Rich Murphy
Complacency Report
Hearts and minds find shelter in denial.
Ministers and Samaritans
rescue conscience from the street
and rationalization herds the flock
toward the holes in the sand.
The social services staff
and marketing execs donate cushions
that envelop pea or poverty
and from mother via the kitchen
piping excuses remembered from childhood.
The “Do Not Disturb” signs
point in all directions without an owner
or an ounce involved in the trouble.
Alibi, forgery, and “not me” finger the culprits
convinced that innocence fills shoes
from the neighborhood all around.
Willed-ignorance tints objects beyond noses:
Om sweet ohm.
Blame rains on the homeless if need be.
In other states, Libya or Myanmar,
mandatory amnesia and blinders
focus the population on freedom.
If a sense of self exists in the dogs
that populate domestic terror,
then lasers burn holes in propaganda,
ignite rebellion at any opportunity.
The couched position-statements
that fall from the malls and grocers
around democratic postures
escape an adult sovereignty.
The P.R. campaigns threaten
with discomfort food
self-served in a refrigerator box.
The false dichotomy economy plumes
larger than suburban life in the leaflets.
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Rich Murphy’s credits include books, The Apple in the Monkey Tree (Codhill Press) and Voyeur (Gival Press); chapbooks, Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Rescue Lines (Right Hand Pointing), and Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox). Rich lives in Marblehead, MA.
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RECONFIGURATIONS: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry / Literature & Culture, http://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/, ISSN: 1938-3592, Volume 5 (2011): Disappearance
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