Malcolm Miller Poems
Malcolm Miller was a Salem poet. His main entry is Miller, Malcolm H.
Thanks to Rod Kessler, English professor Emeritus from Salem State we have some of his
Salem-Centric poems shown below.
Malcolm Miller’s Salem Poems –an incomplete compilation [13 February 2016]
Standing on the Salem-Beverly bridge gazing seawards at four in the morning March 1990
to the right the final
part of Salem shines
with spaced lights curving
towards the end
of our power
to the left Beverly
like a finger lit
by many gold
rings points
towards some union
out beyond
our marriages
out where only dark
bigger than all our lights
seem to call
I am going
I am going
will I see
will I see
you there?
[INTO THE HIGHER AIR, 1992, 72 pages, p.8]
Witch Trials Salem Mass. 1692
the trees were stark
to begin with
and the choppy sea
often grey and cold
Indians had strange
ways and eyes
their arrows could travel
a long way and accurately
far off the English king
could not be relied on
rumors spoke of changes
not to their advantage
order is always maintained
by a form of no
the haunches of women even young
shake fire in the thatched-roof cabins
fire is a dangerous element
and a moral god insufficient
there are always reasons to kill
many wished for more than twenty
[INTO THE HIGHER AIR, 1992, 72 pages, p.33]
A clean Well Lighted Place In Winter
it’s 3 in the morning
the fatal lapsed hour
I am the sole
customer here
in this Dunkin Donut on
the coast of Massachusetts
the coffee is all right
the donut not bad
the music being offered
only fair
and behind the counter
the young woman
who quit high school
out of boredom
is yawning
a mute kind
of weary-eyed goddess
but a goddess none the less
in this god
blessedly open place
or don’t you know
don’t you know yet
about closed up towns
in cold dark times
[FURTHER AND FURTHER POEMS (1992), 72 pages, p.65]
ZONE 3
I used to buy a ticket
from Boston that said
to Salem Mass
now it says
to Zone 3
I used to have moments
of joy now I have
no problems
I used to be free and easy
now I am acceptable
and do the right
thing for
the situation
I used to be loyal
to something I could not
define now I am
a good citizen
[FURTHER AND FURTHER POEMS (1992), 72 pages, p.16]
State College Canteen
on his last day of work the guy
by some quirk of inspiration
profit or satire
loaded the huge soft
drink machines with beer
the price was right and the day
spring-like
never have students learned more
about religion
Dionysius was dancing in the halls
and singing in the corridors
never did the philosophy professor
a master of logical positivism
seem more absurd
his much praised sobriety was found
to be a sort
of living death and all the English
instructors by afternoon were being
booed from the building
for not knowing how to teach
young people how to return
to the sun
[POEMS THAT NEED YOU (1993) p.41]
there is a sign in a bar in my
home town that is like modern life
do not hesitate to ask for credit
it says
our way of saying no is very polite
[Unsatisfactory Fragments of Lukewarm Fire, (Jan. 2004) p. 57]
College Girl in Massachusetts
in the winter dawn a girl bound
for history class sure
footed and neat with
the grace of morning
her face almost fresh as
recent snow the night’s
full twinkling moon over
Salem harbor
college girl bearing your proud
unchallenged face towards
the necessary war of all
the living I go
with you
I go with you clear-eyed sprite
your earnest brow of morning
even over here I feel
your unique breathing
the privateness of your being
descended from trees and birds
and from darkness kind
to all its stars
I go with you lovely scholar
and may you find on
your way however
buried the gold
of unteachable joy
[The Taste of Inexplicable Nothingness, 1994]
HAWTHORNE
Nathaniel Hawthorne you never went
to a brothel
drank but not to excess
were not athletic and agile but sat
your large domed skull hid
subtle and at times sinister thoughts
you married one of Salem’s Peabody sisters
and never committed adultery
at dusk in Salem after Bowdoin
