Lighthouse

Lighthouse, originally uploaded by mcwmurphy.

I've added some more photos to this here Flickr thing. Enjoyment, please.

Honourable Mention

So one of my poems got published in a university magazine, so I thought I'd post it up here. I wrote it back in April, in case you're interested:

Whilst paying attention to T.S. Eliot

I should not be here
Rather, amongst the Tubes
And churches of the
Beleaguered ancient city

Let us go then, you and I…

I cannot think in paragraphs
Only in phrases, complete enough
My grammar is that of no man’s –
Adjusted as the sentence sees fit,
To keep you aroused at least til
Its cadence.

We are no prophets, but flapping
Gull wings – my sentences show this –
Without fear, or direction.

Two short poems.

A sort of sonnet:

Whilst Worrying About Opera & My Future

I am here, regardless of desire
Encased in grid roads and optimism
Diminished sevenths are unstable
And demand resolution;
N.B. Don Giovanni –
Retribution dragged him down to Hell
But there’s a happy ending, lieto fine –
It is Mozart’s mad resolution
That lends me hope now, not
America’s modern manifest destiny
(Which drives my peers
To be Masters of the Universe
I will continue to get lost in my head
And ignore what is being said)


And I Can Hardly Keep My Eyes Open

As I stroll down Locust Walk,
I am nearly blown aside
By passing winds, and disinterested students
Learning to succeed, not to enjoy.

The Future Is Yesterday

_10_0013.jpg, originally uploaded by mcwmurphy.

Hello 'everyone',

I forgot that I had a Flickr account until very recently. It happens that it was about the same time I took some pictures of Scituate, MA, when I was up visiting. If I think I have some interesting photos in the future, maybe I'll slot them in here. This one I like because it's an old ticket office that is currently being restored. Interestingly, the shack is in the middle of the South River now, like an island from a forgotten American age.

Maybe I'll send this to Craig Finn

There’s often these parties
Back in West Philly
Hip kids in the basement
Listening to Pavement

They’d last all evening
We all got sick of seeing
PBRs and Chuck Taylors,
Sparks & Norman Mailer

I don’t know what I was thinking
Doing all that drinking
Wasting my time
With fortified wine

Similar to my stance
On hookups and dance
I often spent nights
Getting into fights
With my subconscious

I wouldn’t call them killer parties
They were just OK
Back in the day
When I felt so artsy

I’d head out the back door
Hit up the liquor store
Grab a forty or four
And come back for more

This made the night easier
My pickup lines cheesier
It’d almost get fun
But then you’d get off with someone

I’d call up someone else
Hoping I’d not end up alone
But that was part of the game
Things always stayed the same

I’d hate to watch the dances
Mix it in with my lost chances
But I figured out who I was
Mixing in with the cognoscenti
At age twenty

Those weird kids with beards
And emaciated wit
Were just like I feared:
Totally full of shit

No, I wouldn’t call them killer parties
They were just OK
But those were the days
When I felt so goddamn artsy.

I'm going to try to set this to words

Ode To Your Future

Do not worry yourself
About days past
And moments gone.

Time will abide,
So look back well
On what you’ve done;

O’er many roads pass’d,
Traversed in style,
You can recall.

Never allow yourself
To live through stories,
Lest you fall.

Look to the future –
And keep your head high –
And you will strive.

I’ll always be with you
Even when I am gone,
You will keep me alive.

When you pass St. Paul
He’ll greet you well
Like an old friend –

I’ll be looking up
Admiring my past life
My regards I will send

The future’s unwritten
But your fate I know
As long as you try

And love all who you meet
You’ll make a difference
And never truly die.

Whilst not paying attention in my Mozart class

When I emerge from the Tube

Covered in grey and rain,

Trafalgar rises afore me.

He seems daunting from his pillar;

With His gravity weighing down on me,

I fumble for my umbrella.

With my fustian shield

I trudge on, mentally decrepit

By Albion's lofty dead hero.

Instead of a new post...

I direct your attention to my playlist from a radio show I did tonight. Seeing as it's my birthday in a few hours, I felt it would be a good idea to do a sort of retrospective look at all the music that has shaped my life in some way, or at least, all that I could fit in to 2 hours. I also made some comments about how they affected me, and who introduced them to me. I'm not really much of a self-aggrandiser in general (and I don't even know if the internet knows if this blog exists), but some people expressed interest in the show, so I thought I'd post it up here:

WQHS's Not So-Acoustic Philly

ps - There's two artists that were very big at different points in my life that aren't on there; one because I didn't have a good track to play (Billy Joel) and one because I was stupid at age 14 and don't own any of their music anymore (Linkin Park).

