Sheila Murphy

PILOT

"There are no absolutes," the round professor voicefully declared. Now 
that this poor shelled dream has passed, I learn there's nothing very 
arbitrary about spirit except its photogenicity. Coltrane's seventieth 
keeps being replayed on radio. It's two days later, two a.m.. The lips 
of my announcer keep saying this one and now this one is her fave. 
What keeps moving is the mood more supple than I was when it first 
arrived. And the professor's dead. So who's going to be watching this 
hard-to-pinpoint thing. And the election. Do they look alike again, 
one older and one young. Legacies are chilled alcoholic flight. Jazz 
musicians find their way through cobwebs on the tires of a car parked 
for too long in this one place to be welcome anymore. A saxophone 
sounds like a violin with a head cold if you listen with the right 
forgetfulness. How does percussion earn its keep in a disintegrating 
thought system. I am blond because I say I am.



FREE-STANDING SELF PORTRAIT

Subsidy ought to be washed. It was Christmas again. The shredder 
glowed with opportunity to hard-yarn reworks into indecipherable 
spills. For every lust, there is a wording. Investment is to 
busybodies what sports are to the lethargic. A bust of someone quiet 
needed to be rubbed atop the piano every little while. Which town is 
"16" on the Wyoming license plate? We're prayer mission-control for 
all the ones whose bodies have been tampered with by loving 
scientists. Bone marrow is a phrase without a picture in my mind. 
Wrong texture, I suspect. (Can it be drunk?) The windows everyone is 
fighting for are too dark to absorb the healing rays we read about. 
What a gift, the dictionary she no longer had to carry from one room 
to the next. A box of cold-pressed notes. It's not a matter of leaking 
something like a story. Power resurrects and multiplies and all the 
other verbs you want to hear. I point in six directions with affection. 
Quite specifically where recipients are housed. A planet is defined as 
a mentality maintained by invisible and potent hinges. This core of 
goodness feeds others and itself infectiously. All afternoon the TV 
voices locate boundaries for the recent past. I burn rubber with this 
smooth machine by watching screen release its obbligato. Procreation 
is reputed to begin with loving mirrors of all shapes and sizes. I say 
it's more specific than that. Care, too broad to fit into a policy you 
pay for month by month. The words "long-term" don't really modify. 
They clothe.



CORRESPONDENCE

Lust takes a left turn, and I'm nowhere to be found when the object 
reappears. I decide not even to sketch it. The weather's wrong. I'd 
rather work in oils on something else. Snapshots may be good enough to 
make their points. The snare drum makes me think of roomy flats with 
antlers poking out of walls. Somebody took the liberty...In retrospect, 
the thought of acquisition fails to titillate. One lives in hope that 
psychic confidants will fail to resurrect the story. Driving in the 
rain ought to engender legendary intimacy. Reasons Maslovian preclude 
this. Look at all the soggy branches downed. Mythology, to endure, 
must have done better. The elements do not necessitate retrieval of 
their imagery.



THE SEPARABLE JUSTICE

Cinders bleed at night. She pokes the answering machine open. Presses 
shut the single-digit message. Tumbles out of the funk, reconstitutes 
the separable justice in a slip of voice. Dewey decimal finder's fee 
in open stacks. Homogenized recalcitrance, a synonym for darkness of 
the page. Statistics translatable as quiet. Thumbs pass up the optical 
illusion of a slowing down toward thought. As though this acre might 
be moved somewhere with us upon it. Small figures on a cake without a 
corresponding wedding.

Singularity, a line of melody that's recognizable, varying need for an 
attunement



HOMONYM SHOULDERS

Piano wilds my sense of hearing 
For I cannot cross the midline 
In real life, so flute is better, 
Linear thinking, and square-shaped cakes

Caldrons mere my taste 
Because I write with two hands 
On account of having trained the one 
For which I'm disinclined

A person cannot be expected to give up 
The zest portion of the program 
For however many hours she sits at home 
Presumed to have been buried in her happiness

But instead rehearsing without consciousness 
A tarred and feathered dream 
That costs virtue and temperament 
That tantalizes others better suited to the suffering



DIVIDENDS

Spinet your little eyes out, go ahead and drizzle. Davenports once in 
the street are now moved in. Your off-the-shoulder attitude (directory 
assistance) can be seen to pry. Why don't you. The sole maternity I 
have is tired of me at last. Unclothe lyrics so I can disclaim their 
meaning. The qualming of guitar chords pounces without conscience. 
Mediocrity opens a fist that should be neighborly. Why she wore 
mustard I will never...Bathing in calendula is one thing; drying out, 
another. Legal pads seem fresh while they are being used. Rose, the 
color, opts to freshen light seaworthy. Champions, not bronzed until 
we name them.

Tapioca drilled by random silence, tease modality of shoulders



THERE IS A MOOD

Rosary for me your olive loaves all century 
I have emptied the recording (glass) 
Of your pressed voice 
Of your smart linking black and white keys 
Stringed instruments also sidecars in the press 
Of the eventment of anointed ones 
Who speak what we write down (in order) 
Sanctity conferred even in living rooms 
There is a mood to each carved space 
Now it's time to pancake make-up all celebrities 
Prayer is costume jewelry for the taut birds 
Selved in situation black to make their melodies come near 
Sequential breweries moisten the home with their shellac-like 
Shoulders able to endure most anything by reputation 
The laughter to relax in seeds along same looking shorelines 
Teach which questions not to ask