An Apology and Other Poems

by David J. Murray

Overview

An Apology For all the irritations Ive caused you,

Im sorry; in a mirror,

My eyes might glisten with tears of fear and remorse.

For being an onerous burden upon you,

Im sorry; in a drama,

Id movingly exit, the back of my hand on my brow ...

It is no secret that unrequited love is the most difficult kind of love there is in life. In An Apology and Other Poems, seasoned poet David J. Murray extends a lyrical apology to the heroine who inspired his writing of four previous compilations and may not have welcomed the attention.

In his tenth volume of poems, Murray covers a wide variety of themes that reflect on both the personal and abstract as he explores feelings of humiliation, fear and hope as well as the issues associated with aging, inequality and moral scruples. Throughout his compilation, Murray shares poetry composed in a variety of styles that use both traditional metrical schemes and free verse to convey his thoughts and feelings about life, love and the future.

An Apology and Other Poems shares one mans journey as he reflects on unanswered love, expresses remorse for his actions and hopes for forgiveness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491786468
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/26/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	122
File size:	187 KB

About the Author

David J. Murray has published nine books of poetry as well as scholarly books, articles and encyclopedia entries. Born and raised in Manchester, England, he earned a doctorate at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Murray is currently emeritus professor of psychology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, and a resident of Toronto.

Read an Excerpt

An Apology and Other Poems

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By David J. Murray

iUniverse

Copyright © 2016 David Murray
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8647-5

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CHAPTER 1

Apologies

    An Apology

    For all the stress I've brought to you,
    I'm sorry; in a painting,
    My head would be bent in a sorrow approaching abysmal.

    For all the irritations I've caused you,
    I'm sorry; in a mirror,
    My eyes might glisten with tears of fear and remorse.

    For being an onerous burden upon you,
    I'm sorry; in a drama,
    I'd movingly exit, the back of my hand on my brow.

    For not being an uncle-like mentor and helper,
    I'm sorry; in a movie,
    I'd blush under arc lights for totally failing to be one.

    For making you think I might be a jerk,
    I'm sorry; in a video,
    I'd brush from my shoulder the dandruff and dust of sheer rumour.

    For loading you with my obsession with "Art!,"
    I'm sorry; in a novel,
    I'd be a nonhero for not being immodest enough.

    But now, at last, I've caved in and ply you
    With humble apologies here;
    And I try to ignore the sensation the floor's not beneath me.


    Apology #2

    This is a book of apprehended fears,
    Fantasies caught in automatic light And
    smothered in a mélange of regrets.

    Cheer is missing; only now and then
    A light-beam cluster-multiplex of flowers
    Clarifies obscurity, then goes.

    Ambition is faltering; for every stretch
    Of high imagination and achievement,
    A road of fallow dust lies underneath.

    Hope glitters with the glances of my heroine
    Or cannonades into a fen of doubt
    Circled by rocks, each one a hollow timepiece.

    No cheer is here, unless you read these words
    As if they'd been carved on a wall of towering stone,
    A monument relaying my mistakes;

    And so I apologize for love unwise
    And try to greet you, soliloquist that you are,
    With generosity and consolation.


    Apology #3

    Spread-eagled, I see my soul
    Outlined against a sea-like sky
    With a mighty stealth indicative
    Of distrust of perfidiousness
    And faith in the growth of groundswell heard below.

    Honour I claim, not calumny,
    For my actions, which were atavistic,
    Forged from a Puritanical guilt;
    Honour I claim for words that here express
    An unrelenting wish to worship women,

    But also in which my optimism falters
    When femmes fatales are allotted the finest altars.


    Apology #4

    I dare to hope that you'll accept
    Apologies that I had kept, Once
    my ego had seen through
    The fact that I was bothering you.

    Someone angry once said to me
    How sad she knew that I would be
    If I looked in a mirror, then had the thought
    How stupid I'd been to ever have sought

    The love of a lady half my age;
    All my concoctions were persiflage
    For a high-flown battle not to lose ground
    In my fight to have a partner around.

