Five poems by Mark A. Murphy

Upscaling Zagajewski

What is, is more than it is; and that it should not be.

Theodor W. Adorno

Everything flows as Heraclitus knew

stepping into the wandering crosscurrents

of the Kaystros River. Everything passes as we consider 

if the drowned cat is a proper subject for poetry

within any exoteric or esoteric rules

of poeming. Every dead kitten a negation

or opposition to what went before. Every line or phrase

juxtaposed with thoughts of the moment

proceeding it. Just as the tidal river

carries the feline carcass

to the sea, so the old snapshot of the poet behind bars

changes (for better or worse)

as neurons transmit and translate flesh,

steel, darkness, light. And in doing so are transformed

themselves like our memory

of Zagajewski’s worried face (warts, birthmarks

wrinkles) pressing home

their natural advantage in that world of sanitised poetics.

Now we forget our earlier reservations

as the AI image upscaler blurs the line between conformity

and illusion. Spits out its cleaned up version

of how it thinks the poet’s phizog

might benefit by removing

everything that makes his countenance old and wise

and beautiful. Everything changes

as the rising sea tides flood the low lying fields.

Leave us to wonder

at the sand clocks of Heraclitus and Zagejewski’s thirst

which exceeds the mythic blue Aegean.

Helene Demuth Notes A Change of Heart

1. How do you turn down a dialectical thinker

with a hard on for a new idea?

1. Tell him the dialectics of hopeturn out to be

nothing more than the interpenetration

of id and ego. You can’t always hold back

the tide, but you can always muddy the waters

by taking refuge in the greatest good

for the greatest number. One death is heroic.

Two deaths, a tragedy. Better to be dissatisfied

as Socrates, than satisfied as a pig.

A qualitative leap between, ‘I have begun

to long for you.’

And, ‘I who have no need.’

Navigators

for KMC

When the time comes, we will not be the ones

to let the dead bury the dead

for we’re the ones who can’t go home.

Our hearts have died so many times.

When the time comes,

we will procure the Death Certificate.

Kiss the deceased on the mouth.

Shake hands with the crematorium ghosts.

Drink with the gatecrashers

to the recently departed. Receive

their reservations.

But we ask, what if the time comes,

and we do not accede? What if we had to tell

someone, the most important thing

in the world, but knew they wouldn’t believe us?

*

We gently remind you. When the time comes.

Passing Thoughts in Eternal Ignorance

i

What can we know when we’re closing in on death

in a world where we’re hardly born?

What ought we to do to negate winch, chain

and portcullis, when our children

are so quick on the draw –

to throw us away if only to appease the middlemen

advertising another culture palace?

What may we hope in loving, apart from paying

the piper to rid us

of lost causes, that we might pay lip-service

to the songs of strangers

acting out secrets in the oldest game

in the book – tongue twisters

picking bloody moon daisies and midnight candy

from the night garden

without a thought for the dead and born again?

ii

What do we care for enlightened self-interest 

peddling shortcuts every time

we would kiss? We who knot the rope

to bridge the gaps

so we might cross to the other side

without losing our grip in the deep ravines

of empty time. Only to learn

the rope was always too short to begin with.

Quiet Mother Weeps for Everyone

i

White breath of stolen time, we drink your mornings.

We drink your midday, we drink you

after midnight

when the crescent moon hangs

her ashen halo

in disorderly retreat.

When the quiet tears of the Red Sea

recall the old city walls before the night air bursts

into halos of fire

like Fire Genies in a pantomime.

We drink you when the sun is dying

in the crowning moment of choking air.

ii

White breath of stolen time, a woman plays piano

in a house in Tel Aviv.

When it gets dark, she types: ‘Death is a Mistress

from the Holy Land,’ on her 1943 Olympia.

She says the runes shining above the number 5

are lightening bolts

projecting power to preserve peace.

She wears orthodox braids in the latest “Jerusalem” cut

and calls to her Gazza flautists:

Fortissimo grandioso.

Her eyes glow above the City Lost in the Desert.

Her eyes glow white hot as peeling flesh.

Her eyes glow as much as pain.

iii

White breath of stolen time, we bring you a child

anaesthetised on a stretcher.

We bring you biopsy and amputation.

We drink and we bring you stars we once knew

glowing in veils of chemical

goodbyes.

We bring you the house of music and words.

We utter: Lento doloroso.

And we alter the stolen garden.