Category: culture

Poem: April 2

daffodils3

No longer will I bore you with my
mother’s life, and how I wish I could change
the way of her death. Thirteen years

is a long time, abridged by events that
just happen down this road. Though more
and more, this life seems impersonal, like

watching a new born lamb, sweet
to touch and then later to taste. How does
this lover turn carnivorous at a stroke?

And the lamb, like its mother, is a mere
vessel – when you’ve seen one, we all
know how we’ll react. So don’t get me wrong,

but Mum, you were a function, a role you
played so well, and no matter how
I embellish your memory at this time – well,

there you go, I have done it once again

Poem: ‘Clothes’

clothes

These are my favourite clothes, I
wear them for days on end.
See?
They retain their shape,
my shape,
even when I toss them
into wardrobes, or hang them from
skeletal frames, dis-
assembled, waiting for warm
odours of my living
return.

So say you’ll never throw them
out, and resist all
temptation to wash. Simply
lay them on a chair or bed – though
mark the creases,
the bulges of cotton limbs, fleshy
legs which have moulded denim,
now hanging in threads. And make sure
to study the greasy collars, precious
oils of my skin. Then take
hold of this shirt, stretch the faded
fabric in your hands and breathe in
the smell of years. Remember
the walks and our talks, when
there was only time to kill. For these
things, which may be nothing now, are
still worthy of note, the relics of
a single life
and not without right

image and poem © copyright David F. Barker 2013

Poem: ‘Turning’

foam

Is there a point where the tide
stops,
a moment that I could see, or touch?
I’ve been looking
at tables giving times, exact
minutes of apogee, and it was
just here I’m sure,
right here,
where I pointed
and watched
and saw nothing, except
the foam stretch ahead of me
like phantom silk, all
along the buff triassic sand, as far
as I could see or walk.
“That’s where the waves
stop,” you said, “where the tide
turns back to the sea – and me.”

image and poem © copyright David F. Barker

Empty Promise

N60-90, E120-150
N60-90, E120-150 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Strange to say, but as the snow
falls your nosebleed is like
a punctuation, something else
we can remark upon, something

other than this relentless cold,
our sparse Siberian spring. Harsh
economics brings with it
other extremes; people

who must choose between
eating or heating well into
April’s empty promises.
Some of them I know,

not the tragic ones who stare
at me from television screens,
directors tugging the stretched
strings of my heart. No – these

are stalwarts and forgotten
heroes, men and women
who have given their lives
once and don’t complain while

they slowly freeze or starve
in little houses, not so far
from me. Now they give up
on living so cold hearts

can balance their books.
But we fixed your nose, it was
easy in the end, though who
fixes this town and this world, is

anyone’s guess

© copyright David F. Barker 2013

Lipstick

She still puts on lipstick the same way,
calls it ‘lippy’ like it was a toy

One time she was his Venus
emerging fresh onto the shore of him

Now it’s Saturn who looks back
from the mirror

smeared,
croaking lame words of age

poem © copyright David F. Barker 2013