12/31/09

On the borrowed
coffee table,
four candles lit
against the dark
share space with
a pack of Camels,
a glass of bourbon.
A Bach sonata
fills the evening
with elegant
notes and silences.
An old man,
remembering
the absent,
sits alone
and smiles.
He is forgotten,
but he is free.
Call that a
New Year's Eve
party,
as does he.
  - mce

Journey

The old year dies;
the new year looms.
Struggle Mountain
remains forever.
  - mce

Winter Dawn

Every sunrise,
empty and cold
as a lover's
broken promise.
  - mce

Genesis

To make a new world
you must be willing
to murder the old gods,
step over their corpses,
through the madness,
out of the darkness,
eternally alone,
into the empty garden
of your own creation.
  - mce

Leonard Cohen

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed:
The poor stay poor; the rich get rich.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

Recalling the Psych Ward

Immaculate,
white,
brightly lit,
sterile
and locked.
Ruled
by certainty
and good
intention,
not a solitary
doubt disturbs
its perfection.
As close to Hell
as you can get
on earth.
Worse even
than war.
No one
consigned
to such a place,
even by
mistaken love,
can help being
changed forever.
And no one
every truly
escapes.
  - mce

Invitation

I write poems
for an audience
of ghosts,
hoping only
to please.
If you are
such a spirit,
enjoy these
offerings.
The living have
no place here,
but the lost
may make
themselves
at home.
Even ghosts
need somewhere
to relax.
  - mce

Facing The Choir

Three ravens
perched on
a bare branch
above the creek
stare at him,
but say nothing.
An old man
shivering
in the cold,
with many
questions and
no answers,
stares back.
They sit like
mute black oracles.
The truth
of the world
cannot be spoken
by the world.
An old man,
shivering;
three ravens
perched on
a bare branch.
Nothing but this
can be known
for sure.
  - mce

Embracing Chaos

Why this worry
about who
you really are?
Confusion
and creation
are twin sisters.
Embrace them.
Accept them both.
Enter them.
Surrender.
It's a threesome
or nothing at all.
  - mce

Erato

Kiss me Goddess.
I want your tongue
in my human mouth
filling it with words.
I want your breath
in my lonely lungs
inspiring me.
Haptic Lady,
I want your legs
around my waist
urging me to creation,
undulating ecstasy.
Make me dizzy
with your passion
and I will sing
your holy songs
to flawed creation.
Oh erotic Muse
of the holy body
and the broken,
profane heart,
come with me,
and laugh aloud
when you do.
We will name
our children poems
and send them
into the mortal world
where they will
walk in beauty
and make us proud.
  - mce

Ritual

Build a small alter,
of twigs and branches,
pious offerings of
iron wood and cedar;

kiss it with fire and air;

tend it with delicate
and grateful care;

send the smoke
to God in heaven;

supplicate:
ask to be whole,
gather the warmth
to your human soul;

lift your heart and pray,
embrace the void
and greet the day.
  - mce

Whiskey For Breakfast

There are mornings
when waking
into this profound,
bottomless silence
makes me want
to scream out loud,
"Hey, I'm still here!"
  - mce

Telos

The frozen meadow
is a hard, white
shag carpet.
Seven wild turkeys
arrayed in a
gobbling skirmish line
pick their way
carefully across it.
I stand silently
on the frozen deck
in my bare feet
and watch.
The algid world
contains us all,
no exceptions.
Strutting fowl,
the flaneur
who watches,
no one escapes
this brumal vista.
The God of heaven
is simultaneously
the God of phenomena.
Skepsis slips away
when your toes
are cold.
  - mce

Gnosis

Hallelujah
is the one true
commandment.
The Sacred
is not a puzzle
to solve;
not a commander
to follow;
not a creed
to mumble.
It is a joy
to experience;
it is a love
to share;
it is a way
to be.
It is simply
and divinely,
Hallelujah.
 - mce

Divorce: A Brief Christmas Eve Meditation

Sometimes
the price
of freedom
is loneliness,
but freedom
is always worth
whatever
it costs.
  - mce

Solstice

On this shortest day,
the dark has risen,
a black cloak
covers creation.
The light,
reduced to spark,
awaits its time.
The earth turns,
the trees remember,
the flowers,
in imagination,
dare to hope
and blossom.
On this shortest day
the darkness falters.
Smoldering embers
flare again.
Soon, the world
will turn once more
from cold to warmth.
The light of the east
will not be denied.
Death, rebirth, new life.
On this shortest day,
darkness defeated.
  - mce

