If I wished,
I could return
to  the world
without color
and all its
material prizes.
It would be
the easy path.
But I dream
a riotous palette
and insist
this new life
be drawn
of its varied
and vivid
hues and tints.
Difficult, painful
brush strokes,
but a canvas
so much richer
for the effort.
  - mce

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

  ~mce

for Pablo Neruda*

In your poems
the sun sang
yellow invitations,
eagles swam
in lilac ink,
butterflies discoursed
on desire,
the moon
whispered white
mysteries.

Your syllables said:
these are my arms, Lady,
lose that silky frock
and come into them.

My love feeds
on your love,
Love.

My lips
are for you.

You are mine;
I am yours.

We stand here,
the briefest moment;
let us stand together,
naked in eternity.

Dare to embrace this,
you murmured,
for it is all
the world can offer.

Eyelids fluttered out
ardent yeses;
sighs replied;
fingers danced;
many dresses
glided to the floor
with tiny gasps
of imagined pleasure.

Flesh and spirit
conjoined.

What woman,
could resist
the implacable sweetness
of your songs?

What woman,
having a heart
to hear,
would want to try?
- mce

The rain is of the process…*

Clouds gather in my mind;
rain falls in my brain;
ink flows through veins;
words drip from my fingers
to gather on pages.

What does that make me,
but a puddle of poetry…

I am a pirate
pacing a quarterdeck
before a battle.
I am Adam
beneath the apple tree
waiting to bite
into the New Order.
I am a hopeful heretic
praying for immolation
but unable
to strike a match.
I am a corpse
writing a will
in blood and *****.
I am a soldier
watching a friend
erupt in a fog
of pink viscera.
I am a madman
twitching on a couch,
forgotten in a corner
of a windowless chamber.
I am a hero
slaying griffins,
destroying dragons,
ravishing maidens
as my rightful reward.
I am a lover
to whom ladies
open their thighs
and abandon
their honor,
willingly.
I am a tone deaf poet
singing a defeated song.
I am the amateur torturer
carefully sharpening
his instruments,
but then unable to find
meaningful work.
I am a ****** priest
hearing my own
confession
and finding it
absurdly tedious.
I am all of these
impossible people.
Who are you?
  - mce

I am a pirate
pacing a quarterdeck
before a battle.
I am Adam
beneath the apple tree
waiting to bite
into the New Order.
I am a hopeful heretic
praying for immolation
but unable
to strike a match.
I am a corpse
writing a will
in blood and *****.
I am a soldier
watching a friend
erupt in a fog
of pink viscera.
I am a madman
twitching on a couch,
forgotten in a corner
of a windowless chamber.
I am a hero
slaying griffins,
destroying dragons,
ravishing maidens
as my rightful reward.
I am a lover
to whom ladies
open their thighs
and abandon
their honor,
willingly.
I am a tone deaf poet
singing a defeated song.
I am the amateur torturer
carefully sharpening
his instruments,
but then unable to find
meaningful work.
I am a ****** priest
hearing my own
confession
and finding it
absurdly tedious.
I am all of these
impossible people.
Who are you?
  - mce

Where is God
at four AM?
  - mce

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

Life offers no real advantage to anyone.
Even the rich and powerful bleed and die
which brings some comfort to the poor and weak.
Every day we wake up
to an enormous jigsaw puzzle
containing billions of pieces
but missing the most essential.
Vainly we struggle to complete it
so we can think we master reality
as if our brains are really
that intelligent or we that important.
Of course, we fail and curse god
because it couldn't be our fault.
Life is ordinary and few people
can admit that to themselves,
although I have noticed that those who do
are happier than those who don't.
Forget perfection: the perfect job,  
the perfect lover, perfect ***, perfect anything.
It doesn't exist and the pursuit
will waste your time and
plunge your heart into darkness.
Try to be a bit humble
in this obnoxiously haughty world.
Consider the inevitable shortness of life
and revel in its imperfections.
Notice the drunken Indian, the hungry children,
the innocent murdered masses who have always been,
but accept that evil and destruction
have stalked the land hand in hand since Man began.
Do what little you can and forget blame.
Try to forgive ******, Stalin, **** Cheney
but remember your own sins, too.
Lift up your fractured soul and
let it sing a mortal song about how time
passes like a gentle, sweet,
nearly imperceptible breeze.
Be thankful for your breath,
take a deep one and move on.

