Category / Uncategorized

by bcmiller2014

Dark Matter

Sliding into what you

feel I lose my self.  I lose
the thoughts that make 
me someone, not you.  
Instead I look inside 
my mind and find your 
visions, your desperate 
need to find meaning,
and I know that my
center has been 
swallowed by your
emptiness. 
Climbing out of what you
want I find myself, my
tainted thoughts
uncentered but intact.
To mine them I drive 
hard, guzzle fuel, must
recharge to resist 
your gravity, to pull
as from a well what’s
been lost. I define
words I never have
spoken. 
by bcmiller2014

Daily

Suspended in an ocean of

sameness, blue deepening 
to black below, colors 
cease to exist.  There are no
corners, few extraordinary 
moments except when we
unexpectedly survive an
encounter with very large
teeth. Rays of sunlight cut 
the surface like golden
glass, marine life breaking
through in great shimmering 
pods. These sightings occur 
at odd times, when we may or
may not recognize our
singular insignificance. They
give us a perspective of
scale. 
by bcmiller2014

Rule Breaker

He doesn’t speed up for

street signs. Not ever. He’s
a pedestrian crossing 
before an impatient line of
cars, their drivers with 
feet twitching, eager to
be done with the “in 
between” time after a task
has been accomplished but
before the entertainment or
the friend or the dinner has
been reached, worthless-
seeming breathing 
happening without an
official job. 
Well, 
     okay, living
is a job, but it rarely 
counts unless we’re 
considered productive. 
Perhaps
he is reminding them that
being is productive. Caring
about the unhappy person
bustling so briskly with 
sadness falling like a mist all
around her and simply 
sending a kind thought
is productive. Thinking about
words like bees as they swarm 
in short clusters and separate,
travelling for miles before 
returning home
is productive. 
He’s an efficiency-
driven man, unless
standard behavior dictates,
and then he becomes the
wild bee on a great journey. 



by bcmiller2014

Colors

Some see one color and

others another, while 
others will see a third. 
There’s a completely 
rational explanation for
this, having to do with
lighting and cones and
rods and personalities. In 
the end each individual is
justifiably certain of 
his or her perspective. 
This is true for clothing,
spinning objects, pictures
taken out of context, so
why not words, and 
sayings, and spiritual 
thoughts that twist and 
curl in changing light in 
an interpretational 
illusion?  If red can
be green, almost 
anything
can happen. 



by bcmiller2014

The Plan

She liked to think of herself as a woman of uncertainty, but that wasn’t really true. Sure, she didn’t know what to think about the Bible any more. She wasn’t sure how involved God really was in people’s lives and how much was a matter of perspective, but she was sure of more than she wanted to admit. She was sure that people weren’t primarily numerical and therefore didn’t belong in boxes. That probably applied to God, too. She was also certain she needed to think her own thoughts, make her own decisions and take responsibility for learning how to actually live her life. She didn’t want to survive. She wanted to be fully invested, aware, empowered, and present for all the days before her death. 

