Poem ‘Pat 1.0’

Marlene Dietrich photograph (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pat 1.0

A girl from the future, she’d said,
a real chic-chic-whirr!
Pat was her name, dark high heels and
clinging pink dress, a row of
little red buttons before me
which (the paperwork said), would ‘lead
to other worlds’.
So I pressed the bottom button, a thirty
second hologram projected from her eye,
a précis
from my time to hers: “My god!”
I said, all-a-gaga,
“she really makes President?”
Button two appealed to my
sense of history. “I can be
any figure you like,” she giggled. So
I thought of Genghis Khan and
recoiled, I mean
I fell to the ground—
the stench of his breath and
bloody blade! so real,
but even he had a human eye.
Button three was ‘anywhere, anytime’,
so there we were in a darkening
Berlin bar, surrounded by
art deco, lots of nods and smiles;
I felt the spirit keenly, the zeitgeist
over my shoulder, whispering: ‘seize
the moment, this
brief,
precious time’.
And then she stood and sang for me
like Piaf, posed
like Dietrich, sizzled
like Kitt, singing how old fashioned she was but
I just wasn’t a millionaire, although
“zat, darlink,” she purred, with a brush
of mink on my cheek, “vill be easily
fixed!”
I felt
a little like Faustus before
Helen of Troy, though
she was no Mephistopheles;
more legion, everything rolled into one app.
All this time her top
button had intrigued the most.
“Go on— pat it!” she said, smoking
cross legged.
“You see?” She kicked
off a heel, letting
down her futured hair.
“Yes,” she whispered, pulling me
close, “and I, my sweet,
am just the beta version.” I looked
briefly
down on Metropolis
from floor 159, so brave,
so new.
Some things, clearly,
would never change

Poem © copyright David F. Barker 2012

Poem ‘October 15’

October 15

Lingering smells of vinegar and fish,
red and green smears on an empty plate,
a solitary bone in a serving dish.

The constable pours tea
in a room drenched in sunlight;
an incongruous joke becomes light relief.

At his age a simple case of lights out, it’s said,
something you have to believe.
Only an hour before he stood at the door

complaining of chest pains that
Alka Seltzer would not relieve.
The neighbour walks in wiping her eyes,

tells of a conversation by the fence.
She cups her drink, shakes her head,
unable to make much sense.

Light another round of cigarettes,
though wherever the eyes fall
there are many reasons for regret.

So stand, walk around,
peep through the net curtains where
the ambulance casts its shadow – no sound.

You’re numb with facts that won’t ingest;
a still hot soldering iron, pliers, cut wire,
like something from the Marie Celeste.

poem © copyright David F. Barker 2012
* first published in poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available at amazon.com

Poem ‘Wordspiller’

The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written i... — The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse and paragraphs, not in lines or stanzas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wordspiller (for Christopher Marlowe)

So you are the spiller of words, almost
as far from me as
Beowulf is to you.

Wordspiller, your crosspose outstands me,
but I backthink
the falling choirs where you sadwalked

your summerwaiting mind, to
when your glories were mere
airthought,

like the Greathallow who once
shorestepped there
to see for himself

your forliving Angles (he oncebethought
angels) and their saxon King
Ethelbert redeemed to newspells that

you mindweighed as truthless.
Now I meet your clearstead gaze; for
the muse which stretchfed you

has not alleaten you yet

poem © copyright david f. barker 2012

Poem ‘Hurricane’s Grave’

Hurricane’s Grave

A copse can be an intimate
friend. Most days he roamed there, always
finding something to love, a life of
reasonable expectation.
Late winter was a favourite time; tree tops
took on reddish hues and
there were further signs other
than snowdrops
and blue tits’ brighter songs, of the
burgeoning spring

Today was different. Large boots
had been this way,
their wearer, like
a stump line of grey, stood
barely seen by an old fence, through straight
saplings in sunlight.
He approached the figure, which seemed
to dissipate like mist in the sun, something
he’d mistaken for form
and life

But it was more than
a notion that had led him there. The fence
overlooked a rolling field, familiar lumps
and bumps of pasture unchanged
for decades,
where lords in their demesnes might
still rule for all he knew.
He leant on the fence, it
gave way in his hand. A piece of torn
grey cloth freed from a nail, flopped to
the damp ground.
He held it,
felt its old thick weave— like a uniform

He pondered the scene in front
of him, gave space to wartime tales,
the remembered lumps and
bumps which might easily hide a
hurricane’s grave

* The Hurricane here, is a British WWII fighter plane

Poem ‘City Nights’

City Nights

Though your faces
change these same streets
remain. Same high
sights in floodlit stone,
city nights abased
by brawls and chilli fights
in queues

Where were you when
I was this green
and victim?
Your fashion is the masque
of fools, disguises nothing;
your life like mine is
still waste

But somehow you’re
preoccupied.
Laugh in my face and deride
my reticence— won’t you!
So it always
was, for soon the dreaming
is done

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