Muir’s Montage

Jack Miller

Description

The title Muir’s Montage is derived from the fact that when he read his poetry in coffee houses in the 60’s (especially @ the Thirsty Ear in Morristown NJ) he used the nom de plume Alexander Muir because Jack Miller seemed so commonplace.
The early poems were heavily influence by his drug & alcohol abuse. The later poems deal with the intricacies of relationships & lost & unrequited love. Although an agnostic he believes there is a power for good in the universe. When you try to do good you get help. Where that help comes from is open for debate.
Words are the “Arcanum Arcanum.” He believes there is a hidden dimension to words and word meanings and derivations hold many mysteries and in that occult dimension lies a mystical significance. Before the accelerating expansion of the universe was known it was believed that at some point the expansion would end and gravity (Sidera mordax) would cause the Cosmos to contract to its starting point in a “Big Crunch.”
Although the poetry is quite dark the author strives to remain optimistic. The central theme in the poetry is that of survival. You can only escape thepain of living by deadening the senses with drugs & alcohol and this only works for a relatively short time. Then you must face everything. There is no escape from yourself.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 12 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665568203
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Muir’s Montage
 
An exploration of the beauty of the mysterious
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jack Miller
 
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2022 Jack Miller. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  12/07/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6821-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6820-3 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914987
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Contents
Dedication
Pariah
Deja Vu
The Fountain of Amalese
The Shears of Atropos
“Old Angel Midnight”
Ate’
Rhea
The Alchemist
Egeria
Memory
Presque Vu
Lelia and the Demon
The Icarian Sea
Nacimiento De Vida
Varykino
Glorious Gamine
Heaven Bird
Scarcity
Codex Regius
Allerion
Salvation
Queen of the Gypsies
Torch Song
Alethia
The Iron Maiden
Crush Depth
Troglodyte
The Desert Dawgs
Sun Flower
Banshee
Black Pearl
Archimagus Rex
Lelia and the Angel
Nanu and the Ibbur
Flood
Master Jack
Rima
Café by Foujita
The Laughter of the Gods
Perdita
Sarcobatus Plain
Icarus
Captain
Bellerophon
Hypnerotomachia
Son of the Succubus
The Red Witch
A Gift from Sacha
Ghost Orchid
Swan Dance
Monster Maker
Beyond Infinity
Elvira Madigan
Tormenta
Cypher-God
Maudit
Master of Darkness
Vale Avis Caeruleus
The Prison of the Dead
Vagabond King
Ocean
Luyten b
The Third Interval
Evelyn Nesbit
Lyriad
Memory
À Jamais
Jamais Vu
The Laurel and The Thorn
About the Author
Dedication
This work is dedicated to my wife Donna, my best friend and most astute critic.

Pariah
Amid the concrete laughter, living on remembered things
The winter fly laments his sodden wings.
Amid miasmic smiles, blotting now from sight
He gazes forward, backward never left nor right.
Amid the pain of half remembered need
he sucks his pulsing wounds and smiles to see them bleed
Amid the searing, silver spinning pinwheel night
he swills the amber truth and sobs profound delight.
Amid the faceless desert, he grasps in either hand
his cherished singularity but clutches only sand.

Deja Vu
The sleeping odalisque uncurls
and speaks the Persian word for pearl.
A magic word that swiftly brings
a catalogue of joyful things;
Walnut shells containing rings;
A mourning dove that sweetly sings
The sea, the sand, the snowy slopes,
Magic reginbogo scopes.
The midnight broomstick, Winnie the Pooh
Heffalump me and Piglet you.
Golden whistle on a chain,
Green velvet, summer rain,
The sun through stained glass window pane,
Christmas trees and bubble gum
“The golden apples of the sun.”
“Tristram Shandy”, Herman Hesse
The lisping affirmation---“yesh.”
Weeping beech and dogwood trees
Tic-tac-toed upholstery,
China mice from Italy
Bright red hair, a bright red key,
Above the world the stars go by,
The light goes on though stars may die.
The world of Now holds nothing new,
Everything was deja vu.
For you touched all and all touched you.

The Fountain of Amalese
The arid fountain, theatre in the round, circle in the square
ringed with players, waiting for the play to start.
Guitar strings bind the rosary together.
Black cat stains his leopard hat and beats his strings apart.
Twister and her sister Tiger Rose, nursing bed sheet shrouded Omar.
Howling rhythmic benedictions from oblivion, until he’s kicked.
He bleeds for all
Sad seductive Chloris, 14 flowers in her hair, painted eyes & soiled thighs
Tugs at slipping stockings, rags of purple velvet for a pall.
The Cameo, sad marmoreal Madonna,
motes of music cover her with dust
and in her eyes an endless dusk,
seeking some serenity from midnight tokes of tea.
I watch them all
I watch them watch me watch them watch
And on and on to infinite inharmonious permutations,
distilled to silent shrieks of---
Touch me!

