Dictum
Generosity means crops upstaged by weather
The posted mission statement cleaves to ingestion
Pouncily by shift by nuclear indemnity
What energy do you intend
I’m very tired and frosted, airborne spores
Demean themselves,
The stalled majority less analytical than Plato
Graven haste what if and stamina to spare
Retrenchment offloads grand light to the outfield
Have a pinch runner
Winning strong remarks apart from the IQ
Deservedly, the parents did not notify their consciences
At night I gather to myself these mysteries,
Enforcement’s factual enormity
Know what he wants, do what he says
The Frame
Is there a law that we can make, any loopholes we can close,
Constitutional law fitfully called law of the land,
Not self-executing, will prevent and punish some
Only religion, ethics, character
Plunked out in the cold trap door, still gifted with an older
More impressionable caretake,
Bless, bliss, bluster toward stalled sleep
The living rancor chills the face, an arbitrary young
Statistic briefs insightful sponge
Suspicion of the greater heights defines the words at risk
Supposing fallen from a cliff,
Who is more likely in the long run,
Cloister than apparently alone,
Curve ball sentenced to arrest
When violence against fairness fosters enmity
Bifurcates stray random issues
Let me sit and read the paper
Gymnasium-sized egos state what is
The toughest thing in flight: night landing on an aircraft carrier
When you deep breathe, how much do you estimate it costs
Cheating’s bad because it’s subsidized
One of the speakers said the first thing taught in law school
Was to bill an hour for fifty minutes’ work
You will have access to a list of obligations as a lawyer
Rapt attention, all working in the same place,
Listen to the language not be pure
Imposture
Flavor of the moment can’t control the flow
Of penitence / inertia / everybody off the hook, etcetera
In full flower and watched pearlingly
Plantation gravity gives ursa mown by arbitrage
I tautfully enlarge the swift place to whatever incident is there, then what
A pungent dormant drive-by shoe-in
Don’t go back to where you were before you came here
Standards offered up for the poor souls, no matter what the conflict
That’s the incident, pernicious disrespect off-loading breeze beyond the harbor
Interruption stakes its claim on impotence left out in weather
Get them on board, engage with them
Interpretive dance here for the long haul
Rapt within the minus column
Pointedly enough when animals are better than their masters
Right from wrong within circle of influence
All internity preventing polarized informance
Altimeter
Altimeter seems lifted round the curved pulse of integrity
The tabloids choose often wood for an interpretive instance
Turning secret blue particulars
How is affection placed to work with white
By drinking perfect water on your own time,
The apparent white detractions from known consequence
Value goals that end in use
Extremely difficult to play without being physically there
Unlatch, say, hemispheres broken into through a phone tree
To take assessment and then put it into acts
Flush with certitude on page twelve’s
Locution, hand in hand with loyalties
Prioritized, personalized, show me a rationalization
That relaxes sturdiness in flight
Amaze varieties of selves
This man grows farmed with the elated trenchcoats of aha
Put this simple plan in place, he says
Flash commands on strained pervasive playthings
The effect, dependent on the dose
So there upon the leafy wilderness goes groundswell
Counseling and other things while
Tension mounts the staircase
Distinct from locable integrity
To have been blamed is to have settled into someone else’s motivation
Second largest of the big boom generation
Locusts swept apart from distance
Conditional approval has been tossed to supplicants
A colorcade, great murals handed down from people with a shared heart
Photographs of someone else are boring
That includes the football field the kitchen the aquarium
Continuum
For the umpteenth time, erase the barriers to life blood
Of this former motivation
Get her to call me
He’s up there talking,
It’s not a program, it’s a frame
It’s not a picture, it’s spun sugar
On the borderline of poverty
What is your goal at this stretch,
Which horse, how predictable
Intuitive regression strops the vintage playthings
Advocate, disseminate, equivocate, endorse
Internal motivation integrates from stem to stern
Rocks out there and fertile soil
When cooking jambalaya, cook becomes accustomed
During swamp tour, heard about a man who . . .
Give me some content with some implications
Opportunity to do another thing
Re-sentence the emergence
Play the plan but once
If troubling answers, trauma stays indelibly at last
Snapshot
Being a role model is not voluntary
The question is not what the question is
Intentionally or intelligently
Rhetoric imbues a lifelike quality to pastures
Connective tissue blanches while you wait
The in-line skates, just dancing
|
 |
| Sheila E. Murphy's book manuscript Letters to Unfinished J. was selected in this year's open poetry competition sponsored by Sun & Moon Press, and will be published by Sun & Moon. Dennis Phillips was the judge. Falling in Love Falling in Love With You Syntax: Selected and New Poems has just been released by Potes & Poets Press. Recent works include A Clove of Gender (Stride Press, 1995). Murphy's work has been widely anthologized, most recently in Fever Dreams: Contemp orary Arizona Poetry (The University of Arizona Press, 1997) and The Gertrude Stein Awards in Contemporary Poetry (Sun & Moon Press, 1994, 1995). The Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series recently brought out an autobiography of Sheila E. Murphy, including photographs of Murphy with family and friends.
Sheila Murphy co-founded with Beverly Carver and continues to coordinate the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series, now in its eleventh season. Murphy is President of the management consulting firm Sheila Murphy Associates. Since 1976, she has made Phoenix, Arizona, her home. |
|