Property values virtue-less,
woe-laden chemical fixation,
coercive compensation,
and dictatorial models.
I peddle only what’s authorized.
Learning to live with life demonized
and kept under glass.
Can someone pretty please
pass the string of lingering bullets?
Care growth is a cobbled-together hulk
of differing flesh, enmeshed
within the fabric of future perfect tense.
Struggle this way, and no other.
Bite me, is what I should have said.
-r. miller
Something in the way
she moves me out of sight-mind.
It’s like perdition to my bottled heart.
A rumbling, existential fart
progresses through the stations
of the cross and into my nasal cavity.
That’s life or something.
Look it up, not down.
Admittedly, my psychological landscape
is a slum these days, so
it isn’t any wonder why
there’s rioting in the streets,
dumpsters ablaze, and shards of glass
scattered like rose petals
along the sidewalks.
TEDTalks can’t save us anymore.
My blood’s gone bad for a while.
It’s looking for a new role to fill.
-r. miller
I can take care of myself. Scratch that.
I’m not motivated enough. String me up
by my fingertips and encase me
in sunshine and barbed wire.
These are the kinds of dire straits
I regularly seek. I have a weak heartbeat,
pudding for a brain. A stain
upon the membrane of whatever it was
I once desired most. Was it love?
If you must give it a name,
make sure that name has aesthetic worth.
Make sure it has a warm place to sleep.
The pit of my stomach has deepened
to a disturbing degree, and sooner or later,
it’s going to be me who’s digested
in its depths. Now that’s what I call music.
-r. miller
I’d like to shake this continuum
down to the basics. Scanning
the windswept wilderness
for signs of struggle, my faculties
begin plotting a coup. I can no longer
elaborate why evil excites me like it does.
Let’s make things fun for a minute,
and disposable. Get cozy
with some unsavory types,
let our hair fall to the floor.
The burgeoning saga could use a bit more plot.
A lot can happen mid-tango, after all.
-r. miller
Kind babble flows freely
and functionally from mouths
once given to whispers.
Babysitters of the world unite.
And the pinnacle of human enterprise
grows moldy midday. Why I’m not surprised
should be a worrisome prospect, I think.
Yet as I recline here, gargling ink
and casting stones, I feel not
the wet caress of fear nor
the weight of love’s dumb entreaties
pressing me into its bog.
A day worthy of remembrance,
you could say. And only be half-correct.
-r. miller
Expect the ordinary, but vaguely.
The lesson spelled in vomit
is gradually taking up space.
Now I submit to the pace-
maker of the cosmos.
A show of good faith, let’s say.
This diet is driving me
to lesser extremes and my dreams
are naught but reruns.
So much for the fun part.
-r. miller
Given something to brag about,
and finally a rolling of eyes.
Well, let’s shake the temple
down to the foundations if we can.
Your hair is slightly out of place
in this particular Zeitgeist.
Sure enough, tension spits in the wind
out of purest boredom.
Bedroom lockdown! Like I was saying…
Fornicators of the world, undress.
How is it I only find solace
in the rusty fuselage of sleep?
That isn’t the half of it.
Mind the collisions, why don’t you?
And the abrasions whispering of ill tidings.
My once-a-month pride
has finally expired. Ride or die –
the stickiest of wickets.
-r. miller
Disrepair becomes you.
Lately, the diesel blooms
hanging on the midday air of truancy
have taken to biting me
a little at a time.
A little. At a time.
The time is negative, but positive vibes
are rushing in from the abandoned strip mall
to give us all what we deserve.
Exactly what that is will be revealed,
or else not. Stay tuned, I suppose.
I’ve sequestered a couple
of unnamed feelings to save them
from contamination at somewhat
my own expense.
All the better to appreciate
my slice of greasy heaven,
the seven-pointed star burning
the window glass. But in the end,
we all end up as pockmarks
on a dead god’s lips.
The sum of the someones
we’d hoped to become is always zero.
And the smoke lingers just a bit too long.
-r. miller
Moody warbles…
Sometimes they penetrate,
and others… The look
of irritation sweeps over her.
She minds her agenda.
I keep my secrets in a mini flask.
Night resuscitates almost completely,
envelops half-heartedly.
Holding fast to my means of comprehension…
Cohesion limiting… Her,
coolly frowning
as my escapades put me in the corner.
-r.miller
Let’s just say that the town
has reached its boiling point.
Let’s just say it and forget it,
the way we’re wont to.
Stars and forgery breathe down my neck
as consistently as breakfast.
I can’t be the only motherfucker
who’s pissed at the way life
unfolded its wheezing accordion
to lay a sputtering polka on us all.
The fall is where the heart is, right?
If not in the descent, then maybe
in the point of impact, but
them’s just semantics.
Part of me wants to say I’ve heard
all of this in a Pavement song.
At least the part of me
that still has standards.
*Insert Propaganda Here* 