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

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

The poet owns
a closet packed
with dancing
skeletons,
whirling and gliding;
he never needs
to dance alone.
- mce

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front*
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

In retrospect, she was the time's type:
nothing special, really;
nice smile, a decent body,
the obligatory long hair,
almost pretty, but not quite,
seventeen and on her own,
willing to trade her body
for a place to crash, to get high,
maybe a little food.
Nothing personal about it.
I provided her three night's lodging.
She paid in full and moved on.
I can't remember her name.
Those were the sixties.

   - 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

Hey there stranger!

Tis round about middle night. Très misterioso. Sleep a forgotten memory.
I am writing this missive from hell. Don’t dismiss my missive. Don’t be so negative.
Even the ****** are upbeat sometimes.
I was taken aback too. The downhill happened before I knew it.
Think of life as rolling snowballs. Individually, not so bad.
It’s the avalanche that crushes you.
OK, some days are disasters: dim to the brink of extinction, darkness and silence unimpaired, inertia and void as never seen before.
But you can never tell. Downs have ups. My crushing depression was long ago replaced by mere unhappiness.  A weak weakness transformed into strong weakness. That’s progress.
I always fail, but every time I fail, I fail better. That’s improvement.
Add a little honey and the gall tastes fine. Drink up. Enjoy.
If you learn to suffer well, at least you are good at something.
So don’t worry. I am at the peak of the abyss. There is no bottom.
Dismally fine, I’ve never felt older. Words won’t do. Hush.
Nothing of uninterest left to say. Just wanted to reassure you.
All is as always. There’s no hope yet.
Soon the sun will rise over the nothing new world.
From the depths, I say hi.
Optimistically bleak,

Mike (or whatever sometimes speaks for him).

By  Diane di Prima*


Extract the juice which is itself a Light.


Pulp,   manna,   gentle

                    Theriasin, ergot

like mold on flame, these red leaves

bursting

                    from mesquite by the side

of dry creekbed.         Extract



the tar, the sticky

substance

                    heart

                                of things

(each plant a star,        extract



the juice of stars

                                by circular stillation

smear

            the inner man w/the coction

till he burn

            like worms of light in quicksilver

not the false

            puffballs of marshfire,      extract



the heart of the empty heart

                     it is full

of the star soul that paces fierce

in the deeps of earth

                       the Red Man,

                                                 healer

in furs

            who carries a club

who carries

             the pale homunculus

in his belly.

                         For you are angel, you call

the soul from plants



                      or pearls of ambergris

out of the grudging sea.

                       Extract arcanum.  Separate

true Archeus from the false

                       the bitter

is not less potent—nor does clarity

bespeak truth.



                        Out of the heart of the ineffable

draw the black flecks of matter

                               & from these

the cold, blue fire.

                               Dry water.   Immerse

yourself

              though it be but a drop.

                                                           This Iliaster

flowers like the wind.

               Out of the ash, the Eidolon of the world



Crystalline.

                  Perfect.

Anticipation
holds the key
to paradise:
not the moment
of entry,
but the instant
before.
- mce

Thinking of you,
my brain stutters
like a broken radio
crying for mercy;

my eyes quiver
at the shining
of invisible
volitant objects;

my ears tremble
to the silent tunes
of ecstatic
unsung hallelujahs;

my lips seal
from the impossible
pressure
of your beauty.

Where
is the end
to this.

No worries.

Come lover,
I would
gladly discover
your  powers

over the rest
of me.
~mce

Out of the depths I cry to thee...*

wake into difficulty
from lovely sleep
of night's negation

to news from the
bird world sung
and insects that know

what finds its way
early into this
familiar room

two of gloom mornings
in glued sequence

sunrise of grey
clouds scudding

of light opaline
through windows
diffused

are windows only
worlds of open

is rain a form
of loss

and truth but
power moving

all melts and
can be replaced

the soul sinks

a day of grey
makes a day
of blues

death spiral
         of the spirit

when did I
become so weak
against the intractable
what is of daybreak

cruel the new has
become

and terrifying
and
continual effort

time not a friend
as clocks threaten
actions untaken

the mereness
of mortality
disappoints

sand mostly gone
to the final
hourglass' bottom

distance incomprehensible
away a way which way

each day a fainter path

fading notes of
unstruck chords

save me from

this cruel unwritten
poem of morning

this syntax of unbidden
meteorology

oh lift me up
and desire
make young

break my human fall

beauty and joy
cannot be sundered

we live by grace
or not at all

allow me survive
what must arrive

for every broken
poety fool

that famous final
Day of Decide

When I Write Poems

When I’m embraced by airy inspiration,
I am a bridge between the sky and earth.
Of all what heart high-values in creation
I am a king, when breathing with a verse!

