David MurphyOuter and Inner Worlds
Beyond where ships sail on salt
lie staggering danger and untold discovery;
beyond the romantic specks of our cosmic vault
lie an astral range worth uncovering;
and in this rare, ordinary build
into which we people have evolved
(one of idealistic hopes forever unfulfilled)
lies powerful mysteries that never shall be solved.
Cloud Kingdom at Dusk
On his back on a grass hill
lies a boy, who, in this dusky hour,
watches the sun paint a castle
with pastels on keep and tower:
a gentle peach upon the spire
that’s lit by a cloud dragon’s fire.
Moonbeams
Sometimes, the moon drops down a line
when fishing for him, or her,
who’ll climb starward that silvery vine
in search of wild adventure.
A Country Woman and Her Daughter
The girl enters with a glad meow,
summer weather following like a tail.
The screen door bangs on sunset’s brow
she pounces on her mother with a purr.
Looking through a Microscope at the Universe
Evidently, you have it backward.
The microscope is for the microscopic,
the telescope for those enraptured
by the awesome scope of the cosmic.
Clearly, you’ve made a mistake.
Yet in life’s surprising petri dish
lies a macrocosm of creation:
startling stuff that makes up bird and fish,
complex atoms which incite elation,
that look like stars in a great black lake.
Church Bell
The air’s dead in the cemetery.
Unmoving, the Spanish moss drapes
like monks’ robes in a monastery
in that gliding Reaper’s shape.
Live oaks stand as still as lead.
A sound. Through glossed air comes a knell:
sliding like glaze, sticking like dread,
conducting a new soul to its stone cell.
The Candle
A flame leaps on a taper’s end
like a child filled with joy
or when playing with his friend –
such warm, bright light in a boy.
Desert Revival
We once were all in desert dry:
scorched by sun, parched by thirst,
we’d thought that here we’d die.
But when the night came coolly
we felt we’d weathered the worst.
Our zest it quickened duly,
as life extended, untraversed.
Season’s Chimes
It’s inadequate, the sounding chime,
to convey the sundry dawns and dusks
that rise and fall like crops of flowers,
and seasons that stock and sap the bowers,
and fields aging from seed to fruit to husk:
these many great and small cycles of time.
Sunset
I saw a fine sunset
of bright citrus oranges –
of that a long wire –
and gold, harvest yellows.
I longed to not forget
how the wild color singed
the sky like a fire
when stoked by the bellows.
Pioneering
New horizons yearned for,
and adored, like far shores
where rest the fertile stores
that learners oft explore.
Heartgash
This wound no hand can stanch,
neither doctor’s nor family’s.
For it, no balm in homilies,
in truths, or olive branch.
Happy Saturday!
Here’s a new poem.
The Great Motivator
Life, that grand adventure,
is fraught with zestful noise
of kings, paupers, alloys
strange, shaky, and unsure,
and is hung o’er by death,
clammy and ominous:
the dark, repugnant bliss
that vitalizes breath.
Just some thanks for your support and a reminder that my latest mystery, The Vortex Mole, is available!
It’s been a very active year. I’ve published six (count ’em!) books, and am working on a new one!
The Natural World, 12 October 2024
The Murders in the Endicott Hotel, 19 November 2024
Afghanistan, 1 February 2025
Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, 3 April 2025
The Vortex Mole, 18 June 2025
Limericks, 29 July 2025
Also, there’s a new poem below!
Common Heroes
Life soon becomes what we chose:
More than what might be or could,
it’s how we quietly stood.
The world is full of common heroes.
Thanks again for your support!
–David.
I’m very pleased to announce that my latest book, The Vortex Mole, has been published through Dreameyrie!
The President of Vortex Defense Industries, Maj. Gen. James Gibson, sets out on a mole hunt that will have devastating consequences for him. His Russian opposite, Col. Gen. Dragomirov, struggles to survive Moscow’s duplicitous political games. Meanwhile, Gibson and Dragomirov’s men clash and strive for dominance on Ukrainian soil.
As the mystery surrounding the mole’s identity deepens, Gibson and Dragomirov draw closer and closer together, and their blows against one another’s forces land with ever more destructive power. At last, the mole brings the two formidable rivals face-to-face, and the consequences prove shattering.
In this military thriller and espionage mystery, the mole could be anyone, while the search for truth about betrayal takes a dark and subtle route through a bleak and savage war.
