Two Poems
Rich Murphy
Dumpster Divining
Whatever discounted routine,
notion, idea not shelved
at the store and forgotten
got dumped, left at the landfill.
Perhaps the inquisitive natures
could retrieve for the psyche,
nation, culture and repair.
Rocking chair wisdom
and saving grace gut calls
rot and rust on the curbs
for the weekly garbage haul.
Trash pickers and anthropologists
could step out in front and lead
salvaging the sacred expeditions,
demonstrate survivor skills for a planet.
Jury-rigging habits until evolution
catches up supports sporting
the Olympic insignia OOOOO
for the upcoming patch in trials.
Chimp Champs
From the raw chawing in forests,
cooking served up humans
around a fire then table then ladle.
For so long just other mouths
tearing with gnashing teeth after
a hunt and then chimps transformed.
Earth-bound from tree limb
with shrunken brains over time,
so a hunter and cook could nest
next to a stove without alpha
brute day and night.
The long trudge through the jungles
through villages, towns, and cities
to where mother wears pants in an office
and to where fathers pant less, winds.
A slow-moving hope training —
jogging memory, jumping-jack clashes,
and leaving no one behind with an old
gravitational force mindset,
through evolution to global peace —
crosses over spacetime to consciousness.
Rich Murphy’s collections Mind of Europe: A Genealogy to the Fat Man and Susan Constant both by Cyberwit and Inside Stories by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock were published in 2024. First Aid and Footholds were published in 2023 by Resource Publications and Cyberwit. Meme Measure was published by Resource Publications in 2022. Space Craft by Resource Publications also came out in 2021. Books Prophet Voice Now, essays by Common Ground Research Network and Practitioner Joy, poetry by Resource Publications were published in 2020. His poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice for Americana (2013) and The Left Behind (2021) and Gival Press Poetry Prize for Voyeur (2008). He has published ten other collections of poetry and essays. Rich Murphy is online at richinkworkshop, at linkedin, and at YouTube.