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Snapshots
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hot & dry, the spiced memory you dog you train my head tilt & stray whistle quaint damp eye companion you who miss touch firm touch, say, a rail you, today's memory: unkempt sloppy love, care & dry whys what's left is the only eyebrow coat of dust yelp & roll along this suburban sprawl I'll never who-- someone could water an entire lawn while I stride past a faint train's O whistle of who- cares & oil rigging in-out lore your barking O distance Chris Murray: Dallas, TX 10:50 p.m. 27 Aug 03 Today's List of Lists: Seven Things Reflexive With All My EM Dashes Sparkling Just Below This ABCsURfACE Things are cooling off around here without heat--you only need to hand out the sheaf of answer forms one time give all quizzes it's quicker that way less work-- if your mailbox is near its limit--Christine! You need to call me now [who are you?]--nowadays most prefer medium-well--WE ARE SO HAPPY THAT OUR HOUSE IS GOING TO GO THROUGH!--SEE THROUGH THIS TURQUOISE DEAR LOOK THEY HAVE FILLED THE CAVITIES WITH GOLD AND POLISHED THE ROUNDED JAG OF IT SO SMOOTH OH THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU I LOVE IT --The cashier in the Minimart said so today. --Overheard while walking past 2 science profs on campus yesterday. --Message yesterday from Office of Information Technology. --Phone message today from unidentified bill collector. --Waiter, steakhouse, last night. --Friends buying a first house, yesterday. --Gift last night of turquoise bracelet from daughter just back from Arizona visit. chris murray hmbl.thx.2hcic Dallas TX 12:00, 04 Sept. 03 Air a weather of gulf sins here, lugging the stuffed day around-- humid brown reruns of summer heat, diffuse squint-light. Jump-south, ocean, & this air winding up its trillion bald & stitch fast balls: surely, a hurricane is curving unnatural crimson attitude to run home along the heavens, their invisible corkscrews above this land-lock howl-- well, sure: they would call it Bible belt. At dinner, an oracle of a man at the bar, who knows exactly how to sip Tuaca like my sly granny, warns a comely woman: "Get your laundry done today, girl--tomorrow's for downpour," and suddenly I've no trouble believing everything in the world is always extreme & can be found here. On the way out, a fiver for a trumpet player on the corner working out a modern revolution of improv for all this: covenant of eight--oh yes-- steamy but cheerful & way too blue bars. Chris Murray 12:00 9/10/03 Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas are you that one of gravity's most timothy aria, recording your one cricket self tonight as if I lived near a field of green gone full amber sleeves lightweight some other fabric not reminders of wool necessity, how apple limbs will droop to ground, autumn-- are you that one, tiny hop-quadraprints, delicate crooked & comb-toothed legs, walking off unreadable longer nights as if new to the drumming gulf-sky rains-- are you that one, toeing a course along vacated garden mounds impressionists' carrot, potato, jicama beyond the warm patio stone-- clear-wide-eyed, oh you!-- is it you?-- dressing up for a night of out-right body cry, sing: or somehow is all that still very north-- granted: daily moving closer, simple, cold-- we could not know what code to make then kissed instead for the lank of winter self where you wedge or rest in the year's lone hollow, cedar linger & shavings, scatterings on the loose floorboard, penultimate you in the shiny anchor round of balance, wood stove, its fourth magnificent, round weight of silver foot-- are you that one? chris murray, Dallas TX, 18 Sept. 2003, 1:47 a.m. Delay not mini Godot, Let us go now, you're an eye pouring Deleuze I'm the blue excelsior unpacking wheelbarrow girls wantering in neologisms O Peter Gabriel: "Red Rain"! "red rain red rain is coming down" this or that blue bird bread crumb way out of here "pouring down" the midnight your pronoun is showing blue mascara coming urban inside pouring faces together playing dos gardenias para ti Sartes, too, putty on favored grammar OMyAnyOne Some say it is an army of Norsemen some mini hoplite shine for your lonesome Today Show Hostess Cupcake rewind O Muy Red Rain for more Simone: pouring my not mother was like that: her bluest falls pouring out of Havasu rock-- to each of their wantering tongues this, my overlove Chris Murray, 25 Sept. 2003, Dallas TX, 2:30 a.m. my luck riffs toward Z, today's cicada trees a-sway-- how a child resides first in lingual Greek tyche between eye, ear, a thick mouthed here meeting a so cream coffee man leaning slow words & Bach