Ben Miller
Moon and Muse
Lightless sun negative bleaching
A barren window horizon These are ghost towns in the attics Dark windows onto winter beaches Migratory flights from skeletal fears Dancing on waters that turn from warming icecaps Stygian breakaways too worn welcome paths Where is the moon and where is the muse Moon stabbing all silver light away In lack of light deserts are screaming For want of words which carried meaning Across all bridges of desire Ego Theater in Rose Light
I can fight for a thousand years in
Long chains of resistance spurring betrayal Climbing downward into burrows Which are mazes in reverse Leading only to rusted gateways That I paint into gleaming towers On the dimmed horizons that I care to paint To deliver myself from elements and isotopes That isn’t for me to worry That isn’t for me to sing That isn’t for me to carry after all There is no faith in shimmering things In those diamonds of the mind Plucked from a hollow ball of earth I built from faulted hands Dug into mountains Delivering no transfiguration Save for a strange alchemy of ego Burrows upon burrows again Tracing tendrils toward each other A race to the end that is no end I can fight for a thousand years Without reaching home So take me now and carry What needs to be carried And I will let go Holding only that which cannot be defined Or even spoken in words falling ground-ward But only offered on words of silence Grace II Grace bestowed is an open window grace ignored Faith splintered on ignorance and time No immortality for man alone |
Lightless sun negative bleaching A barren window horizon Self-emptying into pools too shallow Without the moon to feed it and to be fed Moon and muse in reflective dance Surface always going deeper There are none outside the circle Only ones that haven’t dared the dream Remember the dream is a memory
Ideas are pillars of fortified sand drifting Used to prop our empires Of mind and sold on land And staged in plays of a self Which dances before my eyes and displays Finery of nuance that bespeaks Something grand But it’s only me crowing to myself And refusing to linger In Grace bestowed Which I twisted and transformed in Shades of deconstruction posing As dances way into Grace ignored III The Rose sings without end In places soft and wise The Rose sings in sleeping dawns Which never awake in the ego spinning mind The Rose twines on the edges of fabric And the page we dance upon And the difference between me and that Mystical Rose Is that She listens While I speak Her heart is open and immaculate And mine is crushed when When my empire inside it falls IV Carry me open me break me on the wood Set my feet marching and my mouth finally silent In those places of knowing I’ve only dreamt about Where my proscenium mind has danced and sung |
Lion Roars but Silent
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Lion roars but silent as a dark cat in ever darker sleeping shadows
Under a sky which dares to hum blue birdsong in erupting daylight We are this crawling to the day and pretend we do not want to be Hear the roar and leave the hum in a darker night bonfire turning Still Giving each moment the dream of the fire And crowning the realization Go to run from the lion in her dream veiled sleep But the lion is the night filled with hungry low keening desperate animal sounds And she surrounds us still in light through hum blue day A beating in heart in time to the roar Hands turning to claws at the sound and scraping at covered tables Beats on the grass and the burnt ground of the savanna road Distinction loses focus as the ground becomes hot We scream back at the roar to silence it quiet it within ourselves And where did you go they wonder After the screaming stopped After the heavy steps across the ground Became quiet Did you acquiesce into the night call roar Did you slip into that animal state Whatever happened to the man before the lion Unanswered questions pile like kindling Before the bonfire turning that pretends to hold off the night And silence the lion beast roar We scream back at the roar to silence it quiet it within ourselves And we run from the lion in her chase across the stone burning canyons Scream dies as roar overtakes then the scream becomes the roar What we’re hiding in the day pretend for night costume ball on the sands What did our feeble screams hope to conceal Did we slip into that lion dream state put the lion before the man Dreams of something raw and hot in place of tied and bound Sinking into the roar most velvet of cushions opulent in giving fire Man before lion not lion before man loses meaning In a roar that climbs circles likes notes over savanna sky Distinction ceases to matter as the roar becomes the song And the song becomes a whisper in the roar of we cat in daylight darker shadows |