Aught No. 5 - Murphy, Three Poems

Aught, no. 5 (2001)

Sheila E. Murphy

From Afar

Qui es in coelis
Equaling quiescent thrum
Replaces sturm und drang.
The silver letter opener,
Green glack on copper,
Newly waived requirements,
Sopapilla in the nonce,
Our shelter warms us whitely
In a sturdy nectar ridge of towheat,
Many textured days arise in protest over
Catastrophe and jouissance.
A prayer for something lacking mist earns courage
Not material ensung palatial covenants,
A mural shows some natives writhing
With faces made of wrong-hued clay,
Perhaps distracting from the planetary
Shropshire, skilled, unskilled, whatever passes purview,
Moments after, paths grove toward implored respect,
And wedges link to far cries from intoned abundance.
More than anyone's share of doldrums ceases
To bespeak their say into the wire
In answer to the heads-up from an umpire
Curiously dressed in striped compliance,
Broken out by page and social stumbler,
Inch by earthen inch.

Opening

Trigger word, all guarded lapse,
This way around eclectic dim bulb repertoire
And depth to pore across.
Humor me or you or replay pavement
Glossily, as picturesque things, do you trance,
When I use green it is especially after hours,
Tomorrow will be keep-awake for better par
As tincture. If I held your hand aside,
The lotion would have worn away.
The night sky would relieve into conclusive morning,
None of me would be afraid.
I'm capable of narration, yet prefer a story
Not be stretched too far around the block.
Behold a string, a care, a promise, or a ring.
Behold a place to stay the night under the campsite pinhole lights
That draw in line a sky worth holding in a private language,
Semitones rework themselves into a theory of remission
When it comes to inconclusive dominance.
The sort of quality a festive plume is lacking,
Shortly stormed and bratty, so did I in the kitchen.
Many points of house go quailing,
And my diffidence removes its pluck from hideaways
This close to housing, this exceptional,
This thin-ruled practice of collegiate intake
Racing to a nonexistent finish line
That breeds unfinishing of points and lines.

Spirit Drive

Intermittent leave-
Taking affected pace and
Prayer and gleam, the noise of
Human act, the difficulty
Placed against seeing a moth's weight
As imagined, opening
My spirit drive as indistinct
So form directs or sentence illumines
Genius as bedside manner,
Peaceably alert, intuitive, aware, appreciably intact.
Beyond the little that we know of daylight
Signed, enjoyed, doubtless misgiven
At the hour of celebrated and linguistically correct
Material bound to a separate strong penetration
Of eternal plan, the tree of isolation
Framed by distance quickened equally by heart,
A pause audibly indifferent to
Succession planning just along the crux
Of dreamhood where play's the same as bedrest
Chastening. Need follows fuel,
Fuel follows form, form follows food.