Separate Universes

Two forces collide
ricochet
two opposing rays emerge
bounding like deer
across the caves and truncations
over the waves and exclamations
hey!

You!

follow ME!

it's a mystery of physics
or magnetics
the way that the dances diverges
realign, meeting at the poles of opposition
laughing at the ride.

Picturing Pronouns

She wants to make movies
hold her eye to a glass
and capture a world (that she directs)
in a lens, frame it in black.

I know her through pictures,
one in particular, but it
doesn't move the way she does
and I provided our soundtrack.

Our stories are similar
but have different interpretations.
I have cliche characters, plots, and theories-
she twists expectations.

We have parallel histories
(though I'm the only one who survived the dark ages)
the branches of our family trees entwine
leaving echoes in the bones under our eyes
coursing under our skin
cells calling to their counterparts
to the steady rhythm of hearts.

Mine beats a little faster,
Hers a little harder,
but our blood inevitably bleeds
the same color red.

She wants to make movies
show the world something new.
I write cliche stories, because
no one listens to what's been said.

Around us, the universe whispers
unsure of the consequences, or knowing the rest.

Inside me, the verses flounder
unable to determine the words which are best.

So,
I rearrange letters and
p
l
a
y
with pronouns.

She is ME.
I AM.
Together, WE.

Our 'us' is a pronoun I trust,
though the sentence is incomplete -
Because it's the beginning of something,
something I'd love to read
and what the world needs to see.

Gerry Murphy

"Under the Dog Star"

Imminent synchronicity wakes me.
I open my eyes as the digital clock
displays 3.33.33. a.m
Beyond the windo
a gleaming curve holds up
the dark weight of the moon.
Further out fierce starlight
glitters through from 1347,
Even the dogs are silent -
shot, knifed, and bludgeoned into silence.
Thinking of you,
I begin to imagine you
slipping out of the satin hush
of your underwear
into the chafing din of my arms.
Trouble is, you are probably awake also,
busy in the sealed-off archives of memory
shredding this fiction.

Finally I admit to myself
that you will not call
and apart from burning offerings
next to the silent telephone,
apart from racking the postman
until he snaps and coughs up
all those letters you insist you sent,
I can do nothing.
So, I sit in the gloom
unravelling steadily,
the gleam of a demented smile
growing brighter and brighter
as I disassemble the rose-
shelovedmeshelovedmenotshelovedmeshelovedmenotshelovedmeshe-
reassemble the machine-pistol.

This is where I peel your name
from that much battered, much travelled suitcase-
the heart.
Where I dissolve whole reels of memories
which played and played
in that obsessive, all-hours cinema-
the head.
This is where
I switch off the individually-lit photographs
and burn down the dreary warehouse of regret.
Where I walk out
into the sweet empty air
into the desert of myself.

More fragments.

Open Mic at BJs

Nevada pours over his notebook
twirling his pen as
another name on the list
is crossed of. Ink over ink.
Pen top over ball point.
Ink over ink.

A cycle of BJ's Good Grub
Eat.

-

'Eros'

Like the stiches that make my pocket
you hold me together and
my keys (to keep others out)
the broken cell phone, I can't see the screen
but I know I can put it to my mouth
and dial --- 8233 and you'll answer,
asking if you can find me.

Find a self-proclaimed poetess
at 4 AM throwing plates at
the wall because it's blank -

like your smooth white skin
I mouth punctuation on your spine
the question marks drip off my lips
and turn into exclamation points dotted
with your freckles.

We speak in smoke colored sentences
punctuated by sin but the only pause
is an ellipsis ... for good taste.

Dashing and dotting eyes, spillings Ts
our relationship is gibberish that no one
but us can read.

But, y9ou always strike me classically.

Your lips a bow, tipped with
an arrow of nose.

struck

I whisper your true name,
Eros
into my pillow.

----

Monday doesn't like school
the other days of the week tease her
so she applies herself extra
diligently to her studies, turning
her books and pens into
surrogate buddies.

At night, she looks at the moon
and wonders what about her has caused
other to focus on its dark side.

Mondays remembers the days before
classes began, when she and the other kids
played together.

Friday used to braid her hair,
before Saturday and Sunday came between them.

----

A Poem for Alarm Clocks

Destroyer of Dawn
you mutilator of morn!
I hate myself for turning you on
that fucking beep I scorn!