you went walking in dark heavy clothing
your face impossible to read
and children were fearful
your sunless body did not discover god
what pleased you you enjoyed but life
was at bottom a sort of wretched thing
lightened by family and comfort
Melville your temporary friend by far
was a holier more extraordinary spirit
his work outlives yours but still
the best hotel in Salem is the Hotel Hawthorne
in it one can eat the Scarlet Letter lunch
the menu boasts sinfully unpuritan desserts
a huge statue of you looms on Hawthorne Boulevard
nobody around here notices it much
midwestern schoolteachers snap your photo
busloads of them file through the streets
the House of Seven Gables is a must
making the city a lot of do re mi
talent you had and intelligence to spare
what was lacking was lacking almost fatally
[THE TASTE OF INEXPLICABLE NOURISHMENT ( 1994), p.10]
good night Irene
I have a cousin
Irene
she often stands downtown with
a severe condemnatory look
as if the world
has disappointed her
she doesn’t know who
Walt Whitman is
if she did
he could be in
for a real good
talking to
Jesus Suspended In Stone From the St Joseph Church Salem Mass
Son of a distant desert people
what are you doing up there
hanging like some penance
or warning of what can happen
if you speak well and directly
and don’t flatter the top dogs
your body hangs huge
as a statue from Easter Island
a continual embarrassment if noticed
a terrible mistake like Stalin
in Red Square kept alive
by technological skills
and a lot of money
you seem hooked up to a sort
of pillory by puritans or sadists
what did you do anyway
and how weary you must be all
these centuries hanging there
gaped at by foreigners who
can’t really tell why
they keep you on view
as they go about earning more TV
channels and winter trips to Florida
you’re more or less like a prisoner
captured in a war who just got
lost in the shuffle and never
made it back
to your own people
[THE TASTE OF INEXPLICABLE NOURISHMENT (1994), p.33]
at the campus of one of the lesser
state colleges in Massachusetts
a disgusting perhaps degenerate
professor is eyeing the tan
new bodies of poor
quality students
most hardly made it out
of high school and many so
unscholarly will fail in
a year departing on these long fitness
crazed legs he ogles and wants
wrapped around him
a disgusting professor is eyeing
some of the greatest bodies in
history that will not be able
to cope with Shakespeare or calculus
Kierkegaard and even Picasso
might seems European rock bands to them
the disgusting degenerate prof
is eyeing them
hips sinuous with strength and
beauty the gods would rock with
may they live forever the poor
quality students with miserable
IQ’s and long shining rich
hair in the wind their skins of
magical entrancement and their
fine shaped skulls that do not
bother with history or ethics
or expository prose
the disgusting professor is eyeing
them day after day
he is paid 34,000 per annum and
worth every penny
[THE TASTE OF INEXPLICABLE NOURISHMENT (1994), p.56]
BEFORE SUNRISE DUCKS SALEM HARBOR WINTER
part of black
water and still
darkness in air
the eerie normal
cluck as you pass
they hug shore
vague neat clumps
sealed in
who they are
yes but who
are they
[THE RIVER OF MUDDIED WATER BEARS GOLD (1994), p.36]
SALEM HARBOR
the great sailing
vessels that used to reek
of mid
ocean brine and china
spices and teas
strong black pepper born
in Java split mahogany
trees to adorn
and enrich Massachusetts
who remembers them now but
museums full of
paid customers
some tame pets of pleasure
cruisers litter
the harbor flushing their god
damned toilets casting
garbage ashore cruddy
with bacteria
too many mediocre
spirits have hung about
these streets too
many generations for
anything but humdrum
to happen
a handful of intelligent
people are going about
their business suspected
of whatever crime is
in the air
[THE RIVER OF MUDDIED WATER BEARS GOLD (1994), p.51]
TOURISTS
what have they come to see
so many hundreds of miles slowly
across droning repetitious highways
