Between sighs, the skin heaving,
apropos and weaving.
Intrinsic course, skin’s river flowing.
One unto another in morning or at evening,
with shadows in the mind concealing
other shadows. At last, the fault lines grimacing
and contorting as the molten center
gurgles, pushes, approves.
Promulgate the lyric jelly, harsher mistress,
and enfold me in your sway.
-r. miller
Derail me tenderly.
Direct all further inquiry
to the overflowing
gutters and the empty
parking lots at midnight.
I can only hold myself so steadily,
oh friend with benefits,
and this beauty mask
has grown too tight.
Centuries of infighting
have left us deaf
to further commotion.
Perhaps we ought to
commodify our losses
like proper aesthetes,
raise a glass
to this tepid spectacle,
and then drop it to the floor.
-r. miller
Something in the sleeping…
A light like water leaping
from the wound. As of late,
I’ve pruned the thorns
of whatever’s sprouted in my brain.
The ensuing pain was marginal,
but necessary. Now,
I have that much less to think about.
-r. miller
In the cold, intellection
fractures like brittle rock.
Powdery residue, a memoria,
lay in the brain’s creases,
as one by one, coughs issue
and irritation ensues.
This melancholy is of
a color I can’t name.
-r. miller
I’m drying up
beneath a piss-stained sky,
chemical burns inside
my glistering skull, ink tracks
crisscrossing my torso,
waiting on an undecided twilight
and some half-baked revelation
to still the jitters in my fingers.
-r. miller
The trial period is ending.
Such heretofore unknown disarray.
And the roof leaks,
though the rain is unfriendly.
Between breaths, a silence
thick as molten rock.
-r. miller
The derangement
must proceed casually,
by gradual degrees
before bursting
with supernova intensity.
By now, we should have moved indoors.
It always seems so, we’re told,
and the telling
puts us in the red.
I can’t seem to un-touch you.
This is my fault.
But I haven’t felt
the plethora of exit strategies
bunching up in my brain.
It all unfolds
according to principles.
Principles I don’t
have the bravery to name.
-r. miller
The voices in the street
pick the meat from my skull, kind of,
and fog rolls in like a carpet.
Maybe keep me off my pedestal next time.
Sure enough, next time presses
on my belly until it assumes the form
of frenzied nausea, proceeding
to force-feed me thoughts
wrapped in other thoughts
wrapped in other nausea.
Consider this an anthropological account
of how my body sometimes blunders.
The facts are stacked against me,
imposing though impotent,
anesthetized collossi drooling.
So much for the ruling caste.
I have to play fast-and-loose
by choice.
-r. miller
It may be unwise
to pull the trigger at this juncture.
O how such thoughts
have sunk the body,
basic though they be.
A neurosis worth exploring,
worth articulating.
Through blue reverie
comes the bright orange shriek
of poor impulse control,
igniting every nerve
as if each were a fuse.
What matters, naturally,
is how this is put to use.
-r. miller
I’d like to apologize
for any disconsolation
which may or may not
have been the direct
or indirect result
of my various indiscretions.
You bet I take
these secretions seriously,
by which I mean,
forget I said anything.
The whole business
is kind of fucked,
and I wish I had a drink
to offer anyone in such
distressing moments.
These aren’t singular, after all —
they exist by the dozens.
-r. miller
