David MurphyThe dusk was very orange tonight
A trick of the clouds and the light
And as that same light slowly failed
The gaudy orange sky quickly paled
And turned into a starry sphere
Like a face with comets ear to ear
And an eyelike moon, clear and low.
Seeing that, folk wonder, rightly, where the days go.
What is it that makes people be happy?
Is it firelight, candles, or something sappy?
Perhaps mountains, nature, or autumnal light?
Or a day seeing children flying a kite?
Some poor folk are happy, some rich ones too.
Some people stay cheerful while others stay blue.
Scientists say it’s genetics and place,
A mix of the two in our human race.
It’s a complex formula, their studies show,
To end with an answer that we already know:
That happiness comes from without and within
And sharing it is as easy as giving a grin.
There’s deceitful beauty where trees grow twisty
In a somber forest that’s shadowed and misty
Where light shines through in arrowlike shafts
And leaves stir faintly from gentle drafts.
There in a clearing stands a crystal bell jar
With a red rose inside that glows like a star.
For centuries not a single petal has fallen—
Neither in snowy seasons nor times of spring’s pollen.
Young trees around it have grown old and died,
Yet the rose has not wilted, faded, or dried.
Deathless, perpetual, unfading, enduring:
Without change, the rose has no chance of maturing.
Again, again, and again the sun rises and sets
On this place without memory that never forgets.
It is baffling how in a town so slow
How very quickly the years do go.
Sometimes after a frightful storm
We must burn our bridges to keep warm.
Here we work like a mill
Striding every day uphill.
Our hands are callused, our backs half-broke,
We chuckle at hope, that indecent joke;
We grin at love as it slips away,
Laugh at life and the hard day
Because the words to the song of gladness
Go like this: C’est la vie and to hell with sadness!
It was one of those nights
Where we were laying on our backs
Looking up towards the end of the universe
And talking nonsense about stars and life
When I had this unshakeable and illogical feeling
That I was falling in love.
I wondered if I should ask her to marry.
But for heaven’s sake, I barely knew the girl.
We didn’t get along that well.
Well, we didn’t not get along either, but, I mean to say,
What the hell was my heart doing
Trying to get me to marry this girl?
She wasn’t my type; she was too young,
Still figuring things out.
You’ve met the type: college dropout,
Wanderer, finding themselves on the road.
I used to be that way once myself,
But I outgrew it. Most of us do,
And the ones that don’t, well,
They are who were meant to be.
Anyway, the stars were shining and I was
Wondering why I’d even considered
Marrying this girl, as she prattled on—
Something about Kant, and then on to Archimedes,
And then into a bit of astrophysics that,
Even in my state, one skewered through the brain
By Cupid’s arrow, I knew she did not understand—
When I came to realize why I thought of falling in love:
Here she was, beneath the blanket next to me,
Baring her soul to me: a virtual stranger.
There was something admirable about that.
Something profoundly lovable.
I could have asked her to marry me,
And it wouldn’t have been half as mad
As the mysteries of the universe.
I know there are some others
Who still prefer nature’s sweet light
To the glare of the television set
And who like mournful Tom Waits songs
And can imagine what life was like
Centuries before the Industrial Revolution,
When the Natives on the plains
Lived in teepees and the Mayans
Were still constructing pyramids.
Sometimes I see a hummingbird flying
And I remember hearing about
How quickly its swift heart beats
And I see the moon in the daytime
Behind hammerhead clouds that still,
With effort, look like floating castles.
I guess that the world’s just gotten tougher.
The facts squeeze the youth
Right out of you. Genocides, war, pollution,
Disease, global warming, you name it—
Everyone’s got an opinion and wants you to take a side.
Hell, even the people who bury their heads
In the sand and don’t harm a soul
Get outed for not helping.
But it makes it a little better somehow, to listen to old jazz
With the music turned down real low
And a hand-rolled cigarette between your fingers
With a little bit of lamplight and
A half-decent book written by a barely decent man,
And a cold bottle of beer,
To steal a few seconds from the world—
It’s a guilty pleasure, made all the worse by knowing
That outside the world is going up in flames,
And you’re nestled in to the semi-darkness
Enjoying a few moment’s peace.
Drink is a thing most odd.
Although merry-making, it is flawed
For the odd drink
Leads to a merry think
And merry drinking
Leads to flawed thinking
Which means odd drinking.
For sure, drink is a thing most odd!
Though merry-making, it is flawed:
Even rightly put down, bottle and cup,
They’re best not stood straightly, but bottom’s up!
They say that marriage is a worthy thing
And that may very well be!
But sometimes I want to take off this ring
And be on my own and free.
The able word-smithy
Ought to be pithy
And must write well
For his clientele.
He should have felt sadness,
And had spells of madness,
Yet still kept some humor
For his consumer—
Because nothing beats levity
Except, of course, brevity.
An unhappy mind
Makes the day unkind
It ties the thoughts
In strictest knots
And makes the soundest plots
Come to noughts.
To be convinced of the strength of far-off powers—
Of deities and entities and potencies
Is to stick and wallow for wasted hours.