  ~mce

if only
i knew
where poems
are from
i'd go there
pick them up
like rocks
stuff them
into my socks
and hobble
home lame
and write
them down
for you.

  ~mce

It’s not that a photon can be in two places at once, it’s that a photon is everywhere at once.*

We are
two photons
apart, together,
everywhere
at the same time,
different but
the same
yet always
radiant.

  ~mce

Canoodle away the daze.
Low productivity remains
sadly underpaid.
Dreams do not demand
To Do lists. As yet,
love requires no app.
Perhaps the world is dying
but green, green patches
remain in the shade.
Find a tree, see.
Take your love’s head
in your lap. Be glad
of time and hugs.
Glorify in achieving
that most perfect goal:
no goal at all.
Or one perfect kiss.
Clarity radiates from
exactly where you sit.
You can’t step in that
same stream even once.
Don’t try. Keep your lips
happy and your feet dry.

I've been everywhere
and
there's nowhere to go.

  ~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

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

We will sleep together
in my head tonight;
holding each other close
in arms of fantasy:
dream lovers,
made of imagination.

~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

Love is when
the here and now
doesn't matter,
which is impossible
and satisfying,
exactly like love:
a wound that
you are happy
to share.

  ~mce

How do you
fall in love
with a few words
on a telephone
or a few lines
on a computer.

You don't.

But I have.

~mce

The dying god
born again,
only to die and
be born again,
mirrors the heart
that falters,
hiccups
and stumbles,
but perseveres
to find its way.
  - mce

He can't afford a sacrifice,
the priests do not work cheap;
he's standing on the lip of Hell
considering a leap.
Will you walk beside him now
to the edge of the abyss,
and stay that final footstep,
preserve him with a kiss?
The money's gone, the game is up,
he's missed the gleaming prize;
there's cold within his lonely bones,
there's sorrow in his eyes.
He needs to know there's still a chance
to feel the brush of grace,
the lost caress of hopefulness
upon his aging face.
Throw the Tarot, toss the coins,
hear what the spirits say;
he needs a resurrection
on this January day.
So will you walk beside him now
to the edge of the abyss,
and stay that final footstep,
preserve him with a kiss?
For the world is gray and barren,
the land is deep in snow;
he's standing on the lip of Hell
with nowhere left to go.
  - mce

-a fragment. For MD.

We must not speak of this. ******* and nonsense swirls around old age. It’s truths are inconvenient. *Golden Years. Honored old age. Valuable old age. Deserved Rest. Most never get what they imagined: honor, comfort, love, troops of friends. We must not speak of this. They no longer look to have those things. Drugs and medicine have turned old age into an endurance race, difficult to endure, much of it unrelenting, inert, isolated boredom. Forced longevity has ****** up pensions, health care, housing and happiness. It has ****** up the entire experience of retirement. Life everlasting, mummified. What disturbs our blood is this longing for the tomb. Oh Reason not the need. We must not speak of this. Memory becomes diaphanous, stretches and thins until it is all skin, no snake. Those who delivered important opinions or stinging rebukes fade to faces without names. Or vice versa. The old become greedy and selfish (we must not speak of this), because they have been abandoned by the living world and must look out for themselves. It becomes more difficult to share the joys and pains of others. Our own impending deaths render other’s less substantial. No matter. Even *** becomes selfish. There are needs which succeed *** and affection. We must not speak of this. Many older folks who are perfectly capable abandon it because it involves relationships which are (we must not speak of this) too much trouble. Been there, bought that T-shirt, wore it out. Primates die, the oceans become poisoned potions, the very weather conspires against life. **** it. The future is no longer our concern. We must not speak of this. We are ghosts in a country no one visits or forgotten photographs without identifying marks. We are the muddled memory of our generation, dead but walking. Young people look through us as if we aren’t there. We look at them and think (schadenfreude) they deserve exactly the world they got. Good luck with that. Grin. We must not speak of this. We have entered the realm of No More Second Chances, where all that happens is just more of what has. We are riding the Turnpike of Infirmity which has only one, involuntary exit. Wishing the destination more distant, we drive on through the Valuable, the Honored, the Deserved Rest, The Golden Years, waiting for the bony hand to collect the final toll. The one that, in the end, we all must pay. The day thou gavest Lord is ended. We must never, young or old, ever think of this.

