As/Is

2.28.2005

blogsplitting

can your blog come out and play?

posted by Lewis LaCook on Monday, February 28, 2005

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heard in conversation with BC

everything
why is
also why not

posted by Sheila Murphy on Monday, February 28, 2005

(5) Comments:

Indeed every why is also why not. another witty coup poet Murphy.

Indeed at each reading of your verse, I see another edge, where language breaks from its normal shell, of what some call the language of the commodity. You do this with verve, and sensuality, however subdued, augmenting your reader's experience. In this way, you resemble an Israeli painter whose ideas I happen to know .
Merci
encore

# posted by Anonymous on 11:06 PM

Indeed every why is also why not. another witty coup poet Murphy.

Indeed at each reading of your verse, I see another edge, where language breaks from its normal shell, of what some call the language of the commodity. You do this with verve, and sensuality, however subdued, augmenting your reader's experience. In this way, you resemble an Israeli painter whose ideas I happen to know .
Merci
encore

# posted by Anonymous on 11:06 PM

Poet Murphy my comments have replicated, and so there is a metacommentary going on here . So then, perhaps I need to add more and take away less. Poets are fussy, are they not? But if you, like most poets, seek readers, how shall we find the book that lets us read you? I mean you, as the You of all who claim the activity of poetry fabricating, or let us say imbricating the words in space or across the page. Rarely am I moved to comment on other poetries as I, like thouands of readers, have found the makers a rather somber sort, a bit stuck up! perhaps, whereas the rock stars, and pop stars love their fans, as they know that without their fans, they are not anything at all. Let me pose this question then, a double one, to all the poets posting: should readers be paid to read? When does the activity of reading become , or take on the status of writing? It seems that only the late Italo Calvino (in If on a Winter's Night a Traveller should... being a sweet reference to Nashe's Traveller) has shared the lion's share with his readers the wealth of recognition. Perhaps it is time for a reader's blog directed to blog poets such as yourself, whose work seizes the moment, carpe diem Reader! One book , one text at atime?

_____ Finally I beg your indulgence to a poor reader who writes for one, from another language, and two, as I and many readers are thrilled to be the subjects of such activity. Bonne chance.

# posted by Anonymous on 12:14 AM

I would love to know of the Israeli painter's work. Please share where one might find it online.

Thank you for your graciousness, zest, and heart-filled intellect. It's a joy to have such response.

You'll see books on www.spdbooks.org by yours truly and by others. There are other books, but this is a start - newest from Stride Publications in England is called Proof of Silhouettes. THANK YOU for asking. I know others will have titles to add.

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 12:09 PM

Fascinating text. I quoted it on my blog to clarify an image, Streets of Amsterdam

# posted by ed schenk on 3:52 PM

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2.26.2005

if
I could
play the ukelele

there
would be
enough poetry and

everything
else would
spin down shut

off
wouldn't living
be more comfortable

with
a little
ukelele?

posted by Rach on Saturday, February 26, 2005

(2) Comments:

Well a ukelele seemed worthwhile to my Dad (see his ukelele chords on the current photo at the top of my blog). There's also the accordion. But no, that would be heavy and complicated. Ukeleles are for minimalists.

Anyway, I like your poem... ;)

# posted by Jean Vengua on 2:00 PM

I spelled that wrong,didn't I? Ukulele.

j.

# posted by Jean Vengua on 2:01 PM

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I wish no one had ever said anything about these
things I say now I'm struggling
to remember James' grandmother
with the eyes like bloody
raw meat perched in the
hospital bed cutlerying her
tray meal with shaking fall
apart hands and all I

can think is "make it
brilliant" in one ear the
old woman in the big empty carcass
of a hospital in the other
the things people will say about
my dismembering of her and
straight ahead

bitter, futile anger for being
dragged along with his life, not mine,
because I'd stepped away
from dying folks and family
and he was so good, so so good,
next to my chasisted
impetuous little girl and I

swell up & up & up & up
with despair, with something, I
inflate and I float away
from him
by his nanna's bedside,
the aura of them blinding.

