Death
Who is Blogger/Poet/Fiction Writer/Artist Ann Johnson-Murphree?
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE
2014
HOLIDAY SNOW – ACRYLICS
BY
Ann Johnson-Murphree
Ann Johnson-Murphree
Author Bio…
Born in northern Alabama, father was a Native American (Chickasaw) sharecropper who managed a farm for a businessperson from Decatur, and a mother who worked in the local cotton mill during the Depression to pay for Beautician School. Although her mother lived in the same house, she was emotionally absent since the Author’s birth. The author, raised by her father, Native American great-grandmother and an African-American woman all were great storytellers.
Instead of playing like most children, she roamed the countryside alone or with her father and at night she sat at the feet of these strong-minded individuals listening to the stories of their lives. During the summer, she lived with her fathers’ sister in Birmingham, Alabama; it was there that she would discover a library, and mingle with her aunt’s circle of friends that included local writers, artist, and politicians. A cabin deep within the Black Warrior Forest was the weekend retreat and filled with these people from a different life than her own. This aunt encouraged the imagination of a young Ann with the gift of her first journal, which she filled with stories over the summer. Planted was the desire to write, a seedling waiting to spurt from the warm southern heart of a child.
Nonetheless, with adulthood, the desire to create buried itself deep within, the dream wilted but did not die. It lay dormant, gaining experience all written in hidden journals. These experiences, the contents of these journals became short stories and poetry reading to share with the world.
Throughout the years along with her father, great-great-grandmother, and her beloved Aunt Francis, other influences were, Faulkner, Capote, Fitzgerald, and Harper Lee. Later in life, I discovered the warm and comic writing of Grace Paley. The Collected Stories, the vivid poetry of William Carlos Williams; the strong poetry of Phyllis McGinley, and the world’s most exciting women, Maya Angelou are some of the poets at the top of her list.
The harshness that shrouded her life would cause her to withdraw from most of the world; it fills the pages of her writing, the heartache, the abuse, and the denial from her mother. Today, at a stage of life where she enjoys her children, grand and great grandchildren, her four-legged companion Mason, she lives in Southern Wisconsin…far from her southern roots, writes and paints daily.
ONE OF THE MANY REVIEWS ON HER WORK:
Southern living, tragedy, memories, and nostalgia… 2014
By Dr. Karen Moriarty – Karen Moriarty, Author of “Defending A King ~ His Life & Legacy” [about the incomparable Michael Jackson]
“As a former teacher of English and creative writing, I approached the reading of Ann Johnson-Murphree’s “Honeysuckle Memories” with real enthusiasm. Poetry is not a wildly popular genre currently. However, I have always enjoyed it, partly because it can be consumed in bits and pieces and at any time of day or night. This book did not disappoint. I consider poems the poet’s personal journey of heart-soul-and-mind. This collection of poems is about Southern living, tragedy, death, and memories. The poet-author’s background as a child who grew up in northern Alabama, a sharecropper’s daughter who farmed for his living, colors much of her work. I enjoyed the flow of her writing, her style of combining prose and poetry, and her reflecting the imagery from her earlier memories in vivid terms.
I recommend that you buy and read this book. It is priced well — to entice the potential reader to venture into the realm of poetry. Ms. Johnson-Murphree enjoys, above all else, sharing her love of writing with others who will enjoy it, understand her better, and share her personal journey.”
THE POETRY OF ANN JOHNSON-MURPHREE AT AMAZON.COM –
November Sales at Amazon.com…
IN SEARCH OF WORDS
Ann Johnson-Murphree Poetry Books – A Collection of Poetry
http://www.amazon.com/Sachet-Poetry-Adoration-Aspirations-Asylums/dp/1500483354/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413302456&sr=8-1&keywords=ann+johnson-Murphree
A Sachet of Poetry…
Sachet of Poetry the “final” poetry book to be written by this author on a lifetime of experience growing up in “poor” southern conditions, living with depression and through the loss of two children. The other coffee table books in the collection are Echoing Images from the Soul, Reflection of Poetry, Honeysuckle Memories and Beyond the Voices. There is also a book of artwork, personal therapy created during the year following the loss of her children. These poems a tiny fragments of mind, heart and soul. The author is currently working on an accounting of her young life growing up in Alabama.
