Catch

The voices rise in tandem,
the voice of dark and the voice of undark,
the voice of dust and the voice of snow,
the voice of rust and of bone.

Could we catch them as they rise,
these voices? Catch them unawares
and contain them in the cage
our fingers make as they interlace?

Surely they would slip
so easily through such brittle bars,
rising and drifting as they do
in the broken blue of twilight,

their song, a distant song, a song
of memory that begs us to forget
the petty narratives, grand minutiae
whose meat no longer satisfies.

Just Wow

This gives the word
“photogenic”
an entirely new
meaning.

The moon
preening
in smudged sky,
flakes of dry
leaves dusting
the paths to an
agreeable elsewhere.

These droplets,
symbols,
melt on our tongue,
before
by ghost or
by guess
we’re flung
into epiphany
and smothered.

-r. miller

I Love You, Show Me

I love you, show me
your weapon, she said, lusciously
he said through his eyes
delighted in weakening
the repressive filler
the depressive filtering-
out of over-verdurous sense
the sequence making it now
the skin to skin shuffle
urging all to completion

-r. miller

Forest

At last we lock the forest.
Its chitinous chatter,
its verdurous verve,
put away for the night
beyond memory’s rough touch.

Yet children’s refrains  
remain anchored to the surface.
A surface I swore to scrub
clean of all contamination,
exaltations, wanton filigree.

My work is never through, I said,
bowing my encumbered head,
bowing low and bowing long.
And the forest, foregone fiction,
locked deep in song.

-r. miller

What’s in a Poem?

Pay no attention
to the man behind the misery.
He isn’t all that much to sneeze at,
which for one who appreciates a goodly sneeze,
is as pure a tragedy as has ever been penned.

Good. Now that we’ve lain some foundations,
can we, what’s the phrase,
“take the edge off?”
I’ll have to consult my personal oracle on that,
but I’ll get back to you in a few stanzas.
Actually, disregard the previous statement,
and once you’ve seen to that,
you may disregard this one as well.

You can, in fact,
disregard any of this
at your leisure and your pleasure.
But first, I’m gonna need some help
with these word-devouring titans
who should have been in bed by now.
They look so cringe in this poor light, you know?
Such sloppy eaters.
All that putrid meaning
piling up in the corners of their mouths…

-r. miller

By Extension

Here you are,
and by extension, me.

Radiantly armed

with a fresh surplus
of harlequin skin, ripe

for digestion.

And the question,
of how to outwit customs
and escape, sinews
still savory,
into the hot
glistening wilderness; how
shall we answer?  

Tenderness is key
(isn’t it usually?)

Only with a distance
sufficient enough
that it can no longer
touch you,
and by extension, me.

Smiles and similes
drool as one
in anticipation of
new assignments,

and who are we to agree?

Minor irritations
on the eyes of the wilderness,

the red itch

that causes blood
vessels to burst
and overflow her
restless gaze.

-r. miller

Lesson

The windy-eyed girl
has a lesson she’d like to impart.

But whenever she opens her mouth,
it isn’t words which come tumbling out,
but flabbergasted crows.

She’ll have to speak
through her fingers, I reckon,
though they haven’t much meat…

-r. miller

A New We

Shape up and shape on
for so is declared
remix season.
Way out of reason.
Shimmies and slips
as they each define
an aspect upon which
hinges a new we,
rather utmost but
mid-dangle.

Somewhere and some why,
beset the sewage angels
in living petrichor,
most able ruse,
ruminating on ruination.
At war clasping cold.

Be on the stutters,
swarm of details,
o eaters of the wage.
This be a blanched stumbling.
Rage omitted from rush.
Note the time stamps.

-r. miller

Salutations

I’d been thinking over all the ways to greet you.
Sadly, more urgent duties prevailed. Breaking
in new skin, for instance, to see us through
more difficult days. Storm conditions

accumulate at a solemn tempo
not-so-distantly, and me, wishing only to
acclimate, to be a part of them, too,
though by now, I’ve become a touch
balkanized, warring territories
laying claim to the same body. An event
so long in the making that the making
is almost all that I know about.

Out of all the ways to greet you, this
is certainly one example.

-r. miller