Sunrise through the Silver Maples,
caught by Rose of Sharon,
this late August morning.
Meditation on dark roast,
and Summer ghosts,
but the little piper chases
the final sibilant one from
my candle-charmed garret.

The long, searing trail
from July to September,
has grown shorter.
From my table of swooning thought,
I am called by the scarlet emissary,
directing me, not only to his joy at Sunrise,
but contentment that we are not yet clawed
by Winter's frostworks, from where
he and I have often conversed.

-Robert Milby
August 23, 2014

shiny banjo catfish . . my first collection of haiku, senryu, short poems 'n post-its . . .

Surrounding glacial pastures, in northern New Jersey.
Your pack barked and wailed, when the fire horn screamed,
As I sat at my campfire on haunted Schunnemunk Mountain.
I followed your paw prints in December snows of Black Rock Forest.
Coyote, suckle your pups at Summer filled teats.
Breathing poetry under dark Mountain Laurels.
A truck murdered you.
I stopped at your majestic torso—
a yelp of rich blood like a red vine from your open maw.
Dark blonde fur caressed by Lenape ghosts, beckoned me to halt my car.
I could not leave you to be spread into ruin by oblivion's emissaries.
I grasped back legs, and pulled your sleeping body from damp and dumb pavement—
the sacrificial altar of commerce.
Petroleum death barges sailed by.
I dragged you, like a sack of wet sand; a fallen rebel against an urban incursion.
The humid day called witness clouds for ghosts to clean your blood
with hail and cool July rain.
They chased you down in Central Park.
It took days but they found you:
cast a net over your feral hide, stabbed you with needles,
and made your green fire smolder and smoke like addicts in alleyways, on stoops,
and Victorian tenements.
They captured you, ensnared you with poisoned meat
and rifle dirges like bold Grey Wolf and Mountain Lion.
Their metal traps mock your fangs; chew your fur, flesh, and muscle.
People turn on their own packs—they kill what they do not comprehend.
Coyote deity, your rut will be written in soil tales; on lichen parchment;
Spring fog, Summer oak stands, when your clan is gone.
Yet, who shall write of the human drama of blood:
Babies born of starving mothers and warfare fathers;
skeleton houses and twisted automobiles?
Humans prepare for war and make babies.
They slaughter the forest, and whelp babies.
They poison the water, and drop babies.
They pave over farmland and starve children.
Your spirit walks in Summer-mad marshland, searching for your mate and pups,
Crossing roads in bog mists, and scavenging like humans.

-Robert Milby

July 24, 2006

​Lipstick to lips wears off.  Or does it get ingested.  Some gets ingested.  

Ingesting one's own appearance is toxic.  One's own image, viewed too often, can be toxic.  

God made into image Is limited.  Matter made God Is toxic.  

The color of lipstick wears off faster 

Than the color of beets.  The color of beets 

Comes out in the urine.  The color of lipstick?  

my body has an asphalt aroma.

i'm idle and my fuel tank,

a shot glass, is in the gutter.

outside table

is set with elbow,

fist on cheek, book

of cracked pages.

i watch this scene on the wall of my skull:

my brain, a clod of tendrils in search of a plot.

there is no place to root

in the exposed isolation of the road,

a dead ringer for the physics of chaos.

the shade of an oak is a collective memory.

i glow metallic in the ultra-violet sun.

i've hit a possum and the road, built

with no regard for obstacles,

continues its tail-pipe regret for the shy and blind.

drone of tires rolls out mother's predator pie:

a recipe for chainsaws and parking lots

to expand the rush hour of denial

and shorten the proximity

of stand-up comedian to botched executions.

once deflated, roadkill reveals its broken bones.

unable to stand, life continues

in the crawl of maggots.

may 17, 2014