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CAUGHT IN THE NET 89 - POETRY BY
JIM MURDOCH
Series Editor - Jim Bennett
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Hello. Welcome to the next in the series of CITN featured poets. We will be looking at the work of a different poet in each edition and I hope it will help our readers to discover some new and exciting writing. This series is open to all to submit and I am now keen to read new work for this series.
You can join the CITN mailing list at
-
http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm
and following the links for Caught in the Net.
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He knows her room and sometimes he kneels outside the window on the fire escape and watches through a crack in the curtain or more often just listens.
from; Common Denominator by Jim Murdoch |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
COMMON DENOMINATOR
TRUTHS
EXHUMING TRUTH
THE POWER OF LOVE
MOTHS
READER PLEASE SUPPLY MEANING
THE POETRY OF REGRETS
IS A RED WHEELBARROW EVER EMPTY?
THE WAR AND AFTER
STILL BIRTH
3 - PUBLISHING HISTORY
4 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: JIM MURDOCH
JIM is a Scottish writer living just outside Glasgow. He has been writing poetry for over thirty years and his work has appeared regularly in small press magazines up and down the UK. Over the past four years he has moved online and started to promote his writing through his literary website. In his mid thirties Jim found the need to branch out and began writing novel, then, in his forties, he thought it might be a good idea to have a crack at a few short stories. To date he has published two novels, Living with the Truth and Stranger than Fiction and a collection of poetry spanning his entire career, This Is Not About What You Think. Jim’s latest novel, Milligan and Murphy, will be available any day now.
For more about Jim visit the following websites:
http://jim-murdoch.blogspot.com/
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2 - POETRY
COMMON DENOMINATOR
Every evening
Sweet William
sits on the wall
watching Stiletto
and the cars
creeping quietly
down the street.
He knows her room
and sometimes he
kneels outside the window
on the fire escape
and watches through a
crack in the curtain
or more often just listens.
The sounds he likes best
are like children sobbing
and he understands that.
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TRUTHS
They came yesterday
and unwittingly I let them in
after all, what had I to fear from friends ?
It must have been while I was sleeping
they made those deep deliberate cuts
into my past.
They were looking for malignant truths.
You can't live with them.
They have to come into the open.
I didn't even know what they'd done
till they showed me the ugly truth,
limp in a dish like a still-born.
"You've got to be cruel to be kind,"
they said.
They said lots of things.
But the wound never healed
and the truth ... it lay and rotted
like Adam's apple.
_____________________________
EXHUMING TRUTH
It was there.
She knew it would be
if she dug deep enough.
But she seemed disappointed.
What did she expect to find?
Nothing smells very sweet
this far down.
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THE POWER OF LOVE
(For Jeanette)
Love is a straight line –
it gets right to the heart of things.
Love squared is expansive –
it covers a multitude of sins.
Love to the power of three is deep –
it takes time to explore.
Give me your hand
and don't be afraid.
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MOTHS
Every day I come and look
(every day I can)
at the poem in the window
to see if it's changed
(and it always has)
but it's never more than a poem.
Every day I'm drawn
(it's an act of faith)
but there are never any answers.
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READER PLEASE SUPPLY MEANING
Writers are all liars. We all are.
But at least they are honest liars.
They write down those necessary lies,
the kind that move men to leaps of faith
or excuse us when we fail to jump.
In the end it doesn't matter that
they let us down in the cruellest ways.
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THE POETRY OF REGRETS
Poems turn up out of the blue these days
like family
and usually when things are going badly.
Once they were with us, day in and day out
we lived with them
but never really appreciated them.
I guess that's what growing up's all about,
finding ourselves
with too many regrets and fewer answers.
Only wish I'd said more when I had the
words to say it.
but you don't turn family away. Not ever.
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IS A RED WHEELBARROW EVER EMPTY?
My doctor said I
needed to
breathe and drink lots of water.
Actually she
never said
anything about water.
My wife nags me to
drink water,
seven glasses every day.
My doctor says I
can't just breathe.
I have to pay attention.
Breathing in itself
means nothing;
I'm not to look for meaning.
I did hear the sounds
of silence
and I think one hand clapping
and a tree fall in
the forest
but I don't have the words to
explain them.
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THE WAR AND AFTER
You vanished in a second.
That was all it took.
I blinked and then
you were gone.
A bird landed where you'd been.
I shooed it away.
A man stopped to
eat his lunch.
I asked him: "Could you move, sir?"
Soon a construction
crew arrived to
erect a
monument but not to you.
A dog came along
and peed on it.
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STILL BIRTH
(for Emma)
Still, a breath away from life,
a heartbeat away from breath,
still my baby lies
her frozen hand
reaching out
to receive
the gift that was
no longer
mine to give.
Still, everything is still,
until I cry her cry and
shatter that stillness
forever.
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3 - Publishing History
COMMON DENOMINATOR - First published in Sepia
TRUTHS - First published in AfterNoon
EXHUMING TRUTH - First published in This Is Not About What You Think
THE POWER OF LOVE - First published in This Is Not About What You Think
THE POETRY OF REGRETS - First published in This Is Not About What You Think
THE WAR AND AFTER - First published in Jasmin’s Heart
STILL BIRTH - First published in Salamander Cove
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4 - Afterword
Email Poetry Kit -
info@poetrykit.org - if you would like
to tell us what you think. We are looking for other poets to feature in
this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
bio to - info@poetrykit.org
Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net. Our other magazine s
are Transparent Words ands Poetry Kit Magazine, which are webzines on the Poetry Kit site and this can be found at -
http://www.poetrykit.org/