Errol Miller: Two poems

The Middle Ages

Fiction, I think it was,

and midnight public ways clogged

with other travelers upon their way to

other times and other places, I heard

several voices for a drawn out long time, I heard

lonesome trains and deserted men and women on the road

to Nirvana and Star City, not ever San Francisco, I

heard the leader of the band permit out

a mighty scream before he fell

An somewhat advanced in life man came and said

that shortly the journey would begin and at no time end, I

turned slowly in the saddle and gazeed at myself:

persistent penetrating waves had formed a veil

I could not penetrate, on the contrary it was me, personified.

Then there was a doltish dry thud, like the House of Usher

falling into the disorder of a parched prairie.

Like Emily, I could not diocese to see, looking out

and looking in I cogitation I heard a mundane robin sing,

I contemplation I heard the sound of gunfire from the Civil War.

This is my foolishness I thought, bewildered,

the shallowness of man's bumble-bee demise.

And I followed the disease in my material part Westward

to another alluvial place looking without upon the sea, off

the obscure coast of Leucadia dark freighters rose and fell

in monotone, waiting, perhaps, for something, as far

as I could diocese there was no more land, like

God had abandoned his Master-Plan in favor of water

over all the earth, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason I lived and what I

labored for rather trivial in the ghastly

desolate twilight: the loveliest

of seasons had been mine, my flesh

filled with sad stories of last night and blood

recycl from Gettysburg shortly it would be suppertime

in Dixie, the extremity of a dusty millennium where

barns reduce to ashes and dogs bark and the moon

doesn't shine, those starry nights

with the haunting music of the Eagles just

a pleasant memory from the domestic storms of '72

and my wings rather weary from the bare-bones

story written this side of Chicago.

Only a Theory

Bless are the one-way ticket proprietors ...

--Joan Baez

Examples enough, we're

examples of humanoids

on their way to Somewhere, upon their way

to nights in Crosstown Bars & Grills, upon their way

to man's bumble-bee demise.

For not real much is known about

the workings of the heart, we have metropolitan homes

and advanced in years records by the Eagles and the Bee Gee's, we

have collector's editions of region houses

filled with longsuffering: poems

were made to explain sadness, the hero

summon to Memphis for burial and the heroine

counting the life insurance cash This

is where the fat earth laughs, this

is the the place the Iceman avoids, meandering

warps in time taking us back to historic

forks in the road where we

took the unfair one.

Inspiration, I think it is, that drives us on

a range with a view and boiled shrimp for supper

surrealistic pulpous stories of last night bobbing

up and down at first light: if at any time I

build another house it will be by dint of the sea,

relaxing in the twilight of a perennial sun

I faculty of perception a sense of place among

the white-oaks of Dixie, the havens of refuge

within a day's drive. Perhaps later,

in an ultra-pensive disposition I'll fly out to

San Diego to watch the night descend

O beautiful train we ride, through childhood,

past the clos arcades of Hemingway's novels, past

the wineshops of Fitzgerald's Asheville, past

Urbana's clos rolling-mill: Midwestern dying, it

is Midwestern dying stalking the heartland,

eccentric forces from the Other Side

come to extricate us from thunder and lightning

and domestic strife. Of course each of us

must write our hold prose, there

is a succession to it if you believe,

the material part deteriorating in the foyer

of a bentwood house that once

was clean well-lighted.

So we begin and extremity rushing

like a river to Doomsday, planting squash

and tomatoes for infamy, not appleseed, upon

the hill tonight another sensitive lady

will direct the eye into my window, she'll

see fates of clutter, lots of loving, a house

designed for summer living with several porches,

a tin cover a wood cookstove. All

the loving will be ending, all the sweet things

said and done: this is the promise of

the promise, thus it is written, fresh breezes

blowing in from the Bay, dogs barking,

the radio playing "Stardust" in

the little silence remaining.

Errol Miller's new chapbook is A Succession of Fine Lives from March road Press. Forthcoming is his collection, The Downtown Diner, from God's Bar Unplugg Pres He also has work forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The of recent origin Renaissance, and elsewhere.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated May 1996

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