Everyday at 7 AM, you take me away
from my lover
leaving me longing for PM,
when I can crawl back under the covers.

--------

I need to update this more often. Blech.

"Paper is Poor Company"

Paper is poor company
these letters, vowels
meant to be read aloud
but silent, without sound
bloodless ink upon the page.

I write poetry on napkins
bathroom stalls and to people
words dribble from my pen
all lost and disconnected
without a set of eyes to see

But some see, then don't read
so all that is left are holes
in the body of me, my corpus
a line of footprints in the snow.

The poet wanders -
Sandaled, chucked, always bound feet-
with no place to go.

Haunting

Trees whisper down Elm Street
with the crackle of speakers
the whisper of treads
I walk, humid curls
halo my head as my smoke
trails ring behind
wisps and whispers

the buzzz
of you on my hips I feel it
like the scent of autumn my pillow
the imprint of love on sheets
rustling leaves and water drips
echoes and echoes

I write short silly sentences
with the tips of fingers
and linger on send
wisps of willows, whispers

the anachronism of technology
ties you to this
memory of full and thin lips
lingers, haunts, the pavement

tonight we walk together
if I listen with my ribs
the rhythm of your step
entwines with mine, accent on the left
behind wisps, whispers
echoes and echoes

Spring 2008 snippets

"With this on one hand
and that on another
I could never find the words
to get across the boxes
I only knew the letters going down
and in the space between
each note, the silence between
the sounds my heart follows
the beats of the songs and poems
never read, meeting a dull ache"

-

A tornado is formed by two things:
cold and heat
the frosty cold front blows from the
North and dances with the warm dust gusts
from the South waltzing in a circle
the hiss of steam on the
cold lips of the Canadian front
as they kiss releases a vortex
of rain and wind, a whirling dervish
loose across the prairie,
chased by vans and satellites

-

The worms weave themselves
over the magnolia leaves
glistening like ribbons from the ground

moon light hits the sodden boughs
creating fireworks around the dying
flowers perking up for one last kiss
from the rain.

But you don't see any of this.
You're asleep, away, alone.
And I am awake, aware, alone.

Watching the worms weave over
the magnolia leaves, pulling the
petals into the ground.

-


Like a dug up miscarriage
you're nothing like you could have been
concieved in shame and born in sin
your half formed bones peeking out
fomr your skin, half human
half reptilian.

Yet as I stand above your little mound
hands colored with the grime and ground
my curiousity is sated.

You're not the beautiful baby I've been mourning;
You're the monstrosity I hated.

Half torn, half born
rotting in the ground
half formed, half born
you'll never be found.

Tom Noyes

The universe is a barbershop quartet, one ongoing medley that won’t be interrupted, even for applause. When you get a red light, someone else gets a green, and it is good. The traffic flows. If you dig a hole, the next thing you do is fill it up. You inhale then you exhale. Too fast you faint, too slow you suffocate. You stay in step despite yourself.

St. Patrick's Day in Boston

There are bombings in Belfast
but in Boston, it's still.
Stars dance above Charlestown,
the Moon balances on Bunker Hill.

All of the troubles an ocean away,
we drink our pints of Murphy's and Guinness,
toast "Erin Go Bragh!"clad in green,
and wear pins that demand other's kisses.

In Belfast, black cabs drive the tourists by
IRA men that are painted, enshrined on walls
Above sayings like "Ulster forever, Protestant or die!"
while the Catholic's revenge echoes from Falls.

In Bean Town, it's a great day for the Irish!
Dance the jigs, sing the refrains.
Oh me? I'm 80 percent, on my father's side.
We've even got one of the old tribe names.

Pass the beer, tinted Green,
Dance a reel on the floor,
It's a great day for the Irish!
My lovely, could you want more?

drabble

The apples were shining with the condensation of early morning sunlight. Overhead, a distant crow called forlornly into the crisp air. From somewhere off in the distance came the whistling lull of cars passing through puddles.

George laid on his back, looking up at the light reflecting off of the leaves and fruit above him. His back was stiff and cold with the chill of morning. It almost ached beneath him (or was it inside him?) as he breathed disappearing wisps of smoky breath. He had no knowledge of how long he had been laying there. The dullness of his bones made him feel that he had been there most of the last night.

