Requiem

If luck falters
and I am taken tonight,
at least I will go knowing
I was never
another man's meal.

   -  mce

Control

Born, live, die:
the first and last
evade control,
but the middle
we can try.

 - mce

The Circle of Memory

He's sitting in
these rented rooms;
he's waiting
for the end.
He knows that
there are things
he knew,
he'll never know again.

The parting of
your lovely knees;
the glistening
of your lips;
the way your breasts
reached out for him;
the lilting of your hips.
The time of lust
has drained away,
there's little
left to trust.

He's sitting in
these rented rooms;
he's waiting
for the end.
He knows that
there are things
he knew,
he'll never know again.
   -mce

Lonely and Cold

Love is cold folly for the old.
The skeleton of habit no longer bends.
The confines of rooms admit no alteration.
Old poets seek solace in crazy places
that brook cats, but not strangers.
Words become prison windows
that serve to bar the fading light.
Sex is reduced to the retelling
of boring, weary stories
or mechanically repetitive rumblings.
Love is folly for the old,
folly pointless, lone, and cold.
   - mce

Friendship

Properly nurtured, it alone will last;
The one remaining blossom of the past.
   - mce

Devouring The Devourers

   ~ menu fixe for Chez Revanche

Anxious Anaconda Antipasto.
Mega Shark Soup.
Grinning Crocodile Fillets.
Prodigious Python Pie.

All served up like revenge,
appropriately cold.

Presentation is everything.

Tuck in, before they do.

   _ mce

Perfection

   ~ for William Carlos Williams

The perfection of that
fucking red wheel barrow
that caused such grief;
those damned white chickens
that brought no relief.
How many readers foundered
upon these images?
How many would be poets
took to truck driving
and went completely daft?
   - mce

Words Poets Ought Avoid After Sixty

Alcohol, for it has done its duty.
Future, for what remains is anemic.
Past, for it is already where it belongs.
Hope, for there is no longer time to learn Greek or conquer Everest.
War, for there is nothing more to say.
Cemetery, for it overflows with friends and lovers.
Body, for it  doesn't take orders and runs to fat and rigidity.
Money, for it has proven its worth and amounted to nothing.
Love, for it belongs in the vocabulary of youth.
Justice, for it is not a feature of this life.
Death, for it shall arrive soon enough.

And so many more.

What blazes at thirty is best forgotten and interred at sixty.
Dictionaries shrink and thesauri shrivel to essential bone.
Resignation displaces inspiration as it ought.
Poetry devolves into abstract thought.

Let us wear our lives like worn out clothes,
draped on the thorn of the wilted rose.

   - mce 

Riddle Me This

Poetry tells the truths
that aren't, but must be.
   - mce

The Value Of Stuff

These former treasures
now transformed into
anonymous junk.
Where did their history flee?
I stroll this flea market
with 10 dollars and no plan.
How many lives held these items?
Like mute Zen Masters
each has found its original face;
the desire that attached them
to life has evaporated.
They are only sad things in boxes
waiting for new hands
holding disinterested dimes,
seeking meaningless curiousities
to gather dust on lonely shelves.
This is what stuff comes to.
   - mce

Metamorphosis

    ~ for FK

He fell asleep a defunct and uncertain mortal,
but in that night of wavering visions
he dreamed of crocodiles and lilacs
each blossoming according to its own nature.
That made a sort of sense.
Telephones rang and creditors questioned.
Fishermen returned from the sea with boats full of water
which they easily traded for vast quantities of oxygen.
The crocodiles were fragrant and the lilacs smiled.
That, too, made a sort of sense.
One melancholy action flung itself upon the stars
and vanished from the satisfied earth.
He loved God and Satan simultaneously
and in their delight they reopened the Garden
feeling once more the necessity of affection
and directed him to eat his fill.
Who can argue with such divine logic?
All his ex-lovers sent telegrams expressing regret.
The gold he never had swelled his coffers.
He decided this dream was too lovely to end.
And yet, how to make sense of this gloaming cornucopia?
The answer struck him obvious as an earthquake:
forget the prisons of words; take new orders;
laugh with the crocodiles; dance with the lilacs;
become a man of action; imbibe Ambrosia for breakfast;
devour Manna  for lunch; shit astonishing flowers.
This makes perfect sense.

  - mce

Portents and Possibilities

There is no peace to be had here.
The birds have flown away
and night clings fiercely to my brain.
Cars are becoming space shuttles
and I begin to feel weightless.
Even as the Mayan apocalypse looms,
I feel giddily hopeful
and imagine the dying sun
dripping on my upturned face
so happy not to have to do Christmas shopping.
Even a faux apocalypse beats no apocalypse.
Still, why take unnecessary chances?
Pass me the bourbon and that last joint.
I know a cave in Tennessee...
    - mce

Marginal Artifice

Make my skull a furnace;
take the common utensils of torture
and forge the eccentric necessities
of my particular being.
Vanity, lies, sloth, lust, poetry:
these are simple vices that demand small craft.
Beat them into being and release me.
I can manage all the atrocities to follow.
   - mce