Solstice

I stood alone
with you,
like it was the end of our world, an
eerie glowing sky reflecting my heart, with
the solstice on its way. You
turned to look at me, that smile
I knew so well, your gracious nod
I’d never seen in real life. My hand
went through you – you were not
there anymore, just an echo like the
sonorous bells over pantiles, made
uniform by the morning rime. You said
I looked ‘frit!’ in the dialect
brought across to your city,
the voice of your
distinction. ‘Your life is not
your own,’ you said, ‘even the sun
never stands still, only seems to.’
So you told me not to worry, not
even care, to let it all go
now, that it’s better to die trying
than do nothing,
a short life
with meaning and all its
tortuous crosses borne, can become
a pilot light of inspiration. You
walked towards the sea, smiling
once more and unafraid, before vanishing
out of time into the
low glinting sun, a promise
of far off warmth
and the revelation to come

image and poem © copyright Dave Barker 2012

Maverick

At what point do you realise you’re
not alive? I’ve watched
pedestrian slow to
moribund, the colour
drain away like a leaching wound. Life
without verve is no life at all
and my verve shot away years ago. He left
on this tangental course, a maverick
fired like some devil who may care. Oh,
he’s fine by the way and living it up
in a lush valley somewhere, high
on peyote and painting the tall
arid peaks where
the air is clear and the milky way
whispers sweet nothings
in his ear, the shining girl who
once curved my night sky

poem © copyright Dave Barker 2012

Literacy has stalled

The sun only slowly burns off the morning fog;
a mind is clearing.
I’ve been cursing the cold and remind

myself of the time of year.
‘Literacy has stalled’. The radio spits out
this throw-away phrase.

It gets stuck in my craw, as if
this country hadn’t already been thrown
to the dogs, its mangled corpse

not tossed around for years, plaything
of the Whitehall hounds
and their circling vultures, both

rather good at feigning that they care.
‘Literacy has stalled’. As if it ever really
got going, it’s been a hidden truth

for decades; those miraculous exam
successes where league table is king. Never
common sense, not discipline and

certainly never values. And here’s
carte blanche to dress it all up; new curriculums
and shining academies: Zero times zero

equals zero.
Literacy has stalled: so tell me something
new! Nearly everything learned I’ve taught

myself, it’s a case of needing to but
I’ve yet to train my eye to spot who’s
behind the tail that wags the

elephant in the room

poem © copyright Dave Barker 2012

Two Guitars

How far could we have pushed it? How far did we
dare? The cold didn’t
hit us so much then and our bones weren’t

the barometers they are now – not
so plainly breaking
down. And time, he was our slow

playground friend casting his long spell,
fooling us to think that
what we had was real.

But a new chord
could send our minds off in tangents to those
places of colour, much better imagined

than experienced. Two guitars, two
minds playing like John
and Paul, though minus their gifts, their

backgrounds; all still ideas
in the ether surrounding, mingling even with
Alexander’s breath, the vapours of many

great men – and
where are they? Great only
in books, and how much

lesser are we?

Sad Songs

Where have all the sad songs
gone? When I was young I sang
the saddest songs; there was

a depth, a yin as well as
yang, like the love
of a minor chord, or a melancholy

walk by the sea –
and it was all so much bigger
than me. Something

tells me that I can’t be
ageing well, not when
all the songs sound the same,

where the tide never rises again

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