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5.25.18

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After hours of raking garbage,
we settled into a half-baked romanticism
that in former days
we would have smirked at.
Now, the jerks back home
can have a laugh and we
can go on eating up what’s left
of our sophistication.
Overhead, mild tribulation
buzzes and works its way
into our rusted gears.
The collected fears
of an entire generation
reach out to cop a feel.
We’ve reached the point
where what’s real
steadily begins to feel less so.
Nowhere left to go
but into the drooling mouth
of forgetting.

-r. miller

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5.23.18

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Viewer discretion is ill-advised.
My well-intended deviation
from the expectations of my clique
will very shortly derail.
Love is a hailstorm, after all –
protect your head.
The would-be dead are coming up
from their half-assed tombs
to greet the should-be living
with “fear in a handful of dust.”
Hell-or-high-water slides
deftly into the background noise
left us by some moody bureaucrats.
A real, honest shindig for the ages.
Naturally, my stagnating wages
have a thing or two to say about all this,
but they lack the necessary language
to correctly articulate
whatever particular thoughts
they’ve manacled themselves to.
Debacles all around!
And the antique stage
on which all this takes place
sinks into a bog of its own creation.
Desperation clicks into gear.
All bets or off, then on, then off again.

-r. miller

5.21.18

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So long, Sanctimony,
and may your deafening bluster
never again ruffle
these disenchanted feathers.
The ink of a contemporary passion
flows from this pen,
so contemporary
it makes parents of all stripes
throw their hands up
in quaint dejection.
I send this letter of rejection
from the unplumbed depths
of my solar plexus,
a nexus of filthy pride,
of desires that disorient
in disastrous ways.
I’ll never reclaim the days
I spent idling
in your tepid streams,
but I hope this two-fingered salute
counts for something.
Let’s leave it at that.

-r. miller

5.16.18

Standard

Kiss me on the eardrum,
for old times’ sake.
Wake and bake
to keep our auras intact.
Shutter up, nice and sleazy,
the ham-fisted approach
to easy livin’ in this eggshell suburb.
I guess I haven’t thought this through, but…
Things fall into place so casually,
it seems, so what’s the point?
The poignant charade
commences with a running start.
Our mutual heart
dissolves into a pool
of second thoughts.

-r. miller