Four Poems by Sheila E. Murphy - from a work-in-progress titled "October Sequence"

 

Four Poems by Sheila E. Murphy from a work-in-progress titled "October Sequence"

90/

Mindful of the lapdog teachings of a pseudo

Monk she drove another way

Clouding the mirror with her lesser half

And sounded out each word while reading

Palms and palimpsests by sight

By seeds by soundlings as a carapace

Reverts to safety as presumed

Recursed crossed out and slammed between

A pair of irons heated halfway

So wormwood holds and viaducts

Allow flow through to winter here

Where butterflies the hue of marshmallow

Plaintext their way to moth-hood

As though temples never real could be

Contained and trapped as strangers

See via slides one through seventeen

No one picture truer than preceding

Olivetti prints on cold white line free

Pastel shreds of ink laced messaging

Intended to be kept like stem cells

Held fast in case

There is a run on original material

Dreamed valid various and of need

 

91/

Otto twin of Opus decorated mirror after

Mirror with untinted facial muscles

And bright teeth his brother whose name

Denoted work kept at his labour

Birthing little save the doldrums

They’d been taught by parents diligent

And driving to pieces thought

Behind the swag and sugar feeling given

To inhabitants of pens for play

With plastic coverings coated with Braille

And ivory pendants hoped into

Existence by quietly receding roles

As though the sideburns in a photograph

Might come to life and flourish

Where name brands had been

And cozy through usual weather

On the sidelines chaperoned invisibly

Enough to freeze gateways from interfering

With the potency of precedent

Still whole in lazy minds uncomfortable

With “show your work” pronouncements

By faculty lacking in faculties

All mood long where sack cloth

Seemed to close in on a fashion statement

 

92/

Ball and chain make nice amendments

To be cauterized blue silver laced

Atop the heads that bow to weather

Eminently qualified to preclude chance

Lacking in wilderness like Inverness

Kept generous and filled by name with

Syllables aglow and fastened to

Rich young breath translating silence

To its former state of saddlehood

Wide open gentle sails encompassing

The mild patter of opacity where wind

Slows to a crawl and chafes

Intact skin to afford its strength

In stamina denuding force fit practice

To make room for window dressing clear

And fresh and ramified the way the

Ocean at last moves minds commingled

With hold still forces left like platitudes

Along cold hills unmeant just there

While all the silver in the stretchmarks

Divvy up their glam shot makeover

In favour of just-is plush forever

Viable new ways of enclosing

Soul and yarn and seeds

 

93/

Fear of freedom shacks up with potbelly

Frat boy deeming fatherhood ploys

To grab the rabid beat feet impulse

Of unready joy boys wanting

Bags of bucks attendant power

To pounce with upon the unsuspecting

Unthinking unwound flurry of feelgood

Nobodaddies mutually playing keepaway

With jewels and scraps and cobwebs

Seeds and mood lit rodeo posses

Chock full of unmended lives vulnerable

To cajoling by conscience free midges

Corresponding to abandoned wasps’ nests

Curlicued not taught collapse as maiming

Corresponding enmity piercing strong skin

Unbroken thus far in the siege of wafer

Splintering and say-so in the free flow

Through new margins and spun ghost avenues

Once whole now horror as mid mood

Scurries to land on lambast hotbeds

Nigh to whittling as the flaws

Gnaw our right to be plated

Sheila E. Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Her most recent book is Golden Milk (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2020). Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition (Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland), 2018).  Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory.