Tim Murphy


ENVELOPE HATRED

The doors are like parchments and yearning is shutting down the sunset. Silken gusts push me down rural trails. I call to a woman who is doing something in a disclosed mansion; she meets me on layers of moving grass and her hands are like bubbles in whitewater rapids. Clear chants ascend the cathedral bell rope. The misguided flee the forest carriages while the hunted retreat into dry seas. When you walk in the fire tracks of the way, old age leaves the village like a wolf. Insects seek rewards in the stillness and bloodstones release blue numbers quietly. Sadness and happiness converge in the valley. Emerald and lavender, differently adorned, protect consciousness. Among the scarlet shadows, geranium shapes move like delicate glass items.

VIRGO

Negative violet and mutable raspberry,
Feminine dill and fennel,
Valerian earth and juniper woodbine,
Chamomile from Costa Rica,
Careful vanilla and modest eucalyptus,
Moldovan marjoram,
Athenian nickel from Boston,
Anxious ivy and virgin almonds,
Qatari string beans,
Fussy frankincense and Armenian angelica,
Brazilian trifles from Brindisi,
Perfect parsnips and patchouli,
Hyacinths from Heidelberg . . .
And some time alone every single minute.



THE CACTI DO NOT MOVE

A blue sepia shone somewhere in the monochrome of the apartment building, while mystic words about spiral life cycles seemed oblivious to the fact of our anaesthetic love heading for the rocks. I remember one of the green birds in your dream spoke of breaking the dawn and opening wide the gates of day, while my dream was of sacraments passing through trees and willow shavings hanging on wands as first snow offerings. It seems a spell was cast dialectically by the two dreams, at least that’s the most plausible explanation for what happened in subsequent days and weeks. It was most likely this dialectic, for example, that prompted us to become our own winter secret. The dialectic theory would also explain the background cello sounds veering constantly into a ghost of a chance that either dream would recur. Ultimately, the whole situation, not least our spiralling arrangements in that apartment, took on a shade of tragedy blue. In fact, that was the blue sepia effect in the monochrome of the building. As regards the dissociated mantras, they have never been explained fully; perhaps a sacrament somehow passed through a day gate, or perhaps a life cycle melted into snow. What else is there to say? The death of our love, by convention I suppose, to nature belongs—but let’s not forget, as a kind of addendum to that, that in our dream dialectic the dancers let go and then, suddenly, the cacti do not move and nor do we.

Tim Murphy is from Cork, Ireland. His poetry has appeared in several journals, including Acorn, Frontera, Otata, Presence, Sonic Boom and SurVision. He lives in Madrid, Spain.
 
 
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