Photo by Tabitha Austin
River Road Poems
__________________
River Road
Disappearing Act
Black Film Noir
Kafkaesque Memoir
Nostalgia
_____________________
River Road
“Remind me
(again)”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
In Every Language
Words remind me sometimes—
It’s all I’ve got left now these dayz
You were so beautiful back then
And I was so stupidly naïve
You had a way of making—
Things more alive than anything
I’d ever known, simple things
Like just going for a drive
River Road down by the levee—
The look in your eyes and the
Way your lips tasted moist &
Moody by the Mississippi
I suppose that’s poetry—
Being held tight in your arms
But I’ve never learned anything
Like that in an English class
Disappearing Act
“You practice
disappearing”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
Lessons from Houdini
I’ve had great masters—
Teach me the art & craft
Of disappearing into a
Closet and nobody seeing
Houdini & Ellison—
They were pretty good at
Disappearing acts and
They got fame & fortune
For performing so well
I vanished in high school—
As well as the university
Magic was how my closet
Got cluttered with junk
I vanished in bed—
Disappeared in nightclubs
I did it because that’s the
Way is was done back then
The rabbit in the hat trick—
Raising the dead back again
I lived my life underwater
Holding my faggot breath
Black Film Noir
“How do we live when
everyday we open our
eyes to death?”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
The 5th Inning (Busboys and Poets)
Sometimes I’m engulfed—
In a film noir moment with
Shadows, cigarette smoke
And a moody killer
I want to walk out—
Of my life, away from my
House of blues and lost
Chances, gone lovers
I’m an invisible man—
Like Ellison all over again
Unacknowledged that
Part of me that I forgot
It’s not worth it—
Another fucking memoir
Or stupid confession so
Why try to remember?
All my gay poet friends—
Dead and gone now after
Killing themselves in clubs
With one-night stands
Mainlining their poetry—
Work-shopping their novel
Getting off with those long
Sentences of heartache?
A tired old queen that’s me—
Pausing to look back at her
Tacky narrative now that
The story’s almost over
No need to apologize—
Nobody else is apologizing
For war, bankruptcy, ponzi
Scams, the new depression
All my str8t relatives—
Waiting for me to apologize
For my gone wasted life…
Was being gay a mistake?
This black & white portrait—
Of Mapplethorpe bent over
With a bull-whip sticking
Outta his tight pouty asshole
He doesn’t look angry—
Or turned on or excited at
All , instead he looks at the
Camera completely bored
He doesn’t look apologetic—
More like a cool stare at me
Making me remember back
When I was a dinge queen
Kafkaesque Memoir
“If it isn’t composed
on the tongue, then
it’s an essay.”
—Allen Ginsberg,
Deliberate Prose
The castle’s always there—
A cockroach in the bedroom
We walk like tourists thru our
So-called discarded lives
It seems so brutal—
How Kafkaesque to be
A point of interest to
Nobody but some tourist
They pause, they look—
They have lunch, maybe
A beer, looking at our past
Meanwhile I’m dead—
Thigh-deep in the same
Old weary Dante’s hell
Nostalgia
EM: It seems that perhaps as we get older we go through these periods of nostalgia, that one looks back at how things used to be and one can point to a certain amount of literary activity in the city and one of the complaints that you sometimes overhear at a reading is that people don’t have those ties in terms of getting together on a regular basis and sharing poetry.
EC: I know for myself that the last couple of years in my journey have been a real time of inwardness.
—E. Ethelbert Miller, “Just Like Old Times: An Interview with Ed Cox," Washington Review, 1982
______________________________
some kind of balance—
between the individual getting
into his or her own self and
understanding themselves
their own graces, limitations—
their own violence against themselves
their own violence (verbal or thought)
against the others both gay & str8t.
