Bro Haiku

young brother life-long
self-same flow of blood and bliss
let mirth heal your mind

Slug South

The days end with reluctance
as May Memorials mark us
as citizens honoring our dead
those who died in the World Wars
or defending our Confederacy
we will not forget them
as the sluggish days turn hot
as the crickets the cicadas the frogs
fill our nights with sleeplessness
until we rise covered in sweat
go out and watch the early dawn
hear birds greet the first summer's day

How could we forget the summers
playing on the beach dripping
sandcastles of our imagination
as the ocean waves gave rhythm
to our blinding white thoughts
we loved the mud of the sand basins
we dug into the moats of our castles
we knew none of it would last
the change of tide while we dripped on
we had no idea what our parents
lounge chair slugs drinking beer    
thought of anything we did

Was it the heat heavy in the oaks
the songs of birds the barking dogs
chained in our dirt yards the feral cats
roaches and rats scratching our dreams
that made us slow as slugs in wet grass
those of us who saw the world were
dazzled by the vision of archetypes
the world's cities the wild Pacific crashing
against the blissed out cliffs of Big Sur
the vastness of canyons the Earth's exuberance
until we retreated on our return to our round 
shells of suspicion our mindless intransigence

Sumatra in Eclipse

Tomorrow totality crosses Sumatra
the solar eclipse descends in darkness
over the land a shadow of doom passing
in the blink of your eye questioning me
asking what has it to do with me in Michigan
awaiting my lover thinking of our love-making
doing it doggy style the details of sex eclipse
all other visions as you look at me an old stereo-
type talking about elections pollution greed
eclipsing the natural world corrupting society
you aren't listening because your thought drifts
to television the make believe president or
is it the show about life in England last century
rich with estates rooms glamour clothes dogs
where people are kind no matter their stations in life
entertainment eclipses reality makes my talk sound
distant unimportant like a total eclipse of the sun
on the other side of the Earth like starving refugees
like people being blown up in Syria wherever that is
don't dwell on unhappy thoughts of death and ash
your sad eyes tell me think instead of the delicious
dinner we shall have then the good night's sleep
that will follow as the night the day no less
certain but far more intimate than an eclipse in
the burning polluted skies of Sumatra

Jack 3-7-16

God is not a Tooth

God is not a tooth
uncrowned, unbroken
God is swallowing
process not stagnation
gender-less eating
neither biting nor bitten
a pearl of gathering wisdom
some call panentheism
a totality unsullied by schisms
neither Sunni nor Shia
Neither protestant nor Catholic
Neither Mahayana nor Theravada
Vishnu and Shiva fully embraced
Neither Jew nor Christian
Buddhist or Shinto
in God It's All Food
and we humans are but mite
monads flickering momentarily
maybe a sparkle in God's smile.

-Jameson

Lake Country Seed (final version)

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.
Later 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 the bed;
We fucked like animals.

Jack Miller, Nov. 2008

see the new version in 2012.

Haiku Equinox

Earth's wicked angle
spins September warmth and light
into dark cold night

Prick-Tease Territory

Guitar lead me by your hand
Deep into prick-tease territory
Gazing turquoise eyes no condom
For the evil eye pierce my psyche
With each strum of your strings
In tune as you reach to pluck
The red hot edge of my pulse

You beat the path of your song
Deep into prick-tease territory
Where you see me pointing
Toward you nodding head in time
Accepting your gaze of turquoise
Your hand touching me strumming
Our song of harmony of cumming


Jack 8-17-15

Elusion

The ideal forms elude me
no more could I give my words
the sonnet form of Will or John
than I could build the Pantheon
or take into my arms Antinous
as did Hadrian armed to command
Athens Rome Alexandria Agape

For it is summer's end and August
now is nothing like august Augustus
my debts no emperor's nonetheless
tie my hands making ever more distant
life on the Mediterranean ancient
excesses of bliss and Eros on a god's isle
where longing lapses into Sappho's smile

Outside my artificial cave rain storms thunder
tearing the drowning face of Antinous asunder


