from my poetry blog
This period of lockdown has given me an opportunity to have a clear out, and going through old cupboards I’ve discovered scraps of paper with old lines and verses scribbled on, words either rejected at the time or forgotten. I’ve decided to share them here for posterity. Some are years old and fragmentary, some are more developed, though still rough drafts.
from my poetry blog
This period of lockdown has given me an opportunity to have a clear out, and going through old cupboards I’ve discovered scraps of paper with old …
Forgotten Fragments #1
I posted this a few weeks ago on my poetry blog, stating that I know that there’s parts of it that I’ll change, but it’s of interest to record the first birthing lines.
I’ve since deleted the opening three lines, it now begins:
the hulls and husks
of scuttled ships
shadow the sky
I’ve tweaked a few others lines and added much more.
I’ve also renamed it Rooftop Blues. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Storm Ciara.
I can hear the gales outside. It’s just turned midnight and it feels as though the wind is trying to gain access to the house through the chimney.
I don’t know how that works. The fire isn’t on and the chimney breast rises up to it’s capped peak, but somehow it sounds like the wind is spinning around in there, a dark vortex of dust and ash. That comes over a little dramatic, I know.
I’m a little feverish. That can’t help.
It’s a perfect setting to begin an M.R James story, or one by that favourite of mine, Le Fanu, but I’m feeling weary and bunged up with this head cold. Not exactly conducive for an half hour’s reading.
No, I think I’ll go up. Even if the wind keeps me awake (my bedroom being up in the loft), bed is the best place for me.
Tomorrow I’ll get rid of this four day’s growth of stubble and step outside, blinking, into Ciara’s aftermath.
There is a poem in my second collection, called The Storm Moves Out, which was written in the wake of such a storm. I can’t recall now what that particular storm was called. I’m quite promiscuous like that-forget the last storm as soon as the next one comes along, for what is life but one long line of storms and sunshine?
I’ll take a walk around my town. Dawdle among the debris.
It may not produce a poem, but the fresh air will do me good.
Christmas is coming 😃 Here is a link to my Amazon page if you’d like to grab yourself (or somebody else) a copy of one of my two poetry collections, or an anthology that I have some fiction in.
If you visit my page, don’t let that photo of me put you off!
My latest collection (2019)
My debut collection (2015)
from my poetry blog
Railway Platform
A guitar case on a
windswept platform
the marbled leather
beaded with rain.
The echoes of long
goodbyes
and illicit, erotic
trysts
may reveal themselves
in song.
Stirring below the
frenzied poplars
new saplings unfurl
an elastic desire
having dreamt
in darkness
of taut, lofty
bowers,
crowning coronets
for ghosts.
©AndrewJamesMurray
from my poetry blog
The Rain Never Stops On Deansgate The rain never stops on Deansgate, it clears the pavement faster than the tribal skirmishes the corrugated shelters and scaffolded walkways snagging the flood-water flotsam, huddled in pockets of faithless devotions. The doorways are already taken, will be for the night, as we turn blind eyes behind fogged-over windows, comfortably dysmorphic in this residence of root. The Church of Scientology over the road has closed up for the day, but I feel Tom Cruise calling to me. Do they have 24-hour call out, I wonder? Working on Hollywood time. I don't think these city limits can hold us, want to hold us, they just lay barbed hooks beneath our skin reeling us in every time we glance back. ©AndrewJamesMurray
from my poetry blog
Western Rap dialect clowns the portly boys weave wild words echoing western rappers speakin' off the chain below hilly peaks demanding degradation in gas tank lots firing from the hip ©AndrewJamesMurray
