Dog Bound

photo by Dar












Dog Bound

Filling the morning air
Dry raw barking of a
Dog bound confined
Alone sexless in its yard
Yelping with determination
Dementia
The noise of frustrated anxiety

The reverse of cock's crow
Bird song
Mindless joy in the morning air
Dog's complaint
Cacophony without restraint
Slave craving its master
Snapping at everything else

Such want and loneliness exists in
Dog's cry
Cough hacking up the pain of man.

--Jack 7/8/'09

San Miguel de Allende

Fountain, San Miguel
by Jack


You cannot know her
Enjoy our photographs
Were they Walker Evans
Avedon Ansel Adams
Paintings of Okeeffe Frida Kahlo
Marion Perlet
Who loves her
You cannot know San Miguel

Nor I who have walked her
Streets
Knowing her no better than
a woman I have fucked
Three times
Heard her history felt kisses
Embraces
The abundance of being inside her

San Miguel de Allende
Unattainable mystery still
Breath stirring my blood
Heart
Cock's crow to Scorpio


Jack Miller
Mexico
June '09

Second Wind

Drawing by Don Bachardy



Second Wind

Through the clouds accumulated
Over the past week
Well into my second flight
Wanderlust
As I gaze from my round window
The High Sierras below
Knowing I am in Mexico

Turmoil of a week of
Weak emotions since another
Journey to California
Overwhelming
Wanting to stay home
Resisting the predawn Taxi
Hating the air terminal herd

Foreboding
Feelings of an old man
Without heart for more
Gazing at desire filled youth
While reading of Picasso at 90
Creating art as a magician
Wand intact casting spells

Glad for Mexico
Where desire death life are
Real as Don Bachardy's nudes.


--Jack Miller
flight to Mexico, 6/17/'09

Floating

Pool at Kalani

My photo

Floating

Deeper than the passion of

Sex

Floating face up naked in a pool

Midnight

The pure black sky

Sparkling with a million stars


--Jack 5/29/'09

Amber

North Georgia Moon
(not Atlanta)
by Jack






Amber


The amber Moon struggles to rise
Through Atlanta's humid mists
Mists of auto exhaust fine particle
Emissions May musk fragrant
Putrid
The Moon Struggles in a sky with
Maybe three stars in a night
Overlit with the incandescence of
Thousands of glaring street lamps
Lighting the asphalt


The amber Moon goes
Yellow to almost white
Atlantans filled with fright
Lock their doors houses filled with
Light
Bright white light to protect
Atlantans taking pills to sleep
As the Moon courses through
Trees shadows threatening
Their lives




--Jack
May 9, '09

Shuck the short term

RAINCLOUDS Puerto Vallarta
By Jack




Shuck the short term

Shuck the short term memory
Recall instead chianti we sipped near
Volterra
As the thunder claps as
flashes of lightning sizzle the
Rain
The Beach at Puerto Vallarta
Appears
With walls of rain over the Pacific
Better to repeat the pleasures
We had
Than whatever it was happened yesterday.

--Jack 5/2/9

The Death of Naomi Vine

Ad Reinhardt
Abstract Painting, No. 34, 1964

Death of Naomi Vine


Like an Ad Reinhardt painting
Black comes the news that you
Died seven years ago
For seven years I had thought
You were choosing art
Had imagined you sitting
As in the painting of you
Nude surrounded by art
Being art
Imagined what museum you were enlivening
You younger than I
All your energy creative verve
Vanished
Into the spirituality of the paintings
You love
Black as the purity of night.

--Jack Miller
For Naomi Vine
4/30/2009

Image from the National Gallery of Art
http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?object=52391

Who's Facebook

Who's Facebook

We are being sucked
Down the net the internet
World wide web
News source meeting place
Sextronic intertwine
Reading messages massages
Longing for email that is not
Spam

McLuhan saw the face in a tetrad
Media mad where hot or cold
"Past times are pastimes"
Our nerves our nervous systems
Linked connected hooked neurons
Electrically excited into an ethernet
Like "The Lawnmower Man" lost in
Cyberspace

Whose face book photos jpegs
Videos word processed power
Point to our displacement
Our dispersal our discontent
As Shakespeare disappears
Into that nexus only browsers
Grasp in their paneless
Windows

Jack 4/18/'09

Lost Fear

Kara Walker 1991
from a video by
Jack







Lost Fear

Looking at your images baring all
How is it that yours was a life of
Naked fear
Seeing you dance
All confidence all self assurance
Abandonment to rhythm for us to see
How is it that you were in
Throes of anguish

Have you now
Undone that fear overcome what secret
Sorrows you endured
Seeing your vision of Southern
strife abuse pain surrender loss
Oppression
Have you healed yourself
With your art

