Key Word Project; the meaning of words and the perception of people who use them.

 What do words mean?  When we look at definitions we often have to look from different sides of the word.  Play for instance can mean a very different thing to a 12 year old child than to their 45 year old father.  This comes to mind as I read through the literature of colonialism and that of globalization.  To a titan of capitalism, fat and happy with his tie firmly knotted in a double Windsor the world seems like a place full of opportunity and profit.  To a cashier ringing up the 200th package of toilet paper that day worrying about how their meager paycheck will pay the bills the only positive effect they can see from globalization is that they can buy a small package of strawberries at the end of their shift.  

Mission is one such word.  Someone can be on a mission to bring good to others in the world.  But the person who builds the water reclamation project while on the mission to help others sees the word so much differently than someone who is on a mission to build their company up and does so by finding the cheaper worker 1/2 way around the world, setting sales goals that this person will work far harder to beat because their mission is to make their tiny family a better life.  

An Old Friend

A friend wrote me an email 

lengthly in its words

it was larger in substance

as the small words formed 

to reveal the details of a life lived 

at times alongside mine 

and other times far away

We live in different places 

but both are married

both have children 

both tried to be better parents 

than the examples we'd seen before 

the continents different

but the struggles still very similar 

What anxiety is left from a past moment

that we feel in the present 

as if the past is somehow catapulted 

into the now, into the present 

How can it be that my breath comes in bursts

and my heart somehow tries to beat out of my chest 

As breath calms, and my heart returns to its normal rythm, 

I think what was that? Why did I feel so scared? 

Who can help me if it happens again 

Where do we turn as adults when the fear, 

the panic, the pain of our childhoods stands up before us?

But a friend writes me an email 

and we talk about how we laughed 

we talk about how we danced all night sometimes, 

running to catch the ferry to go home to houses 

that weren't always as welcoming as they could've been. 

we write back and forth about the time 

when we only thought about what the next song was 

and if it would be good enough to continue dancing 

or should we go sit on the steps and drag a breath 

of sweet clove smoke from an aquaintance we found outside.

We write about our pain, and our loves 

write about our history and a hoped for future 

we continue to tell each other stories that we shared 

and stories we didnt but we continue to write, emails, 

back and forth across time zones and oceans, across time 

a friend wrote me an email.

Co-Vide

I want to sit
In a small cafe
And drink an espresso
As people walk by the window
Uninterested, unafraid
Unaffected by the death
That seems to lurk
In every person, table, shopping trolley.
I want to go to work
And smile at people
A visible smile
Not hidden
By a mask.
A mask not of death but of fear
For myself
For those I love
At home, sad from
The news that keeps coming
The stories telling of more
Out of work
Trying to decide
What to do without.

Death in Portland


When I die
I want you 
To put me out
On the curb

Put a sign 
On me
Free, and maybe 
Some hipster

Will take me home
Prop me 
In the corner 
And hang their coats 

From my rigor stricken
Hands and place 
Their hats
On my head.

Apple Pie

---Jason Murray

Mother’s kitchen is lit

Only by the glow of

The oven’s feeble light.

Sitting framed by the glass

In the oven door

A pretty little pie

Alone, but not lonely.

Basking in the heat of the oven

Turning form

Pastry pale to a flaky,

Golden brown.

Mother walks in

Changing the light

With a wave of her hand

Across the switch plate.

Glancing at the pie

Through the glass

And at the timer’s

Slow turn of the time

She pulls out a bowl

And starts on the process

Of cooking dinner.

Aunt Daphne walks in

Eager to talk about her day

Potatoes are peeled and eggs boiled for potato salad.

A piece of carrot

Disappears among the little details of Daphne’s day,

People and things

That have little to do with the

Details of dinner.

Apa

Olive Murray
---Jason Murray


Loss weighed heavily
on his mind
the sense that they
all were leaving
first his son
then his mother
now, his wife.

30 years
together
less than a life
but more than
most are together
he left then

left his home
left his work
left his country
and went walking
about the world

across marble plazas
polished by years of
quiet feet
these plazas now ruined
by bombs and civil war
a plaza where terrified
civilians hid from
a snipers rifle

He went to the
home of his people
the quiet pubs
full of men drinking
and talking of the same things
they've talked about
a hundred pints before
He walked quiet
through the graveyards
and thought of the love
he had buried back home.

11/12/2017

Fishing,

By Jason Murray

I’m bored

I said, staring

At nothing in particular

Let’s go fishing

She said

A gleam in her eye

I said

How can we go fishing

We don’t have a boat

Yes we do

She replied

Its behind the garage

In the large lake

Out back

I thought

There was only the

Horse pasture

With an old boat

Tipped upside down

Sitting against the garage

Where the MG sat

Currently

We don’t have any fishing poles

I said

Yes we do and she

Picked up two good sized sticks

From the ground

And so we went fishing

In the lake

Behind the garage

In an old boat that just minutes

Before

Had sat abandoned behind

The garage where the MG

Sat waiting for the day

That it could be an

Airplane.