So Much For Self-Help

The Oracle at Delphi said:
Know thyself.

Oscar Wilde said:
Only the shallow know themselves.

After long, painful consideration,
I'm with Oscar.
- mce

Depression at Dawn v 2.0

Waking,
disoriented,
to the weight of it:
dislocation, depression,
despair.

Struggle, it's what I do;
it's what must be done.
Life is combat.
Stand up; soldier on.

Show up for life.

Make the day
or it will make you.

Sunshine helps.
So does birdsong,
friends, whiskey
and ganja.

Still, past failures
nibble at the edge
of my consciousness
like hungry stalkers.

Reflection
is both the joy
and the curse
of aging.

Always,
the old question
haunts me:
am I a fool
and a loser
or have I simply
lived out
my karma?

I expect
no answer,
but in death.
- mce

Your Graduation - for Richard V 2.0

I won't be there,
but my
broken heart
will be,
and my
undiminished love.
At the right moment,
we will reconnect.
Until then,
fly away, Son,
time for you
to soar.
- mce

The Fickle Muse

Sometimes
she is all kisses
and warmth;
sometimes
she is distant,
unresponsive
and cold.
Does she want
to be wooed
or left alone?
No man can know.
It is no accident
that the muses,
like wives,
are female.
- mce

Why Suicide Is Not An Option

Hope rarely flies straight;
it flutters and weaves
like a butterfly
in a stiff breeze,
sometimes making headway,
sometimes blown off course,
sometimes interrupted,
but never completely
disappearing;
always present,
always whispering:
maybe.
- mce

Note to Self

Here
is a shot
at a
wonderful
new life:
don't
fuck it
up.
- mce

Psychiatric Meteorology

My blues blow in
as abruptly
and unexpectedly
as these sudden
southern thunderstorms:
sun and warmth
one minute;
rain, thunder
and darkness
the next.
The weather
of the world;
the climate
of the soul;
both consistently
unpredictable.
- mce

Why I Live This Way

Today at work
I saw:
A box turtle
treading water
while
a three foot long
water snake dozed
on a nearby rock;
two Admiral butterflies
making shameless, passionate
colorful love
in the uncut clover;
four indigo buntings
slicing the air
like Imperial lightening;
six vultures
sailing the thermals
above the berry patch
in an eternal gyre.
What did you see?
-mce

Unrequited Love V 2.0

These black raspberries
do not understand
the intent
of my caresses.
When I reach
to prune them,
they scratch;
when I try
to weed them,
they clutch;
when I lean in
to mulch them,
they slash.
They are like
angry lovers
who want
to make love,
but want
to draw blood,
too.
Perhaps a poem
will soothe them;
it often works
on women.
- mce

Post Memorial Day To Do List

Finish that essay.
Clean the outhouse.
Mulch berries.
Buy some food.
Apply for jobs.
Carefully
usher the dead
back into their graves.
- mce

Thinking of Those Who Died Too Young

A tattered,
veteran drill sergeant
said to me:
Boy,
you don't get no older
than dead.
- mce

Identity

The owl's call
at three in the morning
asks the question
who I am.
- mce

Poetry Casserole: The Recipe

Take an instant,
a snapshot
or sound byte
from your life;
attach an emotion
or a thought;
couch it in
the fewest best words;
let it gestate
until your head
goes into labor
and it will
be born like a real child
that is yours,
but has a life
of its own
and leaves you
to inhabit a world
you'll never know.
- mce

The Girl Who Knocked - A Prose Poem

He had only been home from the war for six days when she knocked on his door. He had been contemplating suicide. Sworn to secrecy by law and strange spooks with dead eyes, he couldn't tell her that. Whatever wounds he had suffered were his to bear alone and would be for many years. Still, his world was so turned upside down by the madness he had just escaped that her unexpected arrival seemed appropriate.

San Francisco, 1972; not the halcyon hippie days, but the lull shortly thereafter. It was a good place to be, safe and cheap. Much better than upland Laos with its piles of dead gooks and terrifying fire fights. His apartment at Geary and Van Ness cost $275 dollars a month and felt like a sanctuary.

And there she stood, even more beautiful at nineteen than she had been at fifteen when they first made love on the grass in their hometown cemetery beside the Civil War memorial near the pile of cannon balls. You don't turn down a vision.

Come in, he said, and she didn't so much enter as flutter back into his scarred life. Her traveling companion, a non-descript hippie wannabee, stood beside her. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand and he disappeared.

That night, they made love like tigers. All the unspent lust accrued in battle erupted out of him and flowed into her. He wasn't gentle or considerate or skillful. When they fucked, he smelled cordite, heard choppers beating, and saw bloated corpses. It was like another deadly encounter in the bush, ferocious and abrupt. What she made of it, he couldn't tell, but she was more than game.

