Pointer

http://mceaphorismus.blogspot.com/

In The End...

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Surprise

I thought when you left
that it was just the end of you;
of course, I was wrong.
It was the end of me, too.
  - mce

No GPS

The turns of life
are imperceptible;
without knowing how,
some morning,
you find yourself
where you are.
  - mce

The Conversation

If you shout
long enough
into oblivion,
eventually,
nothing replies.
  - mce

Wood/Man

The heart
of the wood
burns hottest;
the heart
of a living man,
as well.
Both consume
themselves
to produce
light and heat.
In the end,
only ashes
remain.
  - mce

The Creek Knows

The creek fell
two feet last night.
Doesn't seem
to mind.
Perhaps it knows,
we are all fallen.
  - mce

Same Difference

Most folks
have a past;
I have
nightmares:
same difference.
  - mce

Silence

Sometimes,
words freeze,
too.
 - mce

Winter/Dawn

Ars Poetica

From the mouth
of God's silence
I write these words,
not for glory or to please,
only to remind myself
that in the vast emptiness
of these lonely days,
I am still here and alive.
 - mce

Folks

They all
want to hear you
sing of the light;
damned few
will listen
when the song
turns dark.
  - mce

Thar She Flows!

The weather has moderated here in TN. Today it is raining. The good news is that, for the first time in two weeks, I have running water. Joy! I can take a hot shower in my own house, do dishes, clean. I don't know how long this will last, so I intend to make full and hearty use of it. Life's little amenities don't mean much until they vanish, but when they do, you really come to appreciate them. Simple pleasures, always the best.

Battlefield: Fragment, From An Unfinished Novel

The sky was appropriately the color of gun metal. The smell of cordite clung like rancid perfume. He inhaled. It wasn't much to look at. Not so much a field as a clearing. A patch of nothing blasted onto the hilltop by the exhalation of a few 500 pound bombs. The earth was loose; plowed by mortars and cultivated by machine guns. A place men would have to cross under fire without cover; a place where men would be harvested. Not completely, though. It had been awhile. Some vegetation had encroached. Here and there it smoldered. The jungle never slept. Like the enemy, it kept coming back. There were lumps strewn about at random. Large lumps, the bodies of the dead. Smaller lumps, pieces of them. Dragon's teeth, clumsily sown. At first light the grunts had gone out and executed the wounded, laughing as they blew their brains out. He didn't blame them. Mercy was absurd in war; only death was logical. The bodies would be left to caution the enemy. It wouldn't help, though. They would return. Like the jungle. Until it was theirs for good. The first result would be stench; the second, compost. When the jungle finally returned, where the lumps were would be just a little greener. That a man's death might produce so little. He took it all in one last time. So this is what a battlefield looks like. Son of a bitch.
  - mce

Borrowed Song

How often I have lain
beneath rain
on a strange roof,
dreaming of home.
  - mce

Fever: Fragment, From An Unfinished Novel

He awoke to fever and uncertainty. They blazed and rattled. He recognized them. They were not new. They were old friends come for a visit. They fit together well: feverish uncertainty. The fever came from his dying liver; he wasn't sure about the uncertainty. His body faltered; his mind quavered. Nothing would cure this, but he knew what would help. He knew that words and whiskey and sleep would soothe him. Food was out of the question, as was effort. The day was already over, but he wasn't, quite. He could still build a fire. He could still breathe. He read a little. Something appropriate. Faulkner. He sipped some whiskey, emptied his mind and let sleep approach. Today was accounted for. He wasn't dead yet. Tomorrow was another matter and none of his business. He was busy in the now. Let go. Trust. Surrender. Drift; sink; sleep. Nothing else matters, anymore. He had seen it all before. Everyone dies alone.
  - mce

Desire Never Ends

I have been
cold so long
that warmth
is just
a memory.
Come to me,
Lady,
and build
the fire
that will
set me free.
  - mce

Asphodel

How I wish I could sail
to that fabled land
where otters frolic
and even the trees
murmur poetry
in French.
But I am ice-bound,
caught, for now,
in this frozen harbor.
We must be where we are.
Still, spring beckons;
soon, the sea will be free.
Unlikely as it may seem,
anything is possible
for a pirate
with a passport
on a mission.
  - mce

Death Is A Hunter

  - for Kyra

Death is a hunter
who never misses.
He stalks us all,
patiently awaiting
the proper moment,
takes perfect aim, fires,
and thinks we are gone.
Death is a gatherer
ceaselessly collecting,
eternally foraging,
and when he finds us
he slips us into his bag
and thinks we are gone.
Death is a messenger
delivering the telegram
that says our time is up.
He reads it to us
and thinks we are gone.
But death is mistaken.
Death is certain,
but it is not final.
The world we touched
is changed forever
by our journey in it,
however brief or long.
Something of us remains
in a child, a garden,
a painting, a poem,
a kiss or a caress.
Our hearts stop beating,
but breath does not depart.
Those we leave behind
have only to inhale
and once again
we are with them,
and within them.
Bodies die; love never does.
Each life, sacred and eternal,
inspires Creation.
We are never truly gone.
  - mce

A Pirate's Pledge

Only let me
enter your harbor,
Lady, awhile
and I will linger
there, long enough,
to make you smile.
  - mce

Stay Your Hand, Hangman...