And in balance with all that—
the reality of what you see in the news
all the tragedy of America and also
ourselves not knowing ourselves
Rather than withdrawing from it—
to own that inner world and
at the same time connect with the
frustrations and angers we feel
So many people increasingly—
just pulling back into the closet
and building an escape world
and isolating themselves in it
Each one of us has to examine—
what is going on inside of ourselves
honestly look at what is going on &
not completely annihilate ourselves
__________________
River Road
Disappearing Act
Black Film Noir
Kafkaesque Memoir
Nostalgia
_____________________
River Road
“Remind me
(again)”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
In Every Language
Words remind me sometimes—
It’s all I’ve got left now these dayz
You were so beautiful back then
And I was so stupidly naïve
You had a way of making—
Things more alive than anything
I’d ever known, simple things
Like just going for a drive
River Road down by the levee—
The look in your eyes and the
Way your lips tasted moist &
Moody by the Mississippi
I suppose that’s poetry—
Being held tight in your arms
But I’ve never learned anything
Like that in an English class
Disappearing Act
“You practice
disappearing”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
Lessons from Houdini
I’ve had great masters—
Teach me the art & craft
Of disappearing into a
Closet and nobody seeing
Houdini & Ellison—
They were pretty good at
Disappearing acts and
They got fame & fortune
For performing so well
I vanished in high school—
As well as the university
Magic was how my closet
Got cluttered with junk
I vanished in bed—
Disappeared in nightclubs
I did it because that’s the
Way is was done back then
The rabbit in the hat trick—
Raising the dead back again
I lived my life underwater
Holding my faggot breath
Black Film Noir
“How do we live when
everyday we open our
eyes to death?”
—E. Ethelbert Miller,
The 5th Inning (Busboys and Poets)
Sometimes I’m engulfed—
In a film noir moment with
Shadows, cigarette smoke
And a moody killer
I want to walk out—
Of my life, away from my
House of blues and lost
Chances, gone lovers
I’m an invisible man—
Like Ellison all over again
Unacknowledged that
Part of me that I forgot
It’s not worth it—
Another fucking memoir
Or stupid confession so
Why try to remember?
All my gay poet friends—
Dead and gone now after
Killing themselves in clubs
With one-night stands
Mainlining their poetry—
Work-shopping their novel
Getting off with those long
Sentences of heartache?
A tired old queen that’s me—
Pausing to look back at her
Tacky narrative now that
The story’s almost over
No need to apologize—
Nobody else is apologizing
For war, bankruptcy, ponzi
Scams, the new depression
All my str8t relatives—
Waiting for me to apologize
For my gone wasted life…
Was being gay a mistake?
This black & white portrait—
Of Mapplethorpe bent over
With a bull-whip sticking
Outta his tight pouty asshole
He doesn’t look angry—
Or turned on or excited at
All , instead he looks at the
Camera completely bored
He doesn’t look apologetic—
More like a cool stare at me
Making me remember back
When I was a dinge queen
Kafkaesque Memoir
“If it isn’t composed
on the tongue, then
it’s an essay.”
—Allen Ginsberg,
Deliberate Prose
The castle’s always there—
A cockroach in the bedroom
We walk like tourists thru our
So-called discarded lives
It seems so brutal—
How Kafkaesque to be
A point of interest to
Nobody but some tourist
They pause, they look—
They have lunch, maybe
A beer, looking at our past
Meanwhile I’m dead—
Thigh-deep in the same
Old weary Dante’s hell
Nostalgia
EM: It seems that perhaps as we get older we go through these periods of nostalgia, that one looks back at how things used to be and one can point to a certain amount of literary activity in the city and one of the complaints that you sometimes overhear at a reading is that people don’t have those ties in terms of getting together on a regular basis and sharing poetry.
EC: I know for myself that the last couple of years in my journey have been a real time of inwardness.
—E. Ethelbert Miller, “Just Like Old Times: An Interview with Ed Cox," Washington Review, 1982
______________________________
some kind of balance—
between the individual getting
into his or her own self and
understanding themselves
their own graces, limitations—
their own violence against themselves
their own violence (verbal or thought)
against the others both gay & str8t.
And in balance with all that—
the reality of what you see in the news
all the tragedy of America and also
ourselves not knowing ourselves
Rather than withdrawing from it—
to own that inner world and
at the same time connect with the
frustrations and angers we feel
So many people increasingly—
just pulling back into the closet
and building an escape world
and isolating themselves in it
Each one of us has to examine—
what is going on inside of ourselves
honestly look at what is going on &
not completely annihilate ourselves
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