Camel
Stare me down if you must
With your ageless dreams, rhythms
Oars dipping to drumbeat, caravans
Inching across the horizon
But tell me
Did you doze off too?
When Scheherazade lulled
The insomniac Harun
Or eavesdrop on
The small talk of Kings bearing gifts
And you surely must have blushed
When Salome danced
Or blinked in unbelief
At the grave of Lazarus
Still, you had your fifteen minutes
Tethered to a dog wood, perhaps
On the slopes of Calvary
And you could hardly
Have remained impassive
When they nailed his hands and feet
Videos Now on You Tube with View Count on 15th April 2011
Tommy Murray reads Rathnally Boreen 44
Tommy Murray at the Delish Part One 75
Tommy Murray at the Delish Part Two 79
Tommy Murray Battle of the Books 354
Tommy Murray at the Whitehouse 179
Tommy Murray Bard of Armagh 289
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Lean-to
Immortalised in albums
And affectionately framed
Family gatherings, that
Will be me with the broken plinth
And the dark patch
Where the pebbledash ran out
A ponytail of bits and pieces
Hand me downs and afterthoughts
I am hardly photogenic
But once when September posed impromptu
I was for a split second
Three sixteenths of a spectacular sunset
This little poem which I wrote some years back was published in the Kilkenny Literary Review
The New English Teacher
You know how it is in September
The first day back
Trying to come to terms with the new colour scheme
The wall, immaculate in magnolia
Doors, the worse for blue
Who’s new you wonder
As you notice the empty locker
Cleaned out except for the rubber band
And the heavily pencilled copy
Of ‘Getting to grips with English’
A limp handshake
And you feel as if you knew Miss Brody all your life
The little hen like movements of the head
The turn of phrase
The play on words are all so familiar
That you suddenly find yourself
Scanning the picture of last years staff outing
Trying to find a place for her in the line up,
Listening to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9
“From the New World”
It begins with a tap on the shoulder
A horn call
Oboes arching to octave
A sort of “wish you were here” a
“Come let us stroll along
Those chordal paths
Those misty regions
Where trumpets rise sequoia high
And woodwind choirs sing low.
Where the hush of flute and horn
Fall moccasin soft
On tender homesick melodies
Between subtle intrusions
Of kettledrum and brass
And cakewalk rhythms pander
To the syncopated beat
Of dancing feet
Before embarking
On hair raising tonal excursions
To distant keys and cotton fields
The Hovis people spent hours trying to decipher this poem before sending me a very nice letter
Father’s Day
We knew that mother’s day
Would be a hard act to follow
Flowers were out
Make up, a mockery
We considered chocolates
A lying in state of succulent shapes
With a blue ribbon and a bar code
Before settling for a selection of scratch cards
And a prayer
That you would win enough
To boost our inheritance
Congratulations to 10 year old Laetitia Igwe on her recent success in the Meath Art and Poetry competition. Laetitia's poem is called 'Nationalities' She is a member of the Navan Junior Writer's Group which meet every Saturday morning in the Navan Library