I hope this isn't seen as shit.

17.

I can remember nights
Where you and I talked
And we loved each other.

I can still remember when I was young
– And you were youngest –
Thinking you’d been sent to destroy me,
That you were a vacuum of affection directed at me.
But even when we fought,
We knew we were fine –
That we were meant prop up each other
‘Til frailty and senility wreck’d us for real.
There is little else in this world I have come to feel
Duty bound to care about
And few others whom I’ve truly loved
With unabashed affection.
And, I remember, and sort of can’t forget
You turning nine years old;
I have this irresolvable belief in me of your
Continued childlike goodness,
Sustained forever from that year,
That you will fix the world.
You complained, at least I think you did,
Of living in my shadow,
But trust me:
The only umbral shade you’ll ever encounter
Is when you soar past the moon
And can see the dark side of Earth in all its splendor,
And destroy all doubt.
Please remember, little Mary,
That I will always be looking up at you.

What I Want For My Birthday

1. A Band involving the following:

Trumpet
Drums
Trombone
Guitar (x2)
Bass
Piano
Part-Harmony Vocals

2. A New Necktie.

I am alone in a radio station.

In the middle of the night.


Whee.

Optimism.

This must continue.

Ode To My Facial Hair:

"O Brown mess that once dwelt so snugly round my visage --
You are missed."

Our First Gig

Add to My Profile | More Videos

The Internet is made of cheese.
The Moon is made of Internet.




(More soon.)

How I Spent My Time Today

A set of poems about this past weekend.

M. Murphy’s Lost Weekend

Prologue

I was never enough
To get what I wanted
But was too much
To have things I didn’t.

-------

I have thusly forgotten the necessity of society.
It is unlikely I will ever forget
But I find it hard to remember.

I am, at best, lysergic in my actions.
My journey was long. I passed
Prisons, napalm, decrepit police stations, Betsy Ross, LOVE.

Having crawled, cracked, I set off:

My shoes,
Now not unlike battered veal or thawed cod,
Are worthless.

I tried to sleep on roof asphalt
And drink sublimated caffeine
My eyes became a video recorder
Unable to adequately record –
I had to think in Polaroids.

I could not understand the notion of brotherhood
I cannot stand the potion of Hollywood
But I stayed regardless.

My hair is falling out in clumps
I think I thought I had the mumps,
But then I grew up.

I quit three times,
I am St. Peter
And Judas at once.

My travels taught me little,
Though my stillness, nitrogened,
Life-fuelled,
Made me REALISE

I belong. For once.

Twice I died. Praise the Lord!


I was as odds with my brothers and sisters,
But giant, walking red-black hammers,
Sealed by my signature,
Mashed things into ORDER.

I heard their eyes of distrust
And I used my hands of hope to
Create harmony.

------

I was met by the
Lady of Shallot today –
She tried to kill herself
Just because I was plain.

------

Palm Sunday

Life is death,
Tristan told Isolde.
At some point,
I was inside
Wagner’s head.

I could feel the French horns
I could see the chromaticism
And taste the transcendentalism

I trusted them,
Eventually,
With my life.
I was greeted with
Honour.

This day resulted in
Rebirth, reborn
In ME, me
Of all people
I am adorned with patience and power
Patience, paysun.

Mary for breakfast
Lucy for lunch,
Jesus and palms for supper –
Past and future controlled by my
Edification.

In my mind my
Father greeted me
He couldn’t see
This debauchery.

Is it not strange
To let down & come through
With the same act?
It no longer phases me.

I am space.
I am the black hole.
I eat emotions
And produce …

This day has new valence
I count as 1+1=3
My trinity is not Holy,
But wholly reverent.

I need to read Orwell again.

My thoughts in Newspeak.

Redyellow skyball
Heats me.
Greengreen floor
Fun to lie on.
Bluewhite sky
Easy to inhale.
Supersquishy Frisbee
Very unthrowable.
Shoeless feet
Hard to run in.
Guitarnoise
Is plusgood.
Long live
Airstrip One!
There is no
Unpeace here.
Responsibleless days
Are doublegood,
Freedom
Doubleplusgood.

