EX NIHILO

EX NIHILO

by Paul Stubbs (Black Herald Press, 2010) 

Ex Nihilo (Latin meaning ‘out of nothing’, for instance the universe just appeared ex nihilo) is a poem about making poems, how they originate from an author then somehow organically gain a life of their own. Throughout the poem the author seems to be in a variety of vaguely suggested metaphysical quandaries that are never completely teased out. Furthermore, the poem has a reduced and contextless feeling to it, eerily hanging like a ruined Gothic arch. Although the author says he lives in Paris there is no mention of the city all around him which is a presumably fitting subject for a poem. Perhaps external reality hardly intrudes upon Stubb’s ambient world. Ultimately Ex Nihilo is a poem that should be read alongside other poems, real poems, to remind the reader of the difference. There’s lots of humourless self-indulgence here, circling around subject matter as water pours down a plughole, leaving a faint circle of detritus. This aftertaste soon disappears after reading poetry, not this sermon by a priest. The clue to the entire collection is the Latin title that indicates a religious quandary rather than an actual life experience. 

Paul Murphy

LEMURS

LEMURS 

The electric skin of the jungle storm
Greys distantly then splits, on its way
To pull apart the sun’s fleshy lenses.

Lips of ether shroud the beaches
Darkly within or without; is it the mind itself
Or merely a dislocation of the senses?

I walk the beach in Madagascar
A place just in my mind, where I’ve
Never been, nor wish to go.

Reticence, diligence, evanescence: are merely words.
Poems are merely words. Lemurs have more work.
Dander silently, have invaded my senses.

Somehow the lemur knows,
Dark in its forest, dark in its mind.
Retread the distant lightning at the dawn.


LIVE IN AN EPIC

 Epic of Gilgamesh

 'I couldn't understand why Gilgamesh wouldn't serve cocktails after 11 PM. woman - Newcastle 

Beowulf 

'Laugh, I almost cried. In the middle of dinner, Beowulf and other warriors drinking and urinating on the fire.' man - Manchester 

The Iliad 

'A very nice drinks cabinet.' man - Liverpool 

The Bagavad Gita 

'A wonderful after dinner cabaret except for chariot horses invading the toilet and spreading menure on the mirrors and cosmetics.' woman - Glasgow 

Dear Sir, 

sum of my pomes.

 best wishes,

 Ronald A. Twit 

Li Po composes lines on death while staring into sun Red panda. Confucious he say red panda chomping bamboo shoots. Li Po born. dies. sundown. red panda shits in river. time is river. red panda shit like time. transitory. Mao is born. China is better. all thinkers sent to the fields like red panda. Jenner publishes poem. relieved of beer money throws himself in canal. believes and is re-born as red panda shit floating down river. all living things in cycles of re-birth and death. 

ORDINARY MOON 

So you proved to be useless after all, moon! 
Only of interest to a few travellers who lived apart. 
Your moondust bitter, remnants of an orbiting ashtray. 
You are an elegy for history’s might-have-been. 
A cosmic tongue, poking, slobbering saliva on our heads. 

 MOZARTCLOCK 

Big cocky is an eyesnake look. 
Younger Mozart is troubled.
Whips out his eyesnake, peppers the room.
Not asked back, kicked into the cold.

Too shallow to be an adept pornographer
He becomes older Mozart. A man with
A thousand dirty jokes. Big cocky
Is a cool timetraveller too.

He knows the living, the dead, separating the light, the dark.
Intimates the growing splendour:
The rise of big cocky with the sun.
His creative testicles imitate an alien shell
He leaps at you, fixes you for life.
Then draws a line under himself,
Becoming the next thing:

The gods who don’t exist say it is so.

Paul Murphy