SWEET PASSERINE

The bird visited in my thirty-eighth year
I heard from this window tunes of freedom
Abandoned to the world as she was
In the dawn and the dusk she would always appear
On the same branch perched and unfussed
Singing lustily, thrusting out song to my ear
For two years she came to a sick cell’s outlook
And I’m sure others shared in the pleasure I took
For she didn’t care who heard her, not neighbour
Nor jailer, she was fearless
And then one full starred night she appeared silent
Her throat dry or her talent spent or her needs unrequited
I sat in my room and held the moon
Between finger and thumb for only a moment

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 03.03.12)

editor's note: What portends this cessation of song? Learn to whistle or hum or tap the tune with thumb and forefinger - keep the silence away. - mh

Mush rooms

Another year relaxes in its embers
We gather for our farewell

Through the months cuckoos have called
You have not heard, I wouldn’t know
Leaves fell off branches, regardless

In the evening sun on a Bandon hill
Still at this familiar hole
I try to think of your face
Taste the earth in the air

Your intake of breath is what I remember
That preoccupied, sucking - yeah!
Peculiar to this parish as you were
We can’t confuse you with mother
You are absent-bodied no more

We came here together apart thirty years
We carried each other once a piece
Me a slapped kid, you in the urn
We shared similar meals in between
Those blood red beef stews we loved
Stock full of juice and mushrooms

This is all we had though, moments at dinner
Dirt chewed today is spat tomorrow
My thoughts slip away leaving you
Under mouldering heaps
I head towards laundry and tea
As the moon balls out above the church
We have both gone
To a colder ground called home

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 12.14.11)

editor's note: Not your usual psychedelic, fungal, Friday-nite freakout, nope. This trip is a downer that comes with no actual ingestion, just a year-end suggestion of fungus past and passed. - mh

Autumnal Stumble

Me and you do not exist
She always came first
I as usual agreed to whatever it was she said
It wasn’t the worst
Approximation of the state of US

Walk home drunk alone without even a conversation now to warm an ear

I missed out again, missed the meaning or what was meant
So busied my mind with the moon
It was awe
Some star or planet shone as bright
But smaller, no, further away
And there were wisps of grey
No, silver blue, clouds around
As a frame, as burnt away by these two show-offs
I could see Orion too to the south unbothered as he was
All because I looked up

I touched five sycamore trunks on the walk back
Snail or slug trails tinseled around them
They seemed to have horsey faces and Mollie Sugden hair-cuts
I said hello to all the trees on Clyde Rd
And they waved me on like buddleia by the sidings
As I chugged by unsteadily to the station
At London Road I crossed the bridge
And heard the squealings of a vixen
A pair of them then a-paired on a wall, all brazen
The fantastic one uncoupled himself and high-tailed it
As I rounded the corner
He stopped to check I was not following
Then entered my garden
The little fucker
Home again

And what are my trees?
They need identification
I am surrounded but
The fruit has all dropped
The flowers long gone
The leaves too, soon
I can wait for next year
Unlike some I could mention

- Anthony Murphy

(added 12.14.11)

ISINGLASS

Say simple things
And resist the urge to puncture
Or talk around it

There is the giant of a skeleton
Housed in the college of surgeons
He died young
Yet lives forever

There also are the blooms of unfortunate
Elephantitic males
Kids with two heads
And the insides of several sea slugs

The tools are a panorama
What we do and how we do it
It makes one quite dizzy
With the effort
A quick outside
Have a snort
Beer helps
It is what it’s for

It is not all about you
You know

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 09.30.11)

editor's note: "Specialist or specimen?" That is the question here; and "not all about you" was NOT the answer we wanted. A beer and a snort might be the best we get. - mh

STILL NO CURE

You wake to fresh dreams and receding dementia
A foot of snow on the pillow
And a headstone at your feet
The pile of cones on the window sill are open
And winter comes in like a bear

- Anthony Murphy

(added 09.30.11)

ALPINE YELP

I love you
What does that mean
Does it mean more than
Why are we here
Or where the hell are we
And all the old jokes
And wish washy philosophies
To stand atop a vantage point
Yodel ‘You’ll do!’
Is that what we are about
Us men
We women
Seeking an echo
Is that the reason for our insanity

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 08.17.11)

IBIZAN RAPTURES

We can sit and look
At the excavated terra
Under this blisterful sun
Halfway on a dry pined terrace
Whilst the cicadas engines overrun
We will be bitten
By tiny predators
And again submerge stinging skin
One evening in the middle of July
Before a new moon comes
Ants appear
Hundreds fly and die dimpling
The surface of the warm pool
We cannot swim for fear of mouthfuls
Hundreds more lose their queen
And divested of wings
Busy themselves amongst crumbs
Under the alfresco table
Where the lizards roam
On a feast day
They dally in the glow
Not scared by feet for once
But reaping slowly with silent tongues

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 07.05.11)

PAST TENSE, PAST CARING

Within me there will rise an urgency
I shall hold in my hand some newer plan
Of major advancements, then we shall see

For I shall burst forth on the universe
As a stellar bomb of popping candy
And random indistinctive scatterings