My much longer reworking of my somewhat epic poem about Philadelphia

Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Rittenhouse Square, On Revisiting Central Philadelphia During A Tour, March 3rd 2007

Five days have passed, one hundred and twenty
Long hours, and many Starbucks Ventis,
Since I have heard the bustling city’s roar –
A clamour which all can say they adore –
And since I have ambled these streets with you;
And you, just as struck as I, with the view.

Philadelphia! The word like a bell,
Rings, crack’d, like the Liberty, when it fell –
I will not say that it subtracts beauty
But adds some countervailing duty
To a city that had long been flagging.
So we ventured off, with no feet dragging.

Advent’rous impulses took us West to
East, across the Schuylkill, dark and askew’d,
Along South Street, that mysterious place,
Which vermin and indies alike embrace.
Soon enough we arrived at Penn’s Landing,
Where the pioneer first stood commanding:

Camden, New Jersey; what a sight to see!
We decided to turn round quite promptly.
In the Old City, life is endearing,
In a way that is now disappearing –
As such, I reveled in what was around
Taking in everything above ground.

The window shutters were generally
Where my eyes were, most venerably,
The red bricks seemed both in and out of place;
I spoke a lot, trying not to lose face,
And keep the brogue-breeded blisters at bay,
By so many independent cafes.

My choice of footwear was far outweighed by
My newfound walking-partner-cum-ally,
I thought to myself, whilst strolling along
Spruce Street, avoiding drunken nighttime throngs.
With the Delaware River at our backs,
We headed homewards, making willful tracks.

Amongst skyscrapers and townhouses we pass’d;
In a city somehow both small and vast,
One can lose themselves in conversation,
O how oft this has been my temptation!
Broken pavements seem irrelevant when
I can be enthralled here time and again.


Your townhouses are unsurpassable –
In these fifty states it’s impossible
To find houses matching Tuscan vineyards,
More than those the statue of William guards,
As he stands proudly on top of Town Hall,
Easily seen and admir’d by all.

One Liberty Place, that bluish beacon
Of hope against those who try to weaken
This fair city’s great past, stands intently
To my right, I saw incidentally,
Whilst traversing Broad Street. I darted by
Rittenhouse Square, hushed by the night sky.

My mind rests there still, ‘mongst serene grandeur,
Allowing me to be the raconteur
Of our travels through this epic city
A place understated when called pretty –
Its streets inspire me like naught other’s,
Where you truly feel the love of brothers.

We cross’d that Dutch hidden-creek river, back
Back to the Western side of the train tracks,
Greeted by Franklin Field and Houston Hall,
As gorgeous and stifling as a lace pall –
The vitality we had been given
Had, by this point, from us wholly been driv’n.

And so our trip came to its conclusion,
Clearing the air of any confusion
Asked by my partner: “What is, wonder,
The best city on the Northeast Corridor?”
One could say, now, that the answer was clear,
The Quaker City was what we held dear.

This Commonwealth has been served so well
By Philadelphia and those who dell
Within its invisibly fortressed walls,
And in Benjamin Franklin’s hallowed halls –
It is a gateway to a great heartland
Over which, in truth, it doth have command.

O most sylvan of all sovereign states!
On you all my affection concentrates.
With pleasure, I travers’d your capital,
Which should have remained our one Capitol;
Regardless of crack-dealers and drive-bys,
There's a beauty we can all abide by.

Some prose poems

Steely Americana

I come from Gary, IN. This is where the redwood smokestacks combine with the russet soil to create the heartland. Rusting John Deere tractors are set aside bloodied grass; we’re a bit behind on general upkeep, but we have an airport now. Steel is where it’s at; we have America covered – no need to look overseas, when there’s a goldmine of iron being dug up here. If it weren’t for us, the Sears Tower would be wooden. Morgan Freeman moved here under his on volition. We even birthed the Jackson 5 – can you beat that?




Psalm 23a

As I walk through the shadow of the valley of meth, West Philadelphia smells bad. Though I fear no evil, for you are with me, Allied Security guard; your bike and walkie-talkie protect me. A table has been prepared for me at Qdoba, in the presence of many frat boys; a cook anoints my tacos with much oil; my soda cup runneth over, but is denied a free refill.

A List of Things Seen Upon Exiting the Tunnel Out of New York City On NJ Transit

What I See:

A sea of blonde weeds, adjacent to

A forest of burnt trees

Waves of freight trucks

A cliff of apartment blocks

Peaks of NYC

Redwood smokestacked-factories

Standing water

The longest, blackest Erector-Set bridge

Hills of transcontinental storage containers

MODERN LANDSCAPES!

