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Best Poems Written by Tom Mcmurray

Below are the all-time best Tom Mcmurray poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Haiku - 5/7/5

ancient branches break 
with weight of winter season 
fresh born fawn stands straight

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Laws of Caustic Cause

A day can make a harder week 
A week can make a month of pain 
A month of pain a year so bleak 
It feels like drowning in the rain 

These are the little riddles in the middle of insane 

A little bit can satisfy 
A little more can saturate 
An overdose can nullify 
And even can obliterate 

This is a truth from early youth you should incorporate 

The pain in gain is absolute 
The loss we lose is lost to time 
These are the rules beyond refute 
There is no certainty sublime 

Not even in the meter or perfection of the rhyme 

The thing that brings contentment now 
Can later be a heavy weight 
The face of grace is changing how 
We rearrange our future fate 

These are the laws of caustic cause that make survival great 

The hope to cope with life and stress 
Is just a product of the game 
Do not deny your own success 
Nor feel a need for useless shame 

Just calculate and educate to fuel survival's flame 

A thought or two from me to you 
As thoughts display a varied face 
Some thoughts are false - some thoughts are true 
So choose a truth you can embrace 

And may your days be free to play a part in every race

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Vietnam Quatrain

Within my breast I carry ancient death; 
Its face is pale and white as marbled clay. 
Consumed with guilt, I struggle for each breath 
Still sour with napalm death of yesterday. 

The fractured colors formed behind my lids 
Are monumental rainbows round a pit 
Where hues of crimson-reds crisscross the grids 
Profuse in bloody lines and squares to fit. 

Profanely perfect patterned memories 
Of riddled bodies huddled on the ground, 
Where bloated skin slips off fatalities 
As ragged maggots slither-squirm around. 

The jungle flora breathes forth mystic sighs 
As soldiers wander through symbology. 
They see suspended phantoms' floating eyes; 
A catapult to horrid memory. 

No temple of communion colonnades! 
No transubstantiation in the heat! 
No priestly servants hidden in the glades! 
No promises of paradise wrapped neat!

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The End (Atypical English Sonnet With Abba Rhyme Scheme)

For months our sun has hovered overhead
To crack the barren earth across its land.
The streams run dry, no summer buds expand,
No desert death has ever been so dead.

No haven safe as place where souls can run
Since truth, in brutal slumber, woke and found
A final fury tightly wound around
Each ember edifice of dying sun.

Malignant flaws turn light on human fears
and consequential truth replaces lies
as man forms memories with last goodbyes
remorseful eyes pour out torrential tears.

The final surge of heat falls harsh upon
The raw reflection of an amber dawn.

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Attentive Is the Tiller of the Light

Accept no truth seen through another's sight 
But till the light within your sweeter seed;
Attentive is the tiller of the light! 

The wise man knows the origins of blight 
Begin when "want" of man is seen as "need"; 
Accept no truth seen through another's sight. 

Too often man is blinded by a bright 
Embellished myth converted to a creed; 
Attentive is the tiller of the light! 

When man depends on allegory's might 
To cast out fear the truth must then recede; 
Accept no truth seen through another's sight. 

When men of reason gather to recite 
Mythology as truth the truth will bleed; 
Attentive is the tiller of the light! 

The masses are deluded day and night 
As they upon each other's error feed, 
Accept no truth seen through another's sight 
Attentive is the tiller of the light!

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Joyce - Finnegan's Wake

How scenic is phrenetic fantasy 
Which fulminates within the manic mind 
Yet hides inside synaptic revelry, 
Articulated, yes, but hard to find? 

The minor absolution one demands 
From higher born authority than self 
Is often found in foreign sounding lands 
Or back of boxes hiding on the shelf. 

The madness of the mad though sad is not 
Without a nod transcendent, in a way; 
Which forces Joyce to ponder over plot 
And not which punctuation to display. 

Now take your time and read Ulysses first, 
Before the Wake of Finnegan is shown; 
For Finnegan becomes eternal thirst 
Where cognitive resolve remains unknown. 

Now bitter battles still are fought with fire 
In hallowed halls of higher learning fame 
Where academic's fight against desire 
To elevate James Joyce's brilliant name. 

Finnegan's Wake can make a man go mad; 
Incomprehensible at best, some say. 
Such genius has a way of causing sad 
Reverberations all along the way. 

So read a Portrait of the Artist first 
Then add Ulysses if you have the need; 
But Finnegan's Wake - unquenchable thirst 
A book to blow your brain and make it bleed.

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Cogs In the Wheel

You find in the slime of indecency
The rotted hollow of an empty skull - 
A mindless mind allows redundancy 
Repeated repetitions till it's full. 
 
Cogs in a wheel turning round on a run, 
As sparrows share their madrigals at dawn.
The tulips muse about the idol, Sun,
Iconoclastic papal paragon.
 
Once baptised in the bounty of my birth,
Religion's regal razor ripped and flayed;
When double mothers claimed one child of earth
The mighty sword of Solomon was raised.
 