He had orders for Germany, but that was weeks away. They spent those weeks mostly in bed, as only the very young can manage, doing it every way they knew or could imagine. That tornado of desire took the edge off his rage and sense of betrayal. It may have saved his life.

Later, when he flew away, she stood and waved, astonishingly lovely in a miniskirt, her long chestnut hair flowing. She had no idea what she had done.

Things changed. It was decades before they really talked again. By then not even her name was the same, if she even really had one. Although their lives had long diverged, the connection remained, name or not. When he saw her after all that time, all those bodies, all those endless miles, she was exactly the same girl who had knocked on his door those thirty-six years gone and he knew in that instant that nothing true ever really dies.
- mce

What Thou Lovest Well Remains

I call
my white Saturn
Moby.
She is
the most
constant woman
in my life,
ever.
Ah, true love...
- mce

A Tentative Ode To Desire

Approaching sixty,
I find that
I still love women,
but not as much
as beer and ink.
- mce

Take That, Heraclitus...

Each day
when I take
my morning walk
along the creek,
everything
is different;
some things
never change.
- mce

Close Encounter of the Bird Kind

An indigo bunting
landed on my deck railing.
We looked at each other
for a few seconds
before it flew away.
Beauty explodes
in an instant.
- mce

Tennessee

Why does this place
pull me so hard?
I have always
felt the call
of lost causes,
fallen banners.
Perhaps it speaks
to the rebel
in my soul.
- mce

A Beer At 9 AM

Ah, the breakfast of champions!
I take a drink
and listen as the creek
whispers something
I can't quite make out.
Where are the answers
to all these questions?
- mce

The Good Citizen's Life

You sit in front
of your computer
and telephone
thinking of the wife
(or husband),
the kids, your IRA,
making money
for other people.
Who loves you, baby?
How long has it been
since you could call
your life your own?
Do you possess
what is yours
or does it
possess you?
Obligation
is not a virtue.
Does your heart dance
or does it merely labor?
There is still time.
Reject the full catastrophe.
Dismiss obligation;
embrace possibility.
There remains
a beautiful world
out there:
live like a pirate,
get naked,
dive in,
be alive.
-mce

Vietnam: A Memorial Day Postscript

Sadly,
you can take the boy
out of the jungle,
but you can
never
take the jungle
out of the boy.
- mce

What I learned in Laos - for Memorial Day 2009

"By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next." Shakespeare

Courage

She was my student;
twenty-five years younger.
I noticed her
the first day of class,
got to know her slowly,
fell into bed
with her later,
and then
in love with her
abruptly.
It was unlikely,
broke many rules,
was doomed from the start.
Still, I have never
regretted a moment of it.
You never get to touch
what you are afraid
to reach for.
- mce

The Lie of Mortality

Sunlight dappled
through new, green leaves.

I'm fifty-seven;
my liver could die
at any moment
and I would follow
directly.

Oh, to be alive
and awake
on this beautiful
spring morning!

Nothing else
really matters.
- mce

Ithaca

A perfect Tennessee morning: sitting on Serenity's deck, sunlight through the tree tops, birdsong, Bach, creek water, coffee and a cigarette; after so many years, Ithaca. It's good to be home...

My Shack: Serenity v 2.0

A view from Serenity.

Another View.

Serenity herself (of course, she is a female).

I have decided to name my shack Serenity. Not so much for the state of mind as for the spaceship in the series Firefly. That Serenity also floated in space and was a refuge for a crew of misfits after war and upheaval, seeking a home. I like it, and so it is.

Gender Wars V 2.0

I'd like
to get
deeper
inside your head
she says;
I'd like
to get
deeper
inside you,
he thinks.
-mce

Instruction Manual

It is simple
to be a poet:

slice your chest open
with the fine edge
of imagination;

wrench your heart loose;

take a bite;

smile and offer
a taste
to anyone
who might be interested,

not caring
whether they find it
sweet or bitter.
- mce

Comments V2.0

If you want to comment on a posting, just click on the word "comments" below the entry. No ID is required. Comments are welcome. - mce

Karma V2.0 - for Richard

The heart
that will not forgive,
in the end,
will break itself.
- mce

How To Tell It Was A Hard Winter

Get up in the morning,
look in the mirror,
and realize
that you have aged
ten years
in eight months.
- mce

On The Current Financial Crisis

Wallace Stevens
once wrote
that money
is a kind of poetry;
he did not say
that it is good poetry.
- mce

Martial Thoughts - for Paul Brandt

Wandering
in an old graveyard,
I came upon
an untended marker.