posted by Rach on Saturday, February 26, 2005

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one hell of a goalie

You are one hell of a goalie, scouted
by the NHL and you are on your way until
the right knee, that damned joining of cartilage and bone
breaks beyond repair
and now, 15 yrs later, you have new challenges
mostly surrounding cheese. You love cheese
and eat half a pound a sitting. You are not choosy,
cheap orange cheese, no-name cheddar is fine. Good enough.
You get a kidney stone, a little sharp chunk
of calcium and passing it hurts
more than ten right knees and the doctors say
no more milk products but fuck them
what do doctors know about cheese?

posted by Henry Brock on Saturday, February 26, 2005

(1) Comments:

HA! Love that last line.

# posted by Anonymous on 9:22 PM

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2.24.2005
ring'demBells
what it was made "what was

 not" sees the land surfeit

"blood stars then long, long

 type land" love and the blood

and stars (head'd cardboardpillow)

 "oh that street without

a bucket oranges" oh

 that it sings

another time

 "starlight bloody" bitter taste

little proved (ing) meat

 roast made what jingling in

a pocket "but tingling in" did

 not run aground
posted by harry k stammer on Thursday, February 24, 2005

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2.23.2005

singing "somewhere (pause) over the rainbow..."

posted by harry k stammer on Wednesday, February 23, 2005

(4) Comments:

singing, "try it with NS 7, then IE 6, then NS 4.7, then..."

# posted by harry k stammer on 1:51 PM

harry
k stammer
does it again

methinks:
words fly
why not I?

-Karri

# posted by Karri Kokko on 3:00 PM

Harry,
This is lovely.

# posted by Tom Beckett on 3:52 PM

Tom & Karri... thanks.

Judy and Hunter are singing a love song tonight, somewhere over "thar"

hks

# posted by harry k stammer on 6:31 PM

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2.22.2005

Please

Okay.
Can we
stop moving now?

Feeling
a little
verse for veer.

posted by mark young on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

(4) Comments:

Dear Mark Young, I have been reading here and commenting on Sheila Murphy's poetry, and tonight I see your magic movement and sheer delight as a reader puts me in mind of Apollinaire and it seems to me you have brought to the screen what he (in the Calligrammes) was doing with the page. How magical and child-like the delight I feel as I watch-read your 'moving' verse righting to left . And how this marvellous eye of your poem which draws my own eye to it, invents a moment of reprieve from the humdrum of daily language. I salute you.

# posted by Anonymous on 10:33 PM

Birds
do it.
Words do it.

# posted by Karri Kokko on 12:43 AM

Finns'n
Kiwis writing
hay(na)ku do it

# posted by mark young on 1:42 AM

Certain
"red state"
poets do it.

# posted by Tom Beckett on 9:14 AM

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A Moving Melodrama

Rod,
it is

curtains
for you

posted by Tom Beckett on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

(3) Comments:

I love this, Tom!

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 8:54 PM

Oh! the richness of it! the play of words and curtain, and the shifting of the word groups , and laughter, rod, Rod. Rod is such a wealthy word__ the rod of aaron and the scourge of the rod, yet your Rod is comic with ever the slightest remains of the macabre!
And if I may join my remarks to Sheila Murphy's, I love it.
Thank you.

# posted by Anonymous on 10:37 PM

Thank you.

# posted by Tom Beckett on 4:29 AM

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sundry undertaken lost finding brilliance
within fingers across lines touch as redemption
wood ledge that equals undernotions of here
comfortable on tables curled up with life
circling dizziness told repeated and recaptured
as significant tone ringing with arms in walls
as pictures flash red on mantles lamps gathered
a body as a line in motion

posted by William Allegrezza on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

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Snapshot Satori

a poem

encountered

absorbed

like a
photograph

just
now

posted by Nick Piombino on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

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Necessary Things

might the notion continue
if given a country
if some degree possessed rule
to carry this point as complete
to those who decided its need

posted by Common Sense on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

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a
l
i
g
n
m
e
n
t

posted by mark young on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

(1) Comments:

I never knew it could do such things. Really moving ahead.