    My growing grey, my thinning hair,
    My panting at the top of a stair,
    My failing grip, my fears of the cold
    That multiply as I grow old,

    All testify, with a frightening truth,
    That I'll never recoup the pride of my youth,
    But, bumbling, go on my wearisome way
    To where, in Elysium, water nymphs play.


    Remorse

    A pallid tone pervades the every nook
    And cranny of this unpretentious book.
    I weep the thoughts of "what there might have been,"
    Then wipe them out as if they were obscene.
    Vainly I try, so hard I want to cry,
    To compensate for what has flown me by.

    Christmases sweeping earthlings off their feet,
    Family outings where old strangers meet,
    Premeditated trips with hope the goal,
    Biographies to read that whet my soul,
    And crossword puzzles ease my endless grind
    Of trying to figure out what hit my mind.

CHAPTER 2

Sprawl - Verses

    Glitter and Gloss

    Who can deny
    That glitter and gloss
    And candy floss
    Are wondrous to
    A child's bright eye?

    And who daren't assert
    That refuse and dross
    Are extra loss
    To a man's dull eye
    Who's losing his shirt?

    'Tis 'twixt the two
    That I ride aloft
    On a surging swing,
    Trying not to be soft.


    Relativity Theory

    Two kinds of time exist.
    One is when
    It's so far off before
    I'll see you again
    That counting the minutes or the days
    Is a waste of time.
    The other is when
    It is so soon that I
    Will see you again
    That every minute of every day
    Is saturated
    Relentlessly
    With joy that you'll return.


    Meeting

    Yesterday, when you arrived,
    You smiled at me;
    Not a fake smile,
    But a real smile,
    A smile vertiginous
    In its arousal of
    A smile by me
    That mirrored yours
    Reciprocally,
    Unequivocally,
    Unforced, unvirtual,
    Resplendently real,
    Yesterday, yesterday.


    To the Sun

    The winter sun,
    Slowly sinking,
    Plays a cold light
    On patches of ice;
    Frozen they stay.

    But the same sun,
    Beaming through my window,
    Beatifies with warmth
    The comfort-death
    Of my two sofas.

    O winter sun,
    Elaborate, I pray
    My poser-sitter's warmth
    By shining on her through
    A window warm with Utmost.

CHAPTER 3

Dangers

    Eye Contact

    A blast-in forced by her piercing gaze
    Took him by surprise,
    Suggesting to her that he knew not the ways

    Whereby a future promised touch
    Might be for him if he
    Were not to like her quite so very much.

    And yet, the next time they met, he took,
    Unplanned, a mock revenge;
    A blast-in foisted on her by his look.


    My Blast of Colour and Delight

    My blast of colour and delight,
    You fill with your infinite taste
    And eternal eloquence each night
    You are not here.

    And I, in a gesture reprobate,
    Dream of holding your waist
    And savouring the aggregate
    That makes it dear.

    And the night swings pivotally;
    The moon is quite outpaced;
    Both blast my misplaced energy
    And sneer.


    The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

    A "misadventure of sober gold"
    Might be the name I could allot
    To the time you phoned your parents but
    Misdialed, and so their home was not
    The place where your voice's magic spread;
    It spread into my home instead.

    And O, my sweetest bungle-child,
    You laughed without apology
    On reaching a thrilled but baffled me,
    Who instantly thought, "Psychology!
    A Freudian slip!" although I knew
    That it had nothing at all to do

    With a secret wish of yours to fill my ear
    With the laughter and lilt you know I love to hear.


    Female Eyes

    Whenever you leave, I cannot think
    Of anything except that I want
    To keep you back and bundle you
    Effusively, but no, I can't.

    Your footfalls in the corridor
    Are silently carpeted away,
    Just as my dreams are when you go,
    And I must wait for a later day,

    When you'll return and look at me
    With female eyes that peer and probe
    Into my skull to see if I
    Have feet still fettered to this globe

    Or off to mental space off-ridden have,
    Keeping my feelings hidden up my sleeve.


    My Model

    I cannot speak of my astonishment
    (For prose is a medium far too fused and flat),
    When I see you seated, with your arms a-bare,
    Wearing a T-shirt entrancingly too short,
    Just where your arms and shoulders meet.

