Illumination

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

Dada Collage #1

I am riding in a train that is absolutely packed.
Up in the sky big ships send out smoke
and on earth tonight a man is writing.
Learn to sing without ever worrying.
There is a precise moment in time
when a man reaches the exact center of his life.
Now is the time for kisses to comprehend
madmen and passions.
At last I have the right to say hello
to all these beings I do not know.
Sitting right beside me you were crying
in the dark depths of the old fashioned carriage.
If only you knew.
Even the dogs feel awful.
   - mce

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

Oops!

It may not be possible
to step in the same river twice,
but it's uncomfortably common
to step in the same shit twice.
   - mce

The Secret Chord

   - for Leonard Cohen

That holy voice that undoes the buttons of dresses
whispering them off shoulders onto the floor;
songs that celebrate the pellucid sky of Greece;
the dark confessions of hustlers and junkies;
Abraham poised with the knife of obedience;
the desperate Hallelujah of broken kings;
razors in the hands of beautiful losers;
generous assignations in dingy hotels;
the singular Glory of the god of Art;
speaking in the minor chords of death;
celebrating the discordant mystery of life;
dancing to the very end of love, never missing a step.
   - mce

Marrow

  - for Jim Harrison

The very definition of Exuberance,
life squeezed of life's juices drop by drop.
each lovely female bottom lovingly observed and graded.
every delectable morsel chewed to digestive ecstasy;
wine and bourbon straining like blossoms in springtime;
trout, bear, javelina and ravens known personally;
rivers encountered both above and within;
genuine tears evoked by dogs past;
appetites that won't be denied;
sentences that strike like rattlesnakes;
that lone, probing eye
that even Galileo would have envied.
A Man in the old sense, disappearing,
content with love, nature and war;
what writer could hope
to be anything more?
   - mce

Life

   ~ for Paul Eluard

This prison isn't so bad.
Though the nights are cold,
tree roots break in to warm him.
The guards hum Mozart arias
which are profoundly comforting
and the food drives away
all expectations of hunger.
The sun is black but reassuring;
the moon has gone missing.
The books he doesn't have pass the time.
The caresses of absent women soothe his body.
Many birds choose not to sing
but invisible cats purr delightfully.
Often he is offered parole,
but can't imagine a better situation
and chooses to remain in his comfy cell.
Solitude sings sweet remembered songs
and all the trenches are far away.
Sometimes he misses the smells of flowers
but that soon passes and anyway
grass sprouts in the yard
surrounded by concertina wire.
Sometimes butterflies light upon it,
deliciously anomalous.
Nothing occupies him every day;
He is comfortable here and plans to stay.
   - mce

Existenz

The fungus
on my great toe
is especially funky
today.

I report this
because it doesn't
matter.

Such is
the meaning of
life.
   - mce

Ode To Paw-Paws

Paradisaical Paw-Paws
decorate bland trees;
few know their
delightful texture.
If a fruit grows
and no one knows
its virtues,
does it exist at all?
Forget unheard trees falling;
this is a much more
pressing question.
To Paw or not to Paw:
the great southern question.
   - mce

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
 

Integrity

All these decades
thirsting in the wilderness
and still I refuse
to drink the kool-aid.
   - mce

Olympian Malaise

The old gods are pathetic.

Without the punctuation
of time and death
only indolence and boredom
remain.

Listlessly they lounge
murdering flies or men
with equal unconcern.

Their eternal now
does not allow
the distinction
of pleasure
and pain.

Much better to be
a mortal man
to struggle,
survive
and suffer
over and over
again.
   - mce

Delight

I have lived alone
so long that
I have learned
to hug myself
and enjoy it.
  - mce

Proccessed Cheese Blues

Brie or velveeta?
As Janis Joplin
once observed:
It's all the same
fucking day,
man.
   -mce

White Man's Lament

Finally
the pebbles
of the Ghost Road
tickle my toes.

What delight!

If you are
born white,
it can take
an entire lifetime
to capture
one Lakota moment,

but it's well
worth the wait.

   -mce

4 AM

Sleep departs.
The hour
that all poets
cherish
and fear.
The chill
of morning
not quite born
and death
hovering near.
   - mce

That Beard Poem

The only reason men shave is
to facilitate getting laid.

These days women
only interest me as people.

Time to grow a beard.

   -mce

Changing Citizenship

In France
they know that women
like wine
only improve
with age.

In Amerika
we are taught
to lust
after impossible
Barbie Dolls.

At my age,
I'd rather be
French.

   -mce

Another Day Alone

A whole volume
of poetry
squats within
that title.

Don't squint
so hard;
you'll find it.

   -mce

Stalker

Death lurks
in rented rooms
but a few blocks away
and slyly
changing adresses
moves closer
every day.

-mce

Communication

A Murder of Crows
caw directly to my heart.
They have nothing to say
but I listen intently.
Meaning and nothingness
are often first cousins.

~ mce

A Plan

Sick
of nothingness,
I believe
I'll return
to war
and join
the circus.

~ mce

Progress

the bright morning
no longer invites

every TV show
is a rerun

books that screamed
now murmur

even the body
speaks in the past tense

now becomes was

the falling away
of self
into shadow

even when time
falls and freezes
like winter leaves

the urge to consciousness
resists surrender

how we long for
bright new moments

right to the brink
of night fall

even as the white flag of death
unfurls

~ mce

Citizens

They swim the cesspit
of greed and usury
mouths wide open
hungry always
for more
and deserving it,
too.

~ mce

Celibacy

Two years of no flesh.
The romantic lie
is a parasite
in the human brain.
You only think
bodies are important.
Respect your aloneness;
find peace.

~ mce

String Theory

Electrons whirl and leap
able to be in more
than one place at a time.
They move between
many worlds with ease
sometimes more than one
at at a time.
Many lives;
many worlds.
Nothing ever as simple
as it appears.

~ mce

Walls

Most folks
live in small yards
curtailed by walls;
eventually the walls
become reality.
This is known
as death.

~ mce

Why I Live Alone

I live alone because
when I wake for no reason
at 2:30 AM there
is no one to disturb.

I live alone because
you only get so much love
in one life and I've used up
my quota.

I live alone because
loneliness is a fruit
I have learned
to digest easily.

I live alone because
my failures
belong only to me.

I live alone because
I no longer have the gall
to inflict myself on another.

I live alone because
I have learned the wisdom
of silence.

I live alone because
I live alone and mostly
I like it.

~mce