Last night there had been cider, spiked cider. There had been the taste of apple pie on a lover's lips, sugary and sweet, warm like a kitchen fire. Last night there had also been yelling. Had there been a fight?

Yes, George thought, pulling a night's worth of spiderwebs off this memories. There had been a fight.

This solid memory awash in a morning that seemed so cold and frail, moved George to sit upright. The spinning of his head reinforced the memory of spiked cider. He looked at his hands. Bruises there reinforced the conviction of the fight. A knuckle, swollen and red so that it resembled a crabapple, throbbed steadily beneath its frigid dullness.

struck

your lips a bow tipped
with an arrow of nose

I whisper your true name
Eros
into my pillow

Reciprocal Functions

6 billion people on this Earth.
That's 9 zeros. Ten figures.

In such a wide data set
it's hard to see the fish
for the sea, or ride
the sine waves of information, hoping
the torsion of distance will shrink
over time until A meets B.

And of course, we'll meet
tangentially. You'll be the spurious dot,
no correlation.

They'll say we have great chemistry
but really it'll be that your gravity
pulls me in, falling at -9.8 m/s2.

I'll be the valent electrion orbiting
your element, vaguely negative but
ready to bond, to build, to create
ions of being. Our constancy
adding together our lives
subtracting our fears as we
multiply, making two into three or four
sharing our love exponentially.

I'm looking for something you can't measure.
Something integral to existence,
an infinite but not imaginary number.

I'm not saying that our equation
will always make sense.
Numbers can be odd and even
reciprocals can't always be right.

We'll fight, we'll divide, we'll miscalculate.
There will be plenty of variables to confuse us.
Ones to carry.

But I believe we'll get back on track,
meeting at the X and Y axis, so it's all equal.
and we'll laugh at the origin of our problems.

I'm aware that numbers aren't real, they're irrational.
That the answer to my theory relies
on the acceptance of the very first premise.

The universal law that states
we can do this,
if and only if you want to.

Saranac Lake

Gravel digs into fingertips
carpet and old fast food cups
thrust into a young face

Smaller, thinner, small
like the pebble lodged
in my palm.

Beneath the pushing
of a Mother
beneath a musty blanket

Through fingers
through rough wide stitches
the outline of Father through glass
walking past in the snow.

He blows on snow frosted fingers.
Hands that could tuck you in.
Hands that made breakfast
and pancakes
in the shape of snowmen.

Walk away on the other side.

Beneath the blanket
Mother's hand relaxes.
Spines are straightened
balls of flesh, unfurled.

But the red hollow of a pebble
leaves an impression on the palm
of a young girl.

Dealing with Demons

My mother tucked me and my siblings in each night
reminding us of sin, told us to pray
warned us that the Devil was never
too far to hear or see our footsteps
no matter how much he had to drink
but if we were good girls and boys,
turned the other cheek
then God would chase him away
and save us, if we believed
repeated Our Fathers, Hail Marys
and Apostles Creeds then Mom and us,
we'd be in heaven - looking down
in righteous glory on our enemies
and all our suffering would be worth it
because we'd be together and safe
so, we'd fold our hands
bow our heads
and say 'amen'.

When I'd forget the next day
taking God's name in vain or
acting less than saintly
Mom beat the Lord into me
with the same hands she used to pray
She'd call me things like Satan or Demon
had me so convinced I smelled sulfur on my skin
each bruise confused with confession
like my broken blood vessels spoke
of guilt within, revealing a million
cells of transgression spilling
on the floor like rosary beads,
a trail of Our Father's judgment
leaking onto the linoleum.

I prayed.
Every night my sister and I would kneel beside our beds,
weave our fingers together
and in hushed tones ask God for forgiveness.
We'd apologize, saying we didn't know why
he wanted to test me, making kids throw bricks
at our brothers or tease us about my broken family,
We didn't know why he made our lullabies
the sound of breaking glass and fists,
didn't know why he let my teachers
lie about the kids at recess
and my parents deceive and hurt each other
leaving marks across my sister and brothers
until we didn't have a home anymore
and our house was just a case number
because he knew everything, right?

He saw every time my sister held me
when I was too scared to sleep,
saw my brothers
picking up the brick and throwing it back
and he saw me turning cheek after cheek
heard the clicking and beating
of my red rosary beads
and I was sure he had a lesson for me,
I just wasn’t looking hard enough.