conjugations Z oh nutmeg sprinklings & I have met the worst word (romance) so *mort* it's torch welded to a smooth pat across cicada backsides & who needs that ochre-pebble-bedded mouthfuls or walkways for today insofar as (I love all subtle Z-endings: transnational transitionals) I do not sleep- in Z brimming harpy dreams ridiculous or other- wise presence but take all the happies I can: enough to cite cicadas or confess across any blueberry scone & double seam checkered red/white tablecloth corner draping surface light as seeming ore gone to V figuring adrift once again how I love when luck fits Twin Earth cafe days: for you, a few sweet twin gravities, love Chris Murray, Dallas, TX, USA thirteen ways of listening to a cricket i. all day drizzle flecked ii. on air sweating copper lawn iii. sirens across asphalt ground iv. in a veil of Texas v. crude & yellow leaf turning air vi. through the salt alphabet of infant vii. tears naming a first noon viii. or day breaking its noun porthole ix. of two ampersand rigs x. in almond reverb light xi. & neighbor's asparagus fern spreading xii. oak breeze ting-ting wind xiii. chime, your bare lips slowed to a word chris murray 10:41 p.m. 8 Oct. 03 Dallas, TX, USA to her she is "I'm likin' this *Dirty Vegas* CD-- O ya kno--" just sayin': "Nice kinda Pink Floyddy Brother Cerulean zish + more beat o hey! street but yeah, plush-- unholy moss to try out gentling a new velvet between notes like patting chestnut horses & few words or (all six) walls-- an' ah don't have to be anywhere less'n I want to good mood it. In a nice low flo red dress. Alot." & me I'm O walking in button downs on asphalt crumbs & ear just so after two curbs, random beginnings of hubcap shoutout potholes no doubt Victorian is a spray in a deodorizing manufactury mall somewhere past the cease- less vanilla traffic on Cooper Street's welcome to Omigod Arlington Texas US Chris Murray Dallas, TX 1137 p.m. not that kind of low pressure system the jade buddha man played a cheap skate- board video game til 5 ayem when the temp dropped 10 60/50 in half an hour no tornado though she says looking so bored her Red Stripe shaves 2 inches tipped close to gloss lip & hummed outkast songs sinking all this to her background deep girl heaven Chris Murray 10:08 p.m. Dallas, Texas waking to loss, not knowing what of, how--the next oak leaf loss?-- weaving its way through linens & a freezing still- gone word loss-- not cold temperature, no: that timed, short motion-- life until, hearing the piped catch of fuel-engine-strut outside I can see exactly how this idea globe has no idea of clear loss, how loss will suck dry every corner: lost beings-- Modersohn-Beckers, umbra cradles I have thought more of (less loss--sun more lumin to float, substanceless uber- shadows to scarve the still-working-face) my friends, flat loss, reading, even as sun smacks the balm of day's luck, that unheard shake of it-- loss aloud Chris Murray Dallas, TX 26 Nov 03 11:47 p. m. that one?--cruel as hangnails, or these dry browning curls of pine-needles on the walkway-- do I love your wavy love, in winter we are smoking to look around the grind of a backhoe always climbing for more mud a backbone a man-made mountain a noon hello to rebuild after some (ever-accidental) fire wipes out a power plant: it happened to me, you say, here. I know under the anorexic sun, a pool of basic lettering sunlit twig crisp warm as cheek skin: our words & a little well of breast warming for everyone: women know how he drives wild his own irony: true, women smoke over him more, so many more cigarettes compose him in memory & even he finds women so sidewalk-lucky after him now that infernal backhoe toddles over another round mound it wants to be a train chugging up a wonder of women-- are you reactionary?-- as if whatever rude glue he spent is not already full of a crush some pink melon the labial curious tender chris murray 04 Dec 03 12:55 a.m. Dallas, Texas U.S. sip lemon honey tea doctor nodding: flu so boring: flu tea sip lemon sip honey tea honey sip lemon sip honey lemon tea (so boring!) lemon tea honey sip sip sip so boring oh so flu the doctor says tea is good oh the memory-granny adds wrap a fire-warm brick in flour-sack kitchen towels stow in foot of bed wrap your feet to form oh kisses around your tea & honey & lemon then add the rest well get well sip Christine Murray Dec. 17, 2003 Armsreach frayed paperbacks Olson Maximus Dickinson Open Me Carefully make hard pillows undreaming the mouth & buttercreme dream of TV 800 number quilt & strip mall lending some I to say a New plucking leap Year nothing Kandinsky would warm over nor love too iceberg massive nor tame orchid small to