Stolen Equipment
In 1969
Someone broke
Into a van
And they stole
All the
Equipment
From a
Rock and roll
Band
They stole
The Vox
Amps
And they stole
The Tone
Benders
They
Stole the
Box Fuzz
And they stole
The Stratocasters
But the band
That owned
That van
Had a certain
Kind of
Sound
Because the band
That owned
That van
Was the
Velvet
Underground
And under
Screaming lines
Of feedback
Was the way
They always
Played
Sometimes
For thirty
Minutes
When the
Song was
Sister Ray
But stripped
Of all
That gear
The band
Sounded clean
And sweet
So they
Went back to
The studio
And recorded
I’m Set
Free
And they
Recorded
After Hours
And That’s
The Story
Of My Life
They recorded
Candy
Says
And Beginning
To See
The Light
And ain’t that
Just the way
It goes
With possessions
And with
Noise?
Sometimes the
Things that fill
The space
Can also
Cover up
Your voice
And don’t all of us
Get robbed
Sometimes
And have to
Work with
Less?
But maybe
On the
Other side
We’ll find
Pale Blue
Eyes
Or
Jesus
A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Benjamin Adair MurphyPoetry/Songs inspired by Leonard Cohen from Benjamin Adair Murphy
Bio: Benjamin Adair Murphy’s album ‘Let’s Make a King’ was named one of the best albums of 2020 by multiple publications. His lyrics and poetry have been published in Fevers of the Mind, Headline Poetry and Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Rabid Oak, Coven Poetry, Goat’s Milk Magazine, and others. He lives in Mexico City.
Part 1: The Promise
She held it open with a shy smile that promised so much
while saying so little.
Come, she said, just go all the way up
but I did not know if she meant the stairs or her legs.
I watched her hips sway - or perhaps it was my head
that oscillated drunkenly,
thoughts clunking against the sides like loose change.
It was The Cure or The Smiths - something hollow
to match her eyeliner and her heart
Part 2: The Crack Up
I thought she might have worn earrings
made of bone
and there was a smell of sadness and
the toilet door said
« Sarah sucks dick »
which was true
in time -
just not mine.
And I still have my own teeth
you know.
My chat up lines may need
work and two bags of pennies
are all I ever won
from the arcades.
They’re all gone now
though the taste of candy
cigarettes still lingers and
I am still looking
for you -
I am sure you are just
around the corner on the next
machine.
Isaac is dead.
That was all she said
before she crumpled to the floor.
There is no more of the story.
That is all they can tell us,
and we sit frozen at our desks,
packing bags and locking the door.
What colour were her lips
when she passed out?
I want to know.
How wide or small
were her pupils?
How tall was she,
how far did she fall?
How cold did her blood
run?
Isaac is dead.
Was it quick, like a gun,
or were there stab wounds,
did he grab his chest, his gut,
was there blood, was there
time to think or did his
eyes go out and did he sink
just like his mother did
on her office floor
when she heard the news
that her son was no more?
I know that death is waiting
for them all, the young, the loved,
the smart, the tough, the small,
and we cannot outrun the knife
or the gun, we cannot defeat time
or decay but that does not mean
we should stay in a place
where the phone can ring on a
normal day and a tinny voice
can say:
Isaac is dead.
Alpha and Omega
He is reading to me from Genesis: In the beginning,
he whispers, the earth was formless and desolate.
A dog is barking outside and darkness is encroaching
slowly on the day with long raggedy fingers.
Inside, tiny coloured scraps of paper stick to my toes.
My daughter fidgets, tucking in her many creatures
under a starry fleece, the fox with the puppy and the
white cat with the grey. Her hair is gossamer.
The sky is a dome, the sky is a one-way mirror,
separating water from water, life from life,
the waves are blue when it is blue, black when night
settles on the land, the stormy sea reflecting thunder.
I see Canada geese, beak first, pushing through the
membrane of heaven, born stretched out in full flight.
I see the first people rise, faces turned up towards
their own reflection, radiant, beyond the clouds.
It was not perfect, but it was good. Glory cannot be
contained, it leaks through the punctures in the firmament.
The air is dense and still. He is reading it right,
with wonder and paradise, with mythical beasts, with awe.
And so the whole universe was completed. Silence falls.
My feet are covered with confetti and I leave the room.
First published in Riggwelter, issue 21FIRST KISS - ALMOST
We were watching from the window, raucously
sloshing wine into the gerberas below.
He held her so lightly, like you might hold
a cloud, as if she were barely real, or maybe
it was him that was not quite there, vapour and
mist, tethered by the breathless, dewy grass.
His fingers twisted into her mermaid hair,
hers rested on his shoulders as for a dance,
eyes locked in this revelation, this condensing
of longing, buried so long in daily pleasantries.
Our giggles were lost, absorbed into the padded sky,
we took quiet sips, embarrassed now at our crass
intrusion on this most sacred of moments,
the knife edge, poised between states,
the catalyst for crystallisation, the puncture of the
vacuum, the moment before the universe is born.
First published in Fly on the Wall Press Webzine issue 2.3 poems by Judith Kingston : And I Am Doing Just Fine, Done.Just Done. , Not Quite ReadyA Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Judith KingstonThe Poets of 2021 Links from Other Sites part 1
left brain right brain
left brain right brain
reroute neural pathways
rewrite my own tale
left brain right brain
left brain right brain
reluctant loss of signposts
identity is frayed
left brain right brain
left brain right brain
I miss visceral pain
stomach rooted wail
left brain right brain
left brain right brain
I crawl out for nothing
blasted tears flow
left brain right brain
left brain right brain
body slam at memory
start of domino
left brain right brain
left brain right brain
small girl in my palm
wild feeling lives beside
power supplants harm
Bio Kathryn Anna Marshall is a poet based in Shropshire. Her work is inspired by her experience of chronic illness, as well as her connection with the natural world. Kathryn has work in places like Mslexia, Popshot Quarterly, Streetcake, Sledgehammer and Words for the Wild. She is a columnist for Spelt Magazine, and is working on her first pamphlet.
