Born in Belfast, 1965, Paul Murphy studied at the University of Warwick, gaining a BA in Film and Literature. From there he went to Queen's University Belfast to study for an MA on T.S.Eliot and the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. He has just finished a stint as writer-in-residence at the Albert-Ludwig Universitat, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Wurtemburg, Germany. His poetry, literary criticism, book reviews and travel writings have been published in English, Irish and American journals. He has published a pamphlet and one previous book of poetry, and has read from his work in Paris, Cambridge, Galway and Belfast. He is at the moment writing an oral history of the Black Forest, and working on many reviews of contemporary authors. He also writes philosophy and enjoys working on the interface between poetry and philosophy.
He has published poems in the following journals: Never Bury Poetry, Connections, Krax, Poetry Now, Time Haiku, Fire, The Journal, Iota, Poetry Scotland, Black Mountain Review, Curlew, The Quarterly Muse, The Honest Ulsterman (as ‘Mephisto’), Braquemard, Buzzwords, Marginalia (supplement of Monas Heiroglyphia), Scintilla, Baker Street (USA), The Black Rose, Worm, The Purple Rose (USA). Hermes.
De-Commissioning
This is a word left out
Of all dictionaries
It is our newly-formed catch-phrase,
It is wedded
To all prefixes and Urs;
Ur-city, Ur-necropolis,
Ur-Babel, before
The explosion of languages
Will render all linguisterie
As meaningless and harmless
As a rack of pistols:
Not meant for de-
Deflowering, de-humanisation
Decontamination, or one
From schooldays
Debagging,
Not that either.
Top of the Page.
Necropolis
How I remember you -
Lewis Mumford
Because, behind me now
Is the necropolis
The wind fans the flames
Of the little candles -
Placed there for the dead
The Padre Pio statue:
But this was the beginning
Of all cities, in the past-life and afterlife
Of civilization;
I wander into the city
Of the dead, it is no more
Than a row of bungalows
Of neat, little thrones.
Top of the Page.
The Tower: a German Sequence
For Steve and Sina
I
The gentle snowfields
A dour, sweeping sky
Wind from Eastern steppe.
II
Each train track is
A finger pointed eastwards,
The stark, segmented light.
III
The tram from Kropcke:
A line of haggard faces
I sit blankly stare.
IV
How is it that we
Never commicate, what
Is this concrete shell
V
Of city. A blasted,
Abstract and pitiless
Core of unbeing.
VI
It was tempting to
Say phallus, but there you are
Wasserturm, so
VII
Zeppelin-black
Pointed at the inselaffe,
England, as if you
VIII
Witnessed junkers, madchen
Fire-pointed streamers filling
The auburn Autumn.
Top of the Page.
There Was Some Talk of the Word "the"
For Elena - dolce naufragere in questo mare...
I am dismissed from my casual post
Of Applied Metaphysician and Neo-Aristotelianism
I have not mentioned anyone
I have not used the word "the"
I have not talked in acrostics, acronyms,
I have been seconded to the Institute of Dunces,
I am not talking your language,
In fact I am not talking at all.
Top of the Page.
Spanish Landscape
A piece of paper, pen, light
Waiting for inspiration
To condescend
Distant light, waves, the sea's shimmer
Daylight pouring through the window breech:
This is a Spanish landscape
Courtyards, villas, sea and sky
Waking at dawn
For composition to begin
The hills, bulbous and shunted
Fat with blossom, the clouds hang
The eternal swansong
Of living flowers, plants and trees
Emotions hang like their colors
A patchwork of grays and blues
The locals I cannot understand
In an unkindred place
I hang listless as a mother tongue without a root
I learn the Catalan for slower
And the Castelano for questions
As if this new language
Spoke to me, hangs over the ocean
A thousand suns immortalise its Prussian blue
You who caressed me from torpor
And lifted away the impenetrable night
Are gone, lifted beyond the heat and haze
Of the afternoon, in this place
I cannot understand.
Top of the Page.
The Abyss
They're responding to an aesthetic:
I know this, for after every observation,
Measurement, surreal hypnosis,
You can't but realize the newness,
The audacity: I liked the absence
Of paint, chords, notes, just
The silence, the chilling, tomb-like absence
The nothingness, the abyss-like bottomlessness,
Like nature it has absolute repetition
Of nothing, even the birds don't chirp
Nor do the leaves fall upwards, or
The trees crumble, like an old piece of bark
In my sink, you are useless, pretty unaesthetic,
Pretty, pretty, pretty (a bit like me, I'm so
vain),
But you are the art I create.
You won't do, you won't do,
Back to the abyss with you.
Whatever that was about?
Put words and connections together
Find the inherency
Not here, not there:
Wine floats in glass with cork
Blood red wine on cherry lips
Oozing blood red cherry halos
Coagulated on my lips.
Whatever love is
A headband on a head
Of thick matted brown hair
Glossy, like a horse's mane,
Or an endless cornfield, love
Is a definite question mark
Suspended, or written upside down,
A forever, or never.
Like a dry valley one must
Find it, in season,
Or migrate southwards,
For replenishment, by a sea
Of infinite light, or lost in infinite night
It is the thing that keeps us alive,
We, strangers, in our cosmic ditch
Like tramps, after a night on the tear
Search each other, blind men
De-Gaussing, phenomena, magnetism,
It is all lost in the aureate air.
Top of the Page.
Table of Contents
The Engine is a new web magazine of poetry edited by Paul Murphy, which seeks new stylistics and forms in poetry. At present the magazine enjoys an open door policy, so, anyone who submits will find at least one of their poems published. For submission guidelines, send an e-mail to Paul at Quinqureme@Hotmail.com