and inching traffic jams
steering evenly up to gasoline pumps
children smashing each other
with kleenex boxes in the back seat
and to end up dressed undistinguishedly
in some inferior hotel with water
that barely goes down the basin
finding a twisted cigarette
butt and a condom in the drawer
later to trudge after a row of arrows
to gawk at a museum where cruel
people once killed harmless women
and the kids proudly wearing t
shirts with the city’s name
rooked for too much money by smiling faces
the universal ice cream cones
jammed towards their mouths in exotic flavors
evenings wondering what to do next
missing home and the reassurance of custom
a kind of ordeal has them in its grip
days to go and almost every hour
money ebbs out of them like blood
from a wound
and the newness of the never seen
shining at times like something dreamed once
they don’t always like
to wonder about again
having come so far to find
what is not really here anymore
or perhaps anywhere
[THE GOOD RAIN OF CANADA 1994, 72 pages p.46
SANDLOT BASEBALL
nobody had any money to speak
of and nobody had any jobs
nobody had any heartache or cancer
nobody ever saw such good baseball
nobody knew what time the game began
god was the umpire god the rain
that stopped it and god
the dust of the basepaths
non-artificial reality grass green
as if the sea overflowed and firm
with the right stuff of earth
white ball white ball you are but a dream
we played with a ball taped
black as tar and sticky and not
altogether proper and round
even Babe Ruth could not hit a home run
but the Boston Red Sox did not hear
more angels than we in the darkening sky
the ball lost in twilight still
joyous we did not dream the white ball dream
[THE GOOD RAIN OF CANADA (1994), p.23]
my mother has to go to the rehab hospital
I come to her old place
to pick up a few things
mail and the like and out
the window see
in the park under
the low hanging shade
trees a woman sitting
in a chair right where mother
used to sit
from this angle and distance it almost
is mother
but she will never sit under
the summer trees again
she is lying in the red
brick rehabilitation hospital
like a doll in its crib
she will never sit under
the summer trees again and the only
hope now is she
doesn’t know it
[The Good Rain of Canada (1994) p.35]
I evolve in silence
on a cold sunlit Thursday having
paid my rent in a hotel
named after a revolutionary hero
I go to bed at noon
in my large
white 2 windowed high
ceilinged room as the radio predicts
accurately winds of 60 miles an hour and more
already the great panes are shaking
the white curtains fill with sun
from millions of miles away
gold splashes on the white walls
I lie in bed on pillows
mute and deathless with attention
the panes of glass shake and boom
like opera singers
outside the wind gusts take
over the town and I stare
at the all blue sky filled to capacity
with bright romping air
nobody in the world is very far away
I evolve in silence
why we are here
always like this with no newspapers
with no thought of food and friends
with no loneliness for
a woman this would not interest
[I Who Am True To You (March 1996), p. 57; MM lived in the Lafayette Hotel]
I Find Myself
I find myself wondering what
became of a dog I used to
see in the early morning inspecting
the neighborhood by the tidal inlet
you know where the tide comes in
over the mudflats and the bulrushes
stir even in seeming no wind
have you seen the dog mostly
brown with long ears
what is he doing these days
what about the small hill he would sit
upon as if surveying his kingdom
if you see the dog or hear
about him would you let me know
he has a white spot on his chest
and goes along with a lope sometimes
[I Who Am True To You, March 1996), p. 66]
THE GUEST
with nowhere to live I camp
out in libraries
books in huge even rows
are strangely silently tolerant
none of the great Russian novelists
care if I hobo by them
only a few English writers would
advise me to clean up my act
and I won’t
mention their names what for?