# posted by Common Sense on 7:35 AM

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2.21.2005

'mysemiauto

posted by harry k stammer on Monday, February 21, 2005

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on the little bastards who stole my mobile phone

three kids wired up under
their tracksuits I've seen
plenty of tracksuits like
that before and I sniff
and sneer 'it's an approximation
of the type of toughguy
you're like to be' then
they'd prove me stupid
by opening my pretty
soft skin with penknives
or whatever then they'd
be the brutal grunting
beasts while I'd be the
best kind of woman -
wronged and dead. They

never did anything like
that but they did
shout through my car
window "hey, dykes
suck my dick then when I
got out the smallest
one asked me for a
smoke but I didn't give
him one.

posted by Rach on Monday, February 21, 2005

(1) Comments:

This "hey, dykes
suck my dick then when I
got out the smallest
one asked me for a
smoke but I didn't give
him one." which of one of us, has not feltthis outsideness this objectness, in contrast to the withness of reception. Thank you.

# posted by Anonymous on 12:18 AM

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2.19.2005

Within

an interval

but without pause.

posted by Tom Beckett on Saturday, February 19, 2005

(1) Comments:

and with pause between 'within' and 'an interval' yet more is drawn from the experience of this. harmonic potency resides within/transcends this gem.

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 7:00 AM

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2.18.2005

General Grant's Presidential Legacy

many felt the answer was friends,
as it turned out, the ones who guessed
scandal, were the ones
who were right all along

posted by Common Sense on Friday, February 18, 2005

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2.17.2005

winter
still too
new for heritage

+

things
inflect themselves
one overhears them

+

schwa
invokes depth
but with boundaries

+

crossword
ingredients caught
in annexed cages

+

redeye
travels toward
the same destination

+

camisole
seems rigged
shielding pure nakedness

+

chisel
an alphabet
from perfect stone

posted by Sheila Murphy on Thursday, February 17, 2005

(3) Comments:

sheila, nice poems.

# posted by William Allegrezza on 9:53 AM

gracias, Bill!

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 12:01 PM

"camisole
seems rigged
shielding pure nakedness"

Sheila Murphy a rigged camisole shielding pure nakedness. brevity is the soul of the nunace poetic. A camisole that has become rigged is weighted then, therefore no more a camisole, or something else, the 'rigged' [as in sails?] displacing the levity of camisole.
The visual element of the morpheme (Am I right to say that 'sole' is the morpheme of camisole?;or is it the sememe?) 'sole' which means one (and naturally the other 'soul' hovers there 'ear'ppearing as its aural echo), all of which connects to an earlier text which I commented on __about one and no one and anyone__ so naturally there is a line crossing all of your work __ a transversality_ literally across the lines of its verse.

And "cami" then is rich in name play. Your phrase pomes __ what do they do? _'they' (I hestiate here with my choice of words because never do I wish to make it seem as if I seem them as mere objects) , near themselves to the connotation, the sense and the image _ the sense of words. So as a reader I am 'pushed' no, I'm "In_vited" to think and feel other levels, other senses, and the sense of the body that lies 'behind' the poem. By why 'behind' and not 'in front' of __ and the camisole which conceals discloses . The "schwa invokes depth" the depth that is the opposite of the surface of the camisole, and bounded by its frilled and folding fabric. So these pomes' "crossword" is "annexed" by this reader into the border between the writer. Call this an encounter between the borders of reading and writing and the way I as a reader recompose . Entering exiting your text. A desire to see and read inside the head of the text. I say thank you, and thank you, You thank I. I remain a reader recomposer.
So then.

A good day to you and good writing, and again bear with my run into sentences and efforts to articulate something of what I feel and think as I read your work.

