GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

 

Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct literary magazines and websites and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake and Eclectica, that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives in relative obscurity in Scotland with his wife and (occasionally) next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.

I Have No Words

In Memoriam Birdy

Most pains find their way into words readily

and there are so many to choose from.

Words and pain go way back.

That said words cannot always be relied upon.

Nature made pain, humans, words;

there were bound to be issues,

to wit, I know of no word or combination of words

that comes close to containing all I feel right now.

They’re all too refined, too evolved, too damn fiddly.

A scream likely would do the trick.

It's a kind of word: primal, natural,

language at its rawest.

The Rule of Three

My bird has died.

I feel very clingy

and follow my wife

like a little stray pup.

Please don't die.

Things die all the time

but mostly in threes.

If my wife dies I’ll be alone

and I don't want to die alone.

I should buy a plant in case.

I wouldn't mind if a plant died.

The Natural Order

My bird has died and

I can't stop writing poems.

I'm so conflicted.

I like writing poems but

I miss my bird too.

I tell myself I'm keeping

him alive in the

poems (some small part of him)

but that's not it, no.

I couldn't stop him dying

any more than I

can deny these words their right

to life.

           What does the

world need, another bird or

another bloody poem?