

Women of mind, women of heart,
all a mystery at the start.

Women who loved the words he said
and fell like blossoms on his bed.

Women whose dresses slid to the floor,
he lifted them up, he made them soar.

Women who sighed, trembled and came,
each one different, each the same.

Women lovely as springtime flowers
with silken skin and magick powers.

Women who lusted, women who dreamed,
women who loved him, women who schemed.

Women who broke his willing heart,
caressed his flesh, inhaled his art.

Women who finally came to fear
the cost of keeping him too near.

Women who all loved to play,
but could not bring themselves to stay.

Now he dreams those bygone times
and turns them into lines of rhymes.

Oh, the mad poet of the glade
he sits at leisure in the shade.
  - mce

These gelid mornings
engender island dreams
of pinkest flamingos,
hot sands, swaying palms,
chattering parrots,
and rising tropical sun;
but finer far, Lady,
(closer, nearer, softer)
would it be to wake
beside your naked flesh
(willing, inviting, enfolding)
beneath a pile of quilts
in the dawn's iron chill
and coax from that
smoldering feminine heat,
from the striking sparks
of your eager kisses,
the exquisite, explosive fuel
of your caresses, deep
within the you of you,
the first fire of the new day.
  - mce

Weary of the same old same old?
Don't flee your imperfections.
Instead, double down on them.
Stand naked before a mirror
like the one in the Bardo.
See what is really there rather
than what you'd like to see.
Your soul will either
turn cold as a frog's *****
or explode like a **** lab.
Instantaneous suicide or
blinding enlightenment.
Die, awaken, or just
continue to muddle through.
Corpse, Buddha, Zombie:
     Which of the three
     would you rather be?

A self-portrait.*

Gaze into the mirrored face
of the drunk man. See the
blurred innocence of
the departed boy. There are
no worlds but this world.
War, women and whiskey
do their destruction.
A man becomes what
a man does, but sometimes
that can’t be helped.
Perhaps a thousand more
lives must be lived
to undo the doing, to
break the bonds of Karma,
to find the arms of peace.
Every day a good day to die.

  ~mce

Time itself
will dissolve
(leaving nothing).

My life
will dissolve
(leaving nothing).

Your kisses
will dissolve
(leaving nothing).

But that is all ahead.

In this moment,

I live my life,
taking my time
and enjoying
your kisses.
   ~mce

-mors vincit omnia*

The many old who live alone
must pay attention, take care.

Any misstep might hasten their descent.
Tumble down the lonely steps.
Lie waiting in your own filth,
unable to reach a phone.

What loneliness must attend such a fall?

If only we could choose.

Proud Aeschylus was struck down
by a falling tortoise.
That’s not too bad.
To be hit by a bus while
lighting one last lethal cigarette.
That’s even better.
In bed, at ninety, chugging toward
one, final gasp of ******.
Even better yet.

But not in a strange bed hooked up
to noisy, indifferent machines,
poisoned by chemotherapy,
surrounded by terrified
friends and family struck dumb,
embarrassed and uncomfortable,
stunned by their own fears.

Best on your own two feet.
Like a soldier before the bullet.
Like a Viking struck down in battle.
Like you might have even mattered.

But there is no choosing.

Decrepitude is woven in our DNA.

You cannot escape the
inevitable carnage of mortality,
but you can be very careful
where you place your feet.

When he walked into that room, he carried his whole life with him.

There is something.

It all began when the umbilical was cut.

After that conversation, he just wanted to drink and be whole again.

She sighed with pleasure and slipped the bonds of the appropriate.

He was as nervous as a ***** in an earthquake.

A thousand years ago, he would not have made that promise.

Jesus, get that thing out of here!

Life was good; he had just gotten an NSA grant to study the speed of darkness.

Sure, I knew your mother; she was great in bed

"The only questions that really matter
are the ones you ask yourself."
- Ursula K. Le Guin

For some of us
the universe
provides
a long list
of questions
and a short list
of answers.

Our work,
the real work,
the only work
that matters,
is filling
in those blanks.