Better to trust one’s own competency,
Or to steady winds and blooming flowers.
Out in the red, white, and orange desert
With dun scrub, the howl of the coyote,
And a falcon’s lost and windswept feather,
Is the green, squat, round cactus: peyote.
To find peyote, you must hunt it,
For it lies hidden and half-buried.
To take peyote, you must cut it:
Shallowly, like a blood bond to marry.
Eat peyote beneath the stars, by fiery sparks,
To the sounds of drums and song,
Wrapped tightly in the cobalt dark,
Balanced upon the venado’s prong.
Drink peyote in herbal or bark tea
With the moon pregnant with yellow light,
While the elf owl shadows moths silently,
And the Mojave rattlesnake waits to bite.
Mix peyote with piloncillo
Boil it with water in a pot on coals
Dream dreams as bright as membrillo
Seek the spirits of the Huichols.
Orange pumpkins and golden grains ripen
Beneath a horde of black ravens who circle fields
Where a straw scarecrow stands with his pipe in
To frighten the birds from their meals.
The sky is not yet blue; it is rosy this dawn.
A tendril of mist twines around the fruitful hollow:
It is a delicate white wreath, soon gone,
That laces the amber-leafed larches and purling river below.
The air is thin and clear–
A person could see here for miles,
And sound carries to a listening ear:
The rasp of ravens, the sacred, silent whiles.
Day comes; the mist creeps into low, dank holes,
Then vanishes as the sun paints the rose sky blue,
Leaving the moon in the east like a glowing coal
And coloring night’s purples with daylight’s vivid hues.
Flying like a rushing cataract over the still hills,
The ravens light in a dead and leafless oak,
To preen their glossy feathers with their matte bills
And caw and croak and cackle and laugh as if at a marvelous joke.
On the yellow and blue prairie
Where the wind rustles the tall grass
A fire begins to carry,
Taking here and there—growing vast.
The grasslands shimmer with wild heat.
From a distance there is no sound
Just a flat orange line like a sheet
Beneath tombstones of black smoke clouds.
In dead of night, it’s an orange glow:
Like a torch in a sunless cave.
And glittering, spark-filled winds blow
Ash over the charred prairie grave.
As huge, towering clouds roll in,
Thunder cracks above the fires;
Rain pierces the smothering wind;
Lightning appears in cobwebbed wires.
By dawn, the prairie is hell’s floor:
Scorched, steaming, smoking, and stripped,
At once damp and hot at its core—
The underworld beneath a crypt.
In time come hordes of butterflies,
Undulating capes of Monarchs,
Faceless with wings like blinking eyes,
Fluttering past the torrid marks.
And, too, bison and birds return,
Slowly and lightly, hoof and wing,
To that flat dish remade by the burn,
To death, life, known stages of things.
The still water mirrors the sky.
Pink grasses grow along the road.
The full moon floats like a white eye.
A field hand shifts a heavy load.
A brown colt walks with its mother
And the other cows and horses.
Fields look blue for mezcal lovers–
Agave plants are that blue’s source.
Shocks of hay stand in golden fields.
Ducks swim upon shallow ponds.
The railroad ties zipper through miles
Of wheat, then, with distance, are gone.
Stars shine in the prairie night sky.
The night is clear. There are no clouds.
The cratered moon is full and bright.
Bison huddle in warming crowds.
It is late autumn. Crickets sing.
The northern air smells of winter.
Light wraps the pearl moon in a ring.
Through tall grass, wild horses canter.
Old trees creak in the sighing wind
And drop striped acorns to the ground.
The shallow creek runs through a bend.
A great horned owl soars without sound.
We lay out under the bright stars:
Saw the moon lay in her crescent,
Saw the prairie stretch out to Mars.
We felt nostalgic and prescient.
Her heart was as pure as clear ice.
My heart was hungry as a wolf.
Words came at far too dear a price.
Love lay between us like a gulf.
If she leaves here in the morning
All that’s left will be memory
Like an orange fire that’s burning
That leaves an ash that’s hot and grey.
The horses they start to snuffle.
The dog is whining to go home.
If love can come through this shuffle
It’ll last till memory is gone.
Past the plums and bushes of blueberries
Then through the hollow’s fog, thick and heavy,
At dawn when the whippoorwill’s song carries,
I drive the rutted road in my old red Chevy.
I have not slept the night, for I was out upon the trail
Driving cattle on my horse along the dark terrain,
The hours marked by distant whistlings of the locomotive on the rail,
The deepest night made cold and bitter by unrelenting rain.
The heater’s blowing ghostly hot air on my hands,
And the truck is bumping slowly along the road to home.
I take a tired look at the good lands
That wear my heart raw to work and roam.
Bison graze the tall, golden grass.
A sparrowhawk rests on an oak.
A herd of wild horses, paints, pass.
Like the sun, they’ve never been broke.
It is summer. The wind is hot.
The river’s just a silty stream.
By it, a fox settles in for thought,
Then he curls himself up to dream.
At night the fireflies come out.
The flies twinkle like earthly stars.
Owls hoot. Wolves howl. Trees creak in drought.
