What'd I Do?

What'd I Do? 

Editors don't want experiment.
"What'd I do," comes my mother's voice,
What did I do?
Keep it mainstream; rhyme is OK.
Say it clearly.

Ring. Hello.
Mom is in the hospital. 
Pneumonia.
The way you handle time is crucial.
Time passes. Mom heals. Then,
Ring. Mom is in the ICU. She fell.
In the hospital?
An attendant dropped her.
Broke her hip.
She was to leave tomorrow. 
Now they have to operate.

Drive. Drive. The endless empty road to
Savannah.
The way you handle space and spacing... crucial.
From the ICU,
"Another day in paradise."
First words Mom says as they remove the breathing tube.
"What'd I do?"
Each day, every day, the same sentences.
Then, "Sue the fuckers."
Avoid obscenity if you want to publish. 
Good, rich diction.

We return home.
Mom stays in the hospital
A week
Until they haul her to a nursing home,
Hip not healed, yelling obscenities, 
Wanting  home.
Keep it short and sweet.
Ring.
Mom is dead.
What? Dead. Friday.
Cardiac
Arrest.

--Jack, December '08

Tonight, bright and white
As madness, the Moon
Makes bones of the trees,
Opens my wounds
Like a laser.

Tonight, clear and sublime
as ice, the light
Pierces through the night
To expose my heart
And all its broken memories.

Jameson

Pears

Pears

When you appear in my memories,
What I see first is your face,
Your frown, as if you tasted something foul.
Instead, I alter the view,
Recall your breasts, welcoming,
Gentle, round and perfect like pears.

My face goes to your breasts, to embrace
You there. To smile the reverse of yours,
A smile of delicious comfort that for a moment
Dispels your loneliness and your sorrow.
Was your sadness there from your time before us
Or was it from the life we did not beget?

When I conjure your face, that regret
Comes too. You will never admit, I know,
But that loss we shared is set
Against a love our bodies felt,
And that our minds never could.

Jack

Thirty

Becoming Thirty

We were thirty miles from Tulsa
Behind us the West stretched
Back in memory to San Francisco
And Yosemite

As we sped over Oklahoma
The hitcher we gave a ride drove
He joined us at Half Dome crossing 
Utah with us and Colorado and Kansas

Today I reached thirty
You gave me your present your hand
The summer night was warm
Warm as the flow of my pleasure

The intimacy you gave me
Shared with the young stranger beside us
May have been less than in our tent
On the heights of Parry Peak

But it was no less astounding an act of love high
And clear as the stars the night I turned thirty


-Jack

Mocking Bird

Descartes, doubting, could never know
Beyond my open window
If the singing bird is dream
Or real.

Descartes, to believe, required God
To guarantee not trick, not evil,
But reason to make the birdsong
To exist.

Neither reason, nor God dispel my doubt,
My solipsism. It is pure joy, not logic,
Assuring me this mocking bird
Sings.

--Jack

Photo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Northern_Mockingbird_USA.jpg

My Brother's Birthday

This morning, filled with sunlight,
Is as cold as blue Czech crystal
Off which the sun sparkles.
Cold, too, where my brother,
His daughter and our father play,
Chucky Cheese in Savannah.
As I write to my friend in England,
Playing Gloucester in Lear at the
Globe,
Space and time curve inward
Upon themselves.
Sunlight arcs across our
Curtains.

--Jameson

Poems Revisited

Solstice on the Half-shell This winter we'll have summer The unkind cold will slip away Beneath us As we sleep high over the Equator We shall know tango We shall dance below the Perito Moreno Glacier Near the strait that saved Magellan for one more Ocean We'll play in Llao Llao land Beside the blue blue lake of The Andes And sip rich, red Malbec From Mendoza Feast on Pampas-fed beef We'll stroll the streets of San Telmo and shed a tear for Evita The world my Love is our Cape Horn of Plenty Our Ushuaia Oyster. --Jack, on the eve of our trip to Argentina, Winter 2004 View from Llao Llao Argentina 2004 photo by Jack

Poems from the Past

Miter Man


What woe we feel.

Our Heirophant is dead.

Gone to Heaven--

We're sure, as we carry him

Down to the cellar. The Crypt.

Our Expositor, who so wisely

Told the youth of the world, (the one that goes 'round the Sun)

Told to those afraid of AIDS and billions of babies,

No condoms, please.

Or you'll burn in Hell.

No homosexual love, please.

Or... the flames.

How we mourn. Millions of us.

Rome is a sea of tears filled with wails

(echoing the wails of those the priests abused).

On every digital screen we see him,

Lying stiff on a platform. All dressed up.

Who, now, will tell our women to cleave to men?

Who will offer us compassion,

As we suffer the Cross like Jesus --

The Cross of Christian existence in a sad, secular, warring world?

Goodbye, Daddy Pope.

Rest assured,

No one can fill your empty Hat.



--Jack Miller on the funeral day of John Paul II



Poem written to a friend murdered in 1986:

22 Years On

This spring the azaleas are pink cotton
The red-tips are making a come-back
The feral cat keeps squirrels choking
In branches of dangling oak pollen.

Your bones lie still in the dirt of Tulsa
You would love this new Sarah Brightman
Song, I muse. How would we be
Now that New Age is old?