# posted by Anonymous on 11:13 AM

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2.16.2005

she
prefers no
one to anyone

posted by Sheila Murphy on Wednesday, February 16, 2005

(2) Comments:

"she
prefers no
one to anyone"

I put the words of your poem in quotation marks, not because I want to imprison them, but because not for an instant do I wish anyone to think I was the voice. But
I am the delighted reader once more, and yet again

Sheila Murphy, this newer piece caught my eye, and my mind's eye. No one and anyone, any one of none, and any one is no, if it is not yes perhaps. so then the I is inflected in the being of No and One and the One of public discourse that knows no pleasure, but the pleasure of your poesy again. Really, my half-baked thank-yous are gasps of delight at the wit of this verse.

# posted by Anonymous on 9:16 PM

Even if I deserved your generous praise, it would seem a miraculous bouquet. As it is, I'm overcome! Thanks.

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 7:05 AM

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Adore.
Je t'adore.
Matter mined over.

Entry
is / never
through a door.

posted by mark young on Wednesday, February 16, 2005

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angle'd over

posted by harry k stammer on Wednesday, February 16, 2005

(3) Comments:

Jordan, forgive me, i couldn't help myself... kept coming back to your piece again and again.

hks

# posted by harry k stammer on 6:12 AM

harry--
Blown away at how your form and keen sense offer such an exact response.

# posted by Common Sense on 6:48 AM

Jordan, thanks... i'm not sure how keen the sense and form becomes exacting but i do know it's exactly senselessly unformed.

sincerely, hks

# posted by harry k stammer on 8:45 PM

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2.15.2005

hospital/prison staff

posted by harry k stammer on Tuesday, February 15, 2005

(1) Comments:

dear Mister Stammer __ I like your visual poem very much. It does something to my eyes, my senses. I am not sure what it is, but I like it. I like the way it tickles my eyes, making me think of hospitals and prisons in the same moment. It sends me, thinking of other things, like Michel Foucault and his great books about Madness and the Prison system, and other horrible things of atrocity that human beings have done. But your flag poem, because that is how I see it, lifts that off to somewhere else, bringing back joy, in spite of what I've just said, returning joy in the instant of vision , to the seeing of things and how human beings make a banner of sensual delight to what has destroyed them, or on the other hand, to what has healed them, or provided roads of recovery from illness, or in the case of prison, saved them from their own violence. It is, indeed, amazing , how much a little poem of visual words, can stir the spirit.

# posted by Anonymous on 11:26 AM

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2.14.2005

angle

if by saying it, once more
gave more to what we knew,
then to see it again, is to have it
once more than we knew

posted by Common Sense on Monday, February 14, 2005

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not and one
and not an object
and not one
dependent on one
and not an object
not then
not now
or then and what
or when and what
happening when one
and not one
being the same
and different
and being the same
and not an object
being divided
and not
and not an object
separated and or not
parted and or not
happening
in a condition
and or a color
happening in
hope and or desire
happening in
wants and or needs
and not an object
fluctuating the souls walls
weakening the changeless
one in a million and one
and not
divided confusion
a bargains deal
is the object real
and not
and the one
is the object
being the one
not an object
being being
not an object

posted by kari on Monday, February 14, 2005

(1) Comments:

..."not then/not now/or then and what/or when and what" this creates the back and forth, the metric mental to and fro of the space of meditation, of the promenade "when one/and not one" untwisting the twisted self of a reader caught in turmoils, her karmas and happiness reading you.

