Peter Murphy
Blog Garry Morgan: I am running out of time.Comments:Isn’t that so! says Dai Davies from Betws-y-Coed.Even redemption has an appetite, says Gwen Griffiths from Cwmbran.[spam] Dont ignore this notice.As darkness is our guide, pure Wales will be a drunken Wales, says Lowri Llywelyn from Llandudno. Garry Morgan: I am running out of time.Comments:When I left the cemetery, I heard someone say We love you, says Twm Thomas from Tredegar.Blow up a fuck’n bridge, why don’t you, says Donny Dunne from Drogheda.[Moderator: We apologize. Donny Dunne from Drogheda has been barred from making future posts, fucking Irish cunt!]Oh, what will you give me? say the sad bells of Rhymney.Garry knows best, doesn’t he? ha ha, says Rhobert Roberts from Rhondda. Garry Morgan: I am running out of time.Comments:I haven’t gone to Club Tickle in donkey years since they started playing that blackmetal, slamdance rubbish. I go to Braintech for the electro, says Bleddyn Bowen from Barry.[spam] Calling All Small Stick Players.Up and down, up and down, all day, all night, all fagged out, says Evan Evans from Ebbw Vale. Garry Morgan: I am running out of time.Comments:And who robbed the miner, say the grim bells of Blaina.I want to assert a variable foot, says William Williams from Rutherford.[Moderator: While William Williams appears to be a Welsh name, we cannot find Rutherford on the official list of villages, towns, and cities of Wales.]All would be well if, if, if, if, if, if, say the green bells of Cardiff.Become a new man. Forget the past, says Llio Lewis from Llanelli. Garry Morgan: I am running out of time.Comments:Are you the same Gary who used to? says Trefor Tewdwr from Swansea.They will plunder willy-nilly, say the bells of Caerphilly.Throw the vandals in court, say the bells of Newport.4REAL, says Richey Edwards from hell.[Moderator: According to the official list of villages, towns, and cities of Wales, Blackwood is hell.] Garry Morgan: I am running out of time.Comments:Hey, get a watch, Garry. Ha, ha. Or a calendar, says Rhobert Roberts from Rhondda.I was crawling Castle Street when this little girl asks me to wait 10 years so she can marry me, says Twm Thomas from Tredegar.[spam] Was translate my borscht.I want to take ballroom lessons. I want to sail over the hardwood, says Bronwyn Beynon from Bridgend. Garry Morgan:Comments:[spam] Was need go slice article.He ate poorly and often, drank, drank, drank, says Angharad Awbrey from Aberdare.[spam] She cheats on him. Date her.[spam] Irene call jim.Is there hope for the future? say the brown bells of Merthyr. Mumbles Garry Morgan walks the Vale of Glamorgan,which has become for him, a veil of tears. It’s as if the coastline were a baptismal fount,and he, limbo-bound, is barely swayed by milesof sea and salvation that break at his feet.It is the fiercest tidal reach in Europe. Not even the Mouth of the Severn can restin a country whose people have been createdby mountains and taught the foreign tongueby a nought stick.At the Pleasure Park on Barry Island,Garry discovers Owain Glyndwr operating the amusements. The lost hero drifts from the haunted mineto the log flume to the coaster, distractedby English Kings, both real and dramatic,that drove him into history.Garry sneaks on a ride called Evolution. Glyndwr doesn’t notice him,unticketed and unbuckled, and startsthe motion that hurls Garry forward. He is so dislocated he feels almost human,even as he is launched out of the bucketpast Elvis impersonators who singto keep their king alive.Garry is flying! He soars over Gower and Swansea,over Mumbles and Laugharnewhere other ghosts skein like curlewsabove the famous boat house.Below him the ferocious tides rush back to Wales,rebellious armies retreating from a warthey can never win. On Snowdon’s Wilds Garry Morgan wakes up on top of the world. He doesn’t know how he is going to get down.He looks around at the gorse, the butterwort,the purple saxifrage. It is like lyingon a rainbow except he is badly hung over.He hears a cluck of cuckoos—it must be spring—the coal tits, the wheatears squabbling in their nests.The surplus military coat he has wornfor decades has ripped apart. Everything is cold, toenails, fingers, nose.He doesn’t know how he got here.It must be a practical joke played on himby a giant consciousness.He hears the mounting of mountain goats,the almost human cry of sheep coughing.Everything inside him yells, Help me!He rises into the dripping fog and strugglesdown the Pyg Track where he is startledby Wordsworth muttering lonely and loud, Darkness surrounds us; seeking, we are lostWhat the ...? shouts Garry, trying to avoidthis stranger who grabs his sleeve.Garry swats him, but the man is too dazedto let go. Okay, okay, says Garry. So downthey climb passing yesteryear which the bard eulogizesin elegiac stanzas. Garry, too, is obsessedwith the past, which keeps kicking himin the ass, but he is trying to give it up. Good for you, Garry. And tell that poet fellowthat nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Peter E. Murphy is the author of Stubborn Child, a finalist for the 2005 Paterson Poetry Prize, as well as a chapbook of poems, Thorough & Efficient, both from Jane Street Press. He has been awarded six poetry fellowships, a record, he claims, from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. These days he keeps busy by organizing the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway, now in its 21st year, and other programs for writers and teachers in the U.S. and abroad. www.murphywriting.com