A Sachet of Poetry: Adoration Aspirations Anger Asylums
Authored by Ann Johnson-Murphree
Coffee Table Book
List Price: $5.24
8.5″ x 11″ (21.59 x 27.94 cm)
Black & White on White paper
54 pages
Black & White on White paper
54 pages
A collection of poetry created from tiny fabrics of life. These poems characterize the thoughts of innocence sold into a false world of adoration. Living in silence, God did not keep this innocence from hell, and death would be a long way off and life was between the now and then. Ahead lay sacrifice, pain and suffering. Life should be fruitful; the human life produces scenes of public, private distress and anger springs forth with hate and blood. Mortally led to the mysterious world of knowing the fist is not love, it is the slaughter of innocence…
Purchase this book at:
Bangles and Colorful Cloth for Ma…
Bangles and Colorful Cloth for Ma…
“Dedicated to my Great-Grandmother”
When I was born, you were a young ninety-years old,
your hair pulled tight at the nap of your neck, still
black and bold. At night, you let it down to braid before
you went to bed, it fell to the floor; at first I would watch
in silence from a crack in the door.
The night you caught me I was six, you called me into the
room smiling…asking that I bring you a single broomstick.
I quickly plucked it from mother’s only broom, and rushed
back into the dimly lit room. You showed me how to break
it into small pieces; when I looked bewildered your smile
accented all of your dark wrinkles and creases.
It was then that my eyes opened wide as you put the stick right
through the lob of your ears, its magic I thought; but this is my
great-grandmother I have nothing to fear. As a child, I did not
realize that there was a hole, because when I would touch the
bangles in her ears, she would quickly scold.
Just like the time when I tried to sneak a peek at her button up
shoes by raising the hem of her long dress, she did not have on
shoes, there were moccasins on those tiny feet…who would have
guessed. Yes, I was only a child without a care, and I spent many
hours sitting at the foot of her old rocking chair.
I never tire of the stories she would tell, sometimes we cried together
and now I can say it…as a child she lived in a white man’s world, she
called it “hell”. Her parents had walked on the “Trail of Tears”, proud
and strong, with every step wondering where they had gone wrong.
She help raise me and she taught me the way, and as her mind begin
to wander in those later years, I was sad, when she would tell her stories
she only remembered the bad. This grand old woman dressed in bangles
and cloths of many colors, with that big ball of hair and the nap of her
neck was a great-grandmother like no other.
She died only days before her birthday, she would have been one-hundred
and five, my father said, Ma would have scolded you saying…
” Don’t you ever let anyone see you cry”.
I was fifteen and the world was bright and colorful with the artwork of fall,
a befitting day to bury this beautiful and proud Chickasaw.
©2012.annjohnsonmurphree
Echoing Images from the Soul eBook Sale
FRIDAY RELEASE…
The Smile of Death
Cemeteries are not lonely, only graves filled with people who are silent, they cannot make you sad. In the darkness they hide; those two-faced people that in life others could not abide.
Many descending hearts that lay beneath, hearts ripped from the living soul. Standing over the graves you will find hypocrites shedding false tears, pretending to love or care all those years.
The innocent do not want to lie in coffins under the ground, surrounded by clay mounds of the dead; they prefer ashes scattered in a wildflower bed. The steps of death can never be heard, like a tongue-less person there are no words.
Motionless, the abused, the portrayed, wait for death and with a smile.
2014©annjohnsonmurphree
Slipping Away…
Moonlight, alone in silence ascending my
Stairs once more, below the stars waves
Crash upon a white sandy shore. On the
Hillside my garden too is silent I look out
Over the sea, alone, a star shooting across
The sky, an invisible hand, a fireball thrown.