For a few days now I have been
the guest of the poets
in a state college library
I arrive at early morning opening
trying to look scholarly
I stay until midnight closing hoping no
one officiously eyeing me
narrowly states the case
“you aren’t a student here are you…”
for a few days more I will be
a guest of certain great spirits
whose living testimony sings
out in pages of books
books mostly unopened
[poems (1996) p. 56]
My Uncle Jack’s Pub in Salem Mass
when my uncle Jack opened the back
door of his pub I was
admitted to the world
of whisky and dark polished wood
panelled walls upon which Jack
Dempsey and Joe Louis ruled
with a perfection of classic
American mayhem
seated on a stool near men I had
only to call
out for a tall glass of beer
like ginger ale to join the dim
tribal conspiracy against vacuum
cleaners and laundry detergents
dishwashing and the telephone’s
trinket like gossip
here the measure more largely
held in the tilt of a cap
like a wink and the splurge
of coin and crisp
here almost a quiet dignity maintained
the mystery of malt that “does
more than Milton can to justify
god’s way to man”
biting into a free bowl
of pretzels at 12 years old listening
to the deep loom of voices
where schoolteachers and local goody
goodies and their fussy minions were not
apt to venture I called
out for more
Uncle Jack filled my glass again
on the dark wood panelled walls the baleful
watchful stare of Joe
Louis held sway
Jack Dempsey was almost laughing
with animal joy
[I Am Writing This For You (March 1997), pp. 12-13]
CLOSING DOORS
Walt Whitman is shouting from the third floor
stacks for god’s sake do not
bar the door
throw open the windows
but because of 2.4 inches
of snow and a wind of some
miles an hour they are closing
the state college library at noon
the word has just been megaphoned
as at a disaster
as if yes run run
run for your life
put down that book of poems and run
away into the where
Henry David Thoreau is tussling
with one of the librarians for he will
not leave but commit
an act of civil disobedience
Mark Twain is yelping with glee
Robert Frost has one foot
in the door they cannot close
the security police are telephoned to rush
forward to judgement
the library director red-faced
with fear of his car getting stuck
begs the students
of life to desist and leave
he almost offers money
because the snow is falling somewhat
in eastern Massachusetts
and the state college at Salem
has been bewitched
into fear and trembling
[I Am Writing This For You (March 1997), p. 48]
despair of a minor poet
thinking of the great
poets of history I settle
down under a tree by Salem
harbor to write my own
great poem
nothing happens
my pen shipped all
the way from Japan just
dangles there
in museless air
the hand holding it
could be a pen
holder
I gaze at the ocean blue
thanks to the sky
I hear the maritime ancient
cry of countless gulls
thanks to ears composed
it is said of dust
I look far out upon
the waters until there is
nothing and I am also
such a void
I seek the breath
of a god to be filled
that does
not come
[what light is left (Sept. 1997), p. 25]
around that corner
around that corner
on Chestnut Street someone
has flowers annually
in the yard
there are over 80
people on the street
someone without flowers has the flowers
in view from a window
someone on Chestnut
Street has a fireplace
someone has moments at
night that would surprise you
someone else has such
a yesterday
someone on the street is hardly
ever wet from rain
around that corner
on Chestnut Street
someone has four children
someone has four walls
someone has a Labrador
retriever with four paws
someone on that street
has quite a hope
the last one did
not work out
nobody is dying on Chestnut
Street yet
nobody is giving
birth to poems or music
nobody is wanted by the police
on Chestnut Street around the corner only
2 or 3 know the score
of the ball game just
about over
[what light is left (Sept. 1997), p. 33]
years of the pears
late summer evenings
like early fall
pushing the boat off
grating smoothly on sand
water-bound as pirates
the local vikings from
our fiord for booty
across the harbor with two
pair of oars plunged
in cold clear water to Marble
head now breaking the dusk here
and there with bright
human outcry
4 or 5 boys to end
up in delectable pear trees
the orchard at its crux
the raid boat waiting half
out of water
on the dark foreign shore
to stuff plucked pears
in our pockets before
quiet dropping like cats
to terra firma but this
time the orchard man got
a whiff of us
half hobbling out with flash
light the size of a club
the white radiance casting
our faces as on police
wanted lists as we ran
for it our 12 year old
legs he was no match for
“I know who you are!”
