Diamond Mine

Flowers At The Foot Of The Cave

Virgin Prairie
Blue Soaked Scepter
“Diamond Mine”, “Flowers At The Foot Of The Cave”, and “Virgin Prairie” written by Richard Millett © 2017 Published
by Fluxlife Inc. “Blue Soaked Scepter” written by Richard Millett © 2018 Published by Fluxlife Inc.
All titles edited by Richard Millett © 2018 Published by Fluxlife Inc.

Photography, Layout, Sculpture & Design- Earl Todteman

Conceptual Continuity- Earl Todteman

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Other titles in this series:

Radar/Grain- Tracing The Dim Signal- Water b/w Fingernail In My Salad- Scatter- Scatter/Mild Life/T. & W.- Life Isn't Hard
b/w Mild Life- The Aluminum Farm- The Zen Transference Manual- It Went Red- The First Four Years- Splish!- The Splish!
Supplement- Splish Reconsidered- Swim To The Center- Oranges- Present- Communism Is Grand- The Sampler- Statements Anti
Statements- Sunrise On The Caina Islands- Remember b/w Thank You- Your Future Your Freedom- This Is What Freedom
Looks Like- God Bless The Guests At The Banquet- Salt Or Light- Laughter At The Wake b/w 49 Day Process- Always, All The
Time b/w Miss You In The Morning- Sacrifice The Satellite b/w Milky Skies
 DIAMOND MINE

Water rushing so fast

it looks like knotted wood
its sound a ceaseless perpetual crash
in static blue and black
droplets burst over
the plank's sides
and dot the dirt or
land on kicked out bricks
and from the ravine's
opposite angle, the water
seems to glide clockwise
rolling ever nearer toward the gears

and into the factory

where seven years previous
the core of the industry
sunk unexpectedly early
and like a defense attorney
the treasurer ruled the
materials used were archaic and
their methods unrealistic
and as demand seized up
the foreman and night shift
technicians acidly joked they were
laboring within the great repression

For ages it seemed like the beams

from the afternoon sun wouldn’t come
But we later learned
the view was obscured
by a flood started
from the diamond mine
We know, it's either tacitly implied
or we're told outright
you can't be seen like that, you need lights

When money is exchanged, and

you're finally responsible and realistic
you can't be seen like that, you need lights

Know the value of being articulate

and reconsider your obscure subject
You need to stay in the lines, you need to revise
Realize the need to eliminate images
that would be unwise to present
or ideas you’d be unable to defend

Why persist if honest

people cannot implicitly understand?
you can't be seen like that, you need lights

For years it seemed like the beams

from the afternoon sun wouldn’t come
But we later learned
the view was obscured
from a flood that started in the diamond mine
Back in the head office
on the desk next to
the coffee, scissors and gold pen set
was a black leather envelope and
that morning's newspaper
whose sub-headline read "Forget Forgetfulness"
and detailed a local photographer
who makes elaborate, enormous near-twin
gelatin prints of events- one real, one staged
and described the effect as
painting over paintings
when asked by the reporter
"who will get this?"
the photographer remarked
"anyone who misses being pure
or ever imagined placing one
point in time over another
anyone who pictures
the shape of ideas and
not the shape of their mind
anyone who sees a crowd
and tries to find the
people in disguise"
later, the paper lay open to the crossword
puzzle, and among answers written
in indeterminant script
were asides like
"does purpose follow appearance?"
"where is this from?"
"reasons better than because"
and finally
"determining what to become"
 FLOWERS AT THE FOOT OF THE CAVE

Swinging light bulb above a cracked basement window,

a painting depicting the creation of creation,
and a makeshift bed
I made up a new name for you
that I'll only keep in my head, my head

Look at the jewel resting in the bottom

of the wooden cup, or the stack of handwritten
sheets explaining the steps of the
ritual in rich deep red, and the names of everyone
there exist in my head, my head

charcoal renderings of saints ripped from a magazine

and pinned to the door
dented bits of metal shaped to make a mosaic
and pushed into the floor
quarter inch thick spray-painted silver ribbons
looped like ringlets in the air
and the floating stray white vanes from a feather
landing on your hair

Here I sit half childish with freshly washed

clothes strewn over the chair,
a tray with orange peels, melon rinds, and
empty glasses rests balanced on the
table's edge, while I'm reading a
map leading to a room more colourful than the
womb, where I can overhear
things other than gurgling and organs rushing