A Severe Lack Of Holiday Spirit

...People hit
the sauce in a big way all winter.
Amidst blizzards they wrestle
unsuccessfully with the dark comedy
of their lives, laughter trapped
in their frigid gizzards.  Meanwhile,
the mercury just plummets,
like a migrating duck blasted
out of the sky by some hunter
in a cap with fur earflaps.
  - Amy Gerstler

A Conspiracy of Otters

A strange woman
dances in dreams
snug in bed
far to the north
in a kingdom
of ice and desire.
She is wrapped
in red velvet
and flowing hair;
her ample breasts
rise and fall sighing
for the lost sun;
her hips recall
the warmth
of summer lovers.
Something stirs
between her thighs.
Wise otters
gather and chant
about her
in a charmed circle
intoning mystery.
She is at once
their priestess
and their captive;
a rosetta stone
not yet deciphered
for a language
as yet unspoken.
They offer her
perfect lake pearls
dripping light;
their fur glistens;
their tiny paws
clap out ecstasy.
Her world is cold,
but she is warm.
She does not see
as others see;
does not feel
as they feel.
She is caught
in the ceremony
she leads.
He feels
her body sway
across the boundaries
of man and time.
The gods of poetry
disdain distance.
Far away
in a south of hills
and waterfalls,
imagining her,
he knows
that she knows
what he knows.
  - mce

Raping Emily Post

I am often told I am charming,
but I don't feel charming.
The days of dinner conversation
and cocktail chatter are gone.
Now I speak from the heart
without care for whom
I might offend or wound.
Poetry is asking the questions
that hurt and then
writing down the answers
without regard for consequences.
It is putting your neck
on the chopping block
and laughing at the executioner.
It is announcing to the world
your total disdain for its opinions
and not being surprised
when the world kicks your ass.
It is spitting globs of truth and beauty
into the faces of those most comfortable
with the conventional and the merely pretty.
It is the open wound you display
dripping and draining in public.
It is the dis-ease you create
and flaunt because you
have never sought or valued ease.
It makes people depart abruptly
as if a leper had just
offered to shake their hand.
It is the legless soldier
whose stumps remind you
that your taxes bought his loss.
It is the bullet that finds its mark;
the blade that pins you to the wall;
the bomb that shreds you into pink meat.
It is not charming; it is never charming,
and neither am I because
I have just written this down
for you to read.
  - mce

The Death of Romance

Mute telephone.
Cold stove.
Unopened volume
of Neruda poems.
Empty whiskey glass.
Overflowing ashtray.
Gloom seeping
through too large
windows.
Unwritten letter.
Unspoken words.
Blank canvas.
Still/Life.
  - mce

Good Morning

 I wonder what it would be like to be able to sleep in. Ever since the army, I have not been able to do so. I awake no later than six and can't go back to sleep. Want to, but can't.

It's as if I must get up and check that the world has not disappeared in the darkness, to reaffirm the palpable. Endless disturbing dreams don't help. My nights are a Fellini movie of broken images: my ex-wife, vanished kids (their revenge, I suppose), lost lovers, blown up comrades all visit me regularly. If I could give up sleeping for good, I would.

So up I get. Drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, build a fire, check the creek, read, write, try to get my hands and mind around the substance of the world. Slowly, the dots reconnect and my own version of reality takes shape. The demons go back into their caves. The gargoyles settle into stillness. The ghosts fade. For a while at least.

Good morning...

The Depths

"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche

Invocation (Fragment from an Unwritten Novel)

...in all this imperfection i seek the perfect tone the lost chord the forgotten lyrics that call the lord to action when last we made love i built a pyre of your clothes and burned them because i wanted to make an offering and to hold you perfect and naked forever but you were only chilly and distant like god well who knows what successful supplication requires so now i light many candles against the gloom lace my morning coffee with bourbon ply the fire how many shades of gray does the world contain i have tried to count them and failed perhaps you know tell me love what is the spark that sets alight and where is the fire that breaks the night i want to take you violently from behind deep and without remorse like a centaur mounting a greek maiden on a perfect frozen vase i am praying hard for redemption and more whiskey perhaps a smile but darkness swirls in my brain an old friend whispering me toward the abyss saying it's ok just a few more steps and silence shall reign so what is the sound of one synapse firing why did the golden rule tarnish where have the indigo buntings fled the squirrels in my walls are scratching out messages in code if i can decrypt them and expose the international rodent conspiracy will i become famous and rich will lovely women fling their lingerie at me like silken boomerangs and ride me like a trojan horse or will the masters find me first and sequester me and my waterfalls of words in the madhouse of obscurity and is this a chance worth taking that those who care not should know the truth i know i am a river but where am i running the words pour the words rain it is hard to know what all this means and yet it must mean...
  - mce