So I looked. I searched Bibles and
books, chased strings between beads,
and it turns out I couldn't see the Grace
for the trees.
God was in the one place I'd thought
he'd forgotten about.

God was in my sister, letting me in her bed.
God was in my brothers, always standing up for me.
And God was in my parents too.
In my Mother, in the way she prayed so hard
and my Father, when he made pancakes
and over the sizzling of bacon, laughed
so you'd swear the whole house was shaking.

Though we handle each piece of our
broken home gingerly, minding our fingers
on the edges as we glue it back together
with forgiveness and awkward family dinners
ever aware of the skeletons in the corner,
I'm proud of being a Murphy.
Because we're a family.

We'll damn each other and save each other
with a love you can only describe as divinity.

On Navy Pier

I grabbed you, noting how
the crosshatching of christmas lights
on your golden skin created contrast
between our hands, and squeezed.

My rings bit into my skin.

We ambled toward the city, dusk
deepening the shadows between our fingers
creating a canyon of black that
seemed to leak onto the boardwalk
leaving an inky trail behind us,
lost in the passing crowd.

Like we were melting.

Behind us the ferris wheel
oscillated while the distorted
reflections of children grinned
at the Lake from fun house mirrors,
farther away than the trail of
our ghost fingers, reaching,
could touch.

Summertime

Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
Your Daddy’s rich and your Momma’s good lookin’,
So, hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

It’s 99 degrees; I’m sitting on his knees
drinking to slow my mind, his hand on my thigh.
After I imbibe, he breathes, toking from a piece,
flame near his face despite the heat.
I call shotgun. Whiskey and weed.

We’re trying to devise
just how many vices
we need to mix.

I take a sip, he takes a hit.
Sooner than later, it’s lips,
rocking hips unable to tell
horizon, skin, or sin, where I
end and he begins.

Oh, Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
I’m one hot bitch and you’re quite good lookin’
So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

Summertime, the days begin
Waking up in a pile of limbs
I dance with the street sweeper on the way
Back up Clark, singing to the beat
My feet make on the sidewalk.

After it’s dark, we’ll write
poems on the cells of our hands
holding, touching, searching each other
for one loose comma of inspiration tucked away
In the structure of our badly formed sentences
of fleshy psycho-babble,
our conversation defined by the monitor’s glow.

While Autumn hides in the hallway, biding her time.
Watching the seconds fall from the clock like auburn leaves
patiently putting Xs on the calendar we pretend not to see,
because she knows you’re not mine.

I should recognize the waning sun
Add up the differences and signs
But I don’t want to analyze,
So July creeps by, vices multiply.

They wanted me to go to rehab,
I said no, no no.
They wanted me to go to rehab,
I said I won’t go, go, go.

‘Cause it’s summertime, life’s good and easy
Fish are jumpin’ and somewhere a clock chimes,
We’re so far from rich, but still pretty fly
So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

Now August dawns with gold colored days
and the metallic smell of frost lingers in the dusk.
We start to fight. Find faults to put inches
back in, sleeping apart in the diminishing nights
we’ve still got left together, frigid in the wrong season
unable to weather the change.

My chest is filled with ticks, tocks instead of beats.
You’ve lost the heat you had for me.
We crumble under the weight of vice.
And it could be better, we could fix it.

But, we know don’t have the time.

So, I’ve got my pints and
You’ve got your pipes and either way,
we’re getting fucked tonight.

Summertime, the livin’ is easy,
fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.
Your daddy’s rich and your Momma’s good lookin’
so hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

Don’t you ever, ever cry.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis


-- ee cummings

the chickens

"You have to reach under them,"
the farmer's wife tells me, forcing her hand
beneath a hen that cries out loudly.

The hen's beady eyes look at its freshly stolen egg
shining against the flesh of her palm, bewildered,
like the egg is a fallen star or an oblong moon
that rose too soon in the peach sky
of the farmer's wife's long-fingered
spider web hands.

The hen begins to scream and peck
squawks of protest. It fights for
its treasured egg; its sharp beak
darts out and strikes
drawing a crimson line on a knuckle.

With a fierce curse,
the bird is struck down by
the farmer's wife's fist.