Just if my soul wishes it, my fairy,
I shall give you the peaceful coast band,
Where, with a hum, the pinky sea is carrying
The dreaming tide to reach the dreaming land.

I can do all, just trust in me: I’m mighty;
I have the roots for kindness and for love;
And if I want, from clouds and from the lightning
I’ll make a cover your sweet bed above.

And I can, dear, create a word such special,
That it would change laws of the whole world,
To call again its own celebration
And stop the sun from fall in the night cold.

I’m all another in my inspiration,
I am a bridge between the sky and earth.
Of all what heart high-values in creation
I am a king, when breathing with a verse!

Let my lips please you.
Let my tongue
taste the sweetness
of your soft skin,
the glistening petals
of your secret flower.
Let its aroma entice me
as the taste of you
intoxicates me;
hearing you moan
wild rapid gasps
while you beg me
to bring you
to fullness,
as you feel my tongue
penetrate your gates,
as your hips gyrate
and you scream my name
culminating in ecstasy
that fulfills me too
with the pleasure
I have shared with you.

  ~mce

My lover is ill and lies far away from my touch.

I challenge you to write a sadder sentence.

My lover is ill and lies far away from my touch.

Give it your best shot.

~mce

Wake me
with love

Touch me
with hunger

Take me
with fire

  ~mce

Just a flicker,
a small flame
compared to
what is coming:

the fire next time

will not be
extinguished.

Americans are
slow to wake,
but you can only ****
so many people
over for so long

before they begin to burn.
   ~mce

Hover above me
on your knees.
Let gravity pull
your *******
and your hair
toward my lips.

Put your hands
upon my shoulders.
Press like a panther.
Envelop what I am.
Undulate your hips
until they begin
to writhe in rhythm.

Until we become
only one entwined
bewitched being,
magically merging
without beginning,
without an end.

Eternal whirl of wonder.

  ~mce

i am so tired
of being a poet
sentenced to a life
of memory and words
stuck in the solitary
confinement of
a relentless past
i just want to get
my parole and find
a job as a janitor
and never ever
have to think again
but sadly i just can't
surrender to silence
as much as i'd love to

   ~mce

People often ask me,
as if they care,
where poems derive.

I care and have
given it much thought
for decades.

It is a hard
and genuine question
that deserves
an answer.

I believe poems
come from a spring.

They begin as
the slightest trickle
beneath a mossy boulder
on a steep, green
Tennessee ridge
that manifests as a run,
a river, many rivers
until it flows into
the Gulf Stream.

The spring
is a place on earth
where something
begins.

The spring is not
the water.

I am the poet.
I am that spring.

But I am not the poems.

The poems are the water,

they flow,  
seeking something larger

than I can hope to be.

~mce

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

In the end, it won't matter
how many breaths you took,
but how many moments
took your breath away.

The lonely silence of five in the morning.

The cat sprawls upon the bookcase
dreaming whatever cats dream.

Only the waking birds sing out.

Another morning in the same room.

In Zen they say: sit where you are.
External circumstances don't matter.

But I am sorely vexed by this room,
this quiet, these walls, reality.

I do not wish to wake to this again.

In Vietnam, my first conscious thought
upon waking was, "****, I'm still here."

Once more it has come to that.

A prison is anyplace you don't want to be
and can't leave. I am locked in prison.

Age and circumstance have sentenced me.

Nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.

Only the difficult admonition: sit where you are.
And settling upon the cushions, I try and try.

If you know of anyone who needs the services
of a broken, old, poor, poet monk, call me.

   ~mce

Wake to the warm.

Wake to memories
of desire.

Sleepy otters stretch.

Birds awake singing questions.

She sighs and sips,
the day before her.

He wonders at her wonder;
so the otters, so the birds.

What are those
memories of desire?

And who is this
bright promise
that sighs and sips,

waking to the warm.

One day, he will know.
  ~mce

Let us get naked
and frolic blue lipped
in the gelid waters
of Lake Michigan
and warm each other
on the fine white sand,
your painted toes
pointing out clouds
in the pellucid sky.

