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