"Sometimes they'll fight," she says
whistling on her 's' through the black and white
piano keys that are her teeth
placing the egg in a wicker basket
at my feet, "But if you give 'em a good whack,
they'll remember who's boss."

She walks away, entering the house
the shotgun sound of the screen door slamming
and the scrambled static of the police scanner
echoing after her.

Surrounded by foul battery cages,
pebbles grinding into the bottoms of my bare feet,
I take up the basket and approach the next bird.

Sitting upon its nest as if in meditation,
the hen's eyes are serene and closed.
Its feathers are fluffed, feet tucked beneath
white plumes that are spotted with the defecation
of other birds.

So like a statue, she doesn't seem to breathe.

She sits so placidly that instead of seeing meat
and eggs, I see the figure of Mary in the
garden of the house where I used to live,
surrounded by dandelions and weeds,
her beatific face raised towards the heavens.

Her eyes were closed too.

Her marble white cloak was marked
with the drops of birds too.

She held her child in her arms,
and contemplated the wonders of maternity
that this bird meditates
upon the egg between its feet.

I hold the wicker basket,
Its gaping maw reminds me
so
timidly I extend my hand
toward the base of the hen.

The chicken's eyes open, angrily
and she immediately leaps to her feet
beating her wings and shrieking
defending the egg she's keeping
thrashing the air with her beak.

Determined to do my job, I reach
but she grabs my thumb
and she bites me hard.

I begin to bleed.

Now, irritated in my agony,
I knead my fingers into a fist
and draw it back, self-righteous,
behind my head.

But the chicken stops screaming.

Instead, it sits back down on its egg,
Bracing its head under its wing,
anticipating the blow, with all the grace
of a dove mid-flight in a
stained glass window
trembling with the wind.

A mass of quivering feathers.

I’m poised to deliver the hit,
My shadow covering her
Like an ominous black blanket
But there’s something familiar
In the way she’s cowering
In the fear that makes her shiver.

I’ll never strike.

I stand by the nest until
the chicken leaves of its own accord,
searching out niblets of corn peppered
across the gravel.

Then, I take the egg, gingerly
tucking it in the basket like
I’m cradling my own baby,
even singing it to sleep.

Collecting the eggs like this takes all day
with each chicken only mildly surprised
when it returns to an empty roost.

When the sky turns darker shades
I hush the screen door and creep into the house
with a basket full of tiny moons
and by the blue glow of the stove’s
pilot light, I put the eggs in the fridge.

Life After Depth

Hydrogen and oxygen
chained together
weigh down on sunken ships
putting lost sailors' bones under pressure.

Do their empty eyesockets
see fish swimming above
or birds in air?

Does the sun dapple through
fingers of seaweed or
clusters of leaves?

The corals and anemones
do they sway
in currents or in breeze?

A crab has taken the place of Eve
springing from the jacket
of one of these wide-eyed men.

A shock of red against sodden denim.

The sailor, as he lies,
smiles a toothy grin
the crab crawling across his ribs
and down his sternum

amazed that in this depth
there's still life within him.

The Ballad of Patrick Creevey (draft)

Patrick Creevey, seventeen
full of heart and full of dreams
set out to sail on the open sea
to pay for a golden ring.

His lady fair Molly McGee
worked night and day in a bakery
her hardened hands smelled of yeast
and only wed would she be free.

So it's off to sea with poor, young Pat
'least a fortnight 'til he rows on back
She'll marry him when his ship comes in
and Creevey's baby be.

Three weeks on board, no sign of shore
scrubbing red hands and knees on port
a man named Jack dear Patrick met
who offered him a tempting bet.

Jack, a man dressed solemnly
all clad in velvet of ebony
inquired of Pat why he chose to be
across the waves upon the sea

Patick, resting the soap on deck,
replied that he'd money to get
for a lovely lady Molly McGee
who was a-waiting for his company.

Oh, it's off to sea with poor, young Pat
'least a fortnight 'til he rows on back
She'll marry him when his ship comes in
and Creevey's baby be

"If you best me in a game of dice,
I'll double your wage; you go home to your wife"
said Jack brushing of his veleveteen,
to the sound of his pockets jingling.

Oh, it's a game of dice for poor young Pat
with a quick throw, he rolls snake eyes
She'll marry him when his ship comes in
and Creevey's baby be