MENTAL HYGIENE - Excerpt Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

            As with most things, emotional edges fray with wear. Murphy kept his 

personal mending to himself, but epiphanies were coming between his self-

serving nature and his circumstances. The specter of maturity was beginning 

to get in the way of avoidance, and there seemed to be nothing he could do 

to stop it.  He could no longer ignore the person he was becoming, his 

conscious part in the scheme of things, the fact that he was now the very 

pawn he despised.  

            Those thoughts lay in his head as he shared a cheap motel bed with 

a fresh WAC. What was her name?

Another Poem from the European Trip

On My Birthday

on my birthday in 1945

the philadelphia record reported

that a dozen peach growers in new jersey

filed suit; blaming

the atom bomb for ruining

their crops/ that was the big headline;

the nuremberg nazi war criminal trial

began that day with less fanfare/

both events were far away

and not my fault/

The First of the Poems From European Trip

     Venice Vision

i capture a glimpse;
a snapshot of your crossing
the rialto bridge in september/
the shadow of you reversed
on the water;
the whisper of autumn
catching in your hair
like a frieze/

and venice,
the world's last stop
before a poem,
turns down the sheets;
you're gone
with the good light/