But if I had a daughter, a young woman
I saw drowning in needless pain,

I would say to her:

Are you certain you would be happy,

if only:

you got him back,
or he wanted you back,
or you lived somewhere else
or you were someone else
or were taller, shorter,
thinner, stronger, weaker
just different,
anyone, anywhere, anytime
but yourself?

Sorry, but you are you. Be you.
Insist upon yourself. Be fierce
in your resolve. Men are in awe
of fierce women, really.
Take back your heart.
It belongs to you alone.

You do not need to be fixed, so don't
look for someone else to do the job.

Remember: "You're only pretty as you feel,
only pretty as you feel inside."

And on that there are no limits
except the ones you create.

But then, I never had a daughter,
so what do I know?

   'mce

Some lonely mornings
it is raining in the corner
of everyone's empty
bedroom.

  ~mce

Mykonos, 1969 - for H.M.
"Memory is a kind of accomplishment," - William Carlos Williams

Forty-five years later
I still see you
standing on that
dazzling Greek beach
wearing nothing
but your bikini bottoms
and an innocent grin.

A vision like that
can last a man
a lifetime.

Where are you now
smiling Venus?

Where am I?

   ~mce

If all the politicians
died tomorrow,
it would be a blip.
If all the scientists
and engineers died,
it would be an apocalypse.
If all the poets died,
so would god and love..

  mce

For two million years
we didn't live outside,
we existed outside.

Things have changed.

Now outside is something
we see on TV or in photos
or on the internet.

We chose central heat
and plumbing over
rivers and trees.

We dreamed of safety
and chose not to know
the world.

Most folks would die
in two short weeks
without grocery stores.

How this will play out
remains to be seen.

The omens are not
auspicious.

  ~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?
- 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

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

At just the right
moment,
she would let loose
with sounds
that would
make Mozart
jealous,
and God knows
I love Mozart!

  ~mce

It is simple
to be a poet:

slice your chest open
with the fine edge
of imagination;

wrench your heart loose;

take a bite;

smile and offer
a taste
to anyone
who might be interested,

not caring
whether they find it
sweet or bitter.
- 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

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

Read and weep...*

16 Ways to a Bigger Sock.
Why you should **** your boss now.
7 Ways to Thieve Your Lover.
11 ways to Grow Your Own Bud Lite.
The One Hard Thing Harried Women Want.
43 Reasons to Die Young.
Vladimir Putin For President!
13 Yoga Positions Against Entropy.
Learn to Pick ******* From Trees.
33 Reasons to Love Your Shingles.
Genuine Faked Proof Obama Murdered Scalia.
14 Methods For Preventing Dottle.
Why Internet Lists Make You Stupid.
666 Ways To Fail At Suicide.
The Number One Reason Literacy Is Dead.
  ~mce

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

Open yourself
up to me
like a delicate,
fresh blossom;
I will become
a wanton,
profligate
hummingbird
getting drunk
on the nectar
of your soul.
  - mce

For the longest time,
it was all about the future;
then, there came that
strange, unexpected
and terrible moment
when the past began
to take control.
Oh that tragic feeling:
nowhere to go.
Everything is ending
and nothing is left
to begin.
Sterile loneliness
of the eternal now.
Dawns like snowfields
of the Gulag.
Days of vapis vacuum
Nights tucked into
an empty bed.
Where does hope fly
when you need it
the most?
How do you soldier on
without it?
Time, which never lies,
will tell.