I wait in the dark, between space and space,
I lift my hands to my face. Who am I, my
Name is unknown to me, I look into the
Mirror yet my eyes cannot see.
The flesh is pallor and pale, the wrinkles…
Each with a story to tell. Hair, white, long
Tied up in a bun…I would leave this place
Nevertheless, I have nowhere to run.
A mournful melody spins in my brain, a tune
That I cannot recall…roses to smell and
Mouths to kiss, in a locked room I hide
From it all. Never will I feel rain drops on my
Cheeks, it is the shadow of death that I try
To cheat.
The heavens are dark and deep, I will forget
These things before I slip into a silent sleep.
From this room I can hear the ocean roar, rain
Falls and dead gutters come alive once more.
Yes, I will forget all of these things before I slip
Into a silent sleep.
©2013 ®annjohnsonmurphree
Rebecca’s Story…
Thank you Elouise
http://tellingthetruth1993.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/where-is-my-mother-part-1/
for this comment which touched the heart of the story…”Southern culture. The look, the smell, the ungodly expectations and the heaviness of tightly guarded secrets. You’ve captured it so well.” ajm
The story below was the inspiration for the book of poetry called “A Sachet of Poetry – Adoration, Anger, Asylum and Aspiration”. The poems with thoughts of adoration come from the possibility of love. The anger poems come from thoughts of being placed in a position of abuse. Asylum poetry is derived from the position she was placed in by her mother and the man she was forced to marry when only an innocent girl. Apparition became the final voice for Rebecca, her desires, her wishes, her thoughts on her life and how her innocence was lost behind the walls of an asylum in the mid-1950. Her goal, her most needed aspiration was her death, her death meant freedom.
Rebecca’s story is one of a developing collection and this is an excerpt from her story…
Rebecca watched her father walked through the double door without looking back. Her mother and husband was telling the family doctor how she had been upset with her marriage and threated to kill herself. When she looked at her arm, the rubber tubing, the syringe was freighting then her mind froze in time. Her vision blurred and the fleur-de-lis wallpaper in her parent’s living room became waves of beige and gold swaying in an invisible breeze. The reason she was there dissolved into an ocean of oblivion.
Still dazed, she woke lying on an examining table in the Shelby County Medical Clinic, beside her was the doctor who had given her a shot and a nurse she knew. Standing in the corner of the room were her mother, husband and two sheriff deputies. She did not protest when the doctor gave her another shot of his magic that sent her to a place where she no longer cared. The wheelchair bumped over each crack in the sidewalk, each time giving her the feeling as if she was falling into a dark black hole. The doctor and nurse put her in the back of an ambulance as her mother began to tell Rebecca’s husband that his wife would never leave him. She steps into the ambulance, and in her own heartless way said in a low malicious voice…
“You see what happens when you try to disgrace me, putting you away for being insane will be more acceptable than have you leave your husband. You’re a southerner, southerners don’t leave their husbands”
Quivering beneath the threadbare blanket she fought violently against the straps confining her to a bed as her mind battled with drugged hallucinations. When she slept they became chaotic dreams. Mostly, she lay quietly watching other unwanted souls shuffle back and forth in a dimly lit hallway or being carted off to where the black box was kept. She knew that she had been admitted to Challis Manor located at the edge of the Appalachian foothills it provided medical treatments for the mentally ill. A place where wealthy Tennesseans paid to have members of their families placed to avoid embarrassment; Rebecca was not there because she had a mental or physical problem, she was there because she tried to leave her husband.
New in Paperback…
Published in Kindle eBooks and paperback at Amazon.com:
Echoing Images from the Soul
Beyond the Voices
Reflections of Poetry
Sachets of Poetry on Adoration, Anger, Asylums and Aspirations
Honeysuckle Memories
My Journey into Art
New In Paperback a Third Book Collection of Poetry Released at Amazon.com July 9
Also at Amazon.com
Reflection of Poetry and Beyond the Voices
ann johnson-murphree 