First Aid

By Rich Murphy

First Aid dresses wounds inflicted in a world of "same," self-absorption, and the death of the literary. It marks out what has been lost and explores alternative ways for Homo sapiens. The title also refers to the Percival myth where the wound carries the cure. Think Schiller's play drive. Think a bridge over romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jun 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666776744

Rich Murphy

Rich Murphy's First Aid was published by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock in summer of 2023. Meme Measure, a collection of poems, was published by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock in 2022. His poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice Americana (2013) and The Left Behind (2021) and Gival Press Poetry Prize Voyeur (2008). Space Craft by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock also came out in 2021. Books Prophet Voice Now, essays published by Common Ground Research Network and Practitioner Joy, poetry by Resource Publications at Wipf and Stock were published in 2020. He has published nine other collections of poetry.

Book preview

Injury

"If you sow lightly, you reap

Lightly. And a good crop

Requires the kind of soil

Where seeds sprout a hundred

Fold, for even good seed

Dies in dried-up ground.

What Chretien sows-the seeds

He scatters- are the start of a story,

And he plants his words in such

Fine soil that he’s bound to do well[.]"

—Chretien de Troyes

First-Aid Doomer

The survivalist stacks up dollar bills

to frame a mind thick enough

to withstand gridded resentment.

Any green camouflages for the invested

suburban lawn monetizer and garden

assessor weighing a richer action plan

to keep feet on the soil, not in.

An ambulance wail ricochets off

neighborhood cedar shingles, bleating

until bandaged and absorbed

by the holly hedges and maples.

Burying any small change with hind legs

until a cancer chews through a body,

hounds for sofa cushion search parties.

The walls hold off illness and death

by accident for as long as the ATMs

remain open and bank loans

dare to deal with desperation.

Though the building never finishes,

the shelter doubles for a tomb

against a nuclear blast and winters too.

A Gander

Peering through a peep hole poked

in the all-enveloping blind spot,

the consciousness stimulator alerts

and the childish senses excite until owned.

Trees, sun, moon burst upon the scene

surrounding the spying species

who found home inside a hill

and refreshed understanding

when the precious sky dropped water.

The habit in peeking squeezed

at the torso until the fat head

joked about a cane and tin cup.

Planting food crops, flowers,

and a flag, the imagination conquered.

A mountain man, carrying rocks

in pockets and rockets in a future,

invented with the city parks and glass.

Floaters fluke by from tear ducts

toward cataract and glaucoma

reminding for one long night.

An Adoption Agency

Exhibit A for truth decay

displays in the forced smiles

chewing, swallowing, and digesting

facts in the jury pool streets:

Crisp Francis Bacon cuisine.

A whole culture, even under a microscope,

agrees because it disagrees

about a future direction.

The imprisoned dentists

confess to wrongful conviction.

However, voters drill into political

information cavities so that any judgment

hurts while putting on the best face possible.

The baseline and paradigm sifted

into a gaslighted gear zeitgeist.

Thoughts, as seeds, connect in furrowed

brows when mulling for a self-evident

amber harvest in the disciplinary fields.

The commercial laborer orders

while the neighborhood diner gossips

using the good ol’ days tape measure.

When the verdict comes down

fresh from mass media, a story adopts

and a family begins to compose.

Orientations Lab

To the knees in knowing,

to the hips in boots,

the scientist unlearns

to extract so to begin again.

Stuck . . . sucking sound,

mud lacing books and journals,

careers into career.

Once on solid ground

language recalibrates and points,

a compass needle piquing

a population through terrains

that zigzag switchback