God
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 –
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:
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
In a Cloudless Thousand Years…
We must mourn the waste of the earth
as caretakers we have quit caring about
what we are leaving behind for future
generations.
It is our responsibility to care for what
Mother Nature has given us, she has
nourished us and allowed us to live off her
good graces.
Our treatment of Earth is sinful and
the selfish people numb me
who take from it and refuse to give
back by loving her as they do their own
gluttony. Give back as much as you
want to take away from her.
Are we demons that live in high
towers above the filth left upon the
land. Does that make us good
Bastards?
Take from the earth only what is
needed or evil will come and rob
you of your children’s future filled
with the beauty of Mother Nature
Is it too late, will we never catch up
from our pilferage and lack of
wisdom. The landscape continues to
change, will it become sinister and dank
transformed into a wasteland filled with
greed.
The stink may vanish, in a cloudless
thousand years, but can those of us
who cared about Earth today take comfort
in the fact that someone finally listened?
©2014.annjohnsonmurphree
Fragments of Yesterday…
In the dusty corners of yesterday are buried fragments
of humanity, ancient history, forgotten mothers, fathers,
children, good, evil, and beyond death a veiled ambiguous
world that is still a mystery.
A people that after millions of years of evolution, cannot
see the reality of it all; the human race learns nothing they
endlessly continue their destructive fall.
Blood drenched roads from barbarity to civilization measured
by the futility of the enlightened, and those sacrificed are
forgotten.As humans, we judge others by our own beliefs, we
recoil, we threaten, we kill, and the blood of virtue we continue
to spill.
Millions of years from now when barren land reaches as far as
the eyes can see; will the dusty corners of yesterday show
fragments of how we destroyed humanity, will the veiled curtain
of death no longer be a mystery.
©2014.annjohnsonmurphree
Ann Johnson-Murphree books at:
A Path to this Moment…
Reflection on conception, an unwanted
soul cast away because of greed. An
image of the future, lost in time, starvation,
did not kill the seed.
It lived, did not go away, destiny or fate,
Life without love surrounded by hate.
Yoke around the neck at birth, emotional
Scars during its journey on earth.
Tomorrows’ path long and steep, search
The past, a need to prove why hurt and
Anger ran deep. Truth in abandonment
Can be found, sanity and sorrow closely
Bound.
And then they say “goodbye”.
Ann Johnson-Murphree
Thank you for your support…
The link below will take directly to Amazon.com.
Reflections of Poetry released in paperback 6.20.2014
Reflections of Poetry
Reflections of Poetry is now available in both Kindle and paperback. The paperback version has a new cover but the content has not changed. Over the past months “Followers” have inquired into my having a paperback version as they did not have a Kindle. So, here it is, the size and cover makes it a wonderful “coffee table” item. Again thank you for your past, present and future support. All of the Kindle eBooks are in the process of converting to paperback.
Ann Johnson-Murphree
The link below will take you directly to the Amazon site.
The Gathering…
As humans we are like the Black Birds
collected in a globe of pecking gloom,
an awakening before the coming of death;
wise souls searching for a revelation for
an exit.
We are a race that battles, a race of
warring souls unsatisfied until the end,
living in unrest under the breath of Heaven,
always gathering our possessions close to
us before our journey ends.
Banded in a world all the while as the Eye
of God knows who will be saved and who will
be destroyed, collectively, selectively
crushing enemies.
Reaching out into the night, silently watching
the armies, watching man’s destiny, destruction,
listen people and you can hear… the breath going
out of the world!
©2014.annjohnsonmurphree
The Rocking Chair…
Who will deny me the love of an old rocking chair,
snuggled up in it with someone who always cared? I cherished
it from the very start and the stories I heard as a child while
sitting there still lives within my heart.
Washed with tears, grained with heartaches, soaked with wisdom,
an honor to be there with my great-grandmother in that old
rocking chair. In childhood I lay quietly listening at the
gentle words that wise old lady taught me to live by, you may
not be the best she would say…but you must always try.
She taught me truth and the Chickasaw creed, I learned early in
life that she and God would be all that I would need. She was
my teacher, her life was hard work and prayer, when I became too
big for her lap and I would kneel beside that old rocking chair.
I was there when her eyes begin to fail, when her hair turned
grey, she had memorized the Bible, and the crochet marker became
frayed. She taught me so much as I writhed in my shattered world,
she dried my tears then gave me a toothless smile always reminding
me that I was God’s child.
I was there when she took her last trembling breath, I watched and
I knew that she was ascending to the grandmothers and grandfathers
in the sky, and I thanked God knowing I was blessed. It was almost
more than I could bear, as I watched my great-grandmother die in that
old rocking chair.
©2014.annjohnsonmurphree
ann johnson-murphree 