Has fame been a confirmation a
Burden another source of fear
Will you emerge from the shadows
Or flee back into them
Will you find peace of mind
In the gray between of
Black and white
Transcending the past

-Jack
for Kara Walker
4/'09

April Thunder

April Thunder

Dark bruise clouds
Thunder tornado snow
All in the first week of
April

Pink and white
Scattered azaleas and dogwood
Green yellow sludge washed from
My red eyes

Over the hills of
Georgia

--Jameson 4/5/9

Below the sternum above the gut

Below the sternum above the gut

My pain is right here
Below the sternum
Above the gut
Dead center
A stab that keeps sharpening

Is it too much sugar
Coffee acid fat
Grease from pizza
Excess of packaged food
Gas

Or Is it you

--Jameson 4/3/'09

Sara

Sara

A smear of pink yellow purple
Garden in the rain
Makes it impossible to be
Awake and quiet
My mind full of memory
Sailing at dawn past Sicily
That summer


My aunt with her sly smile
Is eighty today
My distant family gathers
Like the ancient Roman senate
A forum of disconnection
As we sip wine and pretend
To enjoy chicken and fish

Marcie reminds me
The wind and rain erase it all
Except the image of my high buttoned
Grandmother standing in the garden
Sun on the azaleas
Her daughter Sara
Smiling like the Mona Lisa

--Jack 3/28/'09

Stimulus Package

Stimulus

In these days of winter lethargy
Economy falling like sleet
Shiny and cold
You offer us the warmth
Of your stimulus package
Diverting us from couch consciousness
Waking us up with your elan
Vital to our every interest
That big big package
Making us want to spend
More
With spring so close
We can feel it
Wanting the ecstasy again
Unlimited wealth unlimited credit
Surely those screaming children
Out on the merry-go-round
Spawn of exuberance
Past
Will take care of it all
One day
And we can feast now
Aroused by your stimulus

--Jack 2/'09

Somnia

Somnia

Every night
Sirens
Screaming fire emergency crime
I see Atlanta burning
I see gun shot wounds
I see the darkness
Before dawn

Each night
Sounds
Stopping sound sleep
Tinnitus
Inner sirens whistle
Ear and brain
Heart beat breath

Every night
Machines
Click on off on
Heat air condition
You in the adjoining room
Restless as I awake going
From computer to staircase out

One sound alone soothes
The train with rhythm and horn
Carries me away

Jack
2/'09

Knots

photo from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

Knots

Khipu colors harmony
Contrast the lackluster life of routine
Of nots
Of not a leader, not a nabob
Not rich not poor not flying
First class to Bariloche
Not Cuzco not Peru
Not young not famous not mother not father
So defined gives definition to this
Journeyman lover of one Inca
Poet thinker teacher seeking
Music rhythm passion epiphany
Weathered and eroding like Macchu Picchu
Wanting wisdom on a cold afternoon
Thinking of the rise and fall of cultures
So many knots unraveled
So many drops of blood secret secretions
In the aesthetics of khipu


Jack, 1/'09

Bouquet Obama

Bouquet Obama


What has it to do with me
What new flower will bloom in my garden
As this gathering of two million
As this multiracial leader
As this handsome bold man
As his regal glam wife
Walk the White House lawn

Will wealthy moguls no longer
Skim the cream from our milk
Will the mercury cease to infect fish
Will the air clear at long last over
The Grand Canyon
Between rich and poor black and white
Gay and str8


From my winter garden filled with eager buds
Comes hot desire for a full bouquet.


Jack Miller 1/21/09

Moon River

Moon River


Such a trite name for a song
The house I enjoyed that summer
By the river now called yes
Moon River
Who could have thought
Of such a vision a full moon rising over a river
A moon like tonight big round white
Obscured by a river of rain

We lived there that salt summer
Naked in the garden the postman
Scandalized we kissed too two men
On deck chairs facing the river bees buzzing
Johnny Mercer and his wife sweet as rain
Cto visit he tipping his Greek sailor cap
A memory in the winter rain

Moon River in the Marsh
Narrow at low tide I imagine
Allen Ginsberg
Sitting on the dock
Dilapidated dock and he before the moon
Buddha of the swamp grass beatitude
All the anguish of eight acres dispelled
Not quite dead despite the
Smell of marsh gas and
Cawing flapping crows...

--Jack, Jan. '09

House of the Poet

House of the Poet

Beyond the split rail of your balcony

Lie the Blood of Christ Mountains

Backdrop adobe peaks white as spirit

Rise before black clouds of snow

Storms to cool the passion of kisses

All the way from Peruvian Andes

By the mantle of your hot fire

In the gift giving room adorned

For Noel

What warmth can compare to

Fire inside when from each window

Snow and ice spiking downward

Lights your skin smooth and pure

As snow flickering with flame

Here in Hal Bynner's home

Jack Jameson 1/'09

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