The Greatest Ocean
When stars glimmered o’er the wand’ring gypsy
when waves dashed ‘gainst the hulls of clipper ships
that cut through foam under night’s diamond sky;
when young lovers touched their yearning hips,
their eyes glinting for each other like jewels,
hope lay in their hearts, fighting against time.
What is time but a relentless killer?
It kills men, leaves, larks, galaxies, and rhymes
with the same cooling, corrosive pressure.
Paradoxically, it kills e’en age,
which, like all things, it has birthed in its way.
Such things as sailors carry: hope, promise,
a lookout and longing for distant land,
are, like youth, destroyed by time’s steady hand.
Time, whose heart is a mysterious sea;
Time, that the universe must have to be.
Time
Who knows thee, Time, but the living?
Who fears thee, but those who know you?
Thy ways, strict and unforgiving,
cripple and bow that which you grew,
and bury what you brought from earth.
With march and mien unpitying,
you bring sadness in place of mirth,
then, again, you make the old new.
Such baffling brew is all thy worth
that draws death from life, birth from dearth.
This child’s mind is full of nature and joy,
among her thoughts are rivers, leafy trees,
sweeping flocks of swallows, and scudding clouds:
a mind of unbridled imagining
that looks on beautiful and healthy things.
This girl has intelligence, unalloyed
and pure, as fresh as fragrant spring.
Such innocence sets her apart in crowds.
At five years old, this girl dances and sings
and brings sweet love like an angel with wings.
Freed, Wild, Strong, and Clean
They’re saying now that you ain’t true.
Heard while I was going full speed
that you got some new gasoline
that’s got you running hot and lean.
Well in my heart I always knew
that I’d go far too far for you.
I go faster’n anyone needs.
I don’t care when I break and bleed.
I’m tougher’n anyone you’ve seen.
So when you hear folks say we’re through,
you can know, too, that I feel freed, wild, strong, and clean.
Summer’s Shades
After spring’s pastels come summer orange.
Like a glaze, lilac hardens to purple,
carnation pink deepens to a rose tinge;
and powder blue turns cobalt, deep and full.
While on branch and twig, birds sing, perch, or cringe –
sweet songs praising, perhaps, shades bright or dull.
In summer the birds soar o’er prairies singed
by a sun that dyes grass like golden wool.
Like through a syringe, bright colors Time pulls,
while the moon, white skull, illumes the night strange.
Recurrent
Upon the beach there lies a rainbow foam
white, at first, then with opalescent shine:
a shimmering hue in the dazzling sun
whose bubbles in their iridescent domes
display, like love, attractive and subtle signs
for brief and beautiful whiles, then are done—
burst like a primer when touched by the gun.
Now the beach grows cold; the gloaming glows gold,
while new waves that roll reflect stars of old—
and, again, the foam’s hues shimmer and run.
Death in Autumn by a Waterfall
In autumn’s gold-larched, cold Cascades
a river runs down a mountain—
whose slopes are hued in honeyed shades,
glazed in spray as from a fountain—
to kiss the stone of an abyss.
From water dashed against granite
a roar rises like plains thunder,
while the bay, from trees that dam it,
smells of moist earth from dense vapor,
and mist bedews sheer cliffs of shist.
And there in brumey, drizzly clag
waits the gloomy, black-robed reaper,
calm ’neath a cantilevered crag,
to bear an old careworn sleeper,
with soothing hiss, to the last bliss.
I’ll be uploading photos from my book, Afghanistan, every day till April 3rd, 2025. You can find the photos on my website, and you can buy an electronic copy of the book on Amazon.
I’ll be uploading photos from my book, Afghanistan, every day till April 3rd, 2025. You can find the photos on my website, and you can buy an electronic copy of the book on Amazon.
I’ll be uploading photos from my book, Afghanistan, every day till April 3rd, 2025. You can find the photos on my website, and you can buy an electronic copy of the book on Amazon.
I’ll be uploading photos from my book, Afghanistan, every day till April 3rd, 2025. You can find the photos on my website, and you can buy an electronic copy of the book on Amazon.
I’ll be uploading photos from my book, Afghanistan, every day till April 3rd, 2025. You can find the photos on my website, and you can buy an electronic copy of the book on Amazon.
I’ll be uploading photos from my book, Afghanistan, every day till April 3rd, 2025. You can find the photos on my website, and you can buy an electronic copy of the book on Amazon.
