"Surrender," "Drawn," and "Snapshot"
Surrender
Electrify my gentle mind. Please be adorable until I find the deftness to unseason who I am. Spring eludes the senses or it overstays its welcome. Might one propose a meme to counteract neglect? Various new people offer wares. How many ways to spend the same ten bucks? An inbox full of do this, do that, subscribe. . . To maybe feel when we cannot feel better? A vein of half enough shelf life to affirm that blood keeps running. Thus the nature walk for now. To dazzle our integrity en route to something else, no matter what or where. And ready to disarm.
Sorrento, not apart from mending, safety very far from reach
Drawn
I was picturing the perfect hammock as an antidote to the mercurial endowment of the speaker’s eyes that skittered toward targets of greed. I saw firm feeling held between strong trees. Versus mosquito of a man trapped by short life and crazed need. Is anyone immune? The sacrament we dream approaches readiness to bless us each. It would be easy to condemn, it would be perfectly inaccurate. The long-stemmed oversight of petals just about to drop upon the oaken table captivates. The wrinkling of each color blends with seasoned wood. Is there a miracle to gain? Whatever timetable, there looms a future in our nagging innocence. A simple card game that defines ad hoc agreement.
Semitones, symphonic breath, a path in bloom beside the point
Snapshot
I am pretty sure the integers can be worked out. The silo’s tipped, and fields look softer than they would with just the crops. All cows eat grass. Music affords way of softening the width and silence. You and I have walked the place we’ve cleared, and now horizons glow. Mind polishes some windows, thinking one along Ohio where melody was lost. I prayed for better chemistry. To wean myself of sadness that felt natural. A ridge of flowers near blacktop as wind resembles traffic noise, a place to go. The city of our inner selves seems crowded as a scatter-gram of beings seeking safety from their kindred selves.
A scale from which to sing, recalling thunder then the peace of rain
Sheila E. Murphy. Poems have appeared in Poetry, Hanging Loose, Fortnightly Review, and numerous others. Most recent book: Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023). Received the Gertrude Stein Award for Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy's book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland).
Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy.