The Moody Historian
By Brett Clay Miller
Copyright 1997-2011 Brett Clay Miller
Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
Preface
CELEBRATING
TEXTURE
SEASONAL
REFLECTIVE DISORDER
GOD'S
PLAYGROUND
LIKEWISE
OCTOBER
DODGING
RAINDROPS
TRAIL
MAP
SILENT
PARTNER
A
QUESTION OF TIME
SANDIA
RURAL
PERSPECTIVE
HOME
ALONE
AN
END TO ALL EXPLETIVES
DRAWING
NYE
FRINGE
RUNNERS
PLEASE
REMOVE YOUR HANDS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS
GAG
REFLEX
PARTNERS
IN CRIME
UNLIKELY
COMPANIONS
NAMING
DAY
A
DAUGHTER'S SHARE
FOUR
MIDDLES MAKE A FIRST
THE
HAYHEAD PROPHECY
THE
TWENTY-SIX CENT SKETCHBOOK
SURVIVALIST'S
CREED
CEDAR
RIDGE REVISITED
EARS
AND SHOULDERS
ONE
FLESH
UNSPOKEN
WINGS
AND THUMBS
STOMPIN'
PETE AND MR. PETTY
WE
ONLY TALK WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING
COMMON
GROUND
THE
POLITICS OF LEAVING
SELLING
THE TRUTH
SEVEN
DAYS DOWN THE TRACKS
SOUL
SQUEAK
ENIGMA
DANCING
WITH ONE FOOT
CAT'S
EYE
MILE-HIGH
MOSS
GROWS FAT
RETREATING
FROM PLAID
PREPARING
TO JUNCT
VERSCOSITY
SABBATICAL
EXORCISING
LIBERTIES
IGNORING
THE RECIPE
About
the Author
What follows is a collection of poetic prose inspired (or inflicted) by the themes of nature, memory, writing, God, children, love, and the everyday logistics of living and breathing. It is abstract and frequently tongue-in-cheek, but easily digested. It is the code that allows me to speak freely.
Brett Clay Miller / Broomfield, CO / September, 2011
(CELEBRATING TEXTURE) This unexpected micro-adventure has awakened with September breath, sporting a glorious and somehow tactile azure that can no longer be constrained to the edges. In residence for not yet a week, it will surely understay its welcome. For the time, I relish its duality little differently than berries in my oatmeal.
(SEASONAL REFLECTIVE DISORDER) Today, we cross the line from gray to silver; from yellow to lemon. We play tag in the mist and accomplish variables. It is warm for the season, and our blood quickens at the thought of it. The wind is full of its own smell, simultaneously fickle and perfect; it sings in our lungs while autumn nips at our heels, and we thrill in the chase. Though our colors will pale in the final run, our golds will shine and coppers blush in a month of such Octobers.
(GOD'S PLAYGROUND) The first scouts of fall have arrived, flying gold and crimson pennants. As sure as if God has placed a pen in my hand and gently closed my fingers around it, I search for words that I haven’t used at this season seventeen times before, like friends you only invite to parties. These runners have no legs or motives of their own but move with the swiftness and beauty of the breath that carries them. They appear at random gatherings, throw themselves under cars, and spontaneously incite chaos. Most will leave without ceremony, and those that remain will quietly feed the next generation, so that children will continue to laugh and point, and adults will recall when once they laughed and pointed.
(LIKEWISE
OCTOBER) Morning finds the world with one eye open,
fixed on the kinder light of dawn. It is from this point that the day
knits itself together with threads of hope, excitement, and dread,
salvaged in equal spools from the discarded robes of the blackest
night, the resulting garment now gaily dyed and boldly arrayed.
Afternoon adopts an interim twinge that fills my lungs with
memories and dreams: of brashness the crimson of seven maples down;
of directions less hastily chosen. Sunlight beads on my skin, as if I
am saturated with the benevolence of May and not encumbered by
autumnal tendencies. While I concern myself with errands of motion,
planning archaeological digs for the ruins of my memory and yearning
for a thought even mildly provocative, God speaks colors in the sky
that my lips could never touch. During this private sojourn, I choose
and traverse a patch of emerald in an otherwise asphalt sea. It is in
this place that peace rediscovers me and curls up at my feet. I
witness mothers captivating their children with fantastic tales as I
root for small bits of public knowledge. When it is time to reverse
the trajectory, I seek out the same green and find that it not only
forgives, but also embraces my transgression with the grace and
beauty of its creator.
