Adam Jon Miller
the tattoo
cannot tree
across flesh
the Story
how Self
sparrows-out
after death.
a colony
of pharaoh ants
lost inside
a sill
of a window
with no view.
to recompense,
you must
ink-out &
cross the
Holy River—
unsubscribe
from
the flesh.
to heaven: is
to feather-out
into the Great
Hereafter,
where sits
a house
on a cliff
with a view
beyond All
description.
i dream in sharpie, i dream in ri-ˈsplen-dən (t)s
for a friendship box appears above our heads
like inner children, playing in puddles: summer haze.
because you can’t bottle this kind of magic.
for a purple circle imagines itself across the floor,
when we are sad, we autumn: leaves of crème.
because you can’t bottle this kind of magenta.
for everything we do as children becomes what we grow into
as adults, what we do as adults becomes revelation, calls us back.
cheers to our childhood, to our late year bloom, to gorgeousness.
because you can’t bottle this kind of goldenrod.
for who we are, we become even more of, it's called expansion.
i loved it how chuang tzu was dead-on playful about things,
he belly laughed: where can i find a man who has forgotten words?
because growth, beauty, majestic, selfhood: manifest: they all gem.
if you marry a 92-year-old billionaire, you are really swimming
with a child in a floating box of toys.
for there is a gate of color marked around our silly
squiggling bodies, we crawl through: it’s called ri-ˈsplen-dÉ™n (t)s.
because everything we do as players culminates into more:
bubbles, brandishes, brines, shiny as gold, bubblegum as silver.
because you can’t bottle this kind of rainbow, this kind
of wordless hammergod.
for when we love, we love, we make it; moreso, we make Luv.
Adam Jon Miller's poems were included in The Louisville Review, Yalobusha Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, The William & Mary Review, OxMag, and elsewhere. A selection of Adam's work has been translated into Chinese. Adam is a poetry reader at Thimble Literary Magazine. He authors the Substack newsletter WORDINGHOUSE. Visit him anytime at www.adamjonmiller.com and follow him @im.adam.miller.