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| Patrick the poet versifying. |
We
were speaking of Old White Men the
other day. There are poets much more obscure then Whitman,
Sandburg, and Ferlinghetti, some
of them still alive. I count myself, at least temporarily, in those ranks. At a minimum I have old and obscure down pat. But this is my pop stand and once in a while I can indulge myself by inflicting my verse on you, my helpless
readers.
Regular
visitors here even outside our National
Poetry Month feature, know that over the past couple of years I have regularly belched forth poems of despair, outrage, and unltimately
rebellion. You may have seen them
posted here—or you may a scrolled past
Facebook links in horror looking
for kittens or uplifting bromide memes.
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| Patrick in active Resistance at Hate Has No Home in Woodstock counter event to a Trumpista and anti-immigrant rally on Woodstock Square. |
My
own efforts moved me to put together the Poets
in Resistance Reading at the Tree of
Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry early last month. It
was a surprising success with 16 talented poets performing—17 if you count the
old man. I hope to include work by some
of them as April rolls along. But today
I am going to share some of my work, including poems I read there.
I
assembled all of my recent protest and
resistance poetry into Resistance
Verse, a chap book on the fly—an
8½x11 inch self-covered 14 page staple bound book containing 10
pieces.
I figure the books are worth a good $2 a pop. I can mail one First Class for just under another $2. So let’s call
it $4 and I will send you a copy. I
will even autograph it unless you
don’t want it defaced. If by some miracle I sell out, I
can easily print more on demand.
Even simpler, I can e-mail you
a pdf version upon request. I’m not
even setting a price on those. You
can send me what you think it is worth
just kiss my ass and sweet talk me and you can get it gratis. Either way, such a deal!
And if you are a publisher or
sleep with one and like what you
see, give me a buzz. I have more
than a decade of new material
and some older, unpublished material
aching, not all of it this kind of
political ranting, to get put between real live covers.
Contact info:
Patrick Murfin
522 W. Terra Cotta Ave.
Crystal Lake, IL 60014
815 814-5645
Here are some samples including two pieces I
read Tree of Life.
Considerations
from the Dictionary
July
13, 2016
Black—The complete absorption of light
gathers
and retains all energy,
The opposite of white
which
reflects all light,
shining
but creating no energy,
A human with dark skin
any
shade, actually, darker than pink
Lives—Living organisms rather than inanimate objects
or
dead organisms,
Beings manifested by metabolism, growth,
reproduction, and response to stimuli.
Matter—(Noun) Physical
substance which occupies space
and
possesses mass,
An affair or situation
under
discussion.
(Verb)
be off importance and have significance.
Get it now?
—Patrick Murfin
Tonto Will Not Ride into Town for You
For The Camp of the Sacred Stone 9/30/2016
Tonto will not ride into town for you, Kemosabe,
and be beat
to pulp by the bad guys
on your
fool’s errand.
Pocahontas will not throw her nubile, naked body
over your
blonde locks
to save you
from her Daddy’s war club.
Squanto will not show you that neat trick
with the
fish heads and maize
and will
watch you starve on rocky shores.
Chingachgook will save his son and lineage
and let you
and your White women
fall at
Huron hands and be damned.
Sacajawea and her babe will not show you the way
or
introduce you to her people,
and leave
you lost and doomed in the Shining Mountains.
Sitting Bull will not wave and parade with your Wild West
Show
nor
Geronimo pose for pictures for a dollar
in fetid
Florida far from home.
They are on strike form your folklore and fantasy,
have
gathered with the spirits of all the ancestors
to dance on
the holy ground, the rolling prairie
where the
buffalo were as plentiful
as the worn
smooth stones of the Mnišoše,
the mighty
river that flows forever.
They are called by all the nations from the four corners
of the
turtle back earth who have gathered here,
friends and
cousins, sworn enemies alike,
united now
like all of the ancestors
to kill the
Black Snake, save the sacred water,
the soil
where the bones of ancestors rest,
and the
endless sky where eagle, Thunderbird, and Raven turn.
Tonto has better things to do, Kemosabe…
—Patrick Murfin
My Two Cents
October 14, 2016
Ok, so I’m a stranger to locker rooms.
I was the furthest thing from a jock,
a pasty flabby kid
with glasses
and a paperback
perpetually
stuffed in his back
pocket.
In rancid and sweaty after-gym class
dodging the snapped
towels
and hoots at my
terror shriveled wanger,
I recall no chatting
about grabbing pussy
or sticking lounges
down startled throats.
But hell, it was a long time ago,
perhaps the memory is
hazy
or perhaps I lacked
the passport
to the elite spaces
of strutting stars
where such things
maybe were lingua franca.
But I was an accredited correspondent
to the sexual
revolution
even if a failed
participant
and remember free
love and hippy chicks.
I did doctorial research in scurvy dives
with the 7 am
eye-opener drunks
and the reek of stale
beer, vomit, and Pall Malls
and snickered along
with some dirty jokes
and ogled the
unattainable babes on the
beer calendars and TV
shows
flickering in the
high corner above the cooler.
I have spent my hours with men
on oily shop floors
where machines
whirred, roared, and
clanked
and you counted your
fingers
to make sure they
were attached
and we ate lunch off
the roach coach
brushing crumbs from
our aprons
and spun foolish
yarns and lies.
I have languished in the Joint
where a commissary Hustler
was worth a carton of
squares
and drifted to sleep
on lumpy cots
to the moans of cons
pulling their puds,
my hand in unison
with the rest.
I have been in the company of men
where civilizing
women were
nowhere around to
shame or constrain us.
I have heard and said fucked up things—
but I never heard
that sneering, swaggering
unashamed boast of
being a—
let’s not pull
punches—a predator
or the bland
assumption that any other man
would be impressed
and approving.
I
have never laid a hand or tongue on a woman
who
was not willing to accept
my
fumbling advances—
hell,
most of the time I was too shy
or
too terrified to act when they practically
sent
up flares of invitation.
I
may be a pig and a loser, Mr. Trump,
but
I have never disgraced all swine
or
turned winner into an epithet.
—Patrick Murfin
Wake Up!
Groundhog Day 2017
6:00 am
Wake Up!
It’s not yesterday again!
It will never be yesterday again.
But if you don’t
get your ass out of bed right now
and do something
today will replace it
in the time loop.
Trust me.
You don’t want that.
Today is going to be a
Motherfucker.
Wake Up!
—Patrick Murfin
I loved reading your poems Mr. Murfin
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