A Few Lines Composed Above Rittenhouse Square, On Revisiting Central Philadelphia During A Tour, March 3rd, 2007.

The window shutters were generally
Where my eyes were, most venerably,
The red bricks seemed both in and out of place;
I spoke a lot, trying not to lose face,
And keep the brogue-breeded blisters at bay,
By so many independent cafes.

O most sylvan of all sovereign states!
On you all my affection concentrates.
With pleasure, I traverse your capital,
Which should have remained our one Capitol;
Regardless of crack-dealers and drive-bys,
There's a beauty we can all abide by.


-------

I was never much of an epic writer.

Gm Blues Song #2

Rapture Blues

It’s just another Saturday morning
Just me and my guitar
Another Saturday morning,
Chillin’ in the bar

Just another Saturday morning
Let the guitar sound
Playin’ poker with the Devil
I think I might double-down

Richard Nixon, Hitler & Judas
Join in the game
Another Sautrday morning,
What a fuckin’ shame

Keep the Yeunglings rolling
For my last day here
At least that’s what I’m hoping…
Where’s my goddamn beer

Another Saturday morning
Here in New Jersey
What did I do was so wrong,
For you to desert me

It’s just another Saturday morning
Just me and the guys
Sitting by the wayside
Waiting for Hell to rise

Keep the rock’n’roll flowing
And the whiskey cold
Another Saturday morning,
Or so I’m told

Richard Nixon, Hitler & Judas
All raise a toast
“To this Saturday morning
“And a wonderful host!”

Another Saturday morning
Just me and my guitar
I bet you I’m more fucked
Than you think you are

What I think of what I'm supposed to think of as home:

Trenton Makes, The World Takes


I tried to draw from memory
What you meant to me:



What I got looked something like bug eyes.


When you stare at your concrete enough
You can be fooled into thinking it’s natural:
There are grain lines, and imperfections
There’s a greenish mess of moss seeping through

But you are dead. You give the world nothing.
You died long before I was born, but no one sees
You lost your way before you went neon –
You mean nothing to me.


I am dulled here: your inhabitants are grey, their thoughts beiged.
“Progress on all fronts,” the Trentonian says
I see twenty year-old temporary walls and people getting out
While they still can.


The Garden State is now full of weeds;
The idiot-consumer’s readymade plastic paradise

No-one can tell where you end and they begin.

No-one realises they are no different;
Trenton, I hate you, but you are unoriginal:
You look as supplanted from reality
As the idea that you lead this state, let alone provide for it.

Trenton Takes, The World Makes:
Responsibility has been outsourced.



II

I cannot stand to sit here like this.
I can remember when Jersey Tomatoes weren’t from Peru,
When I was happy to still call you home.

I traveled five hundred miles today to find
Just a little part of my youth;
I want to leave you and miss you,
Not leave to find you.

From the sky, you look just like spaghetti,
More tarmac than verdant heartland
But this is the heartland now –
In a country fully fueled by desire;
Sustenance is assumed, taken for granted.


Trentonians:

Do yourself a favour and pack your bags
Buy a ticket, get on this train,
Because this is all wrong.

Lay down on the road and wait
You’re driving to your own death.
And calling it progress.


Trenton Fakes, The World Ignores.

Optimist Blues

Optimist’s Blues

What can you feel for the world,
Living so short and knowing so few?
Happiness will come unfurled
If you let it get to you

I can’t stand to stay like this
Having company from just the walls
I’m not demanding true bliss
But it wouldn’t be remiss

I’m up in Lincoln, NH
My arm’s broken but I’m free
I wish I was camped there,
A place I can just be

I could spend all my days
Ambivalent to the world
In my canoe I could daze,
All comfortably in-curled

I can remember what B.B. said,
“The thrill is gone away for good”
The blues made sure my heart bled
Like you know it should

In the winter, snow fixes all;
A clean lace maternal sheet
It’s also my sometimes pall,
But much less discreet

I need to stay alive for long enough
To know I’ve made a smile always
This may turn out to be rough
But I’ll stay alive all the days
That I need to make a difference,
To know that person ain’t lyin’,
I will not stop tryin’, til
The day I die, and, pass on.

But I’ll be back to New Hampshire
To scare the shit out of you
My soul still camped there
Knowin’ I did what I was supposed to do…