Tag: my poems

Pastoral

Garbled green
steams from the head,
the head broken
by summer rains.
The picture pertains
to malice or
to hunger or
to some uintelligible perversity
we dare not fathom.
Silently roar the phantoms
in the hourglass.
Asses smeared
with fecal residue.
What terror brewing
in the recesses of the boonies!
I told you so. I told you.
Our skins go greasy
in the heat,
grievous
breathless heaps.

-r. miller

Out of Context

They stand where they can.
Principles of comfort disarm them.
And the disorder of the sea,
their warring senses.
Take note of the tension,
the casual alarm rising
from the muddled streets.

I’ve lost all feeling in my feet.
I suppose I’ll have to beat
that out of context now.
Love is a hexagon.
The hotel is in reality a hospital bed.

-r. miller

Apophenia

Everywhere and all at once.
Something wonderful
to wonder at. Bleeding, bilked.
Milked derangement
and estrangement of sense perception.
Your tongue is gibberish.
Pollen, pills, and postcards.

Memories arrive in shards
on the doorstep of consciousness.
Be my blanket. My mesmerizing moor.
We float on filibustered rustic roots.
Overhand undermining.
The wetness shining on leathery leaves.
Saves me from falling.

-r. miller

Semi-Violence

we collect kinetic energy in buckets.
my love for you is a socket wrench.
entrenched views pull us mireward.
turning your tired eyes toward truth
the blue accidents of favor slip into
a fever wound. all regret and no play today.
it’s the way we’ve whitewashed the passage
toward presence, the way we’ve incensed
the skies, the way lies catch up after a while,
sniff us out in our hiding place, and sidle up
close to breathe awkwardly in our ears.
what fear is gathering  itself in my gut?
i can’t move close to you without getting closer,
nor loosen myself without losing myself.

-r. miller

We grew up around a vague mile
connecting discourse to intercourse.
Coarsely ground. Foundations
in despairing fragments.

We tore up the ligaments
of our luster in between clusterfucks,
chucking reason for rhyme
and timing our moves just right.

‘Twas a firefight. Or flight.
It’s hard to miss the one
contained within the other,
hard to miss the mist ahead

congealing into a conglomerate
of multi-colored mistakes
and snaking its way forward.
A locked door is your reward

and it’s reward in only
a tenuous sense. The wet weather
drops its sword before you.
Time to grow some guts.

-r. miller

Twice Over

Twice over, I’ve grieved
for the great sleeve of a butter tomorrow.
Twice over, the sorrow was underwhelming.
This time it’s time to man the helm,
set a crash course toward
the bruised and bloodied sun
dropping its blanket over the undesiring land.
Control must be exorcised.
Distances surmised.
My heart is comprised of illicit endeavors,
sexual favors, anise-flavored
with just a touch of whisky.
The frisk is risky. Meanwhile,
Spring keeps on coming up empty.

-r. miller

Uninvited

I didn’t ask him to come here.
He wasn’t invited. But he took this
to mean he wasn’t uninvited either.
So he came. He stood at the shelf
grappling with the apple tarts,
rattling off statistics of dubious factual basis,
and prattling on about the storm brewing
in the brewpub. I didn’t ask him
to leave in a direct manner.
Just dropped hints here and there,
ominous suggestions that if he remained,
a storm would be a-brewin’ in here.
He ignored me, or laughed at me,
or suggested that I didn’t even know
what I wanted as if desire
could be rationalized. Granted,
I couldn’t exactly disprove this,
seeing as how if I truly didn’t know
what I desired then I wouldn’t know
that I didn’t know. Thus I came
to find myself in a spiraling vortex
of not knowing, and he laughed
and shackled me with primrose.
I wanted to kick him in the teeth,
that rude sonofasonofabitch and in a way, I did.
It wasn’t a literal kick in the teeth,
but it could’ve been. It could’ve also been
a punch in the mullet.
Either way, the bastard shrank away
when I finally mustered enough presence,
and he was swept away
in a blinding wind of scowls.

-r. miller