But still, this will always be in its infancy

Because love is where genesis greets infinity
And for proof
You can look in my eyes
even though I won’t confirm or deny
How much of this is true
But I trust that will get worked out by you
 VIRGIN PRAIRIE

Laying straight and still, staring down

at rivulets filled
with flattened cicada shells

Waiting at dusk
watching people
across the field try and
weave a blanket
from ashes, matted branches and damp grass

But I barely care

I am distracted by
voices echoing over the horizon

Voices
I listened so hard to
one sounded like a melting telephone
one sang like typewriter keys
another rang like a confused
bluebird, and is since locked in my memory

I tried to find where

on the prairie I could sleep
at daybreak I was woken up by

Voices
that waved in the air like film
projected on fog
voices that hovered like an
underexposure on a robin's wing

I searched my thoughts, hoping to realize

which voices I took for granted
the ones that only appear every other year

I got lazy and lost intervals

of hours staring at the sun
circling in the sky
I got confused and gave
incorrect directions
to a couple of asking backpackers

I got angry about heredity

and when carelessness
intertwines with chronology

I could not control my shaking limbs

or the cold sweat on my forehead
I needed to tend to my health
I needed to walk steadily without help

I needed to make a fire

and learn to stop time
I needed to be the watch one has to wind
 BLUE SOAKED SCEPTER

The kink in my neck that runs to my kidneys

distracting me from movies
I've long memorized
and repeating quotations I’ve lived inside of, and
I've no desire to rewrite history that doesn’t concern me

When what I didn’t know

already felt familiar
When I saw the inscription
on my commemorative plaque
had been worn back to smooth silver

When I slipped behind the mist

changed clothes, washed my hands, and shaved,
with no light, and with no intention of anyone seeing my face for a while
I was willingly walked through
a coal stained city lot and deposited in the back seat
of an already running windowless army green car,
which was then locked from the outside

"Mary!"
Had I abandoned my practice?
committed an indirect affront/in my brief absence?

My name is Keith
The beggar at my door raised his arm but soft
while I listened to his parables that had no center
My name is Luke
With an auspicious mistress beside me
I looked at a baby looking out a window at fluttering street signs
My name is Julia
My temper was gentle as I read a sermon
called "Are You Here To Celebrate The Death Of Death?"
My name is Giles
I wish that I'd been obscured when
ears were bitten with endearment while I was plainly ignored
My name is Grace
I was observed by three people whose
accounts proved suggestable and fractured
My name is Abigail
I faced hard construction when I
in truth spoke forcefully about my forged fingerprints
My name is Morgan
I spent twilight emptied
save for sketching a red tunic on bent paper
My name is Brook
I was registered in a hotel under
an assumed name, and made lists of families I pitied
My name is Gabriel
I singed my hair
and clothes trying to be recalled

The sky has been moonless

for 29 nights
why couldn't I stay?
I was bothered by the way
the streetlights
hit the trees and
reflected off the leaves
I took a knife and short
length of rope
Six hours later
I’m waiting for you to arrive
carrying a scepter
and wearing a breast plate
with frayed shoulder blades
and exhausted eyes
I’m waiting for you to arrive
sitting cross legged
on the sodden deck with
wayward souls who
were barely seen
I leapt off the ledge and was soon
out of haunt as I climbed the concave shores
wondering if I should forage, catch a gudgeon
or eat unbruised fruit that had fallen
the gravelly guttered soil
gave way to encroaching
forest dense with rows of
weighted wet purple limbs
that succumbed to gravity
and wind, then abruptly
I was in the center
of a champain, and the only
objects I found were
short rows of tree stumps
and stones each carved with the
query "what made you look here?"

I jaunced away into the odd-even

and was again pursued
by the thickets' reach
The thorns licked my calves
the ant hills shone like pebbled glass
I brushed passed a frog
with a violet tongue and discolored teeth
who gulped for relief, while his body
remained static like a splayed thread in aspic
I made my way into the anters
and found myself prating
prithee pray tell, what
you remember of
working your hands into the mud
feeling it curl under your fingernails?
it feels like a relic reunited with its original
setting, after having been figured lost
or only seen in a dream
Betimes I glanced around for
the travelling lamp while
standing beside the curvature
hearing myself call to
datelessly abandon vizards and leasing
and be faithfully young eyed
I returned once more to the champain
and sat among the stones in silence
I received no visions or visitations
no inspiration to invent an incantation
and in this vacuum of communication
I only experienced the sense
or perchance suggestion of the
imposing press of eras and atmosphere
and now, I notice this restless weather
shy beams of sunlight
moving sideways through the
strings of remaining rain