violet rain cloudy or candy mandolin instead this fine of its playing weathered little ribbon of commonplace very cold sipping spumante. chris murray Dallas, TX, to PoetryEtc folks: Wishing All a Very Fine New Year, 2004 5:30 p.m. 31 Dec. 03 Here it's eighty degrees to mystify January there the Maestro winds himself up inside to go full bore as if the last clock-spring has come undone, or a corkscrew pressed too far, or a slinky toy gone out of control down stairs the whirrrr & Alla Marcia, body sweating the brown hair, dampening by camera Ritenuto, controlled to going full forte in Vivaldi's Summer the Al Fine bee crescendo & the back up violinists bowing up bowing down scribbling to swarm into one body, Presto What the the announcer has to say: air outside of Lincoln Center is 10 degrees. Period. Inside glistening plurals, violin hive pitch of Molto spell Ad Libitum, no weather in this wordlessness Chris Murray Dallas, Texas: Wed-Thurs, 15 Jan 04, 12:41 a.m. A gentleman of the measured 3 p.m. watery sun apace my thought on papers I'm inside the dove gray concrete shadows I concentrate squinting at construction work ahead just as we brush between on the one hand a thick painted tan brick computer hall of grated windows On the other the tic-tac-toe linoleum military college folded neatly inside the square stucco administration building's sparkling door of loud flags He bends past clipped hedges a decisive holly-type walking moon haired leans to say in soft plaid cheer Can you tell if we go this way will they let us through or is everything fenced off ahead, too? Chris Murray, 22 Jan 04 Dallas, TX 1:00 a.m. electronic curving: eyelash of letterings so wistful morphing to balloon yet another "Signed X" and "Date": all the clerks are reading the same amazing romance novel behind the divide or watching the outside sparrow flock turn to a familiar mood a filmy crossing one row of six absolute--why does no letter beyond math in this spectacular alphabet form a square?-- (seriously: anyone know?) windows of the world have long been united in cinder block square frames like here not unlike the manila business of an afternoon's sun come filing in pale renewal clerks at the motor vehicle department who might give the state's precocious stamps & red pens away forever wear pointy badges in gray desserts of bored or hollow metal sounds over curled hair & being idle in the late winter gloss & scrape of plastic desk inserts for the in or the out wire baskets & the grimed desk trays posing like stage crew with 17 inch monitors chris murray, Arlington, TX, 10:30ish, 10 March 04 dyeing black cherry her roots "to look magazine luscious again" the child also speckling the mirror & remarking as her growing anima clouds fur partially the big blue hole above physics & no & behind blank pane gray-- "mama i am just... so bored"-- as history groomed in textbooks beyond here & mirror wise o i think her one head not padded nearly enough as patting thin towels though she will be groomed so I say dear ever so "bored" to be so no is but a cracked kiosk the handbill letterings amelt in rain & hand of want careful to offer one eye to the peeling balcony rusting its lean panther almost completely off plumb the one note late April air conditioning another Texas purr chris murray DFW TX 22 April 04 Poetryetc is a listserv relating to poetry and poetics which provides a forum for poets to debate their critical and creative work. The list has over the years run a number of projects for its members, of which Snapshots has been the most enduring. Every Wednesday, Poetryetc members were invited to post short poems on any subject or in any form they chose. The idea was to make a poetic collage of instamatic “snaps” of that day that reflected the international membership of the list. The project has generated an astounding number of poems. The first two runs, of six weeks each, and the first ten weeks of the third run, are archived at Wild Honey Press www.wildhoneypress.com under Poetryetc Project. The rest - amounting in all to a run of a year - are archived here. Poetryetc, like its affiliate Salt Publishing (http://www.saltpublishing.com), was founded by Australian poet John Kinsella. Salt is managed by Christopher Hamilton-Emery (cemery@saltpublishing.com), while Poetryetc is owned by Alison Croggon (ajcroggon@bigpond.com). Poetryetc is now archived at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/poetryetc.html. and anyone interested can join from that url. To contact the listowner: Alison Croggon These pages are designed, maintained, and hosted by Rebecca Seiferle, the Editor of The Drunken Boat. To email. 
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