Mistaken Identity

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

Nothing Special

Gods, men
and women
have all
disappointed me.
What does that
make me,
but an ordinary man?
- mce

The Mortality Worm

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

Now at sixty
I hear the sound
of marching feet
coming ever closer.

~ mce

Prayer

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

The Why

Mozart made
his seven trios
so that God
would have
something
to cheer him up
after a depressing
day.

~ mce

Memory

Everyone and everything
I have ever known
fits into a small pocket
deep in my brain.
It's all there, only sometimes
I just can't reach it.

~ mce

Hallucinations

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

The Gift

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

On Turning Sixty

Life goes on,
until it doesn't.

~ mce

Soon

Take the
flowers,
woman,
and dance
with me...
soon.

~mce

Verdicts - Made and Remade

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.

***

You are but a
passel of atoms
coalescing at birth,
dissolving at death,
no different
than a supernova
or a seagull:
everything is engendered
for a short while
before returning
to nature's reality.
Live while you are alive;
nothing waits beyond.
What an exquisite freedom
accompanies that knowledge.

***


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 small hurts
and inconsequential
indignities
finally comprise
your whole life.

***

Increase pleasure;
decrease pain:
that's the only
meaning of life.

***

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

***

The Blues

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

Grammar Lesson

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

Just An Eigenstate

Fuck 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

A Simple Fact

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

Longing

So many mornings
he wakes up
craving just a taste
of amber Kentucky
anesthetic.
The heart says yes,
but the liver says no.
How sad the things
that fall away.
  ~ mce

Stealing Beauty

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

Healing

Sometimes
when all my
broken places
ache; I feel
a singular
kind of joy.
~mce

Ten Minutes

All
it will take
to set herself
free.
~ mce

Lost

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

A Mermaid's Dreams

No place else,
I'd rather swim.
~ mce

Dream Song

Dreams that drove us
when we were young,
now render us
tired and cranky.

Age engenders
exhaustion
and not just
in bed.

You remain,
the one dream,
floating through
the ether,
reminding me
of all the dreams
I dreamed
before.
~ mce

Progression

This explains our love:
not the first love,
perhaps the last love,
certainly the best love.
~ mce

Aging

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

Didn't, Couldn't, Shouldn't, Etc.

I wanted to live a brilliant life,
I didn't.
I wanted to be a good husband,
I wasn't.
I wanted the world to forgive my failures,
It wouldn't.
I wanted to make words dance,
I couldn't.
I sometimes want to curse the earth,
I shouldn't.
~ mce

The Birth Of Self-Awareness and Consciousness

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' ass 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 the moment of depression or bliss depending on your malleable personality and temperament and you will never ever be the same again...

That's All, Folks...

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

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

Enforced ritual
sucks.

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)

Homily

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

CB

There is a
chord sequence
in Beethoven's
12th Sonata
that reminds me,
note by note,
of what it
feels like
to love you.
~ mce

Cinematic Surprise

I am living in a movie;
some madman wrote
the script.
All I can do
is play my role.
~ mce

Hindu Verse

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

Womb Tomb

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

It Is Embarrassing

to act like an idiot
to someone
you love,
but in my case
probably inevitable.

Forgive me my
weaknesses;
I am working on them...
slowly.
~  mce

Alzheimer's

A misty grey cloud
the shape of chaos
quietly invading
the human brain.
~  mce

How Often

I miss
your distant
voice.
   ~ mce

Terminal Biography

In the end,
he is just an aging mammal
afraid to die alone.
  ~ mce

Good Morning Blues

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.

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

This Is Just To Say

You are all
my love poems
come true.
~  mce

For You

All of these words,
the bruised fruit of my orchard,
the only gifts I have to offer.
~  mce

Be Joyous Though You Have Considered All The Facts.

It is a shame
to live in the world
quaking with fear.

After all, the world
isn't afraid to die;
why should you be?
~   mce

Bi-pod Biography

I am a bi-pod.

This is to say
I walk about
erect, though
not so erect
as a few years ago.

That is the me
visible to
the world.

But what of the rest?

Birth, biology,
facts, but mostly
narrative
and finally death.

I am what
I have invented.

A creature of
these stories
I tell myself.

All of that and
nothing else.
~   mce

Sixty

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

Moving On

Slip the bonds
that bind you to the past.
They are only in your mind.
Loose them
and your life
will blosssom.
Loose them
and we will make
a new life.
Loose them and we
will depart the world
in the merge of love.
Courage.
We can do this soon.
We can make this real.
   ~mce

Was That An Echo?

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

As Far As It Goes

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

Take A Breath; Start Over.

I have struggled
against anger
at those I loved
who wronged me.

I have made
some progress.

Still incomplete,
but I will not surrender.

One day I will
book passage
on the ship
of compassion.
  ~ mce

Why Do This Stuff?

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

Take Satori Where You Find It

Resting after lovemaking;
my cheek against your thigh
sticky with our spent juices;
I experience sudden illumination:
I have found the glue
that binds the world together.
  ~ mce

Resurgence

For four years
the store front
of his life
had a sign
on its window
that read: Closed.

Now the sign reads:
Open for Business.

We shall see
what comes his way.

But Open
feels better
than Closed.
   ~ mce

Do The Math

The Iraq War cost
three trillion dollars.
Tonight a mother
and her children
sleep in an
abandoned car
in Detroit.
Something doesn't
add up.
  ~mce

Wallace Stevens

"Poetry is a cafe."

Poetry

The brain
picks the words;
the spirit
sings the songs.
  -mce

Brevity

Consider
what a lifetime
means.
 -mce

Love at 60

 ~ for CB

It is the
unexpected flower
blooming in
the melting snow.
It is spring
in lost winter.
It is unlikely:
it is surprising:
perhaps it is
a gift for surviving.
In any case, thank you.
I am delighted.