The Hidden Curriculum

When I was young
my parents got me a dog
to teach me responsibility.
It was a fine dog but
nearly starved.

So they bought me a car
to encourage pride of ownership.
I used it to run away from home
and then abandoned it.

So the got me a job
to teach me the value of hard work.
I took my first paycheck,
quit the job, and squandered the money.

After that, they gave up.

All these years later I remain
irresponsible, own little,
and am often broke.

Hard as it was,
I learned those lessons well.
   - mce

Pussy Struck

One dusk
many years ago
near a small pond
in the Sand Hills,
I watched
cranes dance.

Horny and oblivious
they lifted and lighted
in gurgling, tumescent
avian lust.

Oh cranes!

How often
I have been
as you were.

Mind if I dance
along?
   - mce

Off The Clock

Clocks like feral vultures open wounds with fatal, ticking beaks. Their hands take you by the throat choking off thought. Clocks tell many lies: no time to lose, time heals all, time will tell and, most despicable, time is money. Time isn't money. Time is your soul bleeding out onto your socks. Money is just an inferior brand of toilet paper. Use it for what it's worth. Middle-class zombies buy these lies, confusing time with tempo. The measure it out like expensive coffee: four years of college, forty hours a week, thirty years of mortgage, five years of car loan. The buy their lives on time. The usurers have propagandized them to equate payments with ownership, success with things. This keeps them too busy to ask questions. When time runs out they die, ignorant of having lived a lie. Time laughs last. Always.
  - mce

The Geometry Of Self-Destruction

Though capable of rage,
I am harmless enough
except when cornered.

If you decide
to visit my life,
just be sure
we always sit
in a circle.
   - mce

For My Shrink

The nervous afflictions
of poets drive
doctors to dismay;
it is difficult
and dangerous
to diagnose
a chameleon
in a thorn bush.
   - mce

Miscommunication

As easy as
accidentally
falling off
a log into
a vat
of shit.

Watch
your step!
   - mce

Seeking Springtime

In the alleys
of my hometown,
ghosts jostle metaphors,
but today
I am not seeking
memories or poetry,
crocuses and snowbells
suffice.
   - mce

Penultimate Moment

If you act
before the situation
becomes dire,
you will never
learn anything.
I think it is
late enough,
friend.
Ask me
what I know.
   - mce

Poverty At Sixty

Poverty is the fence around your life. Poverty wakes you up at 4 AM only to whisper meaningless slogans in your ear. It is the school of Piranha nibbling at the back of your brain. It is two hours waiting in the anteroom of despair for $22 worth of food stamps and being glad to be there. It is changing your phone number frequently because bill collectors are such boring conversationalists. It is the empty space your heels used to fill. It is letting your hair grow long and scraggly and your grizzled beard sprout because you know that although you sleep in rented rooms tonight, the street is not far off, and you want to fit in when you arrive. Poverty scalds the lint from your pockets. It is your private Treblinka within which you rage but are crushed. It is desperate prayers against dental catastrophes, blown tires, surprises of any sort. Poverty is when everything you own is frayed including your nerves from sleepless moments spent trying to solve the equation that will make X number of dollars cover X + ? amount of bills, knowing that such math would defeat Newton or Einstein. Poverty is eying the cat's kibble imagining that with a bit of sugar and a splash of milk it might be fine and then eyeballing the cat himself thinking of protein of last resort and trying not to measure him against the microwave door. You ration your cigarettes; whiskey is a fading memory. Passing a diner on the street, you catch a whiff  of burgers too expensive to consider and experience a Pavlovian  moment. Poverty is trying to keep your head up and then remembering you pawned your neck. Poverty is watching the needle eat your last few gallons of gas. Poverty is the archeology of despair. It portends the death of irony. There is nothing ironic about a car with 217,000 miles and no insurance on it. Facts are facts in the world of poverty. Poverty is the last quarter reclaimed from beneath the cushions. It is too much time and not enough quarters. It is the specious logic of the self-righteous proclaiming that you deserve to be poor because you are, which in Amerika passes for wisdom. Poverty makes each day like the next because nothing does not vary. It is who you are and where you are going, although you won't get far. It is the life you lead inside the fence. It is the sum of what you lack. It just is.
   - mce

The Projective Fallacy

wake late
into slatted sunshine

force your mind
to gather fragments
and embrace chaos

take a shower

become a shark

swim in water
you do not understand

play Vivaldi

let the lute notes
wash over you

feel the feather
plucking your heart

vibrations in rented rooms
resonate and vanish

listen intently
to the the wisdom
of a cat
who says nothing

the coffee cup looms empty
the ashtray overflows

dust motes in a sunbeam
regularly portend disorder

disregard them

clarity is a fiction

be still and grateful
content to know
you cannot know
which way
this day will go

until the circle
closes tight

until this day
returns to night
   - mce

The Cat Came Back!

My cat Evan
has returned to me
escaping the howl's
of Rottweilers
and insipid TV
to sit once more
upon my lap
enjoying
morning and Mozart
purring, content
and free.
   - mce