Jacket 21 - Sheila E Murphy and Douglas Barbour

chaos chiastic to
order of senses
census counts coup
in weary walks
through ravaged fields
as if someone still reaches there

across these crosses
ruinous walks wear place
as if still sensed
in order to have reach
through silver
and the fields

worn down by place
meant with each step
to map crossed narratives
as take haste make waste
knot glowing moonlit
ripples into dark woods walked

light over the woods
takes green mapped
meaning place across
stories glowing
with small steps imprinted
ripples under moon

each narrative turn in
leaves strewn down
moonlit paths beneath
foliage darkling a more
than ancient cry of ruth
less any grained would be

a scented granular mere
threaded path littered
by turns and twigs
the moon seems ancient
now that wood shows as
strewn pieces and shavings

scattered granular
in no patterning
recog catches darkening night
ancient as the fear moon
might garner glancing
from shadowed leaf to leaves

one and another then one
grain here distributed
to darken plush green
pass-through might give
glance on scatter gram
to ward off night

stars as grains of
scattered beyond count
the ing of it the tang
in air cooled beneath
each green leaf closed
down to earth rumbling under

lingua faults the slip green
beyond closure
placed lengthwise near
scattering grains leaves
earth rumbling close
enough to stars

stare ways into shadow
s fallen scatter
rings gang greened
as bush walked beyond
small gateways tumbled
along fault lines written in wind

places to stop and soften
seem beyond green
shallow fault lines
scattered in small ways
written to relieve
the mind’s fall with hush

track every fault
line up with righteous
anger or blues nota
bene:   crewel pain
darkly inked impressed
stone shadows climb

limbs shallow listless tones
pressed sinking stark
where train tools rain
rote jewels tangled
in tight pine
vaults very lacking

very  /  red & brightening
lights  /  rote nation
turned and caught in
vaulted aporia
apparitions trace trance
into enveloping cloud

look at how these
apparitions seem to
show some other
trace about them
caught and rote and
vaulted still enveloping

within such high silence
ghost traces whirl in grace
less sound less sight
in daylight against snow
light falling etched against
vaults of shadow deepening

race to swirl a round snow
flutters the deep centered
light with globe of glass
around as vault with hope
toward high within
a ghost of sound pitched fallen

as seen from so far above
snow seems stranded
held static in air gone solid
in light  /  frozen
ghost flash of unthought
burdening the berserker mind

how heavy the frozen
static gone tapped
along strand after
stanza snow flashes in one
frame ghost after
mental set gone slight

slant but how truth
full fills what taken
stance   static   fallen
to icy distance    calls
cold and hard (heard)
buried on the line

all to iced distortion
call callow herds of
buried lines leaned on
aslant how dances in
the attic fold to
aching full and lard

loud active louting
echoes rime-like
beneath the sea  /  stone
intel slanted into
belief gone dead
between those dark doors

tele-pathetic lone lead
darkens sea vanes left
in stone to echo paler
taintings between
death and locked
inactive recollections

phased and phrased out
words shadow stone  concrete
memories taint traced
too faintly grained
as dark waves shear cliffs
toward new achieved loss

the act of carving paces
beyond traces and encumbers
dark words phrased
to concrete as achieved
acts leave behind all
recollection parsing loss

as carved beauty shaves
off sandstormed  /  blasted
beyond bitter before fear
grounded in mist
ghosted in guesswork’s
grammar of grieving gone down

fear at the precipice
of erasure via sand
recalls the ghost
of grief and carves
a beauty misted over
fraught semblance and storm

in fright a bitter light
stumble into the
looked down upon  /  locked
into tunnel vision
the ghosted dark echoes
dauntless horns screaming

looking up into the bitter
tunnel horns clash
a metallic teething
fright skitters formed fear
sparks echo screams
infinitely repeating

metrognomic groundfire
echoes through tunnel
after tunnel vision lost
in smoke and mirrorflash SOS
repeating engine roaring ever
more massive at the fearful eye

one mirrors fear the sound
repeating massive roaring
past the eye that echoes
groundfire more
smoke fails to mute
loud fear as engine after engine

grows in eyepiece ever closer
ranged in rows running
wild across abysmic dark
sands stretching etern
in terms dataed black
warding carpetbagged bombs away

running the ward with car
pet dark in strands pieced
ever ranging grown abyss
to stretched term (in)
all ingredients bagged
shut and with in range

bugged & baggy trousers
dance down darkened
halls   blooded animals
trail the siren’s sound
feet slipslap on abysm’s
edgy reach  /  (st)retch of

the real down deeper than
infinite symptoms branching
back to a fundamental
thoughtless blood
eternally invaded
as changed

A Note on Collaboration

Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy met in Arizona when Douglas and Stephen Scobie were in the State to perform their collaborative sound poetry as well as their individual work in association with the POG Reading Series and Chax Press in Tuscon and at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series in the greater Phoenix area. Following that visit, Barbour and Murphy corresponded online. Among the topics pursued in written conversation was Murphy’s enjoyment of the collaborative process. Douglas asked her to participate in building a text together.
Murphy and Barbour find collaborating a chance to get outside the self in linguistically tuned and turned ways. The process brings forth a different creator, representing the combination of energies often vastly different from those of the original participants.

Sheila E Murphy and Douglas Barbour

Continuations 30