Sample Poems by Sid Miller
Cayenne Pepper and Other Rotting Vegetables
It’s a shame that it all has to end
like this, me in these dirty jeans,
pulling up this garden that has died
of circumstances. This finale is so tired,
such a played out metaphor;
girl leaves boy, boy lies on couch,
vegetables are strangled by rogue
morning glories and begin to parch
in the dry sun of the summer.
Then the boy thinks of leaving too,
boxes up his life, sweeps out the house,
shuts off the power and returns
to the garden that he planted
to show her that he could do more
than just eat words and throw them back up.
And I should have done this first, but everything
got mixed up like everything else and I’m
stuck here without so much as a shovel,
pulling up everything by hand, eating
cherry tomatoes that have somehow
withstood. The zucchini plant has taken over
a corner, so prickly, weighed down
by five pounders that have molded.
The ears of corn have withered on the stalk
and are covered by bugs. The chamomile
which I promised tea from, is dry like hay,
not one flower missing.
The carrots, beans, cucumbers, strawberries,
all ripped up, leaving just the cayenne plant,
the first one in the soil after the thaw.
The peppers have dried and are as dark as blood.
I pick three off and tuck them into
my shirt pocket, to allow
this metaphor to extend even further.
Sunbathing in Ukraine
In the Ukraine, men sunbathe up against
an old wall—of the two in thongs, one stands
on his head and the other is turned around
wearing black dress socks. Another is in leather pants,
but no shirt. Two elders are in rain coats. One man
has a German Shepard at his feet.
My mother tells me my great-grandparents
were from Kiev.
The man’s small, tight buttocks are strangely
without hair. The dog has settled for humans.
Slats of the building run diagonal
and the paint is chipped. A lone window
is seven feet from the ground.
The man on his head must know something
I don’t, or at least can’t decipher.
His face not red, his thong so tight,
his cock still pointed towards his feet.
His shoes lie inches from his face,
meticulously aligned to the camera—
black leather, they would appear to rise
just to the ankle. I would like
very much to steal them.
Notes on the Xylophone
Within the history of motion
your contribution is negligible,
what you’ve created for the most part
man-made. But during the brief
history of yourself, you deem motion
paramount. The list starts
with the obvious—objects
of petrol propulsion, windows,
fast-moving scenery, methods
which have made your imagery—
and ends with yourself—kicking
in the ocean, small unsure
steps down switchbacks, the few
instances you’ve been forced to run.
And while all these might be somehow
fundamental and what keep
you awake, don’t forget the less obvious,
the purely aesthetic—the dandelion spores
floating in the air from your breath,
the sparrow that fell to the ground
from the wound of your BB,
the eucalyptus leaf you placed
in the rain filled gutter at eight years old,
when motion was primitive
and you had no theory of its decline,
when you cleared its path to the sewer,
to let it float without end.
Lessons
I told my friend
I couldn’t walk
with him any more.
The squeaking of his shoes
against the wet sidewalk
was driving me crazy, like watching
someone bite their fingernails bloody.
The next day my shoes started squeaking.
My life has been going that way.
I told another friend,
you watch too much television as it is,
after he bought a sixty inch
projection T.V., his body clinging
to the couch
like canned fruit cocktail to Jello.
But now I find myself staring the same
direction as him, all too often.
These patterns are familiar to me.
As a child my rabbi warned
about making presumptions on people’s lives,
but he had a great crack,
the size of the Grand Canyon running
down the middle of his tongue
and I just stared at it
half in awe and half disgust.
I never listened to his words.
Maybe God put that crack there
to keep me distracted,
make me learn like this.
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