Joseph V. Milford

Poetry

 

 

The Most Important Thing in the World

 

is driving around without jumper cables.

it might die, might lose itself.

among reeds, whipporwhhills, batteries,

it pulses with purity; it could power a house.

if family knew how to speak honestly,

the most important thing in the world, despite

our nightmares is carried by a cockroach to a crevice,

we wonder why we never said it. We never say

the most important thing in the world

to the most important person in the world

sitting there lying there hurting there

working there right next to us. Dying next to us like us.

 

 

Contrapposto

 

St. Sebastian came down off the tree

Pulling the arrows from his body

And breaking them over his knees.

Walking past his accusers and their archers

And the artists longing to paint and sculpt

His torso, his youthful sacrifice, and he

Walked across the plague-ridden Europa

A broken shaft in his hand dripping blood relics.

 

 

Anthropic Principles

 

Disturb this universe

Make slants and sways

 

Perturb the influx

Bray at the factotum

 

Invade the multiplex

Be the one the only one

 

Incredible the prawn

Out of water you are

 

Inscribe encircular the tome

That is a novel and also a poem

 

A poem skips time

A novel maps it

 

Endure this parade and motorcade

Take a moment with a salad in the shade

 

Of the next monument

That the last monument

 

Equipped you to interpret

Let light break upon your brow

 

As the first wave or particle

To pull into the bay

 

that vessel you knew always

that sigh from cosmos, clanging Logos

 

 

Ibex hunt

 

Getting there is the hard part

Like splintered glint on a flying

Fish scale near the platinum band

On a wedding finger you know

When you are ensorcelled by it

When the vibrations in you reverb

And recoil like the bronze strings

Of an acoustic played like a percussion

Instrument is what you are and when

You are there you are being played

By it and sometimes it comes across

Like a halo around a planet or a comet

Of a vocal in a vacant lot or you

Are there in the ore of it a lot so you

Glisten and glitter radiating half-lives

Of it which penetrate all about you

Because you sink your teeth into it

There and find a way of saying it

A tongue to satisfy the urge and purge

When trying something new

And the dart hits the target you try

To remember that niche, that sweet spot

In the clutch, that zone, that new notch.

I was watching a nature special

About lions when I wrote this and most

Think that the males are majestic yet

They lounge around 16 hours a day

And the lionesses hunt the food.

They aren’t that fast, relative to a wildebeest,

Ibex, or antelope. And when they drag the prey

Home the male bullies them out of prime cuts.

Usually, they only catch the sick, the old,

The young, or the injured—the slow.

But they glimpse the fleet herd as the adrenaline

Pumps through their musculature propulsion

And then they kill what they can, the blood

In the dirt and dust of the safari plain.

That’s it. That’s there. You see the beauty

of the running and feel the power

in your loins and the explosions

The eternal herd rides on beyond the horde of stars.

We chase as well through our crude vehicles.

But you get the sick, old, young, feeble.

That’s the best one can pin down to the page.

The best if one is able, yet whether claw,

Talon, beak, or pen, you have seen it.

Been there in hot pursuit of the aesthetic.

Your prey the very universe around you

That you can perceive and in voice find value.

 

 

Post-Colonial

 

I was born of royalty in a dark bloodline.

I was marked by a cruel insignia.

I was educated in the study of the flora and fauna, Tarot.

The beast called man the great encyclopedia.

I traveled to lands unknown to my blueblood heraldry.  Self-exiled, wanton.

I met her in an absinthe haze under flying machines.  Nothing would be the same. 

I squandered my birthright to give her a worthless name.

We became one in red and black, tendrils twined, a new coat of arms.

She kissed away my fleur de lis.

Then we parted—I will speak no more of it.  I found myself in a savage country.

I traveled further south from this western hell to another hemisphere.  

I found medicines and dark pleasures.  Giant centipedes,

secrets whispered, blowguns, tribal brethren.

Deep in that jungle, I found a lost civilization.

I taught them of sailing.  My greatest crime and blessing.

I was buried under heavy stones, loved until my last hour.

I gave them the power of the ocean.  They freed me from my fathers.

 

 

 

At Wit’s End

 

Cobweb-ridden and at workstation

Would rather give plasma to strangers

Have no idea when the grindstone dusts

The beaches of this life I keep pounding

Star-weary and worn fat I feel leather

Of my heart gasp like a dirty curtain

I need a cleansing but paisley shops

Of cholesterol swim my veins with agenda

Once splendor spread itself like a warm

Vagina before me but now teeth teem

In the headlights and the forests all shoot

Machine guns from their pine needles

I am in a red wagon sliding down a lava-spume

Grab my hand and whisper safety to me

As you play a guitar solo and the gods eat curry

Pull me from the spiral even if it ribbons me

I am tired, seriously—I am tired of life’s road-rage

Mentality—begone beautiful sexy demons

Clothe yourselves with sanity and itineraries

Let me find a pillow under my wounded ear

A cool pillow that whispers sweet everythings

As I sleep in a jungle or museum holding sooth

 

 

Joseph V. Milford is the author of the poetry collections CRACKED ALTIMETER (BlazeVox Press) and TATTERED SCROLLS AND POSTULATES, VOL I. (Backlash Press). He is an English professor and Creative Writing instructor living south of Atlanta, Georgia. He also edits the online poetry thread, RASPUTIN, A POETRY THREAD.