Tag: my writing

8.5.19

I appreciate the sweeping gesture,
the golden tone of truth coating all
with a violent sheen.
When the town reveals its frightful mien,

who among us won’t be caught
in the  dark fact of its gaze?
It’s all one dispiriting phrase
after another in this treatise,

nothing to invigorate the senses
and our sense for them.
Hate to break up the phenomenology,
but you’ve gone numb in the extremities.

So young, too; a great shame indeed.
The body’s broken lexicon burns
quite easily, no fuss,
in the flames the body kindles.

-r. miller

7.25.19

Don’t talk to me
about the weather.
With the foreground
growing denser,
with my eyelashes
growing thicker,
it could be poorly timed.
The tree climbed
once too often
soon sinks back
into its roots.
My blood shoots
lazily through vein.
Some day,
a plainer picture
of our routine
will supplant this ornate one
running amok
with its boring flourishes.
Entertaining though it may be,
this thought
barely weighs a thing.

-r. miller

Recurring dream of you

Too much else. You stroke
kindly the wavering within
and adorn the air in crimson smoke,
though the cold absorbs completely.

This matters later, during those hours
where the recurring dream of you
wounds my waking
until waking is disagreeable,

and the ticking of my watch
becomes an illness which
I must surely perish of.
No truth is plainer than this.

-r. miller

3/4/17

The patsy raid went better than expected.

Every principle rejected was replaced
with a pillar of colored sand.
You know exactly where I stand:
this land is mine, so sayeth the fine print.
In the end, it adds up to pocket lint.
A mandate straight from the mouths of moths.
So what if I’m soft?
held aloft by simple kite strings
and rings from archaic telephones?
The cronies have their bones to pick,
and the sickening texture of their moral “codes.”
In their frenzy, they’ve overloaded the wagons
with flagons of gut-rupturing wine.
Circumstances never align
the way they’re supposed to,
but with a closed fist and determination,
what compunction you’ll inspire!
It’s astonishing, really,
how easy it is to survive
the dive bomb logic of an apology.
One minute, you’re in it.
The next, you’re flexing.

-r. miller

2/25/17

Deviation dictates all.
I take this thunderclap for mine own.
So speaks… The coven, salacious.
The tone-deaf monarch breathing heavily.
Around the turn of a screw,
in lieu of hotboxing, these laborer’s fingers
twisting spliffs to engage thoughtfully.
Condescension with a smile.
The way these feminine eyes distress me
and even with a hangover.
I’d downed the wine, flipped the sacrament,
rendered praise unto husky mouths
rife with alphabetic tumors.
The way these feminine hands undress me…
Amid churning stars and specters.
Trees piling on trees. Limitless shadow.
Mine own hands steeped in the boiling nectar.
I only considered the proposal,
the desolate prospect of her windblown song.
We ate of the valley’s festering fruit
and fucked in the grass.
She said these lies were a burden.
More than… The future,
an approaching train, white light
intensifying until only heat.
A remainder, or a reminder.
We carry lethargically on
and summer shoots through every window.
Another lost weekend for the pyre.

-r. miller

2/15/17

Yesteryear, the syphilitics praise
a redundancy like no other.
Doomed we are to walk this sullen road,
comet tails ablaze and biting.
I’ve drank of the stagnant water
poured from the horse’s mouth
and felt otherwise refreshed.
It was like this in the future
we saw once in the iPhone ad.
My teeth came unclenched.
Mucked the filter, fucked the landline.
Scrubbed down with anxiousness
and turpentine, we don hefty robes
and chain smoke in oblivion.
The taste is slightly sour, often sweet.
Nothing beats an evening in the shade.

-r. miller

1/27/17

Felled by a marvelous wind,
we leave things as they are,
as we found them.
Gloom slinks somewhere
in the periphery.
A pause elicits no response.
We water the dark and are sated,
worn down the nerves
and flimsy shoes. All aboard
the blues express.
Dusk by the handful.
A marble altar for the centerpiece
and a gauge to monitor
our fleshy vibes.
We draw us to ourselves purposefully.
Refuted truths to feed
the hollow heads.
Simultaneous, we burn.

-r. miller

Untitled

I swimming thru headache,
tired swooping
eyes heavy handing.

The sand bags plummet.
How my gums
begin to bleed
is truly a wonder.
And the fruits
of my plunder
have yet begun to wither.

Thither goeth
a sensuous shiver.
A season and
a caustic liver.
Leaky creaking.

Must all this
nervous weeping
truly persist?

-r. miller

Burning Mouth

Lonely in the loveliest air,
I spare no expense!
I raise clenched hands
to the upper atmosphere,
shouting “Take my hands!”
And the various sands
of a singular idea
pour into my ears,
making it très difficile to hear
anything else. And my hands
are still there, clenched as ever,
and just as meaningless.
So I burn a stick of incense,
put it ‘tween my lips,
then I wait for it to burn
all the way to the end
so the ember sets fire
to my undeserving mouth.
The power I feel then
is unparalleled.

-r. miller