Evening is a fleeting but magical
study in smoked amber, wherein the very young and otherwise fortunate
are playfully burnished in the gaze of twilight. Youthful shouts and
barefoot opportunities resound in the distance as the day surrenders
to violet: almost sullen, as if petitioning for an alternate ending.
It becomes apparent that what the cicadas can only guess, the
crickets have always known. For a moment, the world slips away, the
clouds release the moon (swollen with its best orange), and I know my
place, like a pushpin knows Brazil, or the Galapagos. Tonight, we put
on a grin, and it fits like new cotton.
(DODGING RAINDROPS) A miniature spider blazes a trail through the hair on my arm, and I remove him with an easy breath, a study in nonchalance. As if to avenge my insolence, the wind picks up around me, and the clouds begin to boil. The afternoon folds over on itself to land and spits promises of a thorough dousing. The moment has no ready words, and I can imagine nothing more beautiful by virtue of its resistance. We move through these hours as we do a rainstorm: heads down; rushing; trying not to get wet. Even so, we are perplexed when the days become dry and move behind us. We can only hope to be doused like the muddy children we once were, splashing in the yard during tornado season, a time when smells belonged to those who wore them first.
(TRAIL MAP) What speaks to me that has no mouth is sure to have my ear. In this land of heavy walkers, when it is the trees that draw me, how am I to render the trees? It is infinitely easier to smile when I can breathe, and breath comes more readily when it is being taken from me in the heights, where time, if and when it is measured, is gauged in distance to and from the treeline.
(SILENT PARTNER) He only speaks when the wind blows; but, when he talks, his brothers and sisters across the region give song. Summer knows his voice most intimately and begs into the night for tale after tale. Winter finds him stark and barren, collecting his thoughts in relative silence. But today the sun shines, and the wheat grows. He is content to close his eyes, dig his toes into the soil, and. just. breathe.
(A QUESTION OF TIME) When these woods first began to breathe, the soil was something more than 'undeveloped'. This village knows and keeps its place, for ours is a cold that that cannot be painted, and the wind speaks most frankly at dusk. Twilight casts its eyes low, depicting runs of fallen gold that rustle in the hush, while hickoried smoke plays silent tag with our nostrils. It is only here that we all are children; caught in the thrill; out after dark. We inhale each other, run the bases, and learn of stories best told at arm's length. We take nothing but time and pictures; images that care little of what the years will say; of whether we will honor this place when faced with gray and barely breathing.
(SANDIA) The trees turn to glass and kiss the ground, hard. We cook pasta on gas stoves in the dark, abandon our homes in search of warmth, and gather wide-eyed in the theatre. We become trained to spot power company trucks, the drivers of which become overnight heroes. Ice rains loudly from the heights, and tree-bones bristle by the curb. We are habitually thick and fundamentally unchanged, but we begin to sense an underlying theme: what cannot rest on the bough of a pine without displacing the white breath of winter is of little use when all is ash and rubble that was formed by the hands of men.
(RURAL PERSPECTIVE) My awakening was painful, though not without beauty; a clumsy and protracted season of rusty-sharp detail recalled from a hands-and-knees vantage. Even still, my eyes are a bad habit, drawn by the parts instead of the prophesy. At times like these, the breeze is sudden and newly foreign. I pull it into my mouth when I stub my toe on his word. I test its agenda with a swollen tongue and taste familiarity in my forgetfulness. I know I am wrong and not wrong, such that my head aches from the bowing and the holding high. But I've learned about choices and the capacity to choose; about who's in charge (and that he's taller than me); that it must not be flying if your belly scrapes the gravel; that you can be brought to your knees, or you can kneel. Now, more than ever, I thank him for the long in longsuffering.