The difficulty lay in the fact that she didn’t know how to do this. For a myriad of reasons she’d grown up without acquiring many of the usual inter and intrapersonal skills that usually come with age. She was determined to find a path, though, whether she was late in starting it or not. She decided to brainstorm, and the list of her ideas is as follows:
  1. Take more initiative. Being docile and submissive isn’t always the true path to peace. Speak up when needed, even if it causes conflict. 
  2. When speaking up causes conflict, decide not to embrace the idea that it’s all your fault. Communication is good, even if it’s hard. Just don’t go too far and start flinging blame or cheap shots at people. That’s never okay. 
  3. Notice the good stuff. Maybe even write it down. It’s easy to lose sight of goodness in life when it’s mixed in with the inevitable pain, so work at recognizing kindness. 
  4. Remind yourself that you’re strong.  You don’t need permission to live. 
  5. Be gracious with yourself. Listen to the words you speak over yourself. If you wouldn’t say them to anyone else, don’t say them to yourself, either. If you fail in this, be gracious then, too. Forgive yourself and move forward. Consider coming up with some positive phrases with which to counter the negative ones. This idea makes you want to barf. Find out what that’s about. 
  6. Accept and recognize comfort. Soak it up when it comes. 
  7. Accept and recognize when you are loved. 
  8. Ask for help when you need it, you ninny. Wait. Refer to #5. You lovely woman. Oh, barf. I mean, Oh! Whiskey!
  9. Allow yourself space to heal without condemning yourself for it. If you’d been hit by a train you’d know it was reasonable to take time. You’ve been hit by a train. It just didn’t have wheels on it. 
  10. When you condemn yourself, try affirming yourself instead. Say what you’d say to one of your students. 
  11. Regarding Mom and Dad: They’re probably not going to change. Don’t wait for it. Work on yourself. Give up on the idea that you’ll ever be parented, even now, in a way that is deeply edifying. Love them where they are, how they are, without expectation. Find your security somewhere else. (This might be where knowing God loves you would be really helpful. It’s unclear why you haven’t been able to get that after all this time, and that makes you angry. Ask Tom about that.)
  12. When you’re up for phone conversations put boundaries on them. Start with five minutes. Go to 15 but not more than 20. 
  13. When they cut you off while you’re trying to tell them about your life, ask them why they did that. Guage their receptiveness. If that conversation goes nowhere, stop trying to tell them about your life. 
  14. When they’re upset about your boundaries, keep them anyway and don’t apologize for having them. You’re bound to empathize. Go for a walk afterward, or go up on the roof.  Yell into a pillow. Call a trustworthy friend and talk about it. Warn the friends ahead of time that you may need to be reminded that boundaries are healthy for everyone. Look at happy animal pictures on Pinterest. 
  15. When Mom and Dad don’t understand and you can’t explain, tell them you can’t explain and you’re sorry they’re in pain, but avoid shifting blame onto yourself to try to make them feel better. Leave the loose ends when needed. Write a poem about it afterward, or refer to #14. 
  16. After having any basically meaningless conversations with Mom and Dad, having stayed within your boundaries, hang up, eat a piece of chocolate and congratulate yourself for a job well done. Contribute $5 toward your next great pair of shoes. 
  17. Cry when it comes. 
  18. Breathe. 
  19. Invest in things that help bring you to life. Take art classes or poetry classes. Be brave and apply for that MFA program.  Be responsible to your day job but don’t allow it to rob you of fulfillment. 
  20. If the MFA program doesn’t accept you, don’t stop writing. 
  21. Keith: This requires a separate list. Work on that as it comes.  Remember that you love each other and don’t let society dictate your “normal.”  
That’s as far as she got, but it was a start. She was already used to laying on an ice pack for long stretches of time to help her back. Certainly she could implement this. With help. And grace for flubs. In fact, when she screwed up and did something wrong she determined to stand up and walk across the street to a coffee shop and get some tea if it was during business hours. If it was late, she’d write “I love me” in Word on her iPad, and make each of the letters a different color. 



by bcmiller2014

Ice

Ice constricts the blood
vessels I’ve heard, slowing
down the flow and that
helps somehow, when 
my muscles are screaming 
for attention. My mental
muscles, my thoughts I
labor to broaden, 
widening the flow of input, 
opening them to full, letting
them finally spray and 
spurt, flooding me with the
grandest of mental vortices
from which I cannot escape
alone, but cry out as though
I’m drowning when all I’ve 
done is open the spigot. 
Perhaps what I need then
is ice, to pull the nozzle for
cold or buy a pack of 
gelatinous blue from the 
drugstore, and place it
against my forehead. 

by bcmiller2014

The Grind

The daily grind is a daily
grind down, or perhaps
a grind up if unlucky.
Grinding over flies
unsettled above the 
under where our
pavement falls sink-
hole deep and shoes
become irrelevant. We
are fine and then we
can only see ankles and
there’s no way out alone. 
Grinding beside doesn’t
happen in life. Only in
that instance of breathing
side by side without
knowing one from 
the other, being curled
like an infant inside,
invisible but bulging,
waiting at once to
become human.