GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

 

Jim Murdoch lives down the road from where they filmed

Gregory’s Girl which, for some odd reason, pleases him no end. 

He’s been writing poetry for fifty years for which he blames Larkin. 

Who probably blamed Hardy. Jim has published two books 

of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.

 

 

The Ship of Theseus

 

 

There are many kinds of memories,

wallows, flickers, triggers and icons,

but the most vital of all are anchors,

tethers, ties that bind us to our past.

 

Some refer to them as proofs which,

is probably a more appropriate term

as proofs require outside verification

and Reason cannot be bought off.

 

The opposite of remembering should

be dismembering I would've thought

since remembering is reassembling.

Now if only it were as simple as that.

 

At what point do you stop being you?

I'm not the child I once was but insist

I'm the same person despite the fact

we don't have one atom in common.

 

What was definite is now indefinite.

I don't remember the bench we sat on

but as one bench is much like another

does it really matter which bench?

 

Memories, like every part of a human,

are short-lived and in a constant state

of flux but there is a limit and in time

even anchors get displaced by beliefs.

 

Beliefs supplant memories with ease.

Like stem cells they become whatever

they're needed to be and who can tell?

I believe we sat on a bench you and I.

 

I believe. I believe.

 

 

 

The Week of Indescribable Things

 

(for Carrie)

 

There are many things people describe as

indescribable that are eminently describable.

 

Vomit, diarrhoea, acrid piss: all are

easily describable. We just don’t want to.

 

What I want to describe,

what should be easy to describe,

 

is the pleasure water provided me at the time,

cold water running over my hands.

 

My hands are not sore but

hands know how to read the pain.

 

Afterthought

 

There were other indescribable things this week,

the way my wife cared for, endured with and simply

endured me. No words. No words. No words.

 

As she sat with me as I cried as I read

the first part of the poem to her in the dark.

No words. No words. No words.

 

 

Bishop, Bukowski and Me

 

 

The reason my poetry disappointed me

for so long

is it wasn’t great.

I thought poetry should be great.

Not necessarily great thoughts

     (not everything’s that profound)

but do great things with words.

 

Took me sixty years to realise

all poetry needs to be is poetry.

 

Occasionally,

like a Philly cheesesteak or a meat sub,

it’ll be great

     (more by fluke than design

          (some happy confluence of events))

and that’s great, really great

but, hey, even a not-so-great Mac and cheese

fills a hole, right?

 

People imagine Bishop was a better poet

than Bukowski and, technically, yeah, maybe.

What does “better” even mean?

 

I should stop beating myself up over this.

GAS Featured Poet: Jim Murdoch

Jim Murdoch grew up in the heart of Burns Country in Scotland. Poetry, for him, was about irrelevance—daffodils, vagabonds and babbling brooks—until one day in 1973 he read Larkin's 'Mr Bleaney' and felt as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. How could something so... so seemingly unpoetic be poetry? He aimed to find out. 

Now Then 

We say things aren't as bad as 

we remember but mostly it's 

the other way round because 

no one recalls hurt or pain with 

any degree of accuracy and why 

would they want to? 

We're fighting a losing battle 

on two fronts from an 

untenable present. 

Wondering what we'll 

misremember tomorrow is the 

least of our problems. 

Expectation is the Mother of Disappointment 

"A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words." - William Carlos Williams

Williams was right, half-right at least, 

although a poem is less of a machine 

and more of a tool: 

closer to a backscratcher 

than a two-stroke engine. 

True, there are simpler machines— 

pulleys and screws, 

wedges, wheels and axles— 

but no one thinks of them. 

We expect too much from our poets. 

Poems, most poems, are a 

means to scratch an itch 

and little more 

and it's never even the reader's itch.

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?