Two Poems
Rich Murphy
Smarty Pants
The window to the soul coordinates smart
for mates who weeded out lust and lies
from the garden remains.
At first the troubadours tumbled from horses
onto mandolins and cities in the West
hurried out to buy glass panes for organ pouches.
Each viewer found that falling
from hormonal heights into coffee grounds,
the lover awakens to pragmatic routines
that demand attention.
The chirp and buzz from kitchen appliances
teach while secreting glands taunt.
The passion that dissipates
into an oxytocin memory
also drools over fantasies
and drips into weekend hobbies.
Just as just, the synchronized
limping team from yesteryear
looks in two classroom pupils.
The perverse behavior
between science and capitalism
when meeting in the crowded streets
pokes out eyes: After waiting
an epoch, humans see.
Body Politics
The dictator sits in the genome
with a short story and a long pointer.
Skin wraps up skeletal narrative in denial:
Happy Birthday until hapless dirt day.
At the embryo launch site witnesses anticipate
with gifts, legends, hopes, and wishes.
Not long after the orbiting parents tire,
the sun puts up with weather and cosmic forces.
Will goes about the day using an index finger
to accuse various enemies hiding in the landscape:
“Bang bang drop dead,” the externalist says
and jogs everyday rain or shine.
But even the evil doers outside the body
feast at the Metabolism Bistro.
Meanwhile, inside the family gene pool,
big fish chomp on small fish or vice versa
with a rhythm that tells time for bomb experts
who try to haul out water wings and the shrimp.
Who among neighbors would dare go for a swim?
When given an opportunity the tyrant
stands on organ music and tips over a domino
in a ribcage or cranium for denouement.
Rich Murphy’s poetry collections have won two national book awards: Gival Press Poetry Prize 2008 for Voyeur and in 2013 the Press Americana Poetry Prize for Americana. Asylum Seeker is the third in a trilogy out now (2018). The first collection in the trilogy was Americana. Body Politic, the second, was published by Prolific Press in January 2017. Murphy’s first book The Apple in the Monkey Tree was published in 2007 by Codhill Press. Chapbooks include Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox) and Paideia (Aldrich Press). Rich Murphy is online at RichInkWorkshop.com/.
