Versus

This is a verse, not a fucking stanza.
I’d rather turn plough than wait in a chamber,
on the field of play not a mere bystander.

Agricultural language suits this bard
and poetry’s but a topiary art:
so much I gather from your cutting remarks.

I’m a lower case type inhabiting the basement
where jars and saucepans in haphazard placement
create an imperfect kind of enjambment

employed to collect red wine and sushi,
filter and ferment into something fruity –
that’s my trickle-down theory of beauty.

Up in the loft they gaze on eternity
while I’m beset by a sense of urgency;
the soles beneath my feet are burning me

as I commit each metre to memory
stamping a legacy in ivory and ebony,
overrunning the lines of my enemy.

Raymond Miller


If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Raymond Miller  would be pleased to hear them