Edge of Africa 

Like a mesmerised fly, a small white car 
teases a path along a chameleon
tongue of land, eager to be swallowed
into its city.

The sky blackens like a power cut; 
Luanda lagoon seethes like a forgotten kettle. 
As the Atlantic approaches the far verge 
and the car aquaplanes on the asphalt,

its driver peers toward the city, 
his foreign home, distant as the future, 
his breathing strained by fear, elated 
at this flirt with death by nature 

in a land bled dry by civil war.
The tempest loses interest, slams away; 
the car staggers along the causeway 
to chance its luck in the human storm.


First published in The Camel Saloon, January 2011.

Edge of Africa

Reprieve

This blind metal coffin, 
forged in a distant city 
I now call my home, 
ploughs over country crossroads.

Synapses, slowed by green light, 
let fingers slip across the wheel; 
undeterred, the car swerves 
into a future where we may write anew.


First published in HQ Poetry Magazine, Number 41 (2012)

Reprieve

Relegation Dogfight

Slow season-long haemorrhage of hope 
to this sad suburban stadium: shades of Hades!
Heavy-shouldered stewards shove supporters in. 
Squeezed inside the Shed, surveilled, surrounded,
sharpened senses surge as seconds slip away.
Hard shouts, harsh sky, head-slicing sensations.
One shot: our heart staked by a single strike.
Who survives such small horrors surely
savours humanity’s submerged sorrows.


First published in Football Poets, October 2008.

Relegation Dogfight

Dog Day Sundown 

Far from winter and work, the sun still sets
on a perfect, dog-free bay in southern Mexico. 

Filaments of eye-candy cloud
squeeze the horizon into layers,

then part the curtain on the evening’s stars: 
Mars and Venus, crescent waxing moon.

A watcher on the beach sifts sand,
peers at what thoughtless fingers raise: 

a leather collar, cut sharp, stained dark, 
a name engraved - “Tigre, Posada Las Americas”.

Inside the town, once clouds reclaim the night,
the mayor sleeps deep and sound. 

She’s paved the road outside her house, raised taxes,
“cleansed” the beach. A second term may come.


First published in Dead Snakes, January 2012.

Dog Day Sundown

Out of Season

In Hong Kong, 
frozen dew on a hillside flower
elicits tailbacks from the city.

Here in Sofia, where traffic 
flows too thin to jam,
unwelcome October snowflakes 
toy with the city 
like apprentice alchemists.

Flat tower block roofs 
are thin in their cover:
chimney stacks, aerials, logs protrude.
Sloping roofs below shape better, 
obliquely white. Cottages,

though few remain, fare better still:
each detail of trellis, porch or tree
magnified by snow, their 
blemishes, rust, decay extinguished,
individuality heightened,

as Mammon coats the eyes, the ears,  
of cottagers, tower-dwellers, homeless,
with dreams of cargo, 
like Chinese whispers,
and bides his time.


First published on the Intercultural Platform, June 2000.

Out of Season

I’m Bryan Murphy. Author. One of the first cyber-poets, back in the day. I’m from England, but I live mostly in Italy, so I’m grateful to Soundcloud for giving me this rare chance to read my work in public – and indeed to the biggest audience of all. 
I’ve spent my life living in interesting places in interesting times, and my work reflects that. My life has got better as I have got older, and my recent work is less political and less dark. One major theme is the enduring struggle between faith, in various forms, and reason. I also write about places where I’ve lived or just passed through, and people, good or bad, whom I’ve encountered. Another topic is soccer, and I hope I can convince you that it is more than just a game. 
You’re welcome to sample, download and use my voice as you wish. I hope my work will give you pleasure.


