Muir’s Montage: An Exploration of the Beauty of the Mysterious

By Jack Miller

The title Muir’s Montage is derived from the fact that when he read his poetry in coffee houses in the 60’s (especially @ the Thirsty Ear in Morristown NJ) he used the nom de plume Alexander Muir because Jack Miller seemed so commonplace.

The early poems were heavily influence by his drug & alcohol abuse. The later poems deal with the intricacies of relationships & lost & unrequited love. Although an agnostic he believes there is a power for good in the universe. When you try to do good you get help. Where that help comes from is open for debate.

Words are the “Arcanum Arcanum.” He believes there is a hidden dimension to words and word meanings and derivations hold many mysteries and in that occult dimension lies a mystical significance. Before the accelerating expansion of the universe was known it was believed that at some point the expansion would end and gravity (Sidera mordax) would cause the Cosmos to contract to its starting point in a “Big Crunch.”

Although the poetry is quite dark the author strives to remain optimistic. The central theme in the poetry is that of survival. You can only escape thepain of living by deadening the senses with drugs & alcohol and this only works for a relatively short time. Then you must face everything. There is no escape from yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665568203

Jack Miller

John Eduard Miller Jr (Jack Miller) was born on Jan. 29, 1945 in Newark, NJ. He attended public school in University NJ and received a BS degree in biology from Rauleigh Dickinson University. In 1967. He was hired as a staff microbiologist by Merck & Co. Inc. where he worked from 1968 until 1979. He went on to hold various laboratory positions until he retired in 2007. He has lived in NJ. PA, TN, FL & NV and for several months in the Dominican Republic. He has had poems published in the following literary magazines Creo, Impact, The Old Red Kimono & The Scribblers of Brevard. His interests include ancient History, Mythology, Astronomy & Cosmology & Poetry. The current work, Muir’s Montage, is an anthology of poems written over the last 60+ yrs. He has been married & divorced 3 times. He has been with his current partner Donna for 29 yrs.

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© 2022 Jack Miller. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  12/07/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-6821-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-6820-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022914987

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Pariah

Deja Vu

The Fountain of Amalese

The Shears of Atropos

Old Angel Midnight

Ate’

Rhea

The Alchemist

Egeria

Memory

Presque Vu

Lelia and the Demon

The Icarian Sea

Nacimiento De Vida

Varykino

Glorious Gamine

Heaven Bird

Scarcity

Codex Regius

Allerion

Salvation

Queen of the Gypsies

Torch Song

Alethia

The Iron Maiden

Crush Depth

Troglodyte

The Desert Dawgs

Sun Flower

Banshee

Black Pearl

Archimagus Rex

Lelia and the Angel

Nanu and the Ibbur

Flood

Master Jack

Rima

Café by Foujita

The Laughter of the Gods

Perdita

Sarcobatus Plain

Icarus

Captain

Bellerophon

Hypnerotomachia

Son of the Succubus

The Red Witch

A Gift from Sacha

Ghost Orchid

Swan Dance

Monster Maker

Beyond Infinity

Elvira Madigan

Tormenta

Cypher-God

Maudit

Master of Darkness

Vale Avis Caeruleus

The Prison of the Dead

Vagabond King

Ocean

Luyten b

The Third Interval

Evelyn Nesbit

Lyriad

Memory

À Jamais

Jamais Vu

The Laurel and The Thorn

About the Author

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my wife Donna, my best friend and most astute critic.

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Pariah

Amid the concrete laughter, living on remembered things

The winter fly laments his sodden wings.

Amid miasmic smiles, blotting now from sight

He gazes forward, backward never left nor right.

Amid the pain of half remembered need

he sucks his pulsing wounds and smiles to see them bleed

Amid the searing, silver spinning pinwheel night

he swills the amber truth and sobs profound delight.

Amid the faceless desert, he grasps in either hand

his cherished singularity but clutches only sand.

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Deja Vu

The sleeping odalisque uncurls

and speaks the Persian word for pearl.

A magic word that swiftly brings

a catalogue of joyful things;

Walnut shells containing rings;

A mourning dove that sweetly sings

The sea, the sand, the snowy slopes,

Magic reginbogo scopes.

The midnight broomstick, Winnie the Pooh

Heffalump me and Piglet you.

Golden whistle on a chain,

Green velvet, summer rain,

The sun through stained glass window pane,

Christmas trees and bubble gum

The golden apples of the sun.

Tristram Shandy, Herman Hesse

The lisping affirmation---yesh.

Weeping beech and dogwood trees

Tic-tac-toed upholstery,

China mice from Italy

Bright red hair, a bright red key,

Above the world the stars go by,

The light goes on though stars may die.

The world of Now holds nothing new,

Everything was deja vu.

For you touched all and all touched you.

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The Fountain of Amalese

The arid fountain, theatre in the round, circle in the square

ringed with players, waiting for the play to start.

Guitar strings bind the rosary together.

Black cat stains his leopard hat and beats his strings apart.

Twister and her sister Tiger Rose, nursing bed sheet shrouded Omar.

Howling rhythmic benedictions from oblivion, until he’s kicked.

He bleeds for all

Sad seductive Chloris, 14 flowers in her hair, painted eyes & soiled thighs

Tugs at slipping stockings, rags of purple velvet for a pall.

The Cameo, sad marmoreal Madonna,

motes of music cover her with dust

and in her eyes an endless dusk,

seeking some serenity from midnight tokes of tea.

I watch them all

I watch them watch me watch them watch

And on and on to infinite inharmonious permutations,

distilled to silent shrieks of---

Touch me!

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The Shears of Atropos

Led through laughter laden air

By nothing but the inclination of a summer hill

She runs.