Call that a date.

  ~mce

All the woman craved
was attentive conversation,
a few common interests,
*** would have been great,
but simple human touch
would have made the difference.

A drought continues until
you move on or die.

Living alone together is
so much lonelier
than living alone alone.

The water of love must be shared.

Indifference wounds deepest.

Being invisible diminishes the soul.

So she took her pride and heart
and her clothes and her dog
and went in search
of a life that felt alive.

Courage is the first virtue.

With it, anything is possibly possible.

Perhaps even unlikely happy endings.

   ~mce

Truly, being
without a job
or much money
presents problems
        but
              ah....
the exquisite
consolation
of laziness.

  ~mce

The universe has
a millions signs
that say no,
but
only a few
that say yes.

/////

Everything is fragile
except the rope
around your neck.

/////

Just another
day in paradise:
exciting as a
hole in the ground.

/////

If you think
with your ****
expect a few
headaches.

/////

All the world's misery
is caused by men
who wear suits.

/////

Sometimes, you must
open a window
just to let a little
oxygen into your life.

/////

My ancestors
marched to war.
I flew.
Maybe there is
such a thing
as progress.

/////

Why do we
fall in love
instead of
rise in love?
Because there's
no such thing
as a rise with
a thud at the end.

/////

Cat's know everything
but divulge nothing.

/////

Death waits
patiently as
a dead cat.
They know
each other
very well.

/////

Enough now,
I am moving to
Lake Michigan
where I will
hunt wolverines
for a living
and learn
to eat ice.

/////

Have to flee,
there is a warrant
out for me for
everything I
never did.

/////

So difficult
some mornings
to face the
ugly emptiness of
the sober page

/////

Wanted:
a future
without
a perhaps.

/////

If I turned
wine into water,
made the living dead,
and called in demons
would these
be proclaimed miracles
and I hailed as
the new messiah?
Might be dangerous.
I imagine the sound
of hammers and nails
calling my name.

   ~mce

1
Sleep is not kind to age.
Evening and morning
mean little to me.
Awake when awake;
asleep when asleep.
As Janis Joplin said,
it's all the same
******* day, man

     2
Sleep is for the young;
now I grab a few hours
here and there when I can.
I have come to know that time
really is of the essence.
        
     3
Older now,
inevitably less
everyday.
Sweet Muse,
I do not fear death,
but dread the thought
we may never meet
and that if we do
I will not
be enough for you.

      4
You are the wise woman,
the alchemist of my soul.
No longer a poet
I have become your poem.
Incant your spell
and I come to life.
    
       5
Old men live on
medicine and memory
telling each other
the same stories
over and over,
enjoying them
each time
while the young
yawn.

      6
Sons grow tall and strong,
take up their lives
and leave yours behind.
This is an old story.
It will be told many times.

      7
The girl I loved
at 17 is 68 now
and lives in Greenwich
contentedly retired.
I have seen her picture.
She is still beautiful.
Why wouldn't she be?

      8
Deep in our aged hearts,
bucking all the odds,
we know that nothing
is ever really lost.

     9
There is a
whole world
out there;
in here, too.

     10
When you find her,
love her;
the universe will
show you the way.

~ mce

If you were not so far away
I'd catch you in my hungry  arms
and you'd lie down and sigh and stay
if you were not so far away
I'd never want to leave or stray
entangled in your eyes and charms
If you were not so far away
I'd catch you in my hungry arms

Chaos mixed with uncertainty
stirred by a random spoon,
like one of those digital billboards
that you drive by too fast to read.

  ~mce

A big snapping turtle
seeking living water
struggles slowly across
the rough gravel road
toward a dry creek bed
filled with rocks and sand:
                ///
Human, all too human.
  - mce

The day when
a pretty, young girl
says you remind her
of her grandfather.
   ~mce

Only the dead know the end of War.*


The truth at the heart of combat:
those who have seen war never stop seeing it.

There is combat and there is the rest
of your life. Nothing ever measures up
to the mad rush of combat; nothing in
your life can compete with that
heart-rending, dire intensity.

Explosions, fire, everything extreme,
the melding of terror and pleasure
into an apocalyptic ****** that rocked
your soul, your mind, your body.

Not the sort of thing you encounter
at the office or in the factory.

So some small part of you never returns
and in deep secret longs to feel it again,
to return to that holy, redemptive horror.