A hard blessing,
but a blessing,
still.
- mce

I have seen death's face
in many places
from Saigon to An Loc,
to the DMZ:
not by virtue, but luck,
he did not see me.

The others who fell
in those self-same places,
he surprised and snatched
away too slow to flee:
by the dumbest of luck,
he did not take me.

Now they are the forgotten dead
and I am old and weary
and worlds from Saigon
An loc or the DMZ:
my time and luck are running out
and slowly he turns his face toward me.

  ~mce

Alchemy is the art of the far and near as is poetry.*

Prima Materia. ****** alchemists groping, questing.
The Face of God. Omphalos. The Chapel Perilous.
Lost path through invisible forest. Hazard.
Base metal to gold. Ignorance to wisdom.
Crucible of transformation. The Rosy Cross.
Inner distillation. Metamorphoses. Essence.
To be bathed in the breath of infinity. Crystalline.
Quantum foam. Particles. Waves. Plenum of possibilities.
     Moving through the world of illusion,
     seeking the sacred glory of fusion.

Every ending includes
a beginning.

The past can
never be escaped,
but it can be
left in the past.

The tree that
falls and rots
feeds new growth;
it remains,
but is transformed;
likewise the past
must nourish
the future,
not stunt its growth.

Open your arms
to what might be
and what has been
assumes it's
proper place.

A ****** fine world
waits out there:

time to get on with it.
_ mce

Come into my hands
like a book.

My hands are strong,
have weathered decades,
will hold you tight.

Let them open you
to the right page,
the center of you.

Let me enter your story
and together we will
search your text
for meanings even
you don't know, yet.

We will write
unimagined chapters.

Cackle at the comedy;
weep at the tragedy.

We will read
each other's pasts,
guess what happens next.

We will find
the perfect passage
and know where
we belong
int the world.

At the tale's ******
we will explode
into a final
exclamation point!

If you only
come into my hands
like a book.

Bright pellucid morning
blue as icy aquamarine.

Fall nips the air
like a petulant cat.

It feels chilly
as a chance encounter
with a former lover
in a sunrise coffee shop.

The season spins
like an obstinate top.

Legions of lawn gnomes
don their long underwear.

The earth accepts this
glacial change, but
I will miss the warmth
of lilies and dandelions.

Still, this new  ambience
contains its own charms.

Trees spasm with delight
as vivid leaves waft like
inevitable paratroopers
to the retreating lawns.

Flowers hibernate
secure in the
inevitability
of resurrection.

It is a time to honor
common sense.

We know the snows
will blanket our
sleepy, gelid lives.

We know that
in time we will
wake to spring,
warmth and hope.

The world will turn
until we don't.

  ~mce

We live in an abrupt time
without ancestors.
Those gossamer threads
that bound us to the past
have long ago melted away.
I am a lone man on a bed in a room.
Adjectives do not accrue.
Only your mouth tracing my body
outlines me into reality,
your pretty teeth nip me
into the dangerous present.
And what then shall I give you?
Neither famous nor rich,
I possess only mundane flesh
and a grab bag of words.
These will have to do, lady.
Allow me to adorn you with them:
earrings made of desperate syllables,
a necklace of my broken fingers.
These are the offerings
I place before your body's altar
where I have come to worship
before the magic of your touch.
Only a man on a bed in a room,
everything that is left of me,
waiting with anxious longing
for your mouth to create me again.

Death dropped by last night.

I never expect him, but he was lonely and I was available.

What’s up, I asked.

Same old ****, he said. You have no idea how hard this job is. Absolutely no one wants to see me. Ever.

Must be lonely.

Lonely, he said, you can’t imagine! Most of them die as soon as they see me.

Do you know hard that makes it to have a meaningful relationship? Or even get a date?

Death lit a cigarette, unafraid.

Oh, I can imagine.

Well, let me tell you; it’s ****** frustrating. Sometimes, I’d just like to cuddle, but I’m not into corpses. Yuck.

Death isn’t much of a conversationalist. Mostly he just whines. It’s all about him. He tends to ramble.

I just quietly let him talk. He did.