Jack 8-13-15

haiku cola

end of summer smile
shades made for the afterlife
fists pep pop tabletop

Rain

Have you ever watched the sky
turn into water watched it thicken
like a plot first mist then droplets
until wetness is all the reality
you know as the story of your life
confuses soddenness with nourishment
baptism with drowning as you recall
the pool beneath the waterfall where
once you sank in cold and damp death
almost as you grasped for nothing there
flailing about over your head gasping for air
filling your lungs with choking water
somehow gaining enough leverage to 
raise your head up into the waterfall
droplets having gathered into water walls
warm walls you might embrace but cold
you flee as if your life would wash away


Jack 2-1-15

Tidal Wave

Tidal Wave

Loving the sea I have always delighted in waves
washing over the shore washing my field of vision
in so far as light consists of waves
altering the land with night and day
as waves of seasons shift from heat waves
to cold waves as the bitterness of waves
of social change alters the politics
of inhabiting the Earth lying so
susceptible to waves of climate shift
waves of change that lull us into illusions
thinking revision will naturally go back
and forth all patterns dissolving returning
restoring peace joy prosperity love
for we think and feel life will get better
that waves of nausea waves of despair always
become waves of pleasure waves of joy
Only now the waves are dark plastic
trash-filled waves of political change
darkening as we who were confident
discover our delusion that democracy works
that good wins if we are spiritual enough
educated enough needy enough with waves of
desire strong enough
until with shock and horror
we realize increasing unrelenting waves
of greed cruelty ignorance will not be cleansed
by waves of sparkling enlightenment

Jack 11-14, revised 2-16

In a Cocoon of Egyptian Cotton

Wrapped in a cocoon of Egyptian cotton
Blue and golden patterned threads 
You bought for me on a side street
In Cairo I watch the clouds condense
Into a dark late afternoon knowing
It will not snow though there on Starr's
Mountain it will as we shiver 
This Eve of the Day of the Dead

A piano leads the orchestra through
Prokofiev's Third as I wrap the cover
Tighter smiling at the exuberance the elan 
As I recall every path through woods
Snow falling bleaching out the worldwide
Woes I have always crunched with joy
For the cold warms my soul and brings me
Relief from all-consuming nescience

Jack 10-31-14

presence (with interactive verb)

presence 

what are you to me but my perceptions
of you or what am I to you but yours of me
knowing yours of me would I recognize
recoil or embrace them would you embrace
mine or turn into perceptions of anger 
disappointment astonishment admonition
for not only are we only our perceptions
we are only this present nexus  
perceptions existing in a moment's encounter
disappearing in a differential re-emerging
in the integral of intensity of percipience
birth death passion emitting memories 
keen clairvoyance erupting cry as we
seek a lift a breeze a flash a powwow
to make your perception of me mine of you
blaze*

(Please replace the last word with your own verb of the moment.) 


Jack 9/22/14

What Need

What need do we have for poetry
Spew of words to retell passion
This person's love for that one
That person's bitter turning away
Poems of brook babble nattering nature 
Petted or tortured feline fluff canine
Howls vistas of forests mountains sea
Spread out to entice like a lover's legs
What need have we for any of it when
Knobs remotes and keystrokes fill our
Eyes with porn with Ebola with war
the sublimity of bombs blasting
Cities of blood-stained streets wounded
Babies crying the sublimity of oceans of
Unrotting trash engulfing seas decimating
Whales dolphins once swimming in poesy
Why write anything at all when before
Our very eyes the glaciers melt calve
Storms burst with bolts hail and winds
Forests blaze homes go up in a rage of fire
When rooftops blow away when
Devastation for which there are no
Words comes to us live 
Full of screams

Jack 8-18-14

Dad

Here it is Father's Day
As you shuffle to the Dollar Store

What must I give you in thanks
For all the disharmony of our lives

Now that you have no outlook
No die-hard military reaction

Now that you can't deplore my
Left-wing marijuana vision

Now that you are my fears
Loneliness disdain senility 

What can I  give you but words  
Thoughts that upset you decades

You frown at me from my iPad 
You decry my beard not knowing

Your own unshaven face mocks what
You tried to achieve that fantasy

That you love and are loved in return

Jack 6-14-14

Almost There

Almost There

Death eyes us in the storm
On Alligator Alley 
Rain washes us toward the
Gutter edge of our graves
You steer us side-road down to
Deco indulgence in South-Beach

