Tag: poetry community

What else can I say?

There’s nothing more
I can contribute.
I’ve dried up in the sullen air
of this forgetful valley.
I probably look like
I could use a decent feeding.
Archaic deities are busy kneading
my brain into shapes
I barely recognize,
and my eyes have decided
to try on a shade of red
for the 2:00 lull. Funny,
yesterday I felt so full
of whatever they call “feeling”
that I could barely lift my body
to its various projects.
Now, I’m merely one object
among the others,
a cohesive chunk of particles
slowly fusing to the floor.

-r. miller

11.27.17

On the surface, pills to gather,
a certain shade of mockery.
I plummet starving to wintry depths.
I in my might disclosing whims.

Whispers on the backtrack beat
sudden snow and polygons.
Delouse the forgeries
replete with best intentions
and the gullet bursts.

Sonatas, corpus, grafting.

My bothered blood lifting me…
Le sourire d’une saison morte.

-r. miller

11.24.17

What is it that looms beyond
these minutes, that ambiguous presence
whose splayed hand contains
the rain storms and metallic suns
of Decembers past? When
did I see you last? It might have been
in the corridors of a dream,
but I have no proof of this. Rather,
what I have is a sequence of colors
and their corresponding sounds.
This room, lit by the little miracle
of your once-being-here, a dull glow
steadily tapering into darkness.
I had some things I’d wanted to tell you.
Do they still matter? Surely
the fact that they persistently arise
in my gutted heart like frost
on leaves of grass counts for something.
Not much, I’d reckon, but
my own reckoning is of equal worth.
I’d like to look you in the eyes again.
I’d like the feel of your lips
against mine for the first time
and every time after.
I’d like for you to know definitively
that I’ve been thinking about you.

-r. miller

11.17.17

One more narrative thrust.
Certain kinds of trust
ramble along the mind’s interior
without any introduction,
doing their own thing,
singing careless hymns.
More often, I’m startled
by the grim face I always seem
to be wearing when
the angels come jostling.
Time for a new hustle.
Autumn wives rustle fingerprints
with slick and sinewy
motions of the spine.
Further down the line,
my memory begins
to anthologize itself
and gets real dickish about it.
Just once, I’d like to sleep
through my alarms.
My anxieties.
The feeding frenzy in my chest.

-r. miller

11.13.17

Distracted by the pangs,
not a moment in sight
to advance splinters.
Dawn fringes
astride the weight of the womb.
Jurisdiction matters in our life across the hall.
The wall reaches out to touch
where our faces have been,
and in a manner of speaking.
Nothing was my discovery.
It might be that description matters less than I credit it
and that these perspectives are but coarse strokes of brush
that manifest an unsteady portrait.
It’s true my eyes are water
and so too my fingers, thrumming
hard gloss of book
while energy degrades energy
beneath a beguiling moon.

-r. miller

11/10/17

I like the silhouettes
this uncertainty paints
across the floor. The
boring zest suffused
with shy contempt.
Translucent platoons of descriptors
come marching through
a door in my spinal column.
I’ve barely begun.

I am inured to the sun
and the grief
that lives inside of it,
and I shall dance,
in a somewhat
acceptable way.

This adventure is only a paragraph,
so you said, and
ran a hand across
my dreary scalp.
Then, we buttered up
the cobbled path
beneath our feet,
sliding wistfully
and wonderfully into crisis.

-r. miller

10/13/17

Forget the drizzle, the bits
of broken reverie
that land with a damp thud
upon the lap
of any given Sunday.
It isn’t like there’s
an obligation, or anything dire like that.
It isn’t like there’s
a green and gruesome torrent
of puerile fantasies
keen on devouring you
building within the clouds…

-r. miller

10/11/17

The carnival sequence
unrolls deliciously
before the sad eyes
of the boho squatters
who wanted only
to get a grip.

The varied pictures slip
in and out
of one another, too fast
for anyone to see
just what it is
that they depict.

I’m back with my pants down.
It’s the modern way,
and I’m nothing, I tell you,
nothing if not modern.
This will only get you
so far, however.

I’d be happy to elaborate,
maybe over drinks?
Of course, you’ll have
my searing sneer to contend with
and I wouldn’t wish that
on my bitterest friend.

-r. miller

9/20/17

a distinct aversion
to blank we in
absolving backlash
dismantled crux
absorbing the thoroughfare
for want must
needs impertinence
of gesture web
though altogether
signed off
on the negation
so it came by cutting
insofar as rut befits
the tender equipage
of what lust permits
in my palm the sighs

-r. miller