A Woman Is Not A Chair
The French (les
Français) got one thing right:
Death (la mort)
should be a woman (la femme).
A women pushed
us into this world (le monde)—
out of a male vagina no less (le vagin,
go figure)—
so, it seems
only apropos one should
usher us out of
it.
Life (la vie) and
death are,
after all,
inextricably linked,
twins (les
jumeaux), if you like,
who take it in
turns to be the evil one (le malin).
That said a man
(l’homme) is still best suited
to dig his own
grave (la tombe).
Optional footnote: The poem’s title is a quote—really more of a paraphrase after all these years—from my music composition teacher. He likened a chair (la chaise), amusingly enough knowing what I now know, to a vagina. No idea what the context was but he was explaining this to my father who was not usually there. My dad had, some time prior to this, told me that the word woman came from womb+man. Neither is, in fact, the case and the only reason vagin is male is because it, as odd as it seems, doesn’t end in an e.
Last Laugh
Last words—
we’re talking death beds here—
are often quoted
and pondered over
and I have
wondered if anyone
prepares their
dying words up-front
and then lies
there aiming to
time it just
right.
I mean, what
does a last gasp even feel like?
It’d be such a
shame to squander it
on a cough, a
burp, a sigh
or worse, a
fart.
(It’s still a form of exhalation.
Right?)
Talk about
fluffing the punch line.
Writers, of
course, get two cracks at the whip,
the actual last
thing they get to mutter and
whatever they’re
working on when they die.
I really hope
this isn’t the last thing I write.
I can do so much
better.
You wait till
the reading of the Will.
Unness
Artists are
often said to have an eye.
This is true of
writers too.
I, for example,
have an eye for when things are not.
Everything is
not something:
wet is not dry,
a cat is not a mouse,
somewhere it’s
not today,
love is not
enough and never is for long enough.
Even enough is
not enough
by which I mean
it’s often the wrong enough.
Existing is not
living.
You might be
forgiven for thinking
the problem is
one of perception but, as ever,
it’s imagination
clamouring for attention
that distracts
us from the here and now.
I blame Adam.
So many things
are not but not all were not ever.
We still recall
perfection and pine after it.
Old Misery Guts
It’s not like we
chose to stop caring.
We didn’t jam
our foot on the brake.
Shit just
stopped mattering so much.
And I expect the
same’s true of them.
They would never
admit to not caring,
I mean only
horrible people don’t care,
but the simple
truth is they don’t care
just as we
didn’t so fair’s fair although
it irks me more
than it should; I guess
surety is as
wearing as it is comforting.
In the end one
of them will care for me.
I’d be happier
if they cared about me but
frankly I don’t
fuss much over happiness,
mine or other
people’s, despite, at times,
being pleasantly
distracted by its pursuit.
Not sure what
I’d actually do if I caught it.
Probably die of
it knowing me
On Perspective
Life begets life –
Sarah Bernhardt
I am sad,
intensely so I think
although how can
one be sure?
Without quiet
how can anyone know
how truly loud
is? Besides
it’s hard to
think over Life’s screams
as she keeps
giving birth to herself.
Perhaps
quietness is just imaginary.
Like unsadness
or whatever or
perhaps none of
these matters
like that
clever-sounding metaphor
you likely booed
over for five seconds,
didn’t get and
will never think about again.
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 and Poetry Scotland that are
still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth
About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the
mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short
story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.
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