(HOME ALONE) An out-loud God lives inside me, but today he seems under his breath. I seek him with the heart of a boy, who sometimes hears the birds and finds them beautiful, and at other times ignores them completely; who loses interest when the one he is chasing takes flight. What better authority on human nature than the man who was also God? What better partner with whom to explore the bleeding edge than the God who was cut for man? We unwittingly seek his peace and adventure in places that will never know him. It's time to attribute the creation to the creator and move on in peace.
(AN END TO ALL EXPLETIVES) “I was up for days that night,” he says, reinforcing his stench with a fresh blanket of cigarette smoke. "Lovers stretched and stroked their hair and laughed about last Tuesday, while the natives delved in daresays, staging postural coups and ubiquitous upheavals in ink." He's referring to his uncle's wedding, or a festival on the beach, or some other celebration relevant only by its capacity for disaster and endangerment of random passers-by. Truth tumbles easily from his lips, self-annotating as it chooses a trajectory, parting flesh and all intentions with heat-seeking accuracy. Poised on the front end of a rare show of interest, he speaks the extra mile with his brow, erecting a spontaneous arch under which the world where such things occur may or may not change, and may or may not need to.
(DRAWING NYE) I wonder how she would feel to see her words next to his. A comparison would be unconscionable; still, she has made her way to my breakfast table.
(FRINGE RUNNERS) She must have forgotten her lips were moving when she invoked the label in my direction; of those whose decimals are early; whose plan is unpublished. Her words are seedlings in a plastic cup, sprouting in a preschool classroom on a rainy night.
(PLEASE REMOVE YOUR HANDS FROM MY NECK OF THE WOODS) The blur of this city and her people about me is a distortion I encourage. Her gifts come wrapped in dialogue, loosely tied with sentence fragments, given for little or no reason. But in a city so full of lights, why is it so hard to see? Because the generation has long died that would speak it to my mouth, will I turn a blind ear? Here in the clutch, the city breathes from the hip. Posture is a tool, and words can make it storm or shine. As such, I want the trail I lay on paper to be the path to your back door; something substantial that you can put a match to on Friday and still dress your wounds with on Sunday.
(GAG REFLEX) Will an urban, coffee-shop thirst proceed from this uninvited drought, or will a bolstered resolve lurch forward, embracing its underdog legacy in true hero fashion? Self-inflicted mega-doses of input have apparently smothered my output, reducing it to occasional drips. Words fail me; only his fill me. I am in desperate need of a drink, and it may well be that I need only swallow.
(PARTNERS IN CRIME) What can be done when songs best heard at dusk jump their cue, or, conversely, refuse to get out of bed? Mobility is the secret. When happenstance snippets become workaday stalkers, I quietly take them captive. We spend the day tallying firsts and naming things. By the time they are free to go, they've forgotten we were not always friends.
(UNLIKELY COMPANIONS) You already know that my words are not kittens, and, if they vibrate, it is not with a throaty purr; but neither are they always razor-sharp, or even melon-raw. Too often, the blade is nicked, bedecked with random shreds of flesh, the fruit too soft to be held. I am not discouraged. The stone that dulls my knife has the capacity to sharpen it, and hunger keeps me on the sniff. In short: theoretical edges are of little use; if I am to work, and thus to play, it will be with knives.
(NAMING DAY) It was a fat August afternoon, ninety degrees and unlike any other. It took thirty-plus hours to convince you to join us. You strained; you arched your neck; you were immediately a star. After, I stood outside by the newspaper box, wherein the facts and figures sat their nests like chocolates, waiting for a George and a Franklin to set them free. I sucked on a habit I would later give up, feeling suddenly and completely whole. Much later we would take you home in the big, blue wagon (it had good, cold air and one bum wheel) and wonder what next.
(A DAUGHTER'S SHARE) It’s difficult to get my head around this miracle; hands that once could scarcely open and close now change radio stations and write in cursive. This child is beautiful to me; she perfects herself as April in the eyes of the sun.
(FOUR MIDDLES MAKE A FIRST) Certain arrivals call for a few well-placed syllables, and yours is such an event; but God will have to line up the letters, as he did the stars on the night you were born, in order for me to come within a breath of describing the joy you bring with you. Welcome to the world, son. Remind me to tell you what comes after.
