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Solo Flyer # 56: Rich Murphy
Dental Record
Standing at attention until they fall out,
the rippers and gnashers greet and feast.
The white wall guard, warning of its reserve
of adrenalin and muscles to use it, welcomes
opposing armies as allies. But just behind
every two eager beaver diplomats, two canines heel.
Over coffee, tea, or alcohol,
and a bit of meat or crusty bread,
the United Front for the Preservation of an Independent Person
wags its tail while it leaves its paws planted, oaks.
While the party wages on, the parties
draw new maps and review plans
slicing, dicing, and icing spoils.
Not until the sweethearts and their hard candy
form words of love and kisses
do they discharge from service a soldier here,
a spy there. An old person in a nursing home
tells stories of glory through broken ranks
to a child who doesn't know what to believe but smiles.
The civilized primate of chewing gum, orthodontia,
and sirloin steak parts his lips to show his back bone
that he insists with pleasure.
Get a Grip
The rebel of any number of fingers
demands creativity. Paintings by children
with tacks hang around the house.
Having descended the tree, the troublemaker
engineers tomorrows. Push button
technology makes life easier.
Using a pencil in a pinch,
the rock of pages steadies
the shaping of each letter and minds
each line of graphite.
The contrarian, who flicks his nose
before each fight, sticks out when alone though.
Hitchhikers use him as live bait. Drivers joke
about a Mr. Stubs or Tom
as the gang of four prefer to refer to him.
Emperors call him The Exterminator.
But no matter what our index or middle fingers
suggest, we plunge the one we find hard to love
into plum pie with all the poetry in our hearts
and the dikes in Holland stop leaking.
Set anything opposite the jackass of the hand
and mules sculpt the innocent bystander.
Chin in, chest out, the drill sergeant orders
the all-thumbs soldiers and gets their attention,
and if Napoleon and his revolutionary army
ever salute, we wave goodbye to the world
we have come to suck at.
Shanks and Then Some
Calcium laws broken, bones bent
separating shins from thighs,
so that beggars would be
comfortable praying. The hinges
of supplication then march off
to the altars of marketplace
and battlefield where they fold.
Scrubbing kitchen floors
while playing horsy for rich children
who never grow up, the dog-eared foil
doubles over and puckers for a living.
The toy soldiers' limbs, too important
to bow, stand to witness the lame
(who are already down there) placing
their heads on the block.
Flesh's hydraulic crane that situates
scaffolding for crawling under beds
or for lifting a fallen comrade
begins its collapsing along the legs.
God's mechanical femurs for coal
and hole diggers of all mines fuels
well-fed joints for charges to nets.
Sole to Ankle
Balanced by a child's piglets,
the arches of Triumph that support
ovation's standing erect an adult
of five or six feet, each on its ball.
The view weighs on the pads of toes
where the earth writes its haikus
and then on the heels that dog the soil
with their ability to print and soon
leave impressions that the horizon
also fits upon shoulders.
The various steps in constructing
a history and its map lead
Napoleonic gestures that traipse
and trespass. Autobiography
and images of here and there teeter
this way and that seeking a cane.
The bases upon which a human goes
about daily life install themselves
into shoes of hunter and hunted
only to expose their resting on the butt
of their laurel and missed opportunity.
Dinner Time
The anaconda in the body doesn't chase
its tail forever, rippling away wastes of time
or go to hell when its lair begins to rot.
Begging to devour the whole world, now,
the sausage with teeth bares all.
Heartburn and frequent trips to the bathroom
slow the canines and thyroid.
Pissing and hissing, the corkscrewed chakra
pops open a desire while bubbles
of contentment fizz meditation.
A daschund naps around the waist
until a new goal that smells of steak
presents its challenge and the greyhound is off.
The garden hose's nose has no patience
for the aum, aum of indecision.
Minced meat pies cool on suburban window sills
while the inhabitants of inhibitions fulfill
by eating dust of the neighborhood creep
and striker. The Lincoln tunnel
from the log cabin reminds every zero
at the backbone of what a funnel and ramrod
can do. Obese boa constrictors miss
their dreams by an inch or moment,
but they own the junk bonds of bonbons.
Spine's tapeworm celebrates
its religious threat against doldrums,
and its rollercoaster ride out wows its ouch.
Country Folklore
The beheaded government ran around
the barnyard squirting bullets and blood.
With the oven heating up, the farmer and wife
absorbed the violence and dressed dinner.
After the religious Feast of Loot,
the occupying army put its feet
up on the table and picked its teeth
until insurgents hear belching
and the coup backfired. Sweetbread
and neck bones boil in a soup
that has every liberated citizen treading broth.
How did the country with its range,
mountains, forest, and fields become
someone's recipe for just desserts?
What hunger do big shots aim to satisfy?
Questions grumble in the gullets
of herds and milkers. Neighbors
and folks from nearby towns smell
the quagmire stew of ambushes
and convoys and cross borders to the ladle.
Fools with explosive news want a piece
of the passion. The new host and hostess
greet the parties with disaster.
Seats at the peace table need to be dredged
from a swamp of body parts.
Rich Murphy's credits include Great Grandfather, a Pudding House chapbook; poems in Rolling Stone, Poetry, Grand Street, New Letters, Negative Capability, Spiral Bridge, foam:e, and Confrontation; and essays in Fulcrum, The International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning , Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and Culture, and Fringe. A second chapbook titled Family Secret will be published by Finishing Line Press. Currently, he is guest editor for Inertia Magazine.
Rich Murphy (C) 2007
Marblehead, MA
richmurphyink@gmail.com
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Copyright © 2007 Rich Murphy. All Rights Reserved