Bryan Murphy's Blog, page 14
October 26, 2012
milestone
Yeah!! I feel like I've scored for England! My new, content-driven website has now received 2,000 visits. Find out why: http://www.bryanmurphy.eu/
October 24, 2012
China 2012
In mid-September, the weather cools and the sky over Suzhou city occasionally turns blue, though there is always a haze of fog hovering over the horizon.
Like almost everywhere else, Suzhou looks better in the autumn sunshine.
Like almost everywhere else, Suzhou looks better in the autumn sunshine.
October 18, 2012
China 2012
The best and strongest piece of culture shock: not being stared at. Plenty of curious glances, but not jaw-dropped fixed staring that I experienced 20 years ago, that made you feel like an exhibit in a zoo.
And people rarely bother to tell me that I’m a foreigner. Or shout “hello” at my back once I’ve passed them.
And people rarely bother to tell me that I’m a foreigner. Or shout “hello” at my back once I’ve passed them.
October 17, 2012
Catnap
A heart-warming rescue? Or a furry, freaked-out fantasy? You decide. From Pyrokinection webzine. For lovers of cats, poetry and graphic comics.
Catnap
Fritz! Now there was a cat: that
monstrous, malodorous, megalomaniac, marauding, mariajuanaphile
creation of Crumb. Sixties and Seventies
slip through a wormhole, spaced out in spacetime,
materialise the poor creature on my absent neighbours’ balcony,
transfix it among spiked anti-robber railings
it is too scared to back out of.
The cat shrieks, wails, howls
like a banshee, yanks us
from Sunday-morning dreams of long sleep.
Its instinct calls to our instinct;
we snap to our feet,
rush to save ourselves by saving it,
but Fritz is recalcitrant, its freaked-out fur frozen,
all energy focused on throat,
issuing warnings and pleas that drown the Cathedral’s bells
(its creator would chuckle).
Its lord and master, our neighbourhood hotelier,
is beside himself in the courtyard below.
We beam him up, with a gang of his workmen, converted to animal rescue, who compose a human chain to anchor him
as he stretches his yearning across the abyss
between next-door balconies.
The banshee screams,
sinks front claws into its ninth-life owner’s wrists,
thus gets hauled back through space, in time,
cocooned in human arms,
to the tableau outside my condo kitchen.
One by one, the humans disappear.
Fritz goes too.
Bryan Murphy is a retired translator who now concentrates on his own words and divides his time between England, Italy and the wider world. His work has recently appeared in Descant, Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon, The Pygmy Giant, Rose and Thorn, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes and The View from Here. His website, www.bryanmurphy.eu, contains a taster of his forthcoming novella, Goodbye, Padania.
Catnap
Fritz! Now there was a cat: that
monstrous, malodorous, megalomaniac, marauding, mariajuanaphile
creation of Crumb. Sixties and Seventies
slip through a wormhole, spaced out in spacetime,
materialise the poor creature on my absent neighbours’ balcony,
transfix it among spiked anti-robber railings
it is too scared to back out of.
The cat shrieks, wails, howls
like a banshee, yanks us
from Sunday-morning dreams of long sleep.
Its instinct calls to our instinct;
we snap to our feet,
rush to save ourselves by saving it,
but Fritz is recalcitrant, its freaked-out fur frozen,
all energy focused on throat,
issuing warnings and pleas that drown the Cathedral’s bells
(its creator would chuckle).
Its lord and master, our neighbourhood hotelier,
is beside himself in the courtyard below.
We beam him up, with a gang of his workmen, converted to animal rescue, who compose a human chain to anchor him
as he stretches his yearning across the abyss
between next-door balconies.
The banshee screams,
sinks front claws into its ninth-life owner’s wrists,
thus gets hauled back through space, in time,
cocooned in human arms,
to the tableau outside my condo kitchen.
One by one, the humans disappear.
Fritz goes too.
Bryan Murphy is a retired translator who now concentrates on his own words and divides his time between England, Italy and the wider world. His work has recently appeared in Descant, Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon, The Pygmy Giant, Rose and Thorn, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes and The View from Here. His website, www.bryanmurphy.eu, contains a taster of his forthcoming novella, Goodbye, Padania.
October 15, 2012
Bar Londra
"Bar Londra" - the poem of the play. My play, my poem. Kinda incestuous, but fun.
http://www.pyrokinection.com/2012/09/...
http://www.pyrokinection.com/2012/09/...
October 13, 2012
China 2012 snippet
China 2012: Suzhou is no city for pedestrians. In the whole of China, there is probably no city for pedestrians.
From Hypatia to Malala (haiku)
Men’s minds warped with God-burnt hate
“Uppity” women
Cold moonlight on graveyard shift
“Uppity” women
Cold moonlight on graveyard shift
October 11, 2012
Big Mo wins big prize
China’s Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for Literature. Great news, especially for this novice writer, whose Chinese name is Xiao Mo – Little Mo.
October 10, 2012
milestone
Visits to my new website http://www.bryanmurphy.eu/
have now passed the 1,500 mark. And they weren't all me!
have now passed the 1,500 mark. And they weren't all me!
October 8, 2012
Back to Europe
I'm just back from 5 weeks in China, based in Suzhou, a small city of some 7 million people not far from Shanghai (a big city of some 30 million people).