We fill our guts with
Croque-Madame and crepes
Beer wine warm camaraderie
Fervent friends from Frankfurt 
In Venice you sing your sad song 'til 
Your detractors spill their tears

We shall forget it won't we
Your slipping into bed beside me 
Two dreamers adrift under the
Comforter and your playing guitar 
Next door to the wedding house
Secret tokes up-deck drunk on sea air
In waves over dazzling midnight sand

What we remember most the marble  
Patterned fine tile warm water shower
Touching kissing watching the attraction 
You want to wash me with your penis
You say and our intimacy shifts from the
Nakedness of bodies to our laid bare minds
As you give me an orgasm of solitude


Jack 6-11-14

What It Is

What is it she asked
young girl on an Acid Trip
WHAT is IT
is it Sigmund Freud's half smile
through his magisterial beard
nonetheless chomping on his
big cigar does it all come down
at last to sex are we
mice in a maze cheese  down
the path ignored because
we are pushing the button
that stimulates our hypothalamus
until we die from hunger
is that it


Is war just sexual frustration
all that killing and usurping
nothing more than the desire
to fuck and be fucked
are we cock blocked is that it
our guns cocked ready to shoot
and the world population
that is all about the fucking
right and world hunger
we eat to fuck and suck and
get the cum out
is that it

or maybe it is art
we live to create music
poetry paintings videos
film architecture the Pyramids
and the Sphinx they are not
just cock blocked cunt sphincter
deferred products of frustration
they are expressions of our spirit
as we push up our endeavors
up the hill of creation
that is it

Or is it
our moments of rapture
our love our awareness of
beauty of truth of goodness
of gods is not that it
wisdom emerging from our years
of fucking and fucking around
allowing us perspective
making us see and feel
ecstasy fuck is not that it
being high and sharing a pipe
or dropping acid together
that is it
isn't it?

Jack 5-24-24

Belle Isle by James Land Jones

Belle Isle

---

Late spring and night. Rain-scented air
Surrounds us like a presence. Ahead,
Past threaded rivers, Belle Isle waits.
Beyond, St. Catherine's Sound unreels, a bolt
Of crumpled purple-silver, into the far horizon.


For months we've said we'll boat out to Belle Isle.
Now lightning plays about us in the shuttered trees.
Transparent knives of moonlight sculpt your face
Between my hands. Your eyes, grown deeper blue,
Compel my lips as birds are drawn to air.


I wait, a silk banner to be filled by you.
Give body to my body through your body.
Turn my empty cloth into a sail.
So fitted, voyager, what is Belle Isle to me?
I would explore the rivers of you all my life. 

Written "For Jack--14 Sept 1984--with love."

May

May
Be that you are
Me armed against me
In my arms this
Night springing with
The fountain of you
My budding love

Maybe
You hold me
Knowing the new
Shoots of ourselves
Entwined will turn pair blossom
Sweet-bitter fragrance
Of May

Advancing Years

The blessings of old age are mine
You've got your health you say to me
You can walk through the high meadow
You can enjoy the fruits of your labors
Drink the finest wine puff the Peace pipe
See the world in all its splendid variety
Reminisce your rich life of accomplishment

You cannot know my Love how such blessings
Are curses for my health is my undoing
The source of my lust my longing my desire
Once again to fuck in the high meadow
To roll my flesh with another's flesh not
Merely to sate but to be desired wanted
To have my Lover tremble at my touch

What is the world's splendid variety to me
Beauty encompassing me returning my stare
With one of kindness mistakenly assuming I
Am sweet generous someone's saintly granddad
A philanthropist not a philanderer someone whose
Memories ought to be preserved for posterity
As I am fantasizing the sweetness of your posterior

How we are herded into this false integrity 
This jail of  distinguishability  propped up as
Revered when all we are is reviled our bodies
Reminders of mortality the very thought of our
Nudity disgusting the young Hell disgusting our
Selves nothing of the weathered twisted juniper
On the cliff standing in sublime loved resplendence

The truest blessing of old age is that it will end
The body and mind will fail  as we own oblivion

Jack