This cinema was a long time in
the making: they strengthened important
parts, ensured just the right balance of darkness
and light. Paid little attention to
escape routes. Then they came in
slow messy queues, some to watch
movies, some to dance on the seats, some just to see
if ice-creams were still served
in intermissions.
Others stood outside too long, picking
holes in the posters, on their way
to someone else.
Night Echoes
Everything echoes at night:
the opening of a wrapper
the crunch of stones
the breath of the wakeful.
Screams
that are only
in my head.
L in the Gin Dictionary
It fell out at
Long Pedlar and Louching
their illustrations not as colourful as
Lime or Fruit Cups –
your bus ticket, primary-coloured with
McDonald’s money off
biro’d with
I couldn’t do it.
I used it to mark the Bitter Lemon page
to measure a Long Pedlar into
evening
a shot of knowledge in my glass.
The cocktail was
no Bramble
no Gin Rickey
but your words
lingered like bitters.
What's all this about Hawthorn blossom smelling of sex?A Found Poem
The hawthorn hedges
of the acre
weighed down with
memorable swags
musky
with sexual
undertones
snowy flowers
swoony, heavy.
Along this shore
lop-sided branches leaning out
from the ditch
away from westerly winds and
withering of seaward buds.
Gnarled and twisted trunks
vigorous
virtually everlasting
centuries of sinews within their roots
with which to start
again.
Sow them in a row
so close they nearly touch
earth pressed tight around them.
Hawthorn blossom
smelling of sex.
My rural English mother wouldn’t let it
in the house.
Source: Sexy Smell of Hawthorn by Michael Viney in The Irish Times online, June 6th 1998Lanes
Today I walk inside an old attitude
the thought settles like talc.
Diary pages spread out into flapjack fields, sticky up close,
the tunes of a hundred unchecked birds
wound into hedgerows like tangled ends in the knitting bag.
Parked up in the lane
raw flesh
hot sweet smoke
bent over headlights
I imagine a garden gas tank full of wine
At the boggy end of things, a swing, held in the crook of a tree’s elbow
tempts a five-bar gate into a clumsy embrace –
over away over away
rope squealing a hamster wheel rhythm as
two boys share the tyre seat, each pushing at each other’s edges.
Scratting for urgent space
in the boot with blankets
clamping my smile around a cider can.
Not the first to make tracks
here
The lane twists into a final choice,
two curled paper horns of a bread bag.
Sparrows drip-drip through branches,
the past scratching like brambles.
Snowdrops hang their heads.
First published in Cool Rock Repository’s Inaugural Expo2 new poems by Marie Little : Portrait & What the Others KnowA Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Marie Little
A true love story never ends. A one-airport hotel. Tactics in Pollock, Innovation in Cassatt. Her brilliant green dress. His tie on, his tie off. The arrangements which afford her lifestyle. Room 711 until 12:15. “Be my human Shazam.” We’re coming back here last night.
Three months later he sees in her an exquisite innocence. A deck of tarot cards. She performs as her mother in society, herself when they’re alone. The passage in Glass. His family company takes a contract for a superchurch downstate. Small acts of charity on the road. Room 103 until 10:45. He abandons her at a trendy-themed bakery on the outskirts of a revitalized downtown. “Forever we are cupcakes.”
They do not see each other for six months. He sits by the windowsill wishing he could replace himself with a cat. She runs hot water over a burn from a flame which seemed further away.
Disappointment at a fish restaurant. A discussion of drawers. His father takes saw palmetto extract. Intelligence is located in the bowels. Pleasure’s phantom arm. Snowdrifts blanket golf course sand dunes. Her mother dies. How that which is absent can still be lost.
The reason why life seems to slow down only when it speeds up. She wears pearls in whirlpools. More on the arrangements which afford her lifestyle. She learns to say “I can take care of myself” in the language where her passport was last stamped. The so-called temple of Romulus. The d’Orsay images of prostitution. A discussion of imperialism in 4’33”. The corridors between nation states and the open waters of harmony
Breakouts in Caillebotte 1 & Caillebotte 2. A debt with unusual covenants plagues his family’s company. The staircase where she had a major accident is destroyed in a fire. Why infected bone cannot be cleaned. The Reich tarantella. She sleeps in the attic, the rest of the house empty. His mother dies while listening to a tragic symphony. Le petit hoquet de la mort.
They see each other again. She has a new haircut and coat but the same feelings. Why there are animal hairs on her slacks even though she owns no pets. The night sweats. The brothels near Raekwon. “On second thought, you do smell like chlorine.”
Why around page 50 all books stops being new to anyone. The word “duped” doesn’t sound negative. Other words like this.
The following spring. How disappointment is like a viola. She learns to say “I can take care of myself” in Farsi. She lands in Tiburon for the last weekend with her father. Flying his body home. The cost of our fuels.
More on the texture of music. She leaves the attic the hard way. The tabby sits on his windowsill. “Feline TV.” He meets a young Christian woman on a turquoise beach.
originally appeared in Funhouse Magazine UK (2016)
Fevers of the Mind 