And lets the warm green tendrils of the wind

Tease her body where they will.

Spinning spindrift swirls above the sea

And floats like crystal thistledown on air.

The ocean splathers quick green sheets to touch her toes

While sunlight sparkles rubies in her hair.

Down the umber corridors of autumn, wet with blood warm rain

Softly stirring tapestries of burnished gold and silver mist she moves

And having passed no trace remains.

Cold, the livid opalescence of the winter moon

Frozen through two hundred million fathoms of still sidereal seas

Revealing naked black and sinuous trees.

In which I stood unseen and watched her shadow pass across the stars.

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Old Angel Midnight

A black berceuse is played on sinew strings

Candles gutter mourners mutter

While round about they wildly flutter

The atramental wings

Hookers pimps and hustlers bathed in neon light

Central Park Bryant Park the Circle in the Square

Decimated men lying there

Everything was holy and perfection in his sight

Alcina gripped his hungry heart

A dirge upon a virginal was played

Arpeggios of wantonness cascade

Within his body venom splits apart

A puritan a libertine

His actions were erratic

Guilt was metastatic

Love was sacred sex obscene

Kerouac went on the road

With Cassaday his manic muse

Who played his jazzy slap-dash blues

They laughed until the darkness glowed

Down roads of revelation delusions to depose

Absorbing Krupa, Shearing, Lester Young and Bird

Bennies, booze and spliffs and wild riffs of words

From deep subconscious caverns extracting raw bop prose

Lamprey-like his mother clings

Like rancid sebum love flows all around

While from the shadows emanates the sound

Of adumbrated wings

Soon he gathered round him the outcasts of the streets

Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, Cru and Lucien Carr

Meeting at their Mecca the seedy West End Bar

The Angel Headed Hipster reigned as King of Beats

Joyful, plaintive, raw, perceptive

Free of expectation or ambition

Free of ego, free of inhibition

He lived to write and wrote to live

Bacchic Buddhist, Dharma Bum

His words were full of cogency

Yet rife with inconsistency

His life was a conundrum

Enfolding visions in his mind

He wrote a hologram of words

Lovingly each book records

The tragicomic tale of humankind

Using intuition not volition or control

Writing of reality conception-less and pure

He was a saint, a rascal, a prophet, voyeur

He was The Great Rememberer truth his only goal

Villa Delirium, bad reviews, Mexico blues

Revisions, deletions, frustrations

Journalistic machinations

How easily delicate egos can bruise

Scourged by guilt he feels the lashes stings

A slap became a thunderclap

And soon there came the flapping

Of cyclopean wings

Tristessa, eyes like Lady Day

Dignified and doomed grisette

Heroin to quell regret

She left his heart in disarray

Her body with his body blends

Abstractions disappear

Shattering conceptions eliminating fear

A petal falls the whole world ends

Running to and from Camille

Skid row, the Cameo, the wino fellaheen

Skin pop bebop flop house scene

Seeking truth in something real

He wandered to a barren place

He walked Perdition’s border

Drew chaos out of order

Daring God to show his face

Bound to unreality to people places things

Shackled to Samsara’s wheel

Too alcohol benumbed to feel

Resignedly awaiting annihilating wings

A verbal exhibitionist he stripped his essence bare

His road had led to nowhere but spiritual malaise

To chasms of despondency and alcoholic haze

The prey of fools and psychic ghouls who came to feast and stare

Misinterpretation a curse that stature brings

Led many to excesses committed in his name

Seeking expiation he called and soon there came

Images of St. Gerard and death’s engulfing wings

The Desolation Angel has flown into the night

Comet-like his fire burns in lovers of the light

His spirit smashed and broken by orthodoxy’s load

But somewhere in some wild night Jack is on the road

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Ate’

This vast mosaic maelstrom of my life,

this choking vortex with it’s myriad images of mind,

engulfs reality and fills the muffled mouth of truth with tears

and clouds my desperate eyes till blind.

Profaning her------transfusive fingers seek the sacred nameless fires

that I must give a name.

Enmeshed in this compulsive game

I garner nothing more than shame.

Aquarius, dark and humid constellation

showering me with comet star and crescent

pins my will upon the moon’s sharp horns

and laughs at my descent.

Deep in Night’s black loins

sucking manhood down it’s maw

engorged with lust, devouring me as I devour,

this crimson, cloying, claw.

These hands that search in sewers for their fill

are far too stained to touch her---------but they will.

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Rhea

Pathetic poetic pastiche, projection of my pseudopain

What do I know of her?

Green-gray horizon eyes

Brooding, moody, mercurial, magnetic Magnani eyes,

Secret thighs, whispering unbidden with hidden,

for now forbidden mysteries that goad my dusty old lust.

Coarse hair like the Barbary Corsair, tangled, tawny, rich, alive

the tresses of the lioness.

Strident strides that stomp and glide,

legs slightly bowed, innocent, suggestive.

The kohl-eyed Queen of Babylon, regal slattern

she snaps her fingers and a legion falls.

Her Kerouac prose and indecisive nose has just a trace

of Caligula in the slightly Roman face------------

but mostly in the blood.

How much real? How much ideal? How much of her remains concealed

beneath the shadow I have made?

I’ll cast the past aside and when the last ghost has died---

will it be you beside me?

What do I know of her?

Beneath the roiling nimbus of the primal sky,

Amid the boiling waters of the sundering sea,

By Chaos sired, out of the loins of Nyx

Pangea great dawn land arose.

And you are it’s soul.

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The Alchemist

Through the caves of misty blue

To pillared halls of green

Perceptions changing, rearranging

He touched the things unseen

He sifted through the light, blue-shifted

With time and senses