Aught No. 8 (2002) - Sheila Murphy, Four poems

Aught, no. 8 (2002)

Sheila Murphy

Something Like That

I waved at her through lamplight. There was a curve that shrouded how a minute of the afternoon had stayed. Despite the rain’s consecutive young pearling, I was trinketing the night away under a warm roof. The terrain was brief, and there seemed blessings coined from scratch as I had learned. Emulsified, endearing lanolin parked fresh against my skin removed the impulse to have wondered. Stronger, stranger pulse tipped any likely aging whereabouts. She neatly waved as though possessing fueled obedience to custom. What might be the meaning of salute. Friends gather amid misunderstandings. Then the evening strums and flakes away.

False step or simply rigor, how the days are paved and played

"skirm rolocable true"

skirm rolocable true
parameter in for-
ce when / if
the diatonic
scalar temple
mews through covetous
tail spun closely
Sousaphonetic
Back-combed

"pencil soft against the pulp"

Pencil soft against the pulp
Barely leaves markings, merely
Documents a kinesthetic impulse,
So hand muscles come to teach

The brain what has been broken
Into broadcast, one gesture at a time,
The body and the mind hold
A discovery together, this

New ritual come home to avenue
Its way into untended area
Protected by no legislation or
Presumed conscience, inferred,

The mind last night showed pictures
Of investing in communal shelter,
Combined with voice, I practiced
Speaking song to indicate this urgency

"maybe discernment shifts"

Maybe discernment shifts
A fraction of the essence
Of the flower, definite article
Points to linkages between

Form and lack of function,
Trespass potentially incinerates
Definition, boundaries equal,
For the most part, pretense,

Angular external inference begins
To teach the eyes belief
In their own fiction, thereby
Extending mirror properties

Of answers to the questions still
Unposed, sometimes not yet thought,
How does one know the difference
Between self and what's outside one's jurisdiction