The Zen Masters say,
when you reach the top,
keep climbing;
the deeper question is
what do you do when
you reach the bottom:
keep on digging?

  - mce

~to The Fallen

No one is invincible.

The world makes soldiers
of willing nineteen-year-olds
because they believe they are
invicible.

I have heard them die
screaming for their mothers,
crying out to a deaf god,
begging for another chance,
amazed this could happen
to them.

If you had heard them
whimpering and bawling
in their final moments,
completely baffled
by death,
you would understand
what they learned too late:

No one is invincible.
- mce

Try to paint imagining. What does that look like?
Maybe use a thinner brush or none at all.
Wear Birkenstocks with white socks.
Helpful? If not, look for details of masochism.
Listen for the fractal music. Hear its nots.
Those are swirls that were your eyes. Blink!
Try playing dinosaurs at a local **** store.
Chug a quivering quart of whiskey as primer.
Focus on penetrating the dance of ******.
No? Then imagine your imagination imagining.
Or, just give up and buy a copy of Cheese For Dummies.
Kick back and enjoy a gnawing evening off.

If you were
a field
of daffodils,
I would rain
kisses on you,
pluck a bundle
of your beauty
and clutch you
tightly in
my heart,
forever.
   ~mce

Days and days
when the only sound
heard in the shack
is the silent padding
of cat's paws
on thick carpet.
Doesn't wear out
the carpet; just me.

  ~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

The coffins are sailing to a port near you.
Consider their lovely, dark sails.
how perfectly they catch the wind of death,
Think of them as bringing you precious gifts
on the Christmas Morning of Doom.
Forget the card. Be the first to unwrap yours.
Don't be concerned about returning it.
You can be sure it will fit you perfectly.

by Randy Newman*


Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles
With frozen smiles to chase love away
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

Lonely, lonely
Tin can at my feet
Think I'll kick it down the street
That's the way to treat a friend

Bright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today

One hand slides up your thighs,
my tongue reaches down your throat,
the other hand fondles your breast,
but the real ***, the deepest ***
is the love passing between our eyes.

~mce

Time has lost track of me.
Daytime, night time, no difference.
Go to bed imbibing the right drugs.
Still no sign of sleep.
Finally at 3 AM I say **** it.
Get up, smoke a cigarette,
get out the cushions.
Twenty minutes of ZaZen.
I sit, I breathe, I wait.
The meditation concludes.
My knees and hips hurt.
Another cigarette, write this poem
and back to bed. Will I ever sleep again?
No way to know, no way to know anything.
I am a poor Monk lost in time.
The monkeys chatter, I am getting old.
I love a woman who frightens me.
My body deteriorates year by year.
My friends age, sicken, die.
Should I worry or just let it go?
Am I a fool or have I followed my Karma's path?
No way to know. Know way to know anything.
I am going back to bed to try again.
Only one thing for certain:
There are no more days in my life.
Every day is just the same ******* day.
Nothing to do but hit the sheets and hope.
Hope that today will be better than today.
Hope to keep breathing. Nothing else exists.
Night thoughts of an insomniac Monk.
Silence and submission, signifying nothing.

  ~mce

The passage of the years
constrains possibility;
calendars squeeze life.
Now I know there are
poems I won't read again;
books I won't open again;
places I'll not visit again;
people I won't see again;
lips I'll never kiss again.
Age narrows time.
Passing sixty,
everywhere around me,
the sound of closing doors.
  - 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