Two Poems
Mark Murphy
Sunday Haibun
We stumble up and down friendless streets in the rain and wind accompanied by the usual melancholia that first drove us from our rented rooms to seek solace in the affairs of other minds. Moving slowly, stubbornly past road works and weekend labourers with the same Sunday dread we feel every churchless Sabbath, we search for love, laughter and belonging, but no matter where we walk, awkward in our distress, no matter which bus we catch, faithless and solemnly depressed, we really have nowhere to go, no one to visit that isn’t already engaged or dead. Awful the realization – we never swapped the Sunday sun for a life of solitude with all its doubt and fear of death. Alas, this is where we find him in his 47th year, provincial and nameless, no intentional loner, but an unintentional poet.
Larks Ascending Haibun
Outside history, outside the clouds lowering upon this ward. What have we here but love, destruction, kindness? Some might live, some die. Guardian angels are among us if we would only look and Vikings beside us on our journey through this life – where, try as we might to react to every lark, every breeze makes us lighter for we are each and all valuable to the next as we are to each other. The birds in the trees have no knowledge of Dr P, yet he has saved so many and we must pay tribute to a man, selfless in his endeavour. Lights, lights in the night. Impressions. Riders and rovers, fleeting motors where attic windows are sentinel. Trees are silent now in the half dark. Voices, voices in the night. Sirens return in the street time after time. Brothers and sisters, this is our paper destiny, remember the names of those that care – Jasmine, Lisa, Max, Amy, Gemma, Maria, brave women all, and Raj and Ben and Paul, good men all. Mother, I say unto you, thank you for I’ve known the value of love.
Mark A. Murphy was born in 1969 in the UK where he still lives. He studied philosophy (BA) at Stafford and poetry (MA) at Huddersfield University. His poems have been published in over 100 magazines and ezines world wide, including Poetry New Zealand, Poetry Scotland, The Warwick Review (UK), Istanbul Literature Review (Turkey), The Paris Atlantic Journal (France), The American Dissident (US), The Tampa Review (US), Left Curve (US) and The Stinging Fly (Ireland). He is the creator and editor of the online poetry journal POETiCA.
