A Familiar Voice

By Deeci Murphy

A Familiar Voice offers another compilation of poems that span the spectrum of emotional challenges that face us all. As in her previous collections of urban poetry, Deeci writes to speak to those hard subjects we tend shy away from. Calls to personal commitment, family, friendship, inequality and justice are served up in abundance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503530577

Deeci Murphy

Deeci Murphy is a Philadelphia poet, author, and educator. “Philly born and raised”, she has a unique perspective on her home town. “I don’t write about the dressed up City of Brotherly Love, I write about what Philly’s like when our company goes home”.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Deeci Murphy.

ISBN:          Softcover          978-1-5035-3056-0

                    eBook              978-1-5035-3057-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/17/2015

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Contents

1. Commit to Me

2. A Familiar Voice

3. Enough?

4. Unspoken

5. The Crown

6. The Wait

7. Before

8. Dreams

9. Solitary Mood

10. Regrets

11. Cry in My Sleep

12. Wanting

13. Comin up Short

14. If I Tell You I Love You

15. Critical Condition

16. Woe Is Me

17. Fatherless Boy

18. Spoken Word

19. Recollection (How the Memory Does Fade)

20. The Journey

21. Questions (A Tribute to the Sandy Hook tragedy)

22. Bullets fly

23. Seduction

24. I Refuse

25. This Situation

26. I’m Tired (Rant)

27. A Beautiful Family

28. I Remember

29. Heartbreak

30. Not Waiting

31. Bittersweet Tears

32. Flow

33. The Sea

34. Freefall

35. One Thousand Heartbreaks

36. Choices

37. See Yourself Out

38. Where We Are

39. A Friendship Unclaimed

40. Apologies (Black Lives Matter)

Acknowledgements

To Chris, Mel and Dee:

I hope you listen to, and learn to trust, that familiar voice.

Mom

Commit to Me

I’ll commit to me when no one else will

Consciously care for

and make sure I fill

My heart and my head

With loving affirmations

Remind myself that I’m God’s blessed creation

A daily ritual to love and restore

To give to all, but to myself even more

The caring concern I unselfishly dispense

And not forgo what I know makes sense

I’ll commit to me when all are in doubt

When they criticize my decision to take a different route

It’s so important that I remember myself

As I’m daily conditioned to put my needs on a shelf

I need to take time to just sit and wait

To digest some of the food already on my plate

To make sure my path’s going where I want it to go

To reflect that my choices allow room to say no

To those things that take my time and drain

My mind, my spirit and that constantly remain

Unresolved, and can ultimately