Tag: national poetry month

Entropic Strains

The matter of happening
elicits entropic strains.
For my worth,
what it’s actually,
incessantly,
drills delirium
through incandescent veins.
Times we were the streets
assailed by sheets
of burning rain.
Here lies a quandary.
And here lies a focal point.
I move to still
the screeching in my joints,
enjoining the light
of the other accidental denizens
of this industrial wonderland.
One hand raises
a cracked cup to cracked lips,
the other is caught fidgeting.
And over the pulse of traffic,
the blue wails of the Sirens…

-r. miller

Ode to a Sunrise

Morning,
the government people are coming.
You have no hobbies
to dissuade them.
You keep my nose clean
when it counts.
Certainly, crunch time bleeds
into eastern standard time.
Nowhere has the infection
been more irrelevant.
With shoes on, how you turn,
in the furnace, on the threshold,
in the guise of a companion.
Man the torpedoes, skipper.
You looked more interesting
in the photograph.

-r. miller

Saints and Whippersnappers

Locked out of last-ditch paradise,
the brazen young fanmailers loiter
dumbstruck at the gates, percolating.

Okay then, a sunbathing we will go,
glistening in our rudeness. True to form,
we work our senses into a lather.

Gather ye saints and whippersnappers
in this sacred space, let the good news
rinse away all shame and bad vibes.

The elder tribes have had their say,
but it’s we who pave their final way.
Post-irony is here to stay, after all.

-r. miller

4.25.18

The face in fractured glass
has a bleak look about it.
Cold tears streak the dry skin,
and it seems as if an even colder truth
burns within the eyes.
I’d like to know that truth,
dig my fingers deep, and feel around
until I touch it, literally.

-r. miller

Hangover

Lately only waiting intrudes.
The fierce wilderness is made docile
by the touch of tender fingers
whose friend/foe status is rather unclear.
I hold dear these vacancies of thought and action,
though I don’t understand why.
Nor the whispers drifting down
from the wakening sky:
Just what exactly are you trying to say?
What secrets will I be selected to uphold?
Teardrops of light trickle
from window to floor with unexpected grace.
The expression on my face
feels less than promising.

-r. miller

Television

A simply and with whispers.
Why is it this munificence
drools a muddling
when the leagues away take shape?
Judicious and nutritive
wonder whips the breeze for better.
This is not my advertising,
my entrapment, or entropy singing.
Cool the ringing specter of obeying
and the spring convulsions mostly neat.

-r. miller

4.16.18

I’ve been saving my sympathies
for a rainy day, though
I’d be wrong to say they haven’t
overstayed their welcome.
Humdrum air flows
from discreet recesses
and about the public eye.
I’d like to die smiling ugh
This little cluster of words
in the corner of my brain
has left an unremarkable yet irreversible stain,
of whose appearance some might complain,
but I think it adds some color
to an otherwise drab space.
My poor face, though, it isn’t built
for smiling, despite my body
being built for dying.
Doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying.