Rich Murphy

The Berlitz Fool

With the poor talker's alms
glittering silver, loaded, and in the palms
of weak thinkers, the proclamations of justice
by lead tongues sentence to death bankfuls
of intelligent witnesses.

Listen to me; listen to me; listen to me
is the vocabulary of the American city graduate,
having had his hands up on a color TV
until his lessons were learned.

Hunting for an ear that stands under the buckets
of random symbols in a forest where nobody hears
the trees falling, the wormwood chemist
becomes impatient toward the lip readers
and punching bags, and pumps
a translation from his butt's pestle.

Capturing an audience dressed in blue,
the poacher comes down from the top
of his lungs and counsels a cage,
mumbling death threats to himself,
the pockets of his mind bursting
with an electrifying moment.

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