A man's name,
two dates,
USMC
and these words:
Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.

That mute slab
spoke to me,
saying:

consider, Stranger,
in this world of blood and fire,
the final hope of glory -
not medals or praise,
but the exquisite good fortune
of dying at home
in your own bed.
- mce

Conundrum: The Clash of Plato and Aristotle

It is easier
to be in love
with the woman
of your dreams,
than with the woman
beside you.
- mce

Walking the Streets of My Hometown At Night

A sparrow lights upon
a black phone wire,
sits a moment,
and takes wing;
two minutes later,
a cardinal
takes its place.

What has changed;
appearance or substance?

People, places, things -
ephemeral
until
infused
with meaning
carefully chosen,
like the fragrance
of lilacs
filling a room.

To be a human
is to be a poet;
to be a poet
is to be a god.

Every story told
engenders a creation.

What is imagined
is real;
not the orange,
but the graceful,
white fingers
peeling it.

Ergo:

a man
tells stories
about a man
telling stories.

The instances
of a life -
imagined -
create
and recreate
that life.

The picture is seen;
the picture does not see.

Heads spin,
not the world.

This has all
happened before
and will all
happen again.
-mce

Odysseus Dreams of Spring and Home

So many
empty days,
lost faces,
frozen dreams
empty beds;
soon:
spring breezes,
the asphalt seas,
another voyage
in search of
Argos,
Ithaca,
Penelope,
peace.
- mce

Credo

Say it. Say it all. Say it out loud. Do not be afraid. A poet must first be bold. Will they disapprove? Who are they? Fuck them. Say it. Say it all. Say it out loud. Be true to your muse. That's all you've got and it is everything...

The Necessity of Temperance

Too much whiskey;
Too little time.
Life is a bitch.
- mce

Ode An Die Freude

No matter
what you think,
I have never
stopped missing you.
Your electric touch,
your magick words,
your peridot eyes
have never
left my heart.
Sometimes
all a man can do
is step aside.
My absence
is my gift
to your life.
Cherish it
as I cherish
your memory.
Live well,
Princess.
- mce

Kindermord

In one frozen moment
I watched my friend's guts
erupt from his body
onto the deck
of our aircraft.
Thirty and more
years later,
it visits my dreams:
this image of death,
ineluctable
as death itself.
Wars end;
war never does.
- mce

A Theological Apology

The fiction
that you choose
to believe
becomes a reality
no less real
for being fiction.
Faith is magical.
God lives or not:
you decide.
- mce

The Messy Poem

An old lover
called me Messy
instead of Mike.
She was right
(always).
My gift orders words,
not things.
I exist
in a cluttered world,
but reside
in the order
of imagination.
I am a ruby
gleaming
in a pile
of dog shit.
Watch me shine!
- mce

A Brief Treatise on the Nature of Lust

Anticipation
holds the key
to paradise:
not the moment
of entry,
but the instant
before.
- mce

An Uncertainty Principle

She once said:
Boy, you've got
no butt at all.
Complaint
or compliment?
I never knew.
- mce

The Anxiety of Anticipation

If I reached across
the void between us -
age, position, convention -
to enfold you
in my arms,
would you open
to my embrace
like a rosebud
to spring rain?
Would you unfold
your self,
draw me
into your warmth
and hold me there
until you tremble?
Would we melt
into each other's body
until nothing remains
but a salty pool
of sated passion?
I don't know.
Only your lips
can answer these questions.
Whisper, now...
- mce

A Solution to the Fallacy Contained in Time, Memory and Reality

man
bench
sun

Facts are not
a life.

Details.

old man
park bench
hot sun

Better,
but not enough.

An old man
on a green park bench
baking in the hot sun.

Closer,
but not the truth.

An old man,
still boyish,
sitting on a
green park bench
baking in the hot sun
remembering
that strange young girl
wearing
a paisley scarf,
red and blue silk,
standing like Venus
poised above
blue Aegean water
on the deck
of a white steamer,
her black hair flowing,
four decades past.

Closer still, yet missing...

An old man,
still boyish,
sitting on a
green park bench
baking in the hot sun
remembering
that strange young girl
wearing
a paisley scarf,
red and blue silk,
standing like Venus
poised above
blue Aegean water
on the deck
of a white steamer,
her black hair flowing,
four decades past.
He smiles,
considering
her hot breath,
her long sighs,
her silken thighs:
she lives again.

The poem at the confluence
of memory and imagination
engenders the stories
which render meaning.

Stories about stories;
all we can know of life,
yet enough.
-mce