Excerpts from 'She' by Christine Murray (Oneiros Books)

Wake up and walk /

           Carry your injury with you

---

Wake up and walk /

Carry your injury with you

It is of no use to sit and weep

Clear the path for it winds

serpentine from stones to groves

Groves are small coves of tree in a

Black sea

There is no going back

There is no lying still in grief

The journey you are taking is already mapped

Wake up and walk now carry with you the scars

Your tears

Your newly dead,

Your emptied heart cup

Drag

---

Did the mirror rent

What of the spheres

The tongues of glass ?

The memory of a cloud

A shattering arm ...

Not unless it was of mercury

Body drags to the hill

Travel is not light nor is it easy

Mirror’s architrave told the story of a woman

Quitting her chariot to offer a heart-cup and

There are two on the path

Two will not look at her face

Crinoline /

A memory

---

The forest is waxing autumnal

My hem is wet-scooping burrs/

                                        Small leaves

Trailing them noisily

To the low throat music of the thrush

A slow rook overpasses

I did not see the woman

Until she was upon me

Helping me up

She tapped my boot

She grabbed my elbow

I have gone over it again

and again/

       Its always the same

Her eye so bright

As She glided away

I picked the twigs

From the frayed lace

Readied it again for stitching

I do not remember her face

 


from 'Grove'

I dared not look at the trees

---

Their pewters

Their ossified trunks

Their dark feathering

The inky black quills of them

          I was caught there veil-lashed

In the place/not place

Where She stalks

This is not the covered corridor

Where once I heard a building’s low groaning

Where groin-vaults draw to the sky as curtains

Where the sense of others is a low murmur

There is not a shadow here

This is outside

Without weather

Tree as metal

Leaf as feather

Stones as big as man

And they sweat real tears

Willows stand grieved

Their blades lashing her face.

              And proceed ?

'She' is available from Oneiros Books here

From 'Of Silent Parameters' - Christine Murray/ Michael Mc Aloran

#1
 
if there are birds here
then they are of stone


draughts of birds
flesh bone wing
claw in grass


collective eye shears
lung ashen
subtle as eclipse


a mercury sun breath
severed/ obsolete
night’s-claim-snap


while day
not day but light
cast from (...)


surely light would retain in
silica's cast or flaw


till knock of blood from which
or laughter of


burnt time
lessened the deathed
feathers of------------bind


in overlay
of silenced


- bind
to staunch the blood/rush


welled now pool
hand held to the
wrist

 
-it gathers still

(-)ness
of the parched redeem


flight from blind winds
echoes to stun


the trace’s lack


groaning wings
of the ever after


and here
claw in grass


surface-wet
bone in blood

seamed


blinded by pulse and the
regalia of


subtle-deft-winds
carried forth


in momentum’s quarry
abounding


stone struck iron
outside the perimeter of


not wanton gargoyle nor eagle there
they are of-one-piece


seamed to


by sinew of none
collapsed the blind signature
till scope of


sky-burst/
nocturne of bleached lime


the raw machinery of absences
                                                     

--

#6-

‘To stand in the shadow
Of the scar up in the air.

To stand-for-no-one-and-nothing.
Unrecognized,
For you
Alone.

With all there is room for in that,
Even without
Language.’
 
--Paul Celan.
 

stasis aglow harbours the scarred light’s cleft


the hour’s locked tombs
(here or there/
a spun lapse tidal glisten-edge)


amber nothing weights the fleshed reprisal


alone the ash
stone voices of the redeem


in circus
aftermath of carousel’s ignited blood


and walk the circle of it


stalk the open ring
not ring  but waystation


those others speak him out of chrysalis


it is voice brings us alive
an unearthing of -


wrenched scarlet wings of stray till touch
all spun together/ as of


silently the lock of jaw the spurious eclipse
(I look to the unlock of iced black hands


in the dreaming of the night’s veranda
a closed fist of dreaming
stillness till break-birth-knowing…)


hands bound by feathers
red-wings of a difficult birthing
warm though, that blood on hands
that are bound-not-bound


the gash, female-d,
the silks/integuments (of low tones)
but a birthing of nonetheless from voice


(stillness of reason to breach…)


till locked/ still from out of mercury atoned
spit of the lack


pulse of the blackened arbour/ fleshed/ abounding
at the hilt of nowhere less, the murmurs of


from out of which


till silenced less or-more-or-less/
a-skylight/ crumbling alabaster


these walls cylindrical
taste of the benign dusts of fleshed accord

--

#12
 
babel


glove /unglove(d)
button / - hook


hand touches iron / something like stone is met


/ unaccountable
                            

--
               
#13
 
‘wind tomb
river tomb

my death fakes my voice
which can only reach

to the ache of teeth

little flower
little ear you know
to what point
I am afraid of shit.’