As it turns out, the class I thought wouldn't run will. Of course, no one told me, so I didn't show up for the first session. First time in 32 years in the biz that that ever happened.

So I have been reinstated from destitute to merely poor. God Bless America, land where even anarchist poets can eke out a marginal (if uncertain) living...

To celebrate, I'm off to score a fifth of bourbon. Hey, life can be a bitch, you have to celebrate occasions like this.

Later today, I'll nip at the whiskey, tend the fire and re-watch Avatar, which I pirated last week.

All's well that ends well. Oops, someone already said that. How about, money and women show up in their own good time. I said that.

Into the day...

Sunny Southern Waterfall

Just around the corner from where I live.

Jesse Collin Young

Self/Realization

If I can but
squeeze through
the narrow Bardo
one more time,
perhaps
I'll get it right.
  - mce

Root Song

Somewhere,
not far
beneath this
crunchy white
carpet,
life waits for
light and warmth
to try again.
- mce

Devotional

Reading poetry,
early in the morning,
very nearly
restores my life,
only not quite.
- mce

The Task At Hand

Somehow,
I must
pull myself
together,
show up
and act like
a professor.
- mce

Brief History Of A Relationship

Nothing
Friendship
Conversation
Love affair
Nothing

Consensus Reality

She tells me,
as I unbutton
her dress,
that she no longer
believes in love;
I murmur
feigned agreement,
but stick to
the task at hand.
  - mce

Polonius Was Wrong

In an outhouse
at nineteen degrees,
brevity is the soul
of survival.
  - mce

Legacy

 - for my students

Beginning a new semester
once again I encounter
bright, thoughtless faces
staring at me as if
I were a curious, irrelevant
antiquity from a museum
they don't wish to visit.
The earth is fresh to them
and they are unbruised,
for a little while yet,
by the unforgiving realities
that life must provide.
I shuffle papers and make
solemn pronouncements
about the beauty of learning.
They yawn and fondle
the ubiquitous cell-phones
I have so cruelly
ordered turned off.
I no longer envy them
their youth or their future.
They remind me of pigeons
ready to be plucked.
I am tempted to tell them
the  necessary brutal truths:
half their marriages
will end in anger and divorce,
others will drag on in despair;
there is no such thing
as true love forever and ever;
the jobs they dream of will
mostly be empty and boring
and obsolete in short order;
the corporations and the usurers
have already captured the world;
that the earth is poisoned
and dying a slow, certain death;
how there are no more secrets
and the government may now legally
read their texts and emails,
listen to their conversations
and learn down to the last moan
even how and with whom
they make love;
that there will be more
than just rumors of war
and they will have to pay for them
in blood, loss and treasure;
that God is otherwise occupied
crushing children in Haiti;
that we have utterly failed them.
But I don't, of course.
They wouldn't hear me if I tried.
Bloody, weeping holocaust
that it has always been,
the world must be rediscovered
by every shiny, new generation.
Mentally wishing them luck,
I do my job, stick to the syllabus,
say a prayer for their possibilities,
turn it all over to them, smile,
and continue to pretend.
  - mce

Uncertainty

So much more
than merely
a principle;
ask the cat
in the box.
  - mce

Night Thoughts

It's 3:30 AM. Can't sleep. Found out today that one of my classes won't run. Low enrollment.

On the upside, this means 100 fewer inept, boring, pointless soul-killing papers to read this semester. That's a very good thing. On the downside, this will move me from poverty to destitution. Bummer.

What's a poor boy to do? Fret? Be blue? Not I. No, in the true American spirit of initiative and self-reliance, I have chosen a nobler (albeit short-term) solution. I'm getting high, drinking up some borrowed scotch and watching the director's cut of Animal House.

I'm not positive, but I suspect that the Meaning of Life is hidden in Animal House. I've only seen it 20 or so times, but each time I feel I'm getting closer to discovering The Secret. Enlightenment isn't easy. You have to keep at these things.

What about the future? Well, in the morning I'll be beat, bleary and still broke. That would happen in any case. Fortunately, we pirates know the truth about tomorrow. Truth is, there is no tomorrow. It never comes. It's all the same long-assed day.

