Peter E. Murphy

January 6, 2020

“Doing Time” by Peter E. MurphyPosted by

Peter E. Murphy

DOING TIME

Each week my supervisor rejected
my lesson plans because my goals
and objectives were the same.
When I asked him to explain the difference,
he changed the subject. When I asked why
the syllabus makes no sense, he said,
You’re not being paid to think, you’re
being paid to deliver a curriculum.
When I asked how to teach teenagers
who can’t read to read, he put a hand
on my shoulder, and with the other
pointed toward the horizon, which happened
to be the men’s room at the end of the corridor,
and said, Take them where they are.
When I turned to ask what that meant,
he was gone. I figured he was off to help
another teacher or meet a parent, but when
I saw him first in line at the lunch counter,
I knew I was wrong again.
I also knew I wasn’t meant to teach
anything important to the dark-skinned
students that sat in front of me.
Like them, I was meant to fail.
And because I was teaching stupid kids,
I figured I must be stupid too.
Even if I wanted to, I’d never be promoted
to supervisor like him. So, I thought,
Screw it, and I read my kids a poem
about nature, and they said, Man,
that’s dumb. So I read them a poem
about love, and they said, Man,
that’s stupid. So I read them a poem
about sports, and they said, Man,
that’s nice. So I read them a poem
about death, and they said, Man,
that’s deep. Then I read them a poem
that said something about their lives
they didn’t know they knew, and they
said, Let me hold that, pulling it
from my hands, reading it over and over,
until they said, Why ain’t nobody
ever told us this shit before?
And I said, You’ve got to be careful.
If they know how much you really know,
instead of more schools, they’ll build
more prisons to teach you a lesson.

—from Rattle #65, Fall 2019

__________

Peter E. Murphy: “My wife has been teaching Spanish and French to high school kids for more than 40 years. She is a saint. Ella es una santa. C’est une sainte. I quit after 29 years. I am a wimp. I taught in an urban school and was sent to the ER five times, but I was never assaulted by a student I knew. My students were protective, said they would get whoever it was and beat them up. ‘Doing Time’ reflects on the frustration that I, and many of my colleagues, and many of my students, felt as another school year snaps closed its suitcase and goes to work.” (web)

 

Peter E. Murphy was the guest on episode #22 of the Rattlecast! Click here to watch …

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December 21, 2019

“Grand Fugue” by Peter E. MurphyPosted by

Peter E. Murphy

GRAND FUGUE

After the hospital released me with a warning,
I walked around this busy city that hadn’t noticed
I’d been missing, me and my reconstructed heart,
so full of gratitude I wanted to kiss every light
that flashed GO, forgive the ones that said STOP.
And when I felt the earth throb under my feet
I remembered the subway below where commuters
were training themselves to work and what it felt
like to be that useful, which I will never be again
until my living will kicks in and a young doctor-to-be
pulls out my organs, examines them, and puts them back,
leaving one out to see if anyone notices, the way I did
in boot camp after taking an ancient carbine apart,
getting busted, threatened with court martial and firing
squad and Vietnam. The sun is working overtime,
shimmying its vitamin D all over the city. Its light
reflects off the granite walls of a magnificent building
whose cornerstone says it was born in 1844,
the year nitrous oxide was first used to sweeten pain,
though too late for Beethoven, who, enraged after
becoming deaf, drove the audience mad when he came
up with his fifteen minute car crash, the “Grosse Fugue,”
where the violin and the two violas and the cello
rip their bows across the screaming catgut
so atonally, no one wanted to listen to it.
Wouldn’t his heart break from joy if a patron set him up
at Weeki Wachee to watch through the great glass wall,
mermaids breathing underwater from air hoses so obvious
you can’t see them? His whole universe would shimmer
as waterproof women swirl through the bubbles
of the sunlit spring, smiling at him, waving their colorful
spandex tails like batons. In my anesthetic dreams,
I too breathe underwater without drowning.
I flap my arms, kick my feet, try not to remember
how blood spilling out of the body congeals
on the hospital sheets so a minimum wage worker
in the basement laundry can put a whopper and fries
on her kid’s dinner plate. There are a million birds
in this city I hadn’t heard till now, each of them tuning
their instruments, each of them singing, I am alive.