Have to be going, he said finally. Must meet the soon to be dead. Rush, rush, rush… and Santa Claus thinks he has it bad. Thanks for listening. See you soon.

No hurry, I replied.

I swear his missing lips smiled as he turned and left.

It took a while before I realized what I had just been spared.

Sometimes, it pays to be a good listener.

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.* - JB

My inner resources have collapsed.
I am officially in a rut.
I am terminally bored.
It's like dying over and over again
but never quite getting the job done.
A strong change is called for.
Perhaps I'll cut off my head,
take up ballet or start a hedge fund.
I could take a road trip
if my car wasn't 240,000 miles
toward dead and it wasn't winter
and if I had any money.
Pawn shops don't pay well for poems.
Sadly, all those conditions prevail.
Which means my chances of escaping
boredom are limited, which is boring.
I realize boredom is my fault.
In my case, it is the San Andreas fault.
If I owned boots, I could pull
myself up by my bootstraps, but I don't.
I wonder if the Buddha was ever bored.
All he ever did was sit around.
If so, perhaps I'm really not bored.
Maybe this is really enlightenment.
That's a truly terrifying thought.
During the war life was boring but
dangerous. Sad thing to pine for war.
Guess I'll just surrender to this
redundant, monotonous splendor.
If I wake up tomorrow, things may improve.
If I don't wake up, they surely will.

  ~mce

Waking to the sound
of pounding rain
is like hearing
death do a drum roll
before a hanging.
Nothing to do
but step onto
the trap door
and prepare yourself
for the drop.

Quis est iste puer?*

Not even the
sterile, serious
hospital scene
can diminish
the wonder.

Your wife
glows radioactive.

Something new
in this old world.

Love made flesh.

In her arms,
your child.

The Cosmos smiles.

Everything changes
forever.

The very best thing
about loving someone
is that it very much
makes you want
to stay in the world.

  ~mce

alles klar herr kommissar*

Write it all down with painstaking haphazardness,
carefully constructing nested memories,
exotic confections, negligible nuances,
dubious symbols of great insignificance,
an absolutely truthful pack of living lies.
Your readers deserve exactly what they get:
stumbling horses, nuzzling cassowaries, dead flowers;
the impenetrable clarity of an imagined life
imagining its mind imagining itself.

In the Beginning, God touched the world;
not Logos but the embrace of tactility.
God pressed himself into creation, every
animal, vegetable, and mineral imbued with
the exalted power of consecrated touch,
leaving marks that remain for us to discover
like marvelous pieces of a sacred crossword puzzle.
A celestial charter, holy Magick, necessary theology.
But seeing is difficult and knowledge is demanding.
We are shattered, splintered, fractured lenses,
mirror fragments of  broken insight.
Rational and credulous, we see only what we want.
To read God's fingerprints we must first of all burn,
burn away the human barriers of debate and common sense.
To meet the transcendent requires clear-headed madness.
Unshackle yourself from argument and logic,
the Magick focuses into a massive corona of power.
Dross and gold separate when touched by that flame
and only the purest, precious metal remains.
You must connect directly to the mystical
to access such bold, terrifying, inhuman force:
only stolen fire or knowledge contains this power
and that theft demands sacrifice of great pain.
But with them you can meet angels personally,
discover the Soul's hidden treasure horde,
speak with corpses, become animals and plants.
No longer chained by causality, you fly free,
in danger of igniting and dying of gladness.
Only walk through the fire and reclaim your birthright:
to see God's imprimatur on every earthly object
and to know that fingerprint is set upon you too.

  ~mce

They are ubiquitous as red, white and blue.
Everybody's entitled to them.
Everybody has many, all insightful.
Everybody feels compelled to share them.
Frankly, I don't care what you think
about Trump, Obamacare, refugees, Syria,
the patriarchy, pumpkins or the Patriots.
But go ahead and fill me in. I know you will.
I will smile politely, as I always do,
while imagining twenty ways to ****** you.

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

Her eyes are
intoxicatingly
limpid pools.
Dive in.
Get drunk.
Enjoy
the best
hangover
ever.