(THE HAYHEAD PROPHECY) Second to one, and third to the other, your easy laugh belies matters of sequence. You are everything I could not previously imagine. As you fumble and tumble and grunt and scratch your way toward manhood, I will be your stone, to use for stepping up or hiding under as needed. Simply put, I’m so glad you’re here. Four o’clock will never be the same now that I have known five.
(THE TWENTY-SIX CENT SKETCHBOOK) Memories, like postcards, seldom arrive intact. Somewhere in the postman’s bag, they silently incubate; warming to the idea of their eventual fame; concocting olfactory memorials; covertly lobbying for exaggerated or reduced significance. The solution, I think, is not to avoid the mail, but to open it more carefully.
(SURVIVALIST'S CREED) The touch of the sun has stripped me of reason and left me with its plural as recompense. The shape of the wind delivers a flurry of bad advice in strident half-whispers, urging me to pack a bag; but I seem to remember that night falls, and winter schemes, so I hold my breath for another day, telling myself that, though I smell yesterday, I need not become yesterday. Today may delight in drawing itself out, but a month of Wednesdays down the page, when unexpected memory-kites begin to flutter in the breeze, a martyr's grace will be achieved. I must remember that retrospect is a moody historian, who wears glasses only for reading and driving.
(CEDAR RIDGE REVISITED) I have forgotten more than I can chew, and what I remember is a mixed plate of greens, the bitter closer to tongue than the sweet; but it is with what remembers me that I must contend. I was once a boy who colored on his wall; then a man who colored on his skin; now a wretch relearning the feel of his skin. It’s been a few miles since the storm, but, without Jesus, I’m only inches from it. These many winks later, he tips his stockpile, delivering upon my sill the imprints of a much younger man: the smell of bubblegum from a freshly opened package of baseball cards; the mournful birdcall that once woke a lakeside child. Such songs cannot be unsung once they have found their voice. Still, in the end, as it was in the middle, our peace is only as real as the methods by which we seek it. In the end, though there is much yet to say, though the wind plucks from my hand what I would not give, it is good to be on this side of the fence.
(EARS AND SHOULDERS) I have little to say that the sand and the wind have not already spoken (though I wish you were here to speak it to). In your absence, I have become a sunflower, inclining myself toward a bright spot many miles away.
(ONE FLESH) The time has slipped by since the hour we said “yes”, a kite string in our hands; and like a kite on the wing, that day moves away from us, tethered by lengthening strands. Still I love you. I love you like a boy who wants to fly his kite loves a summer breeze, and for many of the same reasons. I promise to hang on to that string, whatever the season.
(UNSPOKEN) It was a cruel needle that drew her forehead together just so, fashioning a creased flag atop a singularly beautiful pole. She carries her blonde close to the nape and watches her food like a strange movie. A woman with a strong nose and a soft mouth, she sheds dreams from her eyes, and her hair dances with an undisguised penchant for the smell of sunlight. He knows himself as far as the door, but her perhaps only halfway. She is not his; still, he is tempted to bite as she tumbles from the tree like fruit in a rainstorm, parting the air with an economy glide, putting a name to her limbs and a face to his desire. They send each other looks like third class mail (slow and mostly unnoticed). Hers is the dusk on his lips, yet he lets it fall without a lick. He is too busy trying not to appear rehearsed; checking his watch; suddenly grateful for a face with no eyes to accuse him; thankful for hands that have no sex.
(WINGS AND THUMBS) As the crows begin to gather both up- and downtown, the working man begins his exodus, white-knuckled grip on the wheel; between the metal and the man simmers a tenuous accord. Their pecking order a mystery, the birds oblige and take their cue, perching in neat rows on the wires and shifting in time to private rhythms. Many years of watching have taught them well: trees give shade, but men cast shadows.
(STOMPIN' PETE AND MR. PETTY) The not-so-stranger interrupts our urban face-off, pushing through in all his garish clamor. He dispenses news of characters we can barely imagine, and we secretly admire the art of the dare before turning back on ourselves, shaking off momentary notions of otherwise, snubbing what-ifs like a one-night stand.
