"Scapegoat Borough" and other poems (from my manuscript Epilogue: The Left Behind) were published in Projected Letters. http://projectedletters.com/scapegoat-borough-and-other-poems/
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My poem "Word and Deed" (from my manuscript Epilogue: The Left Behind) with great poems in Marsh Hawk Review. https://marshhawkpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Marsh-Hawk-Review-Fall-2018.pdf
Two Poems
Rich Murphy Smarty Pants The window to the soul coordinates smart for mates who weeded out lust and lies from the garden remains. At first the troubadours tumbled from horses onto mandolins and cities in the West hurried out to buy glass panes for organ pouches. Each viewer found that falling from hormonal heights into coffee grounds, the lover awakens to pragmatic routines that demand attention. The chirp and buzz from kitchen appliances teach while secreting glands taunt. The passion that dissipates into an oxytocin memory also drools over fantasies and drips into weekend hobbies. Just as just, the synchronized limping team from yesteryear looks in two classroom pupils. The perverse behavior between science and capitalism when meeting in the crowded streets pokes out eyes: After waiting an epoch, humans see. Body Politics The dictator sits in the genome with a short story and a long pointer. Skin wraps up skeletal narrative in denial: Happy Birthday until hapless dirt day. At the embryo launch site witnesses anticipate with gifts, legends, hopes, and wishes. Not long after the orbiting parents tire, the sun puts up with weather and cosmic forces. Will goes about the day using an index finger to accuse various enemies hiding in the landscape: “Bang bang drop dead,” the externalist says and jogs everyday rain or shine. But even the evil doers outside the body feast at the Metabolism Bistro. Meanwhile, inside the family gene pool, big fish chomp on small fish or vice versa with a rhythm that tells time for bomb experts who try to haul out water wings and the shrimp. Who among neighbors would dare go for a swim? When given an opportunity the tyrant stands on organ music and tips over a domino in a ribcage or cranium for denouement.
https://terrorhousemag.com/extinction-squad/
https://terrorhousemag.com/extinction-squad/ The Extinction Squad Attacking each psyche to build the cyborg consumer army, advertisers carpet bombed with market campaigns from Internet heights while public relations firms shelled with cranium memes. When the I-beams buckled and collapsed into the brain pan and purpose cratered at nerve endings, the white flag pleaded for solidarity in debt. Once the trained troops miss that customers march when the bank orders, implants hack to hi-jack until engineers hot-dogging cannon balls plash and sipping cocktail spritzers decide among gene pools. Switchyard Flash on 20th Century Limited Only computer hard drives prompt for species members to remember consciousness decoupling from information. The train that rocked and rolled for thought loved through tunnels and over mountains since memory mimed. The challenge to the cranium, coal car to steam puff, for the human freight alerted enough to empower enough so dancers improvised. Then the engineer, calling all cars, leaned on an encyclopedia unaware that track could memorize every comma in nursery rhymes, and television screens winked back at the viewers not yet on a couch. Asleep at the switch to cyborgs, the conductor pretended to collect tickets when in the nursing home for sapiens. Had space craft among sentient animals been prized among the chain gang into a future, John Henry would have joined in a journey, a conga line celebration. Report Card In the hopeless classes, desperation learns how to work hands and how to move legs, quickly. Though college courses lead to ignored thefts for the confident traveler, the despairing and cowed crowd, policed into parking lots, study at gun-point for final exams. Humiliated grave seekers dig deep into ancestry and dumpsters. The peasantry in lessons and in spell-being produce for cringing from afar, for finger-wagging, and for appreciative sighs from elementary-schooled trust fund spenders. An invisible handed pick pocket snatches before the dunce divisions have added militancy to the curriculum. Certainly, the life-long, hard-knock master program substitutes for computing acumen. Three chairs fly against family and friends upon a mean graduation. However, once in a while, an accurate bottle fills with gasoline and stops with a rag. The Ledge-able Constitution The hope dope hangs on each moment. White-knuckled fingernails dig into contingency to hold on for a foothold in history or for a hand from the future. All the while, where extinction promises and slavery threatens, the frown turned upside down tears at the cliff face. A gloat note laughter roars from the Gorge Century where the poor get picked from teeth. Bald eagle and bearded vulture peck at and mess with the grip. An albatross tugs at the neck. The mope goat on look out for a few founders falls in love with a Mead forecast. Marx or the brothers dally where? Swallowing cries and saving energy for palms that take root at a lip, being won’t accept a grip slip. Log-Drumming Through Human Wilderness Dancing to the algorithms pounded out from Silicon Valley, the tribes around the world perform. The romp around cha-cha-ching beats from tough touch screens what Freud geeks drummed lame. The switch-doctor patrons applaud while observing from the official stands when the pageant prances, promenades, and rollicks but mimic in contempt during private deals. Neuro-circuitry responds with Dervish hypnosis to the primitive seductions. The obedient and useless masses resent and then envy in traditional costume until favor blesses with fashion …and yearning again. The token hired black sheep, empathy, fading with neglect on reservations, always smiles for the cameras. The redundant irrelevant imagined communities will pay for the shortcuts around human nature with flesh and bones until senses have no home. “In Americana, Murphy asks the tough questions, “Where did we go wrong?” and “What have we become?”
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