The Shears of Atropos
Led through laughter laden air
By nothing but the inclination of a summer hill
She runs.
And lets the warm green tendrils of the wind
Tease her body where they will.
Spinning spindrift swirls above the sea
And floats like crystal thistledown on air.
The ocean splathers quick green sheets to touch her toes
While sunlight sparkles rubies in her hair.
Down the umber corridors of autumn, wet with blood warm rain
Softly stirring tapestries of burnished gold and silver mist she moves
And having passed no trace remains.
Cold, the livid opalescence of the winter moon
Frozen through two hundred million fathoms of still sidereal seas
Revealing naked black and sinuous trees.
In which I stood unseen and watched her shadow pass across the stars.

“Old Angel Midnight”
A black berceuse is played on sinew strings
Candles gutter mourners mutter
While round about they wildly flutter
The atramental wings
Hookers pimps and hustlers bathed in neon light
Central Park Bryant Park the Circle in the Square
Decimated men lying there
Everything was holy and perfection in his sight
Alcina gripped his hungry heart
A dirge upon a virginal was played
Arpeggios of wantonness cascade
Within his body venom splits apart
A puritan a libertine
His actions were erratic
Guilt was metastatic
Love was sacred sex obscene
Kerouac went on the road
With Cassaday his manic muse
Who played his jazzy slap-dash blues
They laughed until the darkness glowed
Down roads of revelation delusions to depose
Absorbing Krupa, Shearing, Lester Young and “Bird”
Bennies, booze and spliffs and wild riffs of words
From deep subconscious caverns extracting raw bop prose
Lamprey-like his mother clings
Like rancid sebum love flows all around
While from the shadows emanates the sound
Of adumbrated wings
Soon he gathered round him the outcasts of the streets
Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, Cru and Lucien Carr
Meeting at their Mecca the seedy West End Bar
The “Angel Headed Hipster” reigned as King of Beats
Joyful, plaintive, raw, perceptive
Free of expectation or ambition
Free of ego, free of inhibition
He lived to write and wrote to live
Bacchic Buddhist, Dharma Bum
His words were full of cogency
Yet rife with inconsistency
His life was a conundrum
Enfolding visions in his mind
He wrote a hologram of words
Lovingly each book records
The tragicomic tale of humankind
Using intuition not volition or control
Writing of reality conception-less and pure
He was a saint, a rascal, a prophet, voyeur
He was “The Great Rememberer” truth his only goal
Villa Delirium, bad reviews, Mexico blues
Revisions, deletions, frustrations
Journalistic machinations
How easily delicate egos can bruise
Scourged by guilt he feels the lashes stings
A slap became a thunderclap
And soon there came the flapping
Of cyclopean wings
Tristessa, eyes like Lady Day
Dignified and doomed grisette
Heroin to quell regret
She left his heart in disarray
Her body with his body blends
Abstractions disappear
Shattering conceptions eliminating fear
A petal falls the whole world ends
Running to and from Camille
Skid row, the Cameo, the wino fellaheen
Skin pop bebop flop house scene
Seeking truth in something real
He wandered to a barren place
He walked Perdition’s border
Drew chaos out of order
Daring God to show his face
Bound to unreality to people places things
Shackled to Samsara’s wheel
Too alcohol benumbed to feel
Resignedly awaiting annihilating wings
A verbal exhibitionist he stripped his essence bare
His road had led to nowhere but spiritual malaise
To chasms of despondency and alcoholic haze
The prey of fools and psychic ghouls who came to feast and stare
Misinterpretation a curse that stature brings
Led many to excesses committed in his name
Seeking expiation he called and soon there came
Images of St. Gerard and death’s engulfing wings
The Desolation Angel has flown into the night
Comet-like his fire burns in lovers of the light
His spirit smashed and broken by orthodoxy’s load
But somewhere in some wild night Jack is on the road

Ate’
This vast mosaic maelstrom of my life,
this choking vortex with it’s myriad images of mind,
engulfs reality and fills the muffled mouth of truth with tears
and clouds my desperate eyes till blind.
Profaning her------transfusive fingers seek the sacred nameless fires
that I must give a name.
Enmeshed in this compulsive game
I garner nothing more than shame.
Aquarius, da