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

there is nothing
that whiskey can't cure
except whiskey

   mce

Three A.M.
Standing
on my deck.
No sleep.
Something calls.

Still and frigid,
waiting quietly,
I breathe in and out.

My breath rises
in misty, white
mortal plumes.

Inspiration;
expiration.

Beyond my cabin,
I feel the deer
dancing
in the deep night,
chanting the old
secret songs
of their antlered clan.

Exaltation.

I watch meteors
drop on
the ridge top
like God's tears
streaking the sky.

Clarity.

Two coyotes
howl a duet
in the darkness;
the creek whispers
and I understand.

Revelation.

I think
of your flesh
warm beneath
a thick quilt.

Expectation.

So many marvels
attend me.

Surely I am
a lucky man.
  - mce

Thunder storms,
crazed lightening,
downpours,
nightmares,
intermittent sleep.

How different
the world appears
after such
a tortured night.

Grey, dripping,
bleak and dismal.

God must be
in Portugal
working
on his tan.

I feel like
a minor player
in some cheap
film noir movie
trying to remember
my lines.

Shooting starts
any minute now.

****,
who am I?
- mce

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.
And the wolf shall tear it to dripping shreds
and devour it with great gusto, smacking
its lips over such a stupid animal.
And *the meek shall inherit the earth,
but only a plot just six feet in depth,
small recompense for being so gentle.
Better for the lamb and the meek to get Kalashnikovs.
Predators and prey: some things never change.
The world is too ****** to be weak.

  ~mce

Do not think you are free
because you have nice clothes,
plenty to eat and a mortgage.
Do not think yourself free
because you attend a good college,
and get to party and have fun
before the student loans hit.
Do not think yourself free
because you are white
and consider yourself a good citizen
while those others cause trouble.
It takes a lifetime to free your head
and that doesn't begin to guarantee
that your body and words will remain free.
We have forgotten that freedom
is never just about stuff.
Stuff is the drug they use to lock you up.
It is the new ***** of the masses.
Only those who can proudly walk naked
cradling the Revolution in their hearts,
willing to pick up their guns
and die for that Revolution,
can ever be well and truly really free.
   ~mce

Lightening
in a night sky:

not there,
there,
not there.

Our lives
in this world:

not here,
here,
not here.

From nothing
a brief flash
of being
before nothing.

Death does
not end,
it resumes.

No fear.

   ~mce

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

He wants her
naked upon an altar
wreathed in roses
so he can worship
her in every way
a human man
can imagine.

~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

Sometimes, for no
apparent reason,
I am reduced to a
fulminating idiot,
quivering and
flummoxed by
divergent impulses.

Do I hit the panic button
that will eject me to
anywhere but myself
or simply yawn
and take a nap?

This may be a proof of
The Uncertainty Theorem.

I'm not sure.

  ~mce

The mundane world
must yield to imagination.
Eyes are not microscopes,
nor lips but for drinking.
Facts do not make a life;
events alone cannot explain
a single, beating human heart.
Nothing exists so basic that
it cannot be expanded and exploded
by whimsy and effort.
A butterfly is just an insect
until the tale teller awakens its potential;
a lover is just a lump of flesh
until a story renders her beautiful.
Our fictions generate a reality
beyond the dreary limitations of mere truth,
and truth is always mere,
always waiting for the magic touch of more.
Knowing only the particulars
amounts to knowing nothing.
Lift your hand to the world
like an astonished magician
and cast your soul’s spell,
ensorcell the ordinary;
lift your brush and paint a scene
with huge, wild brush strokes;
shout your words into the chaos,
bring about a new order,
a vivid, lush world,
a world that echoes, on and on…

by Kenna Marie*

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Yet, people smolder every meaning of the word beauty.
Taking procedures in order to obtain this image of perfection, but it is right built inside of you. Believe it or not, whatever you need you got!
Reading this now with your eyes, heart beating to the sound of survival.

Educating yourself on how to accomplish revival because you are dead.
The laughter comes in sequences syncing perfectly to those begging for attention.
Revolt revolt!
Build a catapult to launch yourself away from here.