    A blue of deeper blue than are most blues
    Lies in its inherent mould to you; a power,
    Though woefully weak in how it clings to you,
    Is strong enough to break a lover's heart
    Into a rain of fragments flung apart.

    It symbolizes electricity
    In how, when I see you, seated with arms a-bare,
    I want to liaise your arms with artistry,
    Beauty unending sitting facing me.


    First Light

    Once upon a solstice morning,
    A placid sky lay over the lake, almost aching,
    As if it felt the summer had blown by.

    I thought it held a stagnant warning
    That told me that my heart was almost breaking,
    Until that "warning" showed itself a lie.

    For I had felt a body-press adorning
    Your greetings-hug, as if you thought of making
    A freshened start toward a summer's sky.


    Nature's Servant

    A moment's growth, from hints to ecstasies,
    Spotlights a sunburst in the eastern skies That
    dazzles my sad and new-lacklustre eyes.

    Hours later, a flawless eggshell blue
    Colours the sky-lit canopy right through,
    Resembling the ways my wishful thinkings do.

    And last, when evening's darkness starshot is,
    My mind rekindles hidden memories
    Of cruelties among life's reveries.


    Loosefall

    I cannot hold you to anything other
    Than your project, self-proclaimed, to be
    Free from the pressures of another,
    Especially an oldster, such as me,

    Who worships the carpets that you stand or walk on,
    Who ogles the loosefall beauty of your hair,
    Who thrills at every syllable your voice makes
    As it sends its sounds to where I stand and stare.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from An Apology and Other Poems by David J. Murray. Copyright © 2016 David Murray. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction, ix,
Preamble: All I Can Do, xi,
Apologies,
An Apology, 3,
Apology #2, 4,
Apology #3, 5,
Apology #4, 6,
Remorse, 7,
Sprawl - Verses,
Glitter and Gloss, 11,
Relativity Theory, 12,
Meeting, 13,
To the Sun, 14,
Dangers,
Eye Contact, 17,
My Blast of Colour and Delight, 18,
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 19,
Female Eyes, 20,
My Model, 21,
First Light, 22,
Nature's Servant, 23,
Loosefall, 24,
Shopping, 25,
Jealousy, 26,
I Can See You, 27,
Nine-Liners,
The Copper Beeches, 31,
Dead Trees, 32,
May, 33,
Fighting, 34,
Autopsy, 35,
Bar Scene, 36,
Gendered Discourse, 37,
Physics, 38,
Crossing the Street, 39,
Engrossed, 40,
Hillside, 41,
Life Stilled, 42,
Morning Mists, 43,
You on a Plane, 44,
Me on the Ground #1, 45,
Me on the Ground #2, 46,
The Social Me, 47,
Humiliations,
Fear, 51,
On Feeling Despised, 52,
Calyx, 53,
Stiff Upper Lip?, 54,
Frustration, 55,
Arrivals, 56,
Communications, 57,
Fifteen Lines, 58,
Four-Liners,
Headstrong, 61,
Succumbing, 62,
Summer's Heat, 63,
A Holiday Hope, 64,
Downcast, 65,
Stop-Loss, 66,
Bitterness, 67,
No-Man's Land, 68,
Let's Talk about the Weather,
Slush Time, 71,
Ice Storm #1, 72,
Ice Storm #2, 73,
5:00 a.m. The Weather Forecast. Middle of March, 74,
End of March 2014, 75,
The Dusk of this Long Winter, 76,
Optimism, 77,
Pumpkin Time, 78,
Old Age,
I Have ..., 81,
Youth and Old Age, 82,
Going into a Home, 83,
Does Wisdom Have an Age?, 84,
The Great Inequality,
Discussion Group, 87,
"Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth", 88,
The Object of This Rhyme, 89,
Fulcrum, 90,
DELILAH,
Impasse, 93,
I Live a Problem, 94,
The Night, 95,
I Failed, 96,
Nowhere to Go, 97,
Poems about poetry,
Forget It!, 101,
Drown Me Deep, 102,
Amuse-Gueule, 103,
A Vision of Fair Music, 104,
To All My Muses, 105,
Homage to Carlyle: The Battle of Quebec, 106,
About the Author, 109,