STURM AND DRANG

A Category 3 Poem

Most of his poems were categories three or four.
Anything less wasn’t worth the bother.
The fives were rare, the sixes, special, but sevens,
oh, they were something else entirely.

You can go your whole life without experiencing
a category seven poem. I mean, in person.
There’re books, websites, the odd greetings card
but nothing, nothing beats being there.

Like being born. Or giving birth.
One of them’s a seven for sure.

Sturm und Drang

The question
hounded him,
insidiously persistent,
like a rumour

or doubt.

Fleeing was futile
as it always found him
and when it did
it would stop a way off

and wait.

The waiting was bearable.
The awaiting was not.
A stone is just a stone
until someone picks it up.

An Infinity of Uniquity

Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet – Paul Klee

Indeed, it is permitted
to re-enter the realm of dreams.
There are no locks or bars or bolts
and you may travel freely
but—
yes, even in dreams there are provisos—
there are so, so many doors
and, to be fair, they are colour-coded
but, seriously, folks.
who pays attention to stuff like that?

It’s like me asking, as we leave the club:
What colour were the stripper’s eyes?

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.