It’s 3:20AM and I’ve barely written
a thing, so am I truly going nuts?
I can’t even squeeze out enough
juice to write a personal poem
a la Frank O’Hara, that’s saying something.
I’ve had my share of caffeine, now
my eyes clink! the torture. And also
the torture of knowing that someone
you love is somewhere else sleeping
deeply while you sit dumbly
in an ill-lit house trying to
put words on a page.
-r. miller
A tender wind spins through the trees,
upsetting the branches’ slumber.
This means Springtime in the East.
Tonight, we feast on beastly striving.
When the burning hour comes,
we’ll drink in its fire,
our perspiring recollection
reflected in the glow.
There’ll be rain but no drear tonight,
I’ve declared it so. Here, the moon
is swooning in a tarry cloister,
moisture of an overflowing love
shoving shadows off the grid.
And there’s dancing, much dancing,
a muddled magic wafting,
and rhythm daring.
Staring through a window,
mouthing along to the words
of a Mountain Goats song
is a most appropriate thing to do.
So is smoking candle wax,
and so is being close to you.
-r. miller
Triple axioms grace the mantle
of my adolescent allegories,
and sometimes, a few stories up,
where in white washed rooms,
people offer up their obscure prayers
to an even more obscure deity
with scarlet eyes, storms erupt in chorus.
If the idea isn’t to bore us into
a drooling stupor, it feels an awful lot
like it could be. I still have
some psychic damage from the last time,
fuck you very much. Very soon,
some wayward pressure is going
to force its way through the windows
and make of a mockery
of my self-conceit.
Beats fabricating shadows,
if you know what I mean.
-r. miller
I named this song “A Song of Praise.”
So now the land swells agonizingly
into a pulpy mass. I’ve made a mess.
Undressed the silence. You,
I took in my mouth and you
filled my throat with other songs
that I couldn’t sing. So I instead
vomited a string of pearls
upon your unmade bed.
Globs of saliva in your worried hair.
Slimy silken milk
from the dissonant fountain
reigning over all this murk.
The crimson streets embossed
with the names of people who died.
Thus sink the sleeping creepers
of our vanity. Mirrors for all.
I wanted to be a mirror once.
I wanted to drag along bundles
of blunders by my heels.
The real tragedy mounts.
Mountains of fog.
And grievous wounds artfully placed.
Your face within the sewer gas.
-r. miller
With airy fingers, you open up
the bottle of light placed before you
and pour the contents
upon my archaic head,
not knowing that what I feel for you
is opening like an orchid
in the corridors of my body.
Something like an ache ensues,
but it’s mild, pleasant. Our wires
interlock in increasingly interesting ways.
These days are soap on glittering skin,
and the residue they leave behind
warms and nullifies even
the coldest of memories.
-r. miller 3/19/17
And just what was mentioned, exactly?
Cirrhosis is back in style,
this much I know. Shame on me
for lip-syncing my way through
the courtesy seminar.
And all the way to the packing district,
my teeth were in a twist.
Make a list of that, why don’t you?
-r. miller
Some other day in another way.
These thoughts of havoc we align.
Balance we on the precipice,
wringing withering hands.
Dawn commencing, livid.
-r. miller