If there is one thing I've learned in the last three years, it's that moments matter, and at the moment, I'm feeling pretty damned good. Hoist the Jolly Roger. Pour another drink. Argh... matey, call it a victory. Sail on.
  - mce

Hell

Not a drop
of whiskey
remains
to fortify
my coffee
on this frigid
morning.
  mce

Self-Help

Americans scramble about
like hyperactive lemmings
trying to fix themselves.
Vanity; egotistic futility;
pointless self-obsession.
How can you fix yourself
when you are already you?
  - mce

Zen Fantasy

Trying in vain
to keep warm,
he accidentally
burned down
his shack.
As the flames rose,
he attained
enlightenment.
Such brilliance!
 - mce

Jim Harrison

"To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say. For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime."

Evocation

Come, Muse,
don't be just
another teasing
bitch.
Sing through me.
Time is short.
Everyone dies.
Breathe into me
while I still
have a voice.
No one wants
 a song
from a corpse.
  - mce

Battle

A hour and a half
of stuffing the stove
and it's forty-two degrees
inside the shack.
Existence has become
hand to hand combat
with the elements.
The elements appear
to be winning.
  - mce

Carole

Even a distant voice
resonates warmth
on a glacial morning.
 - mce

Pedagogical Sentence

 - "A college professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep." - W. H. Auden

Off to teach once again.
Another semester beckons.
Students who don't read,
respect or understand words.
Colleagues mostly
young enough to be
my own children.
Migrant worker wages.
If only I had learned
a decent, honest trade,
like mortician or plumber,
I wouldn't be in this fix.
Oh well, we must all do
what will feed us.
Once more, into the breach.
  - mce

Silenus Laments

Silenus, sad
old satyr,
wearied
of seduction.
He'd cultivated
enough nymphs
to last
an immortal
lifetime.
They were
all the same
anyway,
ubiquitous,
their beatific
bottoms lifted
and eager
to be impaled.
He dreamed
of mortal women,
wary and
with wiles.
A bit more of
a challenge.
But a job
is a job,
even for
a demigod.
Onward
he plowed.
Another furrow.
Back to work.
Hard at it.
  - mce

Anomaly

The sunlight kissed snow
is pregnant with prisms;
they birth colors
that swarm and dance
like graceful children
within the whiteness.
  - mce

Poetry

My joy and
sustenance;
pity it doesn't
pay better.
  - mce

Apologies To Homer

The rosy-fingered dawn
wore gloves this morning.
  - mce

Exquisite Impedimenta

Lady, though
it weighs
upon me,
to abandon
the memory
of your eyes
would be
to discard
the very hope
of Magick.
I will carry
this load
a bit farther.
Some burdens
are a pleasure
to bear.
  - mce

Incantation

He can't afford a sacrifice,
the priests do not work cheap;
he's standing on the lip of Hell
considering a leap.
Will you walk beside him now
to the edge of the abyss,
and stay that final footstep,
preserve him with a kiss?
The moneys gone, the game is up,
he's missed the gleaming prize;
there's cold within his lonely bones,
there's sorrow in his eyes.
He needs to know there's still a chance
to feel the brush of grace,
the lost caress of hopefulness
upon his aging face.
Throw the Tarot, toss the coins,
hear what the spirits say;
he needs a resurrection
on this January day.
So will you walk beside him now
to the edge of the abyss,
and stay that final footstep,
preserve him with a kiss?
For the world is gray and barren,
the land is deep in snow;
he's standing on the lip of Hell
with nowhere left to go.
  - mce

Conversation

Reading, alone in this
mortuary silent cabin,
the words seem to shout
from the pages.
  - mce

Autobiography

I move south,
away from winter.
Middle-Tennessee
experiences
the longest streak
of sub-freezing days
in twenty years.
These two sentences
contain the story
of my life.
  - mce

Tennessee In The Snow

Economics 101

I was born poor.
Fifty-eight years later,
I am still poor.
Somewhere in between,
there must lurk a lesson
I haven't learned.
  - mce

Existential Dilemma

Am I drinking
the whiskey
or is the whiskey
drinking me?
Hmm...
 - mce

Work Ethic

The rose
I discovered
tattooed
on her butt
made all
that effort
worthwhile.
  - mce

True Love

Please hurry
and find me,
I'm almost
sixty.
  - mce

Percolation

Hauling wood
this morning,
I think I heard
the creek
within the creek.
  - mce

Only A Memory

Limpid and glowing,
your green eyes
were emeralds
dripping light
into the darkness
of my life.
  - mce

Conflagration

Lady, I have
burned for love;
all that remains
for you to embrace
are ashes.
  - mce

In Search Of Lost Time

Five years ago today
I retrieved my divorce decree
from a mailbox in the rain.
A marriage begun in light and bright,
ended in damp and drizzle.
Thirty years of life wasted in-between;
the longest, most expensive blind date
in all of history.
  - mce