(WE ONLY TALK WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING) He’s behind the wheel when KXEW hits the air every Sunday at 7 p.m., painfully aware that free time, in truth, can be quite costly. At the market, he draws a straight bead to the aisle where his love waits, ignoring girls without glasses in the freezer section and oblivious of cashiers named Stacy with “1 years of service”. He is home within the hour with everything he needs, fed and asleep by the time the signal fades. How can someone that I've stared at for hours, whose intermittent calls have comforted me from a distance, become such a stranger? Having called the bluff between tasting and devouring, he can no longer spell the noises that escape him, and his arrivals are but prerequisite to departure. Today, he materialized again after lunch, perched atop the fence as per his custom. He is no longer concerned with attorneys, or neighbors, or developers with papers. Pressing past the silence in his eyes, I launch into the usual query. He is gone by the time I reach the question mark, and I must shift my hopes to the morrow.
(COMMON GROUND) Of the ground that I have walked, there is little in the middle and no shortage of irony. Thoughtful souls in quiet places nurture harmless little secrets and inhale with the living, while 60 dead in a Baghdad marketplace beg to differ, their severed limbs disputing that our world is in balance, with no hand long the upper.
(THE POLITICS OF LEAVING) The dead convene in orderly rows of curbside fashion, while he and she who put them to rest cannot for themselves do the same. Conducting low-down seminars on high-speed death games, they know their redemption and have not the energy for it. Praise the wayward soul who has the grace to pay the rent, hide the key and leave town.
(SELLING THE TRUTH) I had almost forgotten how it can be out here. Over by the graveyard, the rain lends Friday night it's clean. The pavement is an endless stage with uninspired lighting, and the audience does most of the acting. We've all searched for promises in the middle of the road; we had longer hair and less discretion, but we knew the value of a promise. Almost as many years later, though, we learn that the keeping is in the breaking.
(SEVEN DAYS DOWN THE TRACKS) I have often sought to raise a shelter by driving nails with my hands; by splitting wood with my head; somehow surprised when the wind brought it down. Today I am blessed with hammer and saw, and the wind holds aloft as much as it calls to the ground. We all have streets and yesterdays, but the nature of their sum gives me pause. Too often, my crises didn't turn the world as much as you away, and I am compelled to tread more gently. I was sick; not sick like death or cancer, but sick like a razor, forged in a likeness less itself. At some misleadingly random juncture, I stumbled upon the presence of mind to ask for a small glass of breath; to my great surprise, I inherited an entire lung. For this I freely admit that silent gestures in the dark nevertheless cast shadows, and some things are better left undead.
(SOUL SQUEAK) My personal videographer has developed a stutter and a habit for stranding himself at the altar of all that is sequential, linear and uninterrupted. His recent clips are imbued with an intermittent brooding not apparent in early films, manifested in the morbid bloating of certain unbidden moments, complete with melodramatic end-of-time voiceovers. The commentary gains urgency in the translation, and my steps are unintentionally hurried as I slip away.
(ENIGMA) We are a people who seek to be free of what we cherish most; who cherish most the thing from which we need to be freed. Who among us has not been driven into the fires of morning with makers of smoke at our heels? How many of us have called god that which takes from us our shadows, only to have them reinstated a day later and a shade darker? Have none of us embraced death that we would not die, only to be stranded somewhere between? In this manner, any man can be understood by what he steadfastly avoids.
(DANCING WITH ONE FOOT) Many things from my memory have fled, so to be sure of anything is sweetest by far. Now that I'm learning how to love and the best things to avoid, the mirror is a lesser foe, and I search only for sleep behind my eyes. A hint of spice in the air seems to suggest a dinner guest--someone to put me in need of convincing--but the heat of the moment will not keep me warm all winter. I will trade these little acts of saying for acts of saying little.
(CAT'S EYE) Today is a glittering cat's eye; the marble I once favored, even as it fled down the drain. This morning, though, it is nestled on my lawn; as if it had never been gone; as if I need only bend over and claim it. This is not to say that drains are no longer a problem, or that I no longer lose my grip; it is to say that I've come to grasp the value of a marble.