A wisp of willow in the wind will bend
As will the will of wiser men who found
The sterner tree is broken in the end
To join the lowly loam below the ground.

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Return

A fine mist of rain falls silent 
on his thin, sharp-angled face. 
He picks up the pace and tilts 
his head to the wind. He walks 
through the plundered slumber  
of crumbled poverty, abandoned, 
in human acclimation to feral 
creatures who crawl and scuff 
their blood-rough nails on the 
concrete remains of multi-ethnic, 
immigrant history. 

He walks on and hears the 
oddly familiar sounds coming 
from his once attended Public 
School#59. Echoes still drift 
along the faded asphalt haze 
of time. These echoes ring with
elemental bones of hope: 
children breaking out and through 
the gunmetal gray, graffiti scarred
doors to be swallowed by the 
saturated heat of inner-city rage. 

Past gothic, orthodox, cathedral 
mausoleums which sit darkly, like 
ancient stoics, and stare through 
amber and crystalline-blue 
stained-glass eyes, focused 
outward with a small kernel of 
eternal mustard seed hope: 
One day, souls will once again return 
to warm the sacerdotal pews with holy 
order flesh and faith. 

Past the Puerto Rican market 
where a dead pig's head leads 
the carnivore parade of mastication 
promise every day. A meat market 
window of letted-blood and death 
reminiscent of Amsterdam whores 
who sit naked in street-level windows 
exposing their pale, dissipated 
bodies to the stares of dead-eyed, 
vacant, male hunger outside. 

He comes to the grime and grit 
of an empty lot covered by old 
and broken concrete slabs. He 
stops and lets his mind wander 
back in time. He sees a woman,
wearing a ratted, fox-tail wrap 
around her neck.

She holds a long, un-filtered 
cigarette, loose, between her 
her bright, fuchsia painted lips. 
She wears a black velvet hat 
with a veil to her nose. A straight
black dress that flows below
her knees and stops mid-calf 
above her high-heel, shiny-black, 
patent leather shoes. 

He can almost see, through the 
blur of a chiaroscuro choreography, 
his mother conversing with the
Kazakhstan neighbors of his youth, 
in the haze of this dreamlike memory. 

She would hold her cigarette 
between fuchsia lips and wear 
that ratted fox-tail wrap until 
one day, finally, the cancer cough 
began to spew Chesterfield blood 
on the molted fox-tail head of her 
belov-ed fur. 

Then she went to bed. 
Went to sleep. 
And died. 

Quietly, pigeons gathered and cooed 
on that slate-gray, New York City dawn.

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Masai

Proud daughters with an ancient regal look; 
Each undulating move is like a kiss. 
They open up their beauty like a book - 
In righteous, rhythmic, syncopated bliss. 

Erotic ebony gives sinful shine 
To skin that glistens bright the night unique. 
Obsidian, delightful cherry wine; 
From transubstantiated Mozambique. 

Her stride is like the river as it flows; 
She moves with prideful beauty - statuesque. 
Oh lady Africa your passion glows 
With lust imbued by rippled arabesque. 

So sleek and wet her silouette goes by 
A royal beauty born of great Masai.

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Sweet Nectar's Flower

Desirous winds 
now swiftly sweep 
down mountain slopes 
of stone so steep - 
where boughs of broken ash 
are scattered; 
random timber torn and tattered. 

I retreat to find 
my jade and ruby cup, 
to make sweet love to rich red wine, 
fill my cup clear up, 
drink and drain the goblet dry 
to claim its love as mine. 

Take me all or none, 
use me up, 
and when you're done 
wrap slender arms around my waist; 
kiss me there, oh yes, and taste 
of me behind the bower, 
planting seeds of need 
which soon will bloom 
sweet nectar's flower. 

Alluring is your kind appeal, 
like shimmer on green bladed grass 
with silver tips of morning dew. 
I glory in each inch of skin 
as I begin to gently stroke 
and marvel at its golden hue. 

The moss and mold of surface earth 
leave banner scents to please my nose; 
but bold and giddy-high in mirth 
are bawdy ballads sung and told 
in honor of your brightly painted toes. 

I ponder as I wander this old field 
once fertile with a decent yield, 
now overused, some say abused, 
for growth and life have not been fused. 

The butler has a sadness in his eyes 
I neither can dissect nor utilize; 
lonely, I suppose, I wonder if he knows 
one's life is but a grand surprise, 
a farce that slowly grows 
in drift toward death until life dies. 

A poet pleases with his heart-felt runes 
while singers please with oft sung tunes. 
A painter paints to please, 
on canvas or a wall, 
but men of age in pain 
don't gain or please at all. 

Let us take this bitter time, 
as winds whip high the mountain vine, 
to retrospect our lives complete; 
transparency without deceit. 
We may just make a break-through 
(though breaking through 
is not the purpose of the game) 
as we become both cast and crew 
to watch a world now flow for us the same. 

I once was young and now I'm old 
but still I feel so brazen bold; 
am I too old or still quite young 
enough to sing the songs once sung, 
not at the end--but just begun?