Approaching Solstice

The old gods sleep.
Crows of winter
flit in desperate blackness
over the frozen breath
of frosted fields.
Their jagged caws
promise nothing.
December grips.
The world is an ice moon.
The old gods
snore and snuffle.
The dead planet creeps
toward frigid equilibrium.
No promises remain to keep.
The rimy fowl croak
again and again,
nothing, nothing, nothing.
The sun has decamped.
Gelid slumber holds dominion;
waking, but a memory
in an arctic head.
The old gods sleep on.
  - mce

Madness at Dawn

The loneliness
of a fire
that burns
without fuel.
  - mce

Gratitude

“No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” - Elie Wiesel

A Mind of Winter

frozen leaves
frozen puddles
frozen meadow
frozen sky
frozen voice
frozen life
frozen heart
  - mce

Lament

The sky is dark,
the stars are near,
and you are far
and I am here.
  - mce

On Madness

It is probably mad to write about madness if you've ever been mad, but I'm just crazy enough to have a go at it.

Tonight I watched the film, A Beautiful Mind. I tried to watch it one other time, but couldn't. Madness is a touchy thing to those who have been mad, even a sanitized, glamorized Hollywood version of it.

Madness is like waking up into a dream. You are awake; you are in the world; but nothing is quite as it was. You would like to go back to sleep and try waking again into the normal, but the normal is gone - for good. The passage of time alone does not help; it only makes things weirder.

You can get better. With luck and help, you can learn to fit into what, for others, is normal in an unobtrusive manner, but it will never again be your normal. If fortunate, you can pass for quirky or eccentric or edgy. You can get better, but you can't get well. The broken temple cannot be restored.

This new unreality of the normal makes it difficult to be sure of anything or anyone. It makes it difficult to trust anything or anyone. For normal people, the world consists of sharply delineated boundaries, distinct lines outside of which they know not to color. For the mad, those boundaries and lines get fuzzy, indistinct or disappear altogether. They can never be sure where to color or what others will think of their coloring. So, in order to avoid doctors, medications, hospitals and involuntary commitments or jail, often, to one degree or another, they must withdraw from the world.

This engenders one of the most horrific side effects of mental illness, loneliness. We are made to communicate, to connect. Madness limits that ability. It takes a huge investment of energy and concentration for a person once mad to develop a close relationship with anyone or anything. Often, even when that investment is made, failure still occurs. Each failure makes future success more difficult and less likely. You find yourself living in a world where it seems there is plate glass between you and everyone else, where you can never completely touch them.

I envy those lucky enough to live in the normal, sane world. They don't know how fortunate they are never to have slipped those cozy boundaries, how little effort their sane lives require.

Madness is seeing things differently, in some ways better, in others not. It is about intensity. These were John Nash's curse and his blessing. He was fortunate enough to be a genius as well, which brought him a level of acceptance that most mad folk don't get. He got better, but he never got well. He never will. No one ever does, not wholly.

The sense of being in a waking dream never completely leaves. There is no path back up and out of the rabbit hole. You try to figure it out a few minutes at a time. You hold on to the best of your new vision and intensity, but you hide it and try to pass. You look for ways to express your different reality that are acceptable. You are always afraid of being found out. You continue, but you look over your shoulder. It's what remains to do. It's all that remains to do. It's the mission they give you for your sins, that you can't refuse, from which there is no return.

From the Activities Director

Things to do in the holler in winter. Buy wood,  stack wood, carry wood. Build fire, tend fire, carry ashes. Stare at vintage water-stain on ceiling. Sometimes it looks like droopy breasts; sometimes like the Hindenburg. Meditate on cobwebs and wonder what's inside them (could be a goat). Buy wood,  stack wood, carry wood. Build fire, tend fire, carry ashes. Read the complete works of Charles Dickens in Romanian. Watch DVDs. Write obscene poems. Buy wood,  stack wood, carry wood. Build fire, tend fire, carry ashes. Dream of topless beaches; hell, any beaches. Read Absolom! Absolom! backwards. Rewrite Moby Dick from the point of view of the whale (good review from PETA guaranteed). Nap. Buy wood,  stack wood, carry wood. Build fire, tend fire, carry ashes.

Etc...

Consistency

I loathe consistency. It is the premier hallmark of the small mind and the stunted spirit. Don't look for any on this blog. I am a jumbled mass of contradictions. I embrace them. They are me. I say what comes into my mind (what's left of it) as it does. Tomorrow (or even later today), I may write the opposite. I am a smeared and blurred painting. I disdain simple solutions and answers. I accept chaos. Shit, I eat chaos for breakfast. Some have called me mad; I call myself human. What you see is what you get - for the moment...