he called still coming
all the way down to
the shore we pushed off like devil
island escapees rowing for life
“I’ll get you!” he called over
the waves into the dark
we double-oared for home
bodies beating with blood
and delectable pear joy
joy like we had robbed
the very stars of their light
taken the measure of
mountainous sized seas
behind us flashing the torch
with futile hollers a man cursed our
hijinks our dusky blasphemous god
[what light is left (1997), pp. 44-45]
sunday on the north shore
dads romping successfully
on expensive bikes with daughters
and sons as mom well
protected in sun tan
oil and helmet churns
rhythmically along also
along smoothly contoured former railroad
beds the flat earth that once
shook with pounding iron giants
smoke steaming monsters leads to
goodies at the convenience store
the squirrels and birds do not know
the suburban whir and whiz of bike
tires means Sunday
the clicking sound tells gears
have switched
green trees speckle and shade
Sunday is a good time late
morning peace in the fine
summer on the North
Shore of Boston not tremendously far
from where Thoreau determined
to go it alone with whatever god
turned out
to be
and Nathaniel Hawthorne deliberate
and heavy browed pondered
the Salem Witch Trials
his ancestor a judge and pondered
again and spoke
with a silence that would not yield
to gentle tones the dark
coming of something dark
[what light is left (1997), p. 63]
Down in the valley with Delores Cormier
she sang as if she sang
to live
Delores Cormier down
there in the valley
the valley so low
late in the evening
you know what happens then
Delores in the school house
in the 7th in the 8th in the 9th grade
Dolores in her special blue
luminous party dress
not very tall shapely already
bursting forth
bursting like music from the whole
orchestra of creation
like wind in the trees or spring
rivers driven by natural law
Dolores Cormier down in the valley year after year
a jet of yearning that had not yet
accepted the limits
in her luminous blue dress singing
singing so as to really be there
we were all just beginning to live
at all the school parties at holy snow
Christmas and last school day flowering
with June we would await her arrival
in her uncle’s car in her special
blue dress she held up away
from the puddles and mud
carefully like an expectant bride
down in the valley the valley so low
hear Dolores
hear that train blow love hear it
for it is Dolores come to sing her face
enclosed in purposeful solemn
her voice rising from somewhere
like a declaration of something
we were ready for something
more than parents or teachers could say
she had come to tell us everything
she had ever felt and believed
like the penetrating concentrated haunting
outcry of an oboe she throbbed
through our classrooms year after year
down in the valley love
deep in the evening
it’s an old American classic or something
probably you have heard it
we were all just on the verge
of life she was singing
and singing about
and so many years later though
not that very many I suppose in downtown
Salem in a shabby rooming house
where anything goes
in a week by week rented room Dolores
lay dying
bride of death at about age 40
jets of blood pouring out so many
knife wounds they stopped counting
it was Dolores Cormier of Miss Turbett’s class
the blood didn’t stop as if eager to flow
like an endless terrible song
they didn’t mention in the Salem Evening News
already the courts had taken
her children away
she was an alcoholic deemed unworthy parent
and suspected of drugs and prostitution
Dolores Cormier of the Saltonstall School
dead of viciousness and spurned sex
dead of bad companionship
dead of whatever she died of
deep in the evening she lay still
[what light is left, 1997, pp. 70-72]
Return
you return to the park
where you played as a youth
under your feet the half
frozen ground crunches making
you conspicuous though
no one is there
you would not say the thoughts
and feelings that rise in you
along the sandy cove gulls sit
on calm water as you turn
over with your foot
what the tide has brought in
the mid afternoon sunlight makes
a pale yellow cast to the air
it would be almost vulgar to say what you feel
a brown dog is walking
on a leash as around it so much
space seems wasted
[from Amazing Stranger,1998, p. 49]
The Sad Girl Who Sells Gasoline
the merit gas station on north
street in salem mass open
day and night in the dark hours
has a sad girl sitting
and waiting for you to come
drivers who drive in a 2 a.m. see
her sorrows as she sits
alone in her glass cage awaiting dawn
when she will rise and walk
away from so much gasoline
if you drive by wave at the sad girl
will you and smile as though yes
life is good it’s all right
and if you need to fill your tank stop
there and tell her the gasoline is marvelous
[From a powerful kingdom of yes, 1999]
