Mark Murphy
Mark Murphy Poems
She came out of the southern ocean
steeped in mystery. Beautiful. Reckless as sunlight
...
Like the poet, Frank O'Hara, I am not a sculptor
but a poet (at least) according to my friends
I am a man who passes himself off as a poet.
Why? Because poetry is the property of no one.
...
When the hours of morning stop and dawn forces
its greyness, the dead will come to your bedsides
as strangers, carrying their mirrors like lanterns.
They will gatecrash the skulls of the heaviest
...
Look out across the lake.
Not to the far shore;
roads and walls that make
...
If I could win you with words
I would write, “Come and lie naked with me.
Oh, come and lie naked with me.”
...
It would seem that I am ill-equipped to deal
with your latest news; how my inadequacies
must disturb you. My room gets lonelier
by the minute and the gloom outside
...
There are words, sometimes. We cannot utter
them. Safer. Better then, we do not talk
of hearts and courses,
...
I have dreamt all the best poems, never written
them down, except the odd line scrawled
on the walls of the labyrinth.
Never the chance, met most days by the sound
...
It is quite possible, then, that Hector
deceives himself with visions of love,
trinkets, amulets, photographs - all junk,
all of it carried from pillar to post,
...
It is not with any apology we walk
the silt and pebble of this shoreline –
through time and space we ache
...
I watch over the town like some lost angel
just beginning to grasp the significance of the task.
Where ever you are asleep, I hear the sounds of sleep-
walkers, sleep-talkers and sleep-junkies – too tired
...
Night after night she gave refuge to the loneliness
of which I am made, day and then night again
she danced in the dirtiest bars and in her body
...
The Best Poem Of Mark Murphy
Mermaid
She came out of the southern ocean
steeped in mystery. Beautiful. Reckless as sunlight
in the winter surf, bold as morning breaking
over sand and dunes and the treeless downs.
And when the first men spied her naked
on the beech, they cried as children.
And when the women first saw her in the lanes and ginnels
of the old village, they bolted their doors
as if an ill wind were blowing. No one knew why she came
that December morning after a lifetime of centuries
alone. No one cared. But our lady of the deep
had awoken from her dreams in the bleak mid-winter
and came ashore innocent as day breaking
over the sleepy community. And no one could turn back time.
How many men had dreamt of such a creature
emerging as she did with her raven hair
tossed about her loving breasts? Of course,
it would not be long now before the doors opened
and the warmth of firelight would warm her through.
And so it began. The good men of the village
gave her refuge, but it was not long before asylum turned
to torment. Days and nights passed.
After the men had taken what they wanted
as though the taking was their given right,
they cast her out onto the cobbled walkway
like bundled flesh not fit for dogs, and when the women saw
what the men-folk had done, they rushed to condemn
our lady as a ‘wanton’ and ‘fallen’ woman.
In that time of miracles, the villagers gathered
to cast their stones at the sad figure of a mermaid drowning
in the abounding air. Her cries could not be heard
above the crashing waves. No one and nothing could save her.
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4/25/2024 11:02:34 AM # 1.0.0.1119