Audiobiography: Bryan Murphy, Author

Run Over Blues

Recorded highlights fail to flash 
in a lifetime’s blink, this time,
though a rusty green juggernaut 
swells in my outer vision, a rhino 
with the paralysing power of a cobra; 
swerving through the vermilion light, 
it stares the other way, swats me with its flank. 
I shrink deeper into my shaken skeleton, 
shocked into religious expletive, not obscenity. 
Apology draws the sting from apoplexy: 
I let the driver live, stagger back 
to the pub to catch the second half.


First published in Football Poets, March 21, 2007.

Run Over Blues

Under the Dragon’s Eye

No stench of death emanates
from these mass graves.
Beyond rusting barbed wire,
prosperous lowland stirs memories
of the Vale of Kent.

Do our apple orchards likewise
cover blood-drenched secrets?
In this tranquil longan* grove,
the secret is out.

I wonder at the tranquillity,
overlooking shallow hollows
where men, women, children
were bludgeoned, hacked, sawn
to death, few lucky ones shot.

Behind me, their fractured skulls
gather cobwebs on shelves
that perspective renders countless.
Below the serried crania,

a heap of clothes,
blue and black mostly;
occasional patches of pattern, colour,
embody girlish ambition
too pure to tolerate.

Murder tools surround them:
hammers, saws, iron rods.
We did this barely 20 years ago.

Now, a water pump chugs calmly,
oxen graze, children laugh
and comfort our belief in progress,
our disbelief in hell.

* Note: longan is a small, tree-borne tropical fruit, known in English by its Chinese name, which translates literally as “dragon eye”. The place is Cheung Ek, Cambodia.

First published on the Intercultural Platform, November 1999.


Under the Dragon's Eye

Whatever Can


Bullseye on denotation, you fix the under-meaning: perfect start;
then translate more, fail to alliterate, thus betray your perfect art.

Cut! “Fab,” says the boss. You’re not sure. He’s done, rolls the next scene, “fab” again.
You face your image on screen, cringe at the ham – never your perfect part.

Brand-new studio, your voice swings with the instruments, chimes with the counters.
They call you back, result a mess: tech mistakes smashed your perfect Bogart.

Now you’re the director, your actors are great, strike all your long-sought notes.
The freezing theatre’s emptiness hits your eye like a perfect-thrown dart.

Epidermal ecstasy; dovetailing minds; joy in, for, each other.
Then your word out of place sets back her search for your far-from-perfect heart.

Your own words now. You can do it: deno, conno, allit! But: cliché.
Murphy’s Law, son, means you’ll never write well enough for this perfect art.


A 17-syllable ghazal on "Murphy's Law" - whatever can go wrong will go wrong. First published in "Snakeskin", September 2012

Whatever Can

Unicornucopia

A whale of a time they are having, 
the unicorns, gambolling along the waterline 
where surf flecks phosphorescence on their hooves.
Distracted, they barely glimpse 
the plummeting creatures flailing featherless stumps, 
though they hear them smack into the salt-soaked sand, 
and the stench of their secretions will stick around for days.

A foal it is, wouldn’t you guess, who blasphemes first, 
whisking in the word from the fringes 
of her half-formed mind. 
“Umans. Mummy, they’re umans!”
Now umans, as we know, 
do not exist. And if they did, 
they’d keep well clear of Unicornucopia.
Naturally, the grown-ups rope the foal, 
pen her in, brand her a bit, cut out her tongue 
and fly her to a far-flung nunnery, standard stuff.

Themselves, despite the smell, still frolic on the strand, 
taking care not to slip on the corpses unseeable,
nor bestow any comment or look on anatomies 
not in the Book of the Past and the Future. Yet on nights 
when heavenly bodies make their love behind cover, 
a few fear-free broncos gallop to the decaying mounds, 
sniff, prod, chomp distractedly, suck, 
and slice samples to send to the secret labs, 
for you can never tell when something that is not there 
might free the herd from famine or, 
suitably analysed, 
lead to a new disease-control procedure, 
or just push back the boundaries 
of what unicorns never need to know.


First published in "Pyrokinection", October 2012