Poetry: Selections From Tempest Miller

Autoenucleation

gorged my eyes

now they flop on my cheekbones

which are the headlands of my face

did it because my psycho sexual procession

was myself and the stir fry lust 

for rump and jawbone was driving me

driving me to canes and tearing away socks

one day your pretty jaws will be on my rock

in heathland cut from the rest of you

while you hold the ballroom’s attention 

and dance in a mirror because you lust for yourself

bow tie

she’s under a shade looking at God

reclining naked with a compact covering her prize

bleached in sun

hair black like all the family

my eyes melt with buttery pleasure

the cliffs and streets are white

the geometrical church against the mountain

it’s clock 

the graveyard is so tidy

I feel it so well, the church stones licked clean

whatever happened to Bristol beer outside a church door

the blueberries drip in the fields

sweating horses perspire

on green leaves

you sleep with everyone

in your green stockings

a seagull shits down my blazer in Bournemouth

whenever I wear leather

by the fireplace I stand

in a coat too long

which is my last item of clothes

and I lean with elbow quite angular

face less so

longing for the 1940s

Milk and Blood

Milk and blood
a face of snow and pork
marked by calm and quivering innocence
sheathed with a mask of rage
all morning he walks
walks through streets of commerce and tradesmen
goats horses mercantile
he knows not where he will end up
he has murderous fantasies of him
him
cut to farmland
the oily silver milk tank
the orchards spilling red fruit in
voluptuous towers
vodka-headed he is
in his memories
all has been done
all is fucking useless
aye
he remembers
blonde, fake
flat hair, blonde and then black as fuck
red mouth
fat stomach emerging from water
tongue in garbage cans
all with a certain
betrayal
he snaps awake under a tree
he is months removed now 

the memory is stone.

Bay Ski

waterskiing in the bay

through winter and summer

I see the yellow surfers every morn

I see the scrawny tired ones and the big ones standing with red on one cheek

who spit mammary gland seawater to the shore

people who came and go; New Year’s resolutions 

the water turns white, the sand is yellow

with the big eye cemented into the landscape opposite

the waterfront is wet, the pier is rotted wood

and the boatman tied up climb ladders and look stern

they say don’t get too big on yourself

when autumn falls, I walk down sea boulevards

kicking through leaves red purple

these curly sea streets with no one

one day it floods and is whipped by sea, whipped

and an American mermaid wraps around a fire hydrant 

red red

a fox getting tangled in a school goal net on a school field

the school ground hard in autumn 

the ground is hard here from frost

the mud stiffens

I take my boots off before I get to the ocean

I lather in cod oil, sun cream

I burn so easily, I have been a diamond suit in a game of Texas hold ‘em

a bad day produces in me the will to go back

all days are bad since you called it a day

I see you naked on your bed with a banjo hung behind

I see you with foot over foot on the beach under an umbrella

you didn’t want to maybe

I didn’t know what you wanted

but your buzz cut in the mirror was too much

I wanted to bite your lip

I wanted to bite your chest

and I go on the waterski drunk in the pitch black like Thompson on his bike

maybe it’s suicide

wanting to crash into a schooner

sink in a boating accident off Washington

the terror draining all the white from my face

the water frigid but the sky orange and inflamed with schizophrenic implosion

glug glug glug like a trout fish revived in heaven

brought back by Jesus’ hand because Jesus was a sailor

maybe it is but we don’t dare say that or think it

and every day I see the surfers again

the scrawny and the big

death standing behind them

me on the water

life a game of billiards

Tempest Miller is a writer from the UK. His work has appeared in Swamp Pink, Boats Against the Current, JAKE and elsewhere. He releases a monthly chapbook.