# posted by Anonymous on 10:41 PM

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2.10.2005

of hay and twenty devotional items
of the devotional times twenty
of the field
and hay
and activity
of a process of understanding
body and super soul
of the body
that is the field
is the hay
is the fluid soul
activity
of the body
understanding devotional
entity and ceaseless
of the body
and the field
sometimes as human
sometimes
beast
sometimes birds
or worms
or a
saintly unseen
of the hay
that is matter
in another body
that sounds like
bursting in midair
of the fearless flatlander
unrecognizable
knocking at the door
lounging
in the field
ceaseless and devotional
how could love
how could the moon
from beginning to end
touching a field of fearlessness
of the body given to fulfill the past
of the moon and the bug
of the extra limbs
and a million never endings
driven mad by conflict
beyond physical consciousness
something like
of the beginning
and the beginning of a
preponderance of matter
of the first first
and the last last
was an obvious
invitation to the field
of the bird
and the jet
over head
of the body
inside the body
inside the body
one hundred powers purified
times three
of the unconsciousness
ringing
the dust of the light and thunder
of the light of truth
breathing in the divine
in the darkness
in the presences of inertia
guilty of spirit
in the pressure
at the end of pleasure
exciting
the entry of sin
to a body
trying to get beyond
the naked horizon
gliding by
the glamor of glory
bound by longing
because mater is bound in the darkness
to the object by the quality of pressure
at our backs
ending in time

posted by kari on Thursday, February 10, 2005

(3) Comments:

stan,

thank you.. and they do all the time.
kari

# posted by kari on 8:13 AM

Kari, this poem lifts away while being t/here. A joy.

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 9:21 AM

sheila, thank you..
kari

# posted by kari on 10:34 AM

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2.09.2005

langue julienne

crossword puzzle's pro-
pp(pianissimo)ed against her legs
she's taking language down be
low the syll
ables accounting
for the
ir me
sh and th
us the
ir mean
ing

I say my things in long strings not that small s
hard kind of block bit all same-sized
I would prefer to talk them into their definitive
repletion and would rather hear them plate glass their way into mintnew
private space

then and only would the germ be true to keepsake due and s
pores would wake
the watering im
pulse

I'm just this far from thinking something
when she asks the c
hip off t
he olde (ye)
langue bray to
form endeavorish kind of
sacrifice

subconscious science
lingers limber where I work walk wince
and waystate how and why
the wheels are normed
to what existed long a
go to which I yet remain
immune

posted by Sheila Murphy on Wednesday, February 09, 2005

(3) Comments:

their
mesh &
thus their meaning

beaut
eye
full!!!!

# posted by mark young on 5:42 PM

Dear Poet Murphy, Oh when I read this the other day, I was 'overwhelmed' with it, and what you do, and as I am very tired at this moment, I won't even try to write you an intelligent commentary, but only say, as I did about another newer piece of yours I have read, that its intelligence shivers me, makes me get goosbumps, delights me, slakes my thirst for language that is intelligent, intimate and praiseworthy at the same time.

"for the
ir me
sh and th
us the
ir mean
ing"

these lines vertical falls in your page, took me up to heavenly irish jeu-de-mots and eye and ear and their aural betweeness. The two parts of the sememe doing the work of one or more, multiplication of meaning between connotation and denotation. One day I hope to be present when you give a reading____ But you are already of course, reading, reading to the readers and the discourse of your soul, if I can use an expression so bereft of 'meaning' and its tentative grasp on 'reality.'

# posted by Anonymous on 9:27 PM

If I could, Sheila Murphy, I would write a whole essay about this one poem.
Your reader, your devoted reader.

# posted by Anonymous on 9:32 PM

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rock n roll

drugs an issue
the habit important
heroin cocaine speed
clean relapse clean relapse
into rehab
drugs
for many years
was their music

posted by Henry Brock on Wednesday, February 09, 2005

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The Balloon

(with help from Donald Barthelme)

Out to agree with morning,
sullied by its parts, interpersonal
this morning by children, more
then adds to the exact, local
and single beauty, children.
I love. One points out my this
and asks, "Do you own
your inadequacies?" I believe
I do. Who else then to rely,
to ask while pointing to the moon?

posted by Common Sense on Wednesday, February 09, 2005

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shot repeat'dly, again

posted by harry k stammer on Wednesday, February 09, 2005

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2.08.2005

change't?

posted by harry k stammer on Tuesday, February 08, 2005

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2.06.2005

why I don't know unison from punctuation

switch to
om
buds
mantra
la

two
hundred
unspooled
mo(n)ths
sweet
sour
pending
edits

permanent
half
water
gone to
laminate
times
many
underneath

now here
later there
melod
ram
a
thread
of close
up distant
from
dislike

posted by Sheila Murphy on Sunday, February 06, 2005

(6) Comments:

this one of yours also. are there blogs where I can read more?

