Rich Murphy

 

The Service Station's Island

Surrounded by their ocean of asphalt
the islands of civilized derricks, windshield wash,
and oily rags are hundreds of slick rainbows
away from the grease monkey's bay.
Singing to the hulls that wreck themselves
at the curbs around a corporation's private property,
the full-figured pumps with their hands in their hair
or in a washed up heap's pocket
are said to cause the accidents of warriors
sailing home from Troy Toy Co., Persian Rug Inc., etc.
With the masts tied to their sailors
and Simonize wax filling caves, the commuter
rolls a tire past the colorful displays
swearing an oath for old Tahiti,
a hallucination down the road after One Martini Drive.

 

The Sure-Footed Explorers

Assured by their unbruised flesh that bellies
produce food's energy, the well-fed
Americans have not fallen
into self-hood and language.
Nursing their young with the cliché understanding,
and unaware of where they planted their teeth,
the breed of buffalo gorge on technology's sensations,
bluff fellow pilferers, poachers, and plunderers
from one thunderous day to the next.
When born upon the stretchers of consciousness
and bandaged with the need to cry alone in an orchard,
the initiated instincts of massage parlour backsides
are discovered also convicted clumsy.

 

The Stake

Sifting the distractions for a nugget,
the suburban prospector and his ass
wait on the bank of “his” stream.
Over the strip malls and around
the television and automobile,
his senses tumble and flow
producing silt for head, heart, . . .
Clearing his pans pots of worthless fun
only to clean them also of moon and sun,
he desires a prophet’s wealth
while profit swamps his health.
When a rare pebble is caught
in the screen of flesh, bone, and nerve,
he discovers irony while revelation claims
its mark in a moment that no longer exists.
With a golf cap full of precious peeks,
the inheritor – if there is luck enough –
separates sensation from its object
and weighs himself a hero at his demise.

 

Relish

The wilderness unwilling to jump
into the skin of a hot dog
is fed to the voracious o zone.
A thin atmosphere rampages
through the limbs of an oak tree
to ravage the carcass of a buffalo.
The wolf in a white wool sweater
heels at the footlights of man.
Selling bites of Wyoming in a bun
on the noon sidewalks of NYC,
the creators of the cemetery policy
cross their bones beneath their chins
and wait for spontaneity's plush bus
on the breathless surface of a concrete planet.
Shoveling difficult rocks into the sky,
the lucky cab driver is hailed for his explosive techniques,
and the babbling politician spills down a street.

 

Resort

The pool table felt rolls
to pockets to sand and to pockets
of club-membered hands
and to where peach fuzz becomes love
when slammed by a racket's figure.
The skimpy definitions rehearse
their vaults into green's society
and wrap themselves in a gleam.
The ocean acts as though nothing
has happened over and over.
In polyester and aprons,
the creators of spontaneity
dart and draft plots and spans
for the erotic hole-in-one and another.
From the bellhop's clean sheet,
the Cadillac's luggage arises
for the vacuum's putting away
of the diamond's rough, executive spectator.

 

Exterior Wash

We bless then groom our escape
vehicles with undercoating and wax
sealer, while sitting at the controls,
mangy from boredom, mangled
by our lack of reflection.
The mountains of refuse we’ve left
behind, our trails of grime, have led
to these attempts to cover our tracks
with ritual and shine. Behind
our innocence, our experience
speeds toward the rest area.
Every success at evading
the responsibility of landfill
is rewarded with rust and the broken
home that becomes us.
Considering every passing glare,
we avoid the abutment and the push
and pull of the internal combustion
but are hauled away by the mirror
monitoring, the wind praising our hair.

 

The Head of Man

To fix its eyes in their lamp sockets
against the stationary night,
we pave the earth.
Along the expressways to the parking plot,
the limbless lashes are strung
with electrical wires of wonder.
The road crews ride planes of asphalt
and rope the straying steering wheels
to follow the detour cones.
The explosive idea of tar and feathering
the mammoth ball that cannot see,
followed by the poaching graders and rollers,
pulverized the words "nest" and "lair"
and led to the elixir accented suburbanite.
Staring down the constellations
in its hunt for something more handsome,
the ambivalent head of civilization
resting upon the shoulders of its road
finds it admires the long spaces between the stars.
The masked forests and marshes pretend
to motivate the impotent soliloquies,
but the alien face has numbed
the monkey into its inhuman sleep.

 

The Astrodome

The stars, lowered to the ends of telephone poles
that prop the big top of smog
against the coal color,
flag the small dream into reach.
The cab driver stirs in a new car.
The executive wakes to find a trapeze artist
in his arms each morning.
The philosopher and prophet carcasses
are shoveled to the roadside.
Leaning upon the evening, the shepherds
without homes or love wander hillsides in packs.
Within the toy constellations
technicians bind the bumped foreheads
isolated from the influence of wonder,
while a massive birth propels
them all through the barrage of accidents.