Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct magazines and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland, that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and (increasingly) next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.

After Pinter

I am a great man.

People depend on me to say great things.

They expect me to say great things.

I expect I am saying something great right now.

Things appear greater when I say them.

 

It is a terrible burden, of course,

a terrible responsibility, in fact,

to always have to say something great,

to be great to order; that said

people believe I am being great

even when I am being normal.

To them my normal is just great.

They need me to be great

ergo I am great.

 

“That was great,” they’ll say

and they’ll believe that to be true

but at the same time, they’ll be thinking:

I thought great might be greater than that

but what do I know, he’s the great man, not me.











First published in Snakeskin #200, September 2013

The Art of Breathing

To find room for the new
you have to let go of 
the old

so to learn how to write
I had to forget how 
to breathe

and for a time I thought
I had to write to keep 
breathing

which makes such perfect sense
but only if you're a
poet.



First published in Pulsar, March 2008

The Long Game

One T-Rex to another:
“Did you just eat the last unicorn?”

 

Evolution makes
some odd choices:
it kept cockroaches
yet ditched dinosaurs,
it handed the flu
       a free pass
then kicked unicorns
       into touch.

 Now humour is sick;
       truth, sicker
and pick an emotion—
       any emotion—
they’re dropping like flies
and not just the cool flies.

 I guess Nature reckons
we won’t be wanting
any of that vestigial crap
       dragging us down
where it sees us heading.
Now, though, the roach thing
is starting to make
       way more sense.