Eleven
Twenty Two
Sixty Three
I think I recall
the BBC globe
in black and white,
a spinning duality.
The program inter-
ruption in Queen’s English
like a lightning strike;
Mother’s tears,
Dad’s ambivalence —
“Your blubbering
as if you knew him!”
What youngster could
comprehend?
Yet somehow I knew
a bright star had fallen
that November day
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Poetics – Stoddard, Longfellow and Bryant say hello! (What does November mean to you?)
The blank page
has the coldest stare,
no words can describe
this darkness inside,
yearning for amnesia.
Happiness, the distant land
where other people live;
I’m no denizen there,
my passport withdrawn
when you rejected me —
subjecting me —
to the pain of my self
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
It’s the same sounds all round the harbour,
the cries of birds immemorial, echoes
through the cliffs of stacked up buildings, over
masts of twee named boats, men’s bobbing toys.
Your voice is still fresh in my mind, I see
yesterday’s tears in your eyes — that won’t see
me again, our little talks cut off by that corporate
guillotine. It had nothing to do with me.
But didn’t I say you should come here, to Whitby?
Simply to sit, drink it in, watch the gnarled men with sticks
hobble over cobbles, their tight permed wives
with ice creams, moaning, putting worlds to right.
The goths gather here, swarming to darkness,
and the name of Nosferatu, with steampunk dress
codes posing, mingling with transient gulls
strutting their stuff through archaic streets,
owning the place. Enough of my platitudes,
our shared liking for Camembert. You made
your choice, it was the mortgage and the dog,
tethered to the post called debt. It was sad, perhaps
I expected more. So is it sheer folly of me
to hope you read these words? — This tired old man
who just wanted to show you Whitby,
that we might make small talk once more.
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
The mime artist confronts me,
lithe and contorting,
nuancing as best she can
with her eyes.
Masked and distanced,
her gestures rage out loud
and proud,
yet I do not understand,
I can’t even take her hand
to console, to reassure;
so now she’s rubbing her eyes
with feigned clenched fists
but the sorrow doesn’t translate;
such sobbing falls on deaf ears,
yet it screams to my soul:
She’s in her world, I’m in mine,
dimensions apart,
both of us born again infants
deprived of facial cues.
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
*dVerse: Let your words ring out. I taken a ‘left field’ approach.
A consumed moon’s meagre light;
I pause, mourning this grey life.
Let me look at you —
ear lobes like pearls from tissue,
the emollient pallor of your royal flesh.
My finger probes your lips
as an owl hoots its presence:
I imagine your soul,
the skulls of saints
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Ciscography 