--Georges Bataille


ice/ vascular
till hilt of streaming else spoken echo


the drags pelts the stone wall gait of bone’s tryst
collective


the hard scar births the ocular’s derision
river of none


and the death which only fakes the sun’s cracked yolk
walls/ wombs/ distances


of -


a star strangled in the reaches of a tree
capilliary of branches and the music is wooden
rattle of branch


to branch
green yet budded yet

' under the greenwood tree'


black yet the only moon is the new moon
settled in the arc of breath


one stone
more to follow


tooth against tooth (he said)
yet


beneath the pupil’s cataract of night’s align


this is the blood of else
twice the price of the twice starred


unlock(ed)


singed
hair /feather/fur-or the-smoke-smell


rises up,


it is not a burning.
it is a star (or stars) caught into a branch,
(of blue / of ice-)


it is only sulphur-singe ( a street-light) / eye-caught / eye-wavered
it is a hollow-song / a wind-song double-reed-trembling

                
--

#22-
 
iron separate


speech onto speech
a blossom-extrusion


            from hollow(ing) metal


wordless as molten
ash unto blessed
chunk-stun-light
shimmering/
            one or the other


razor steel and the echo(ing) of
speech unto speech erased


and not -
shimmering with/
molten-tree is an architrave for birds
metal-as


it gathers coil-in
(with light... maybe)
even the gnarled corridors of
are blossomed out


the stun’s relapse sears
subtle/ absolute/ hollow(ing)
till trace metallic
        (metallic breathe of echo-fold-echo-silent)



the light’s regress
iron death of the spun alack a-grip
flight forever mast/ taken of wind(age)


--


#32

‘Murky passages flow
From our eyelashes down our faces

With a fierce red-hot wire
Anger hems up our thoughts

Scissors with raised heckles
Around our unarmed words

The venomous rain of eternity
Bites us greedily’

--Vasko Popa


drained light
fettered by winds
a clean bite masks the uncertain eye’s revolt
skin(ned) till task
the rib-cage echoing of glib desire
raging
into naught
till bite of foreign skyline’s shadowing
its slow metamorphosis from

to
edge to edge of. a tear(ing)

is a falling-through
a snap-to


body as gateway /
waystation
it already has the fibres
(of)


the spun fleshed light of regalia unsung
a clear edge
sudden lash of what will(ow) sudden
the rib-cage echoes through the pissoir
night


breath upon breath and the lapse of/
accorded/ (recorded…)
murmurs yes
from drought of eye


light’s claim
an outplay.
the searing moment
the
elastic-snap
back


derangement of form
passes whitely into
chrysalis of
blind heat in solace breath
scattered soil upon white flesh in accord meld
severed the non-breath death forgotten

A Sequence from 'The Blind' by Christine Murrray

Episiotomy

---

the delicate steels are leaning in a row on blue

blue cloths awaiting their use

they think she cannot see this or does not know

the hook/ the blind/ the knife /the thread-skein/

the needle point for when the rupture will begin

as it will

she stumbles past wearing the gown and carrying

her paper-cup of ice ice-water : to wake him up

 inside the silica of this holding-skin

---

inside the silica of this holding-skin

beneath crystal swipe and tungsten tip

the exact point

drain then seep

the vessel-encasement sustains until form becomes

as apparent as the meconium distress which is all

over the cloths the linens the floor / blood is everywhere

the globe is hook burst / there is a body curled into the skin

stitched in caul and head / they will /

use the steel tips to force him out

catapult reprise 1

---

a bone-handled knife is no the tool for dissection/ section/ caesarean /abortion

episiotomy

red thigh rivulet is always beneath bone-handled knife / hook & blood-bag

hook & water-bag /

                              and catapult

over cloth/ linen / floor / and a body curled stitched / caul-head /

use the steel tip the exact/ the exact point

drain then seep /

a bone-handled knife is not the tool for dissections/

sections/cesarians/abortions/episotomies /

the red thigh rivulet is always beneath /the bone-handled knife/

form is 3

---

a bone-handled knife is not tool for dissection section abortion caesarean episiotomy red thigh

rivulet is always beneath bone-handled knife hook & blood-bag hook & waterbag / catapult

over cloth/ linen floor /

and a body curled / stitched /

caul-head /

use the steel tip

the exact

.