Lose yourself in all the sincere.
Perform a test to see if you're the best.
“You are defeat compared to the rest!”
Start to dress to impress when the isn’t up to par.
Spend days alone at empty bars.

“Dare to make a move!”
“It won’t improve you.”
“You got nothing to lose!”
“Yeah, well how about your skeleton starting a rebellion. You’re yelling, starting to tell your children the beginnings of this addiction.”

It swallows you whole, your body is totaled.
Now, you’re in the rusting pile of traveled miles of rot...
Forgetting what you are and what you’re not.

ἐγγὺς μὲν ἡ σὴ περὶ πάντων λήθη· ἐγγὺς δὲ ἡ πάντων περὶ σοῦ λήθη.

How many streets,
how many times,
has he strolled
in this irrelevant
town?

Fifty years
The perambulating
flaneur.*

Change must be
but often arrives
glacially.

Crows on wires.
Nonchalant bunnies.
Indifferent children.

These ancestors
of that first ramble
take no notice
of the white haired man
with a cane.

The scenery never
comments on the drama.

Walking old streets
where many lives
have lived and vanished

brings neither sadness
nor nostalgia,

only the reminder
of time's inevitable,
ineluctable vortex.

Lovers Dream World - a Villanelle**


Katie could put her feet behind her head
Or do a grand plié, position two,
Her suppleness magnificent in bed.

I strained my lower back, and Katie bled,
Only a little, doing what we could do
When Katie tucked her feet behind her head.

Her torso was a C-cup'd figurehead,
Wearing below its navel a tattoo
That writhed in suppleness upon the bed.

As love led on to love, love's goddess said,
"No lovers ever ****** as ****** these two!
Katie could put her feet behind her head!"

When Katie came she never stopped. Instead,
She came, cried "God!," and came, this dancer who
Brought ballerina suppleness to bed.

She curled her legs around my neck, which led
To depths unplumbed by lovers hitherto.
Katie could tuck her feet behind her head
And by her suppleness unmake the bed.

You were born,
as was I.
You are dying,
as am I.
What happens
in between matters.
Too many spend
their time as
they spend
their money,
straining for more
than food, clothes,
shelter until
they suffocate
under attachment
to the unnecessary
they have made
necessary.
They try to buy
meaning with toys
and feel uncomfortable
at the boredom
they have become.
They want the whole
world zoned commercial
so they can work harder,
buy more and feel better,
but they don't.
It is a hard thing
to admit how much
of our lives
we have spent
being full of ****.
Remember:
You were born,
as was I.
You are dying,
as am I.
What happens
in between matters.
We all stand on
wobbly hinges
that can give way
at any moment.
The question becomes
not about death
but about how to live
before the hinges snap
and the noose
breaks our mortal necks.
No easy answers.
It is hard enough
to have your foot
in one world,
let alone two.
You were born,
as was I.
You are dying,
as am I.
What happens
in between matters.
Instead, meditate
on the nothingness
that was and
the nothingness
that will be
at any second.
Do not **** your life
away on nonsense.
Find your way to make
what is in between
matter. Me?
I think I'll go fishing.

  ~mce

I vaguely recall
whole nights of deep
refreshing slumber,
waking renewed
and ready.
Now, every morning,
I stumble into
consciousness
from an
exhausting welter
of dreams and demons
wondering who
you must ****
to get a single,
decent night of sleep
around here?
- mce

When I get really decrepit,
I will wear mismatched clothes
on purpose; fill my pockets
with useless pennies; leer
lasciviously at girls far too
young; mutter arcane
wisdom to myself just loud
enough to hear but not to
understand; eat everything
that makes the health Nazis
cringe; smoke in inappropriate
places; get drunk in the
mornings if I so desire
and smoke *** in public.
It will be an ecstasy to
not give a rat's *** what
anyone thinks. My only
regret will be that I
did not start sooner.

   ~mce

Demanding happiness
requires standing
in an endless line
hoping that
something good
waits ahead of you.

  ~mce