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Has become Live one day at a time.
War we thought gone thirty-four years ago
Is again: Mindless mayhem. Blood for oil.

Monarch butterflies flit just as ever
And the springtime birds are singing.

Jack Miller (spring, 2008)


Transition

Shall we move as smoothly as fingers, gliding in scented oil,
Down each others spine, from touch to words?
What idea shall we share, what repast
Eat, what warm stimulant sip, what game of words
Play, unless the letters we choose spell out
The intimacy of the substance spilled upon each other?
Our words cannot come only from the language of thought;
They must arise from the inmost tissue of desire, surrender.

When we look with peace upon each others face,
When our eyes enjoy the familiar glance,
we see the closed lids of our kiss--unspoken words given
Tongue to tongue. Our open eyes, in empathy, see still
The tension, strain, release and outpouring of our flesh.
We hear the words from our lips when we feel
Their touch and taste.

When we do sit side by side, at last, two old bodies
Porched in rocking chairs, our embraces, our nights
Clasped together from lust to childhood sleep,
Will rest upon us like the healing hands of Jesus
On foolish brows. Like our own hands in the morning shower
Cleansing away from each others flesh
The soil of the soul's solitude.

(For Dar, 1991) Jack Miller

Last Spring (My Corot)

Saturday, April 19, 2008

My Corot

Corot

(click)

My Corot

The small, green oil by Camille Corot is mine.

My farmland, my gossamer trees.

The horde herds to O'keeffe's oils: bright red, white, purple. dazzling.

One man, middle-aged, leads three women

To see, in gallery three, the long, silver slit.

Like a boy, seeing an aunt's tit,

The man covers his mouth and giggles.

He is unaware that all the rest of us envision

Georgia's flowers as vaginas.

---

Over the curves of the white museum

The moon glides its full self toward the scaffolding that lines

Peachtree Street, a street with no peach trees.

Loud jazz, a trumpet, follows me.

Myriad masses of society pass by-- "Broadway Boogie Woogie" by Mondrian.

Oh how Peachtree longs to be Manhattan. And fails.

Georgia was once my green Corot,

All native harmony and nature. quiet. No jazz.

---

My love looks for harmony and nature

On an island of lava, orchids, and ocean waves.

He is O'Keeffe in the hills of New Mexico

Whose lover remains in the East. In New York.

Still, the round, white moon is full for us both;

The night is O'Keeffe's purple-black Iris;

And gossamer clouds wash the moon with arriving rain.

Georgia O'Keeffe

(click)

Jack

Changing Color

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Colors of Change

Before me, dancing and shimmering, is change.

Tree limbs are swaying as a breeze scatters

Blue sky into white shards. Every single leaf

I see is changing, thousands of leaves,

Oak, Maple, Magnolia, Bartlett Pear,

Filling the sun speckled garden before me

Red, yellow, gold, orange, green, brown.

Each color is intense, as if

To emphasize the deepening color,

The darker, richer hue of the skin

Of our new leader, our new Commander--

The Decider who is deciding to

Offer a new garden soil

For the fallen acorns thumping

The rooftop like never before.

--Jameson, 11/5/'08

Recent Poems

Revised 5/3/12:
 
Lake Country Seed

When I was yet a student lad
First time visiting the Finger Lakes
I hung upside down
From the cabin's playground monkey bars
Naked
You said to me
"You looked like an animal."
You wouldn't have sex with me
That night our host
Offered me more
We unmade his bed
We fucked like animals


And from Spring, 2006:


Penetration


On one of our nights,
On one of our nights together
Alone
We probed deeper than before.
Physically, yes, that too.
What I mean, though, is into the psyche.
On the ocean of the subconscience,
We sailed together to Byzantium.
In one another's arms
Each had a revelation of the other's ecstasy.
The trumpet of our songs sounded,
felling the walls of our ego, our protection.
We kissed at the Dionysian door.
the Doors of our souls stood open
For Each
To feel and to enter,
Knowing each other asunder
As much aware
as those long-lasting, neverending
Loves of ours.

Jack Miller, May, 2006


Bahía de Banderas

Monarch butterflies scatter
In gusts of wind
Past my terrace balcony
Below which coffee colored men
More golden than the sand
Embrace on the strand
Waves roll and break as tropical clouds
Tower in the vastness of sky
Sheets of rain are curtains
Moving across the sea
Across the long arch of the bay
Coconut palms join in
Dance of sun and rain
A jungle of flowering trees
Jacaranda bougainvillea hibiscus
Color the steep hills
Now lit gold with sunlight
Now flooded in tropical downpour
Each day the same rhythm same
Intensity sensuality Iguanas
Living and dying as in a Huichol
Dream intoxicated aware asleep awake
On the Bay of Banderas

Jack, Puerto Vallarta
August, 2006



Kalani Song

By day the glistening palm fronds
Stroke the cobalt sky
Waves aquamarine wash
Lava-black jagged cliffs
Black crabs scurry sideways
Disappear
An avocado dangles from a limb
Like a leather green scrotum

By night Hawaiian hermaphrodite
Host sings joy
Up to the million milky stars
He deftly plucks his ukulele
As death defying hula
Saves our dancing guide

In our tree house a sea green lizard
Explores the white window sill
Could that really be the honk
Of the Nene Goose
As we sip our kava

Jack
Kalani, Hawaii, Dec. 2005