drain then seep /and drain/ seep to/ break it /

form is /

and red thread the open wound

---

the gash split and threaded into the toe’s round

a pummelling of dust making red blue-hued and

the drill down split mercury of the mirror shard leaded

underfoot and pounded to dust and now the shatter of it

the shattering of the mirror and from it a skein bled

into a thread a bit of spinning from furies’ daughter her

yes her line (her skein) is emergent from the mirror now

I knew that it would be : the room is full with pounded glass

pummelled to blue-hued dust a dust engrained ,

yes engrained in :

your dance

your heel

your arch

your twirling rage

the red thread is in the open wound

red on gold under gold the red thread

---

red on gold under gold the red thread will tie in the sequin

the dress will transform from the funerary gown of soft cloth

metal pearl mother-of-pearl the peacock sequins emphasise

the scar : where it was cradled in soft cloth/ it shifts with light

it now shifts with light

a battle armour with shiny metal frilling

the metal frill catches and disperses light from

embonpoint to point of candlelight it is no dust

no accretion of dust occurs in the music of fabric

sequin it : it hides the wound

sequin it : with the red thread

sequin it : the loosed skein

tack it in

stitch on stitch

and sequin it

cover it

The Blind is a book length poem about the Furies operation in a contemporary setting.

http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/oneirosbooks/the-blind/

A Review of 'SHE' by Christine Murray

A review of She by Christine Murray

She

Christine Murray

forthcoming from Oneiros Books

82 pp

review by David McLean

This book is splendid in its conception and execution. Purporting to be a poetic narrative of the process of madness that led to the catatonia of a lady called Constance, a person who has encountered a being called She in her dreams and become imbricated in a pattern of psychic events involving She. She would seem to be an archetype. She is the force of death in life, life in death, the essentially female and thus, one might speculate, then (1858) to be regarded as fundamentally evil. The character Constance notes in her introductory letter that the dreamworld is equally real to her.

I do not expect anyone will believe me, but I know 

that my dreaming-life is as real as my waking life. 

Indeed, I have learnt not to call these sleeping 

narratives anything other than a different part of my 

reality.

We can go further, there is no “different part” - she means “another part” - and this because dreamwork is fundamentally productive and creates reality, as real as the real external world is, for there is no real world characterized by the production of real values set against the fantasy world of desiring-production, as Deleuze and Guattari note. The “madness” os Constance is but creation of a world where she/She may live for the socius has given her a world that stinks.

The poems in the book are situated among stones and wood, in a petrified forest of sorts. They are set also in an Irish fogginess, gray Celtic and dour is the world and without the fatuity of small joy. The lady Constance accompanies She in her observations of the environment

The second half of the book concerns dreams set on a small island. Not the mainstream mainland that belongs to patriarchy and the males.

This is a switch to “another terrain” - it is another world but on an island that is also part of the normal dreamworld where the alleged “laws” of nature do not apply. She is the “embodiment of your unexpressed deeds” and thus in some ways maybe like a fury. She is real here for the first time, it is her element and an internal truer world than the false world wherein we live

Just as the pots in which I have cooked

have caught blood in steel, just as

Those very things used again and again

In places where there is no memory -

The tremor in my hand is not of fear at her unmasking

it is of age /ages and that recognition

I wondered at the time if my hand

My eye could tell /

Would live to describe

This thing

This memory

Of our meetings

Her cloths

(from “She is here now in her reality”)

It is an enlarged reality where the quotidian, even the 

 meaning that we create for it, is without much meaning. She seems to be a creature reclaiming debts. Even words and what words signify are revealed as devoid of value: even if they continue to signify, what they signify is shown to be less than nothing by the revitalized sight Constance 

acquires by encountering She, and She herself does not use 

or need words

To look at each thing anew 

 

Those books on my shelf /

The empty vase that bookends them

They were there /

They still rest on my night-table

Talismans/

Each a signifier and each without

A value to it

Standing on this beach of skulls in gathering dawn

Is what I have always been doing /

Bit by bit the /

Treasures of my existence are losing mass

I look again at the shelf/

My hands cannot trace the

Names of the books /

The place where my letters were

Slotted-in /

As an archetype of female life - sex and bitter love, death and mourning, futile- nostalgia for the lost - that She is, that maybe Constance becomes, she is standing on skulls, a beach of skulls, defiant relics of death. She is words and words celebrate nothing and the emptiness. Maybe She is fundamental truth and maybe Constance could not handle this, perhaps her 25 years in a coma were a sign of her failure, maybe they were a reward, a 25 years spent in an internal heaven.

Buy this book, Chris Murray is one of the best currently active poets. Here is a link to a preview.  
  
http://poethead.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/a-preview-of-my-new-book-she/