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
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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
...