Sovereign Clarity for Imaginary Visitors

A bird calls me
A bear who eats with a silver spoon
A few couples walk off into the dark
A child crying in the night

A large stock of past lives
All they could do is act innocent;
And how are the rats doing in the maze?
At least one crucified at every corner

Evenings of sovereign clarity,
Extraordinary efforts are made;
For imaginary visitors, I had a chair;
Everything you didn’t understand

For those troubled in mind,
Give me a long dark night and no sleep;
If you don’t see the six-legged dog,
Go inside a stone

Heavy mirror carried
Here’s a woman’s black glove
Hanging by a thread
I believe in the soul; so far

It looks so dark, the end of the world may be near
It’s just a boarded-up shack with a steeple;
It seemed the kind of life we wanted
Lover of endless disappointments

Millions of empty rooms with TV sets turned on
My shadow and your shadow on the wall
Night is coming
My guardian angel is afraid

On a gray evening
Old men have bad dreams;
Once I knew, then I forgot
One night as I was dropping off to sleep

Source Text: Source Text: This poem is a collage of first lines from Charles Simic, New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012 (2013)

The Painted Horse of Appearances

Seems like a long time,
That awful deceit of appearances;
Taken as a whole, it’s a mystery
The brightly painted horse

Time’s hurrying me, putting me to the test
To grieve, always to suffer;
To find a bit of thread,
Watch it spin like a wheel

The time of the year for the mystics
At least one crucified at every corner;
You give the appearance of listening
There may be words left

Yellow feathers—
They were pale like stones on the meadow;
With the wind gusting so wildly,
You must come to them sideways

You were shaped to a fine point
You were always more real to me than God
Because I’m nothing you can name
I had a small, non-speaking part

Source Text: This poem is also a collage of first lines from Charles Simic, New and Selected Poems: 1962-2012 (2013)

Christina Murphy’s poems appear in a wide range of journals and anthologies, including, PANK, Dali’s Lovechild, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and The Great Gatsby Anthology. Her work has been nominated multiples times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net anthology.