Heavenly Encounter

I ran into an Angel
at the cafe this morning.

He looked shabby and sad
as he told me that
he has been unemployed
and at loose ends
since God died.

The stimulus package
hadn't helped
and there was
no unemployment
compensation
available for
the formerly Divine.

I commiserated,
agreed that times
are tough all over,
and paid for his latte.

It seemed the least
I could do.

  - mce

New Roommate

One morning he found that age
had arrived and moved in to stay
like some unwelcome relative
whose existence he had always doubted.
Suddenly, the past retreated into
a vast, unimaginable distance
and youth became someone else.
Even midlife was a stranger.
Old things began to happen:
his wife had a new husband and life;
his grown children had futures
and didn't come around much;
the news became frustratingly familiar;
sex devolved into ritual;
the best cats were all dead
like more of his friends each year.
He woke for good at four AM
after thin, elderly sleep
and spent the early hours
with bourbon, coffee,
cigarettes and jazz.
Age just smiled, had another drink,
and made no move to leave.

   - mce

American Dream Delusion

There is no luck,
only hard work and skill.
You roll the dice
and win once
then commence to lose.
The croupier smiles
like an inevitable corpse
and hauls in your loses,
but you are tenacious
and put no stock in fate.
You keep betting
and begin to win
and keep winning
until his fringed pate
explodes dollars
and everything you desire
is yours.

  - mce

Integrity

When life offers up
the inevitable two choices,
say fuck you,
invent a third,
and make it your own.

     - mce

A Matter Of Scale

I prefer to live in small spaces.
They make me feel larger and more important
than just a sad, lonely old man
who chants poems to candles and cats.

   - mce

Salvation - So Far

Every time
I have considered
suicide,
someone has
told me a story
so sad
I felt happy
to be alive.

   - mce

Dada Collage #11

The days piled up too high and then collapsed.
Everything was sadder than it used to be.
What we are concerned with here is unhappiness.
It is not a question of enlightenment, but recognition,
that chameleon of vapid, disinterested change.
What does it all come down to in the end?
Feeling furtive needs isn't living;
you weary of feeding your needy, mammal body.
We must extricate ourselves from this repugnant spectacle.
The gates of the world open and close to no end.
The cosmos uses your own voice to complain.
The summit sings what is spoken in the depths.
The boulevards of your brain become smaller.
The wars are far away and oddly peaceful.
The lamps we light at dusk are for nothing.
I found this poem in the flea market of old words,
paid for it with the sorry shards of my memories,
and offer it to oblivion with whatever else I have stolen.
Consider it a final toast to everything that didn't happen.

   - mce

Gerontology

Life slips away;
its scars remain.

   - mce

What Is - What Isn't

The poem is not
the words on the page.

The poem is not
reading those words.

The poem is
what resonates
and lingers
in the mind's silence

just after.

   - mce

Paid In Full

I wrote a poem on the back
of an overdue electric bill.

It was a good poem.

Certainly that makes us even.

   - mce

The Artist

He sits fixedly knitting the air.
Although nothing takes shape,
it does so palpably.
He works with such fierce concentration,
never dropping a stitch,
that the very nothing he is knitting
assumes all the aspects of creation,
except for form and substance.
People marvel at its complexity,
its craft and connivance.
He merely continues his work.
The ferocity of the undertaking
engenders its own reward.
Art may be a delusion plied by lunatics,
but the world doesn't know that,
and the lunatics don't care.

   - mce

Politics

If you must
participate,
you might
want to
boil
the air
before you
enter and
breathe it.

   - mce

Rented Rooms

No matter the decoration,
they remain bleak as Antarctica,
empty as the Sahara.
Stuff will not suffice;
bric-a-brac remains invisible.
Even the best music merely echoes:
Mozart, Vivaldi, even Beethoven
cannot fill the emptiness.
Clocks clang like church bells
and every muted footfall
screams out loneliness.
They are places to pass through
where you reside but do not live.
Even the most asinine Realtor
couldn't call them home
with a straight face.
They are the shelter for those
who have not quite descended
to the bridge abutment.
They are where you wake up
alone into loneliness
and pretend each morning
you are still alive.
They are the difference
between survival and life,
breath and inspiration.
They are the preordained
end of the game
you were forced to play
and doomed to lose.
We each get but one home
and if by folly or disaster
we destroy it,
wherever we go
we remain homeless
in the wilderness
of rented rooms.

   - mce

Manic-Depression

OK, the depressive part
can be a problem:
nothing to do but lie around,
immobile, counting ceiling tiles,
waiting to die, and afraid you won't.

But mania! Oh sweet muse!

The gods kiss you with fiery tongues;
they burn their hissing brands
into your gelid, grateful brain.

Volcanoes of metaphors;
tsunamis of words;
earthquakes of images.

Every moment pulsates;
every instant an orgasm.

Shrinks agree that
most artists are
manic-depressive
to some degree,
but to us it is a portal
to the godhead.

Give the meds to the rest;
the agitated, anxious sheeple
striving to be normal:
to them it is a disease.

But for those of us
who lust for Art,
it is the necessary,
not to be missed,
divine, exalted,
madness of creativity.

Consummate
Promethean
benefaction.

   - mce