(MILE-HIGH) In the thick of the journey, my tires sang dutifully on the wet pavement, and mile markers accumulated in orderly green rows behind me. Now that I've arrived, the plan is to park in an obscure, multi-level garage and proceed to lose my claim ticket. I will work at this altitude in the candle shop with the owner's dog. I will stop in the bookstore on break and cheerfully spend the better share of my night's wages. I will chat in the shop with the smelling and the non-smelling types and walk home slowly after close. I will pass the hotel valets, the hot-and-cold eleventh-floor patrons, without noticing.
(MOSS GROWS FAT) I like to mix my greens until they shout, introduce to one another the hues that surely clash, and step back to observe while they hash it out. But mine are not soul shoes; not breathing shoes or filling-the-page shoes. Mine are out-of-ink shoes; little-to-say shoes. In fact, I have become a useful green; a complementary green; a salad-when-I’m-hungry green. I know that, before autumn descends, I must become a lush green; a custom green; a laughing-in-the-rain green, and my toes wiggle at the thought of being bare.
(RETREATING FROM PLAID) In the midst of all this maximum and minimum, I find myself desperately avoiding the median and the mean; fantasizing ways to part them like an ugly curtain; fascinated with anything that is out. I suppose it is possible that the place in which I’m currently rotting will develop a nostalgic allure once abandoned, but not likely. Surely if there are more stairs going up, then, at some point, I got off on the wrong floor. If stepping out of this skin exposes a few nerves, at least I’ll be able to feel the breath of the world around me; to feel the grace of his fingerprint, not to cower under his thumb. In truth, the question is not whether there will be flight, but if feathers will be lost.
(PREPARING TO JUNCT) This mood has a throat, as sure as the sun has a curfew. My quest is to bind the fingers that would choke it, to open the ears to the sounds of its gentleness, without entirely disabling the beast. After sunrise, a shadow is a shadow, a plagiaristic mime with gray face paint. After sunrise, a shadow has no season, no pockets to empty for the price of subsequence. At 4 a.m., however, the streets are tenuous; intolerant of small thoughts; exuding the raw. It is here that sleep is a yellow car, cruising slowly by.
(VERSCOSITY) Busyness is a thief, and I am a forgetful husband, repeatedly leaving the back door ajar. Instead of venting in a semi-controlled manner the byproduct created by lumbering through each day, I allow the muck to escape around the edges, spawning little demons that must be chased down and quickly euthanized at great personal expense. Despite the unpleasant rabbit-trails, though, I am here now not to wallow or spew, but to quietly lead the herd toward home.
(SABBATICAL) The nature of this trip cannot be found in the rudder, or in the pattern of the sail, but rather in the craft as a whole. I am filled in turn by the wind; the lapping of the waves; the night sounds; the morning light. What today holds little or unbearable beauty is tomorrow’s doom and salvation. The cycles are benevolent while there is yet forward motion. Though it is often in my blood to stand alone at the rail, a shoulder and a hand sweeten the journey.
(EXORCISING LIBERTIES) Sometimes I think that I will just quit: stop pondering; stop envisioning; stop creating. I will walk out the door like a disenchanted lover and go…somewhere; maybe a lifeguard stand, or Vincent's café, and just sit, trying to keep my hands still. I will write myself reminders on little scraps of napkin: "Don’t answer rhetorical questions"; "Wave at people"; "Smell things". Then I realize, usually within the same mental breath, and with no little relief, that I am engineering the demise of my craft with characteristic vigor and design. So, I give up the idea of giving up. I have to ask myself, though: is it better to risk a double standard, or to double the standard risk?
(IGNORING THE RECIPE) Some meals are exquisite simply for their timing and appear less savory in a once-sated but newly-hungry state. What the yesterday in my pocket cannot remember, the today on my plate will not concede. The usual utensils have fled the table, and, if I am to continue mixing my metaphors, I will have to use my fingers.
###
Brett Clay Miller is the author of several collections of poetry. The compilation represented here is culled from "Fingerhugs & Curseflowers" (1998), "Seven Days down the Tracks" (2001), "A Week on the Road" (2008) and "The Moody Historian" (2008). Brett is currently working on a non-traditional haiku project entitled "Abusing the Transitive Property".
If you would like to contact Brett, please email him at eslllc@yahoo.com.