Oh I may be lost there in yon desert
Just another bit of grit in the boot
Forever sand, yet individual

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 05.12.11)

TOO MANY MOVING IMAGES

I love Newman and his pissy snort
And the way his eyes hood
Like my dad’s did when he was a fool
And not full of us
I watched him talk to a bar of mates
His life shone with before
And I guess he smiled sometimes
But not all white like Paul
Not at all

So together watched The Sting and Butch and Pocket Money
And several others
And he tickled himself
With it going
With it gone into us
But those years of our youth
Were for him to rue
Taken out of our hides
Sometimes with a whiskey smile
And we love those guys
They are nothing to us

He was want to understand what could have been
What became of him
I watch The Prize and wonder
If he ever had it
Or if it is we
That let slip the ball

You can only watch the sun go on
And the moon

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 02.12.11)

HOW SPELT IS WEAT

Her hair crumbles like applesauce in autumn
Her breath smells as felt
She sucks up my senses
I’m a tactile dyslexic
Like fingering fish that is smelt
Her laughter is conical
Her body atonal
She beckons me like a square
I’m an ophthalmic moron
An aural goofball
Whenever she is near me
I hear sponges and mushrooms
And loud zesty lemons
I see colours that do not exist yet
I feel daytime and spring
And panic and lovely
Amongst other intangible things
And what do I do
Now that I’m twisted?
Rearrange myself?
I could chop off my hands
With a circular saw
And stick eyeballs on my wrist stumps
Shove a trumpet down my oesophagus
Hop some ears on top my knees
Stuff my tongue where it is tasteless
And cause my testicles to sneeze

Or distance myself
I could touch nothing at all
Curl myself into a ball
Inside a swaddle of cotton wool
Deprive myself in a tank
Like the altered state of
William Hurt
And then
I guess
It won’t
Be senseless

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 12.19.10)

GOONE

Sometimes I think
He has been
Listening since the womb
And I wonder if he will
Ever find the peace
Of those who care less
It may take a while
I remember
When she said you tell him
And he bounded in
His golden head
All smiles
He sat down
He paid attention to his dad
He always did
I said I am leaving
He crumpled
And now there are days
When he pats me on the back
That youth of me dry
Gone into him
He smiles more
Or less
Things pass
Into water

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 08.01.10)

THE BACK OF THE HEAD OF THE WOMAN I LOVE

I look at the back of your head
And wind blown hair
In front of the trees
On a sunny day in Brooklyn
And you say
It’s greasy today
I haven’t washed it
We eat shrimp that sweats
With wine white in iced
Packs of plastic
And you talk
Into your phone
And enjoy a day out
At last on grass
Then we cycle back
On the thoughtless track
That New Jack built
To sweets in your flat
Apartment
And hours of love
In the face of days without it

- Anthony Murphy

(added 08.01.10)

BAD HEART

I was left with a bad feeling that I couldn’t comprehend
So wandered around and thought on what was up
There had been an unsuccessful trip to the optician
Where my son’s eyes had been treated by a monkey
But that wasn’t it
I mean apparently I am the eye and teeth guy
That is my duty as a far father
It is evident
I have bad eyes and bad teeth
So I have more experience plus
She pays for everything
But that’s not it
The bad feeling I mean
We walked home in steep and cold degrees
Me and my son
And I was aware of his asthma
Something that I don’t have and can’t understand
I was very sport orientated
At school anyway
And he never has been
Not that prescription is preclusion
But if you don’t have to physically educate
Mainly because training sadists go private these days
Then where is the fun
So aware of his wheeze and the ‘please
Let me in the door’ look in his eyes
I only propped him up and did not dare
Offer his fifteen year old self any unwanted advice
That wasn’t it either
The bad feeling I mean
When I got him to the door I noticed a pushchair
In the hallway
Years of training and experience do not stop
A gob from wobbling
But some extra sense did then
My son went in solely intent on an inhaler
And I slipped off as I heard the deep northern tones
Of my ex brother in law
The best man at my one failed wedding
To a sister he still adored
With children of his own now that would hopefully never be tainted
By the not knowing of a never uncle
I had no talk
No leverage or cheap jokes
Only a sudden rush
Of all that had passed
And I let my son go
Breathless

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 06.05.10)

MIDDLE GLASS BINOCULARS

And when all feels lost and night becomes the mood
You can look into the deep blue from the hill
See the evening stars burning out
If you are blessed
Forget yourself for a while
Without the need for a drink or company
Listen to the rodents in the walls
Scratching out an animals existence
Put on some Louis Armstrong if you’re fortunate enough
Forget yourself for a while
And think about the distance between all of us
Take a bath and draw deep record shattering breaths
Underneath fathered feathered lathered suds
If you are lucky enough
Forget yourself for a while
Whilst you dream on all that has gone
Regret that you are here in peril
The instant is the thing and there will be more to come
If you make it

- Anthony Murphy

(added 06.05.10)

UPARSE

That elusive truth I have heard
Is the reason of all worthy and
White fisted writers
Their knuckles clicking with clichés
In the search of it
The story and the mystery dying
Because of it
The means and the key
In the midden and the bullshit
Never to be rinsed and held gleaming
That one
I haven’t found it