Planets can be seen: Venus, Mars.
The wind rustles the big bluestem
And shakes the leaves on the willow.
Silver clouds scud. The moon is dim
And lights the plains with its grey glow.
You are the scarlet cardinal
Against evergreens and white snow
And the last gold leaf, autumnal,
Hanging from the branch of an oak.
You are the spring’s first daffodil
And the bluest sky of summer.
You are that unexpected thrill,
That astonishment, that wonder.
You are the dancing aurora.
You are the wings of butterflies.
You are the delicate flora
And as awesome as starswept skies.
Robins perch in the Teton’s forest
On snow-laden boughs of pine trees.
The birds sing sweetly in chorus
While waiting for the north spring breeze.
Their eyes gleam like obsidian.
Their gaze is bright and querying.
With brisk, swift looks the birds peer in–
Past the pines on which they’re tarrying,
Over the saxifrage and vetch–
To the sky, darkening at dusk.
In the cold low sun, shadows stretch:
Full day becomes a hollow husk.
The robins fly to a copse of spruce,
Watching for the barred owl and crow.
Here the birds settle in to roost
Above wild raspberries and snow.
The cold north wind comes tumbling through
Laying drifts high against blackjack trunks.
The deer are out. The sky is blue.
Here lie tracks of hares and chipmunks.
The snow’s buried the prairie grass.
Big buffalo huddle and snort.
Over the plains bald vultures pass.
Winter is long. Its days are short.
The full moon rises behind clouds
Whose billowy silver forms gleam.
Skeletal are the blackjack’s boughs
That reach across the frozen stream.
This is the plains in December:
Rolling, snowswept fields, a huge sky,
Leafless riverbottom timber,
And an arid air, crisp and dry.
Here are wild and austere beauty
Found in the mist of bison’s breath,
The crow’s feathers—glossy, sooty—
And the old weave of life and death.
On oak branches hang frosted leaves–
Brittle, icy, and walnut brown–
Among stones, wolves, owls, swans, and geese,
Where flakes of snow fall thickly down.
Fragrant pines and gnarled cedars stand
In a gorge by the frozen stream
Where fog lies in a milky band,
And the sun makes the clear ice gleam.
Through this cold, all solitary,
Walks a man most melancholy.
All he owns is all he carries:
His bread, water, hopes, and follies.
He recalls a girl from his past.
He dreads the long, poor road ahead
For darkness here is most unkind.
He has no place to lay his head.
He treks across the snowy plains
Past the scrub oak, the pines, and streams,
His mind is hard, his body pained.
His clothing is worn at the seams.
The moon rises, new and dark.
Stars are woven like fishing nets.
The land lies daunting, grim, and stark.
The Man Made of Rain
There once was a man made of rain
With lightning bolts in his brain
When he sneezed the sky would alight
Folks would shout with delight
And ask him to do it again!
The Mermaid
There once was a girl underwater
Who was a mer-king’s daughter
She swam in a castle with fish
And lived life as sweet as a wish
Until a fisherman caught her.
The Girl Who Could Fly
There once was a girl who could fly
And so flew across the whole sky.
She saw kingdoms of clouds,
Soared over mountains unbowed,
And winged above golden fields full of rye.
He’s got nowhere to go
Nothing to live for
Nothing left to show
Nothing in his core
He walks like a ghost
Silent, unseen
Like something from the past
That might never have been.
Now the wind in the alley
Blows paper in the gutter
There’s shadows in the valley
And a dark rumbling mutter.
It’s another cold night
In this evil broken place
With unlit street lights
Over every haggard face.
Now here comes dawn
The dangerous night ends again
We start it with a yawn
Then hurl ourselves in.
And there goes the man
Who somehow lost his way
He’s changed and made a plan.
Each dawn is a new day.
He came from the world beneath,
Where the rule is to survive.
He had hard fists, sharp teeth.
He rumbled to stay alive.
With nothing to lose
Life’s simple as hell
There’s little to choose
In a place forever unwell.
He was thrashed and scarred
Frightened and scared
Kicked out and barred
He left nothing bared.
One day he fought himself free
And saw horizons unfurled
The way it was meant to be
In this gnarly old world.
He looked around and saw
A healthy place to stay
And marveled in awe
That he’d found his way.
The singer sat on the curb
With her pick and guitar
And a bit of good herb.
She was raised in a bell jar
But came far from home.
She traveled by box car
And arrived all alone.
She left what she’d known.
Now she’s on the hard street
Eager for the world she’ll meet.
The Sensitive Poet
There once was a sensitive poet
Who had love but dared not show it.
So she wrote her emotions into pages
Then locked her poems up for ages.
What good is love if you don’t bestow it?
The Indefinable World
There once was an indefinable world
Of green mountains and mists that furled
It was populated by people both wicked and kind
By folk who could see, and folk who were blind
And from far off, it was a pale blue dot like a pearl.
The Singer of Songs
There once was a singer of songs
Who sang of this world’s wrongs
He sang of misfits and outcasts
Of lightless futures and broken pasts.
He gave outsiders a place to belong.
David Murphy 