Frank Miller
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I hate bios lurking as they do between the coy and the self-serving. I was born in Scotland and sent with my mother and brother out of the country at the start of World War II We returned in the last year of the war , spent some thirteen years there and the came back to America where I finished high school, college as an English major, acting school, summer stock, wrote some short stories then gradually vanished in the world of work, of marriage, of children, of divorce and woke one night about nine years ago scribbling at a kitchen table in Manchester, New Hampshire and being surprised that I was attempting poetry- and still am .
All of this is filler- these are the minutes and the miles which brought me from there to here, from then to now to this place and time where I help to run a poetry venue in Brockton Ma.
As Kurt Vonnegut would say- and so it goes.
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MEMORIAL DAY, 2002
Main Street resigns becomes State Route 9,
slides downhill past St. Mary's cemetery.
Awkward groups stand uneasy at their graves;
children fidget, wisely knowing
there is nothing there.
Father I remember you would have walked away
and left her if you could. The body
in which she lived was dead and the life
in which you dwelled was done.
You did not linger at the site,
had no sign engraved to mark the ending road
and did not return to see if grass grew sweet
above her head.
I remember when I found
the picture frames you packed away;
a silver filigree which once
had held the past; now boned
they wait the future empty.
Flags hang limp on Main Street.
The day sags beneath the weight
of all the other days. The sky cracks
then cracks again. The road sheens-
slick with memory,
and blood warm rain
ROBERTS TO ROBERTSON TO REED
You smite paper Philistines
with the jawbone
of a gnat.
Saul without epiphany
there is no Jesus
in your Jehovah.
Zealous of your God
you tumble Holdens
and Huckleberrys.
You are our holy
triple play.
our three-in-one oil.
You have taught muscles
to smile - a Holy rictus.
You have not learned to laugh.
