Poor Things
At some stage or another
we all become poor things
The man who once
pulled trucks and trains for fun
in a gown
and listening to a nurse
image and poem © copyright df barker 2012
Category: art
Poem ‘Mare Incognito’ (for J)
Mare Incognito (for J)
Somewhere between
Southwold and Saltfleet,
that’s all I’m prepared to say.
Where eastern seaboards
lose out each year,
glacial moraines fall away
with no answer to tides
that even kings couldn’t resist.
England crumbling in eye and mind.
Cliffs.
Now that could be a clue
but they’re not too high,
though high enough to sit on
and savour the grey seas,
the view, such as it is.
Does it matter?
Fine days won’t do, not to this mind.
Sea mists, fogs, or battleship skies
which leave enough to be imagined,
whose easterlies cut me into me
whatever I wear—they’re best—
when the only way to keep warm
is to keep moving, jogging
below the sleek aerobatics of herring-
and black-backed gulls,
super-marine harbingers of storm
doing their best to bring life to
Mitchell’s drawings of seaplanes—
and the spitfire.
Such an elegance in death.
But I’m here to forget about war,
about politics which can only
divide and kill.
Grey days mean I’m alone
in a moody make-believe.
I turn my back on all that was,
think about what might be,
where nightmares a few miles away,
that lost world within my right hand,
might just be gone when I return
or answer the bleep which says
I’m connected, branded for life.
Leave me now.
For a little while longer
let me say I’m free
image and poem © copyright df barker 2012
Poem ‘What Goes Around’
What Goes Around
At last I can leave
the window ajar
to sense those languid
sounds of the street
like life itself returning
from some distant place
a world woken up
by a warm gentle kiss
Promise too in the bee’s
tender tap on my window
busy on beatnik rounds –
I am wishing him luck
on a maverick wind
in the cool melodious rain
poem and image © copyright David Francis Barker 2011
*First published in Shot Glass Journal in 2011
Poem ‘Safe Distance’
Safe Distance
Another old soldier who never speaks.
Sitting stiffly in braces and polished leather,
his medals left in bric-a-brac drawers
with sovereigns and half crowns,
concealing the nugget –
the tale worth telling from this safe distance.
A story of a corporal who carried
a limp subaltern from no man’s land
to safety through a Belgian quagmire.
Lieutenant Turnbull was a right bastard,
but no point in resentment or fear
when a bullet could tear through your head
at any time. Simply had to do it and get on.
His blank eyes, though still blue,
cannot disguise the bare brown soul,
like the pounded landscape, the kit bag
he carries around everywhere.
Until the lights go out.
© copyright df barker 2012
First published in poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available at amazon.com
Poem ‘Raptor’
Raptor
Over church, a windmill,
warmer hued in a meagre sun,
through copses freshly naked
and into skies of madonna blue
My eyes are led easily,
catching the swift sole movements
like a gorgeous leaf circling
in elegant fall and flight
It all brings a rare smile
to winter’s thinnest lips,
this soaring, plaintive viola—
a primed glissando on his prey
image and poem © copyright dfbarker 2012
Ciscography 