Nerve Center
A Virtual Poetry (Micro)Chap
by Tempest Miller
Nerve Centre
Banana dress, he wears as he walks in the prevailing wind of the beach.
He knows too well that a day is fleeting,
crushed in an instant like a soda can.
And he goes through town walking very quickly inland from the sea and cove.
He walks over bridges and steps on storm drains.
The bells of townspeople Morris dancers follow him everywhere
as he retreats beneath rumbling skies to degenerate old churchyards.
His dress becoming a wispy and flamboyant skirt,
a golden thread.
In the churchyard as the grave keeper.
That is his job.
What a strange town.
Hiding under graveyard trees that grow
very thick and large with free branches,
digging up muck,
tossing it filled with bones over his shoulder.
Rabbits in the graveyard.
This town with all its dead people,
the demography forever trending towards old and white
and dispassionate conservatism,
have entrusted their bones,
corpses to someone so glorious.
Everything so disparate in this graveyard,
him the completely bespeckled, all-knowing oneness of man.
Like the Buddha.
Looking at him you come to understand he is not only a grave keeper,
but a treasurer,
arbiter of the whole town and its traditions,
like a guard at the Tower of London.
He is not ideological but relentlessly scientific
in his understanding of past and present.
He wishes to influence the long-term,
sees everything as malleable, an institution, and men and women cast in nickel,
lead.
To fall in love with the man in the banana dress,
to sail out to enveloped, murky islands of disease,
eating exotic cuisine and dirty-cheap tacos,
and stand in the castle halls of mirrors.
Across the room from each other,
the spices still on our lips,
jousting in a prism of royal glass.
That is the nerve centre of all I want.
*Originally published in chapbook England 2K State Insekt.
Lemon
The thirsty triathlete
swallows whole succulent fat
oblong lemons
from the kerb where she is running
I liked lemons once
in orchards on high ground
above the sea
they were covered in salt
they were loaded into big wooden boxes
and put on trucks
taken to the psychiatric clinic in the city centre
across from the Category B jail and the Five Guys
and everywhere slabs of yellow stone for pavement
they were a peace offering
share your story
tell us who you are
the lemons hang revolted at themselves
droopy heavy
defiled total yellow
like sand
the triathlete runs away
Cider Teeth
Soho shakes as he walks through
combat boots, Carnaby street, leather jacket
his collar turned up leaning on the black bollard
a fake cigarette in his mouth, the colour pattern too blocky
he has sunglasses
the clouds are darkening
crows go across the sky
he thinks about dildos in his arse
he puts his hand in his top coat pocket
creamy beads silver pearls
he lifts them slightly from his chest and sucks them in the street
in his mouth, they look like horse reins
and this horse cart walks on and rests on a little iron bench
he looks vulnerable with the beads in his mouth. His arthropod mouth organ.
anyone would
for sacheting drunk up and down Soho
he wishes his teeth weren’t dirty from Strongbow.
he wishes certain people went away.
he wishes the houseboy was coming
naked except his underwear on a motorbike
and that he would pull up in front
and get on and get off and get on in front of him
and he could touch himself watching his naked knees
fill and unfill with muscle hooking and unhooking
from a Hunter S Thompson gonzo thrill ride
where his erotic delusions do not stem
it’s fancy town with fancy dress
but let’s relax in Wetherspoons
until 3 in the afternoon.
He looks in the direction of Trafalgar
he sees people swarming a woman in knee highs
paparazzi
he feels such rising bile
he puts his hands in his locks, Banquo
he tastes fermented cucumbers, skipping gay Ronald McDonald
what about him? traversing from Heathrow to inner London
braiding on anxiety pills from Cardiff to Devon
why is he here?
everything they look at is a lie
everything they love is Hell
he crosses his legs, uncrosses them
he sends himself back behind the arras
must erect a curtain between here and there
His face darkens
He slouches
becomes old very old
as he pulls another golden strongbow from his shoe bag.
Bloody Mind of Primitivism
I refuse to die, at home alone with drunk sleepy father.
I will take every treatment.
I will fill my lungs with air.
My body is stretched and replenished
as I walk through the wormhole
back to mystical nineteenth century Wales,
burning farmhouse,
mother in cloths and rags dropping baby down wishing well.
I refuse to die and I refuse to sit still.
I’m only fourteen
but I nurse a burning affection for the twenty-six-year-old man
who drives the milk truck,
and who one day I will invite in and trap with a skeleton key.
At the farmhouse, there is a secret door which goes to a basement,
where there are innocent victims chained to the walls.
Their eyes shoot through me.
If only I could reach through the square and grey pale of time and free them.
I refuse your questions, your answers.
I refuse your mother’s expressionless responses and desire.
Your beautiful friend with his bayonet,
who I was once shackled to and who I thought would be his own medicine for me
and who I could envision travelling with
to shag on English Civil War church stones,
he will soon yearn for me.
He will yearn for me until he is mad,
buckled,
a hopping frog. And he will forego his amphetamine
and his painting tools.
And when he does, I will refuse him also,
pregnant with feverish desire.
I will not die, but I will gladly be forgotten.
I will disappear into the icy, misty vulgarity of all of time.
*Originally published in chapbook England 2K State Insekt.
Ass
A donkey bites my hair
a bear hides in a tree
but the donkey kicks back legs into a woodburner
and lets go
in the external world
which my psychologist friend describes as ‘oceanic’
the donkey finds and eats another donkey
lodged at his benthos
and assumes his form
and runs into the desert
River Mouth
Down at the river mouth
feeding the dog a bone he turns to liquid
arriving with a mahogany scent
with bells
with a birthmark
a crown of bones
on the folly over the water
a bearded man dragging a bag of coins up the beach land
the waves spray
unbridled against the galleon loaded with coffins
I have the salt on my ribs until nightfall
a new year ushered in
with dogs and the smell of cake and fish
the hoops of my majestic jacket unbound
I go to sleep early
and my heart thumps the whole bed
searching for the poet’s passion
not yet in love
not yet a Lord among the divine
but soon
he in the dark
the blood breaking from his valves
the world long
infinite
the sleepless nights encompass the full universe
my heart throbbing
rested on a dark, lonely mattress
BIO: Tempest Miller (he/him) is a queer writer from the UK. He publishes a monthly chapbook on Amazon. His work has appeared in JAKE, Boats Against the Current and Swamp Pink. His instagram is @tempestm1ller.