Quelle

For each poet,
only one poem exists.
Again and again, we attempt
to write it down, exactly
as it should be.
It shifts and sways and eludes.
This is like trying
to capture moonbeams,
the work of a lifetime.
  - mce

My Job

From the pellucid
night sky,
a waning half-moon
spills frozen light
on writhen branches
of forlorn trees.
Two owls
hoot conversation.
A distant coyote
attempts to join in.
I am the amanuensis
of early morning:
if I do not
write this down,
no one will know;
this useless,
frigid beauty
will disappear
unnoticed
with the dawn.
  - mce

New Day

In the chill morning darkness
the soul gropes blindly about
trying to find its pants.
  - mce

Inspiration

If you were here
and warm,
I would inhale
your breath,
hold your spirit
in my lungs
and become
young again.
  - mce

After The Battle

Looking at a stand
of broken trees,
fallen and strewn
randomly about
by the wind,
I remember
the futility of war.
  - mce

Jim Harrison

Winter knows
when a man's pockets
are empty.

Hepatitis C Morning

The assiduous virus
spikes and writhes
in my tainted blood
nibbling at my liver,
eating up my time.
Energy disappears;
I shine and glow;
my stomach tumbles.
The mortality worm
chomps and gnaws.
All I did to earn this
was try to save
a few friendly lives.
The lesson learned
is that there is no
lesson to be learned.
The law of unintended
consequences
operates ineluctably.
No one to blame,
not even God.
In the end, we all fall.
Shit simply happens.
Don't mean nothing,
nothing at all.
  - mce

Heartsease

Waking to the resonance
of a woman
breathing gently
nearby
in the night:
the irenic murmuring
of the flesh
dispelling darkness.
 - mce

"The Real Deserts Are Outside Of Tradition."

The protocols
of morning
engender
resurrection:
rising at five,
coffee laced
with bourbon;
lighting the initial
cigarette;
the sounds of Bach;
urging a new fire
to life;
watching dawn
break from
the frozen deck;
even visiting
the frigid outhouse.
These small acts,
repeated daily,
become rites
that mold
and shape the
random disorder
of existence,
coax meaning
from the bedlam
of being.
Ritual extirpates chaos;
the world returns
to light.
  - mce

Arizona Dreaming

Five AM.
Ten degrees outside,
Thirty-eight inside.
Water's frozen.
Wood's frozen.
I'm freezing.
Thought I'd
moved south.
Instead, I wake
to arctic reality.
The Tennessee
guidebooks never
mentioned this.
Next winter,
I swear,
will find me
in the desert.
  - mce

Fuel

I heat my shack
with wood and whiskey,
absolute necessities
of the rustic life,
and it requires
a good deal of both.
Cedar and oak,
bourbon and coffee,
these are the body
and the blood,
without and within,
sources of warmth,
sustenance of life,
forever and ever,
fires without end
or at least
until spring,
(I hope).
  - mce

'Twas The Season

The dreaded holidays recede.
Greed and gluttony,
bogus religiosity,
mandatory jollity,
painful remembrance,
all depart for another year.
The merchandising serpents,
having sold their apples,
slither back to their offices
to count the take.
The usurers smile
and unbutton their vests.
The God of Mammon
is sated for a while.
The possibilities
of real life return
and that is truly
something to celebrate.
  - mce

Foolishness

I admit that
I have been
a fool for love.
I don't care.
It was worth it.
If you won't be
a fool for love,
you will always
be a fool.
  - mce

Princess

I should have
forgotten you
long ago.
It hurt.
Impossible.
Those green eyes
will never
let me go.
Time passes.
Things change.
We move on.
But even in the
longest silences,
I have always
missed you,
do still,
always will.
 - mce

Transformations

I am splitting wood
with my brand new
just bought yesterday
eight pound maul.
Gripping its very cool
red fiberglass handle
I whack with abandon.
I am transformed.
No longer just an aging
refugee college professor,
I am become
a mighty woodsman,
a handsome lumberjack,
PAUL FUCKING BUNYAN!
Only now, my back hurts.
I need a cigarette,
a drink and a nap.
Transformations,
they always come
with such a price.
  - mce

Trinity

 - for JLB

In his whole life,
he had loved
only three women;
she was the last.
If love
is a Trinity,
that makes her
his Holy Ghost,
the breath of God,
always present,
never visible:
so stunningly
appropriate.
  - mce

Resolutions

Eat more often.
Be grateful for breath.
Notice smiles.
Smile back.
Surrender to serenity.
Get a cat.
Split more wood.
Build bigger fires.
Stay warm.
Drown in desire.
Embrace Creation,
flawed but gorgeous.
Walk in beauty.
Taste the breeze.
Touch someone's heart.
Feel the music.
Find the blaze of light
in every word.
Remember the best.
Learn from the worst.
Continue...
  - mce

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...