'unison from punctuation' works so well

# posted by Anonymous on 11:47 PM

thank you for this, anon! you can check google for my name (with and without middle initial "e") and find many things. one place you might want to consider looking is www.unf.edu/mudlark (see #8) - for a collection - plus books out there. appreciate your interest.

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 10:40 AM

P.P. S. Are you the same Sheila Murphy of the blog Stamen Pistil?

thank you.

# posted by Anonymous on 9:08 PM

The very same!

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 7:58 AM

well i just think your poetry is wonderful! one of those poems you published there is breathtaking. i dont mean this in some corny cliche sense, but it adds beats to my own breath, adding thought to it. so for that , I thank you. I think there is an Irish sense to your work, which for me, is rich . adding as much physicality {my spelling is off today] to the language, as I, as a reader find desirable. Now may I ask Sheila Murphy, is not fine to have such an appreciative reader?

vanity, she flatters herself! [the reader does]
do you like the poetry of one Emily Dickinson?

have a grand day.

# posted by Anonymous on 1:54 PM

my gratitude to you is vast! your joyful sense of what the words draw to themselves remains contagious. thank you!

# posted by Sheila Murphy on 10:25 PM

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2.05.2005

LaNcEd

weird.energy.falls.stops,
and.then.gathers.firefiles,
candy.bits.of.glass.and,
fourteen-hundred.mild.pimento,
cheeses.though.we.were,
only.concerned.that.light,
would.collapse.with.no.greased,
books.following.headless,
wives.to.early.graves.as,
though.violence.itself.was,
not.enough/

posted by William Allegrezza on Saturday, February 05, 2005

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2.03.2005

address't

posted by harry k stammer on Thursday, February 03, 2005

(1) Comments:

no blogger accounmty
no pinchip no
no no
yes
no yes
no
no
yes
no

use mobile phone

solve the weather

Crescent

# posted by Anonymous on 12:59 PM

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2.02.2005

f.UNCTON

spittoon cart[EL HEFE]
carte blanche bod chem
A to Z career crush creche
the self-
app-
1 in zillionotics
crumbles
marbles

level of fat-
igue cleft pa[l]-
atte patois
stinkgermed
ratio carnuba
wax must-

helps to poise un-
learning c/raft
toward choice m'lad
thereupon
infecting the br/ass
furnetrics

posted by Sheila Murphy on Wednesday, February 02, 2005

(3) Comments:

no Reply

# posted by Anonymous on 1:02 PM

no rpq

# posted by Crescentsi on 5:14 AM

Dear Sheila Murphy _ I like this versing singing song __ very much. I hear it in an Irish patois, a sort of Joycean gibberish, of desire and language langour letting its feet (literally and metrically,) dance. visual crosses aural. close listen and
Synonymous Not Anonymous.
After all the cross-over(o-verse),puns in English and French make for a sort of flirtation of lingos.
P.S. It appears not all of those who write (and read), and like to be read, care for the anonymous comment of a fair (godfaring) reader, but pray tell , authors, what else are we, but anonymous readers. So then a doubling of the text and reader's face, let me end this minor intervention by quoting Octavio Paz

"An anonymous collective poem of which each of us is a stanza, a handful of syllables, rather than author or reader"

from Children of the Mire .
So then the doubling of the composition permits us to do the poets in many voices.

You play like Appolinaire and Mina Loy
c'est tres beau Mme Murphy

# posted by Anonymous on 1:21 PM

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and he walked on down the hall

posted by harry k stammer on Wednesday, February 02, 2005

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2.01.2005

my prison camp riot

posted by harry k stammer on Tuesday, February 01, 2005

(2) Comments:

Really fantastic Harry, works in all directions at once with such an efficient rendering of the yard.

# posted by Common Sense on 7:04 AM

Jordan, thanks! hks

# posted by harry k stammer on 12:48 PM

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