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 04.08.10)

YOU DON’T NEED SANDALS IN HEAVEN, APPARENTLY

If you come into town by train
The dome of St. John’s Catholic Church
Is the first thing that you notice
The huge silver blue curves sit
A little incongruous on top of
The right-angled redbrick structure
That nestles the monster
It has always looked
An occidental accident
A mosque in a mask
To those who knew the pre-Pakistan
Days of Tweedale Street
When they remembered
The Paddies raising their buildings
Not just drinking curry
These towns have always needed
The onslaught of labour
A too hotbed of industry
Brand ‘em over!
It went global before you were born
Ghandi’s white dhoti was made in Blackburn
Now Dutch soccer balls
Are stitched in India
But blown up in Oldham

Back to St. John’s

Go through wood heavy double doors into
Byzantine pretension and Victorian sheen
A brilliant mosaic dizzies the mind like optical frankincense
Covering one half of the interior of the dome
Above the altar
Is a scene from the apocalypse
The four Evangelists loom in gold leaf
With a dangling lamb like an offering
The human
The lion
The ox then
The eagle
All winged
And barefoot
Two-dimensional giants
Who have outgrown their tetramorph
Dead eyes ignore the congregation
Unconcerned with little people beneath
Apostling homage
To the Pantokrator
Who is at last seated on his throne
(Yeah I looked it up
And up at it as a kid
Wary
Unknowing)

Christ too is passive
And a little Eastern of aspect
And very foreign to an English child
Of six in 1977
The boy sits in his pew and is entranced
To him at this time
As holy as the dome itself
And with just as many evil thoughts
In his golden head
They are Harryhausen creations
That could turn their creaking necks
And stare directly into the soul
At any unwatched moment
But then Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Is playing at the ABC in town
And for some reason
It is the saints’
Naked floating feet
That frighten him the most

- Anthony Murphy

(added 04.08.10)

MODERNPOSTMANISMPOEM1

Hunched and needy
Like a baby seagull
I stalk the street
For sustenance
Stepping gingerly
Over
The once
Used
Herbal
Tea bags
And broken needles
That spill from brightening bins
In the dwindling dawns of August

Once I dreamt
Of better days within this
Earthen purgatory
When I was brown and pretty
It was no job
To breathe more freely
But now I stalk the streets
Beneath the laughing mooning ball above
In between the raining drops
By the graffito shuttered shops
Into the maw
The muscled chops
Of
The Royal Mail
62-63 North Road
Brighton
BN1 1AA

The lifers inside
So lifeless with pride
Good Morningly grunt their acknowledge
Let out to their wives at eventide
They are always back here stirring their porridge

Will be two hours yet as a coffee-god’s pet
Before I can summon a smile
I keep my weather-beaten head down
In the back of a Transit
On old copies of goals extra or extra goals
Or made up goals with moving posts
As the red valkyries descend
From the upstairs garage

Into the yard yawning with boredom
Like the back doors cold open wide
Waiting is time
And labour intensive
And work is last on the mind

A beardy they branded Jumanji walks by
And there’s Wazzer sungover again
And Grizzly Badams with his drizzly voice
And desiccated Ruth with a fag at her chin
And are they as desperate or do they prepare
And are they aware and of course do they care
About this all pervasive attitude
The constant twatting platitudes
For that’s all I hear

Somedays

Shaven headed voices
Spitting casual brutalities
From their fascicle
There in an element that never forgives
Closed ranks of a herd
But this pack is bird like
Right wing they are
For a working union
A bundle of sour nazis
Who defend their misguide
With persiflage turning
To vicious whispers
And insult camouflaged by
Supposed camaraderie
Banter they call it
The fuckers
Seriously

Otherdays not

For people can be giving
And love their children
Not unusually
And provision gives dimensions
But even Postman Pat had three
Although that is hard to define
On a flatscreen tv
Don’t you think?

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 02.08.10)

Rutter

The fucking foxes have come for me
Roses are bent
Tulip bells tormented
The window button
Gives at my grasp
When back bent
And salvo
My gun has no shot
So word is redundant
And bullshit is heard
Word crap is herded
Like grunts in a pen
Sighs from the open
She as a vixen
Wants it again

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 12.06.09)

LATE NIGHT SPECIAL

I went three for one at Ace’s Pizza
And got handed my arse
In a blizzard of fists
All I asked for was olives
They gave me capers
With a young buck
Who placed his ring upon my crown
And his belly in my face
And the staff shouted police
And then please no mores
There’s tomato all over the
Black and checker floor tiles
And I guess I was trying to chuckle
But I couldn’t as he was so angry
With my head and
With the idiot within it
So I gave in

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 10.14.09)

I GIVE OUT

I give in to everything
You all have me again
There is never only one
But a multitude
A legion that wills
Against mine
And what am I
A natural force
A fiery ball
A fall guy
And a fool
All of this
I never give up
For hope is the god
Who fucks like jesus
As rampant as mohammed
And other prophets from nothing
That prosper in the desert
Of our ever shrinking dreams

- Anthony Murphy

(featured in the poetry forum 09.02.09)