My name does not matter anymore.
Who I was and what I am have become one and the same:
I am hungry and I have been hungry for so long now
I eat, of course, after a fashion,
what has for now become my fashion,
still, I am always empty.
People share with me, they sense my need,
people who do not know who I am,
yet their gifts are always cold.
I have forgotten what it is like to take what I want.
I have forgotten what it was ever like to be warm,
but I can't forget the taste of blood.
It would be wrong to.
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.