—from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith

__________

Peter E. Murphy: “December, 1971, a month before Bloody Sunday, I was hitchhiking through Londonderry, too drunk to realize it was a war zone. When my ride ran a barricade, soldiers lifted their automatic weapons and opened fire. A week later in Limerick, I met Bahá’ís. They said it was a new religion. I said they should disband before they start another holy war. They said they were building a social order centered around world unity. I said if you believed in alcohol instead of God, I might be interested. Four months later I woke up in a gutter in Cardiff, Wales. Later that day, I attended a Bahá’í meeting in Newport, the city where I was born 21 years earlier, and enrolled. Call me corny, but it was a second birth. My experience with the Bahá’í Faith has been one of transformation, which I hope is reflected in my poems.” (web)

 

Peter E. Murphy was the guest on episode #22 of the Rattlecast! Click here to watch …

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November 16, 2016

“Mean Time” by Peter E. MurphyPosted by

Peter E. Murphy

MEAN TIME

She asked for a pillow.
I brought her a fork.

She asked for a cigarette.
I brought her a sock.

She asked for a newspaper.
I brought her a tea set.

Is this what you mean?
I said.
Is this what you mean?

I poured milk in the toaster.
I spread jam on my head.

Bring me everything, she said, pointing
the fork at me, her darling boy.

I hopped from couch to chair
in the living room.
I flew out the window
as if I were a bird.
I landed on earth, which stunk
of flowers, not dirt.

Forgive me—
the sea breaching the walls
of our house, the chimney crumbling, the bed
clothes on fire—

it was the only way
I knew how to love her.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

__________

Peter E. Murphy: “When I started teaching as an adjunct in 1982, I was also teaching high school English and creative writing full time. It wasn’t the money, which was pitiful, it was to gain more experience. While I loved teaching, my life was measured out in paperwork. Nights and weekends I sat in a small living room of a small apartment rarely looking up at my wife and three-year old. I missed them. They missed me. I am still at it 34 years later. However, adjuncts at Stockton University are now unionized so the pay is better, and I teach an advanced poetry writing course. Life is good. For me. However, adjuncts are still the Educated Poor, the lowest caste in academia. I see them wandering the hallways looking for a place to lay their load, coffee spilling out of their cardboard cups onto bags of ungraded papers as they try to remember which college they have arrived at, which students they are about to face, what they must have done to deserve this fate.” (web)

 

Peter E. Murphy is the guest on episode #22 of the Rattlecast! Click here to watch …

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September 7, 2014

“Labor Day: Atlantic City” by Peter E. MurphyPosted by

Peter E. Murphy

LABOR DAY: ATLANTIC CITY

This is the last you’ll see of Philadelphia drivers
who make illegal U-turns on Pacific Avenue,
then park themselves on the sand that will grit
against their skin as they Humvee the traffic-jammed
expressway back to the city that spawned them.
This is the day when Showboat and Trump
and the second tallest building in New Jersey
that reveled on the Boardwalk for just two years,
fold five thousand dealers into the street.
Also losing his job is Mr. Peanut because he swung
his cane at the juvies who tried to trip him.
Everyone wants to sell their houses.
When they advertise themselves,
the casinos euphemize gambling as gaming
and are required to state, Bet with your head. Not over it.
There are other words you need to know—Shoobie,
Ar-Kansas, Lucy, Wawa, FEMA—to make sense
of this island. My friend Sandy lost too much in a storm
named after her. Born on 9/11 long before the fall,
she dreams of waves, not jetliners, crashing into buildings.
What else can you say about a woman who backs up against history?
There are 228 steps to the top of the lighthouse
where you can see how the tide rips away at the dunes.
They put up a cage so you can’t throw yourself off after climbing.

—Poets Respond
September 7, 2014

[download audio]

__________

Peter E. Murphy: “While I have never been a fan of gambling, the casinos have created thousands of jobs since they opened in Atlantic City in 1978. Trouble is, they crumbled like sand castles when the economy took a dive in 2008. They crumble when every neighboring state decides they too want a slice of the enormous pie. The Revel was built out of failure. It envisioned a clientele that would value elegance more than a quick spin of the roulette wheel. They overestimated their customers and underestimated their overhead which was about $60 million a month. Trump Plaza has also been leaking money and just this morning, the headline on the local paper asks, ‘Could Trump Taj be the next casino to go bankrupt?‘ Another 5,000 people out of work.” (website)

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