War is life increased exponentially;
it is life on the brink of insanity;
it is the most alive you will ever be.

The truth at the heart of combat:
those who have seen war never stop seeing it.

Anecdote of the Jar**

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

When that day comes,

when the clouds darken,
when the shadows lengthen,
when there is no escape,

when my goose
  is good and truly cooked,

I hope to relish a meal
  of tender fowl
before it's time to go.

   ~mce

An old man smitten against the odds;
what could be more pathetic?
He knows a lot. He knows better than this.
He has been to war, married, divorced.
He knows all the games from both sides.
He knows she is young, beautiful, far away.
He knows that she chooses whom she wants;
that she runs the game.
He knows he brings nothing to her
but empty hands and a worshipful soul.
He has stayed alive this long
by knowing and covering the odds.
In that, he has always been smart.
Never play the other man's game.
Keep a clear head. Surprise your enemies.
Know when to laugh and walk away.
And yet, he wants nothing more
in the world than a seat at this table
in this most unlikely game.
A chance to win what can't be won.
A chance to have what can't be taken.
One very much last chance.
An old man smitten against the odds;
what could be more pathetic?

  ~mce

You take my heart
I'll take yours

carefully gently
with skilled fingers

we will merge them
into one Heart

that beats so loudly
and with such wild joy

the very angels
will tremble above

stunned and amazed

by the sound of so much

mortal beauty

  ~mce

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 dozens 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
this living air.
  - 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

You get up,
drink some coffee
and drive to work.

Taking the controls,
you blow up a wedding,
a birthday party
and a few possibly
safe houses along with
some collateral women
and children. If it's
a good day you may ****
a hundred people, perhaps
including a few bad guys.

Shift over, you drive home
to the safe suburbs,
light a cigarette, pour
some wine and cook dinner.

Solid job, good benefits,
a house, a bright future.

The wars are but rumors.

You are every inch
the brave soldier.

Why ask pesky questions?

Life is good.

   ~mce

Sing me your pain, Love,
and I will sing you mine.
Together, we will make
a harmony of dissonance.
Lift your voice with me.
Let us make a song
against the darkness.
However brief and fragile,
the melody belongs to us.
What more can there be?
What more is necessary?
  - mce

Death is an
old war buddy
of mine.
I have seen
him work
up close.
He is very,
very good.
But only at
taking lives,
not souls.
  ~mce

Have you ever noticed that
politicians are always
******* out of their mouths?
What exactly are they saying?
Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus
all said simply, pay attention
and try not to **** from your mouths.
Clearly, something got lost in translation.

  ~mce

The poetic cranium
is packed with stories,
most of them
too sad to be told.

  ~mce

Only one
thing
for sure:

I am an
easy man
to forget.
  - mce

Hands are shaped by
what they hold and make.
Sometimes, I hold your body
tight as a cotton summer dress
on a torrid, sticky day;
Sometimes, my fingers slowly
tracing make it writhe and moan
like a gasping, shocked goddess.
Tell me that my hands are
shaped like love and lust.
Tell me how to touch you
again and forever.
Make my hands
the shape of your desire.

   ~mce

"Once I was a young man and all I thought I had to do was smile."*

Generally he was
one part bourbon,
two parts charm,
greeting the world
with a handful
of **** ups
and a mouthful
of apologies
which were
usually accepted
because wit and
a smile will
take a young man
farther than
you might think.

  ~mce

Life is hardly a heap of joys;
ignorance works overtime here
in sheeple country.
The universe uses your own voice to complain.
The needy, tedious body diminishes,
but that devouring voice rattles on.
We wax eloquent in extinct languages
describing marvels to the dead
who are not impressed.
We recite entire dictionaries
of universal incomprehension
through every imbecilic night
until the very ears of heaven
drip weary blood
as every explanation punishes.
You cannot separate
what you have chosen
from what chose you.
So easy to know how to begin things,
unknowable how they will end
other than in a heap of not joys
or a prolonged spasm
of quivering delight.

Mostly, I remember
the red dust;
red like the blood
that won't wash off.
   ~mce

The women of ancient Greece
sang songs and stories
as the worked their looms.
Tales of heroes, great deeds,
love, desire, war, conquest,
gods, mortals and demigods
and not one ended in happiness.
The women change;
The looms still weave;
stories are still sung;
the endings remain.
  ~mce