Sea Wall
Stand and look from here,
you can see the earth’s curve,
a sea-levelled land
bereft of its mother.
Shells we have found
while the silt blew away,
powdered by droughts
and the pitiless wind.
Stand here with me
at the high spring tide—
you know the stark sea
will swell all over this again
poem © copyright df barker 2012
Ways Out
During those darker days
while Dad dug the earth,
I would stand with him
and dream of the sky,
that it might send an angel
in a shining silver disk
to whisk me away
to some fantastic world,
as far away as possible
from that featureless place
Once my dreams were done
each mournful Sunday night,
that was when I’d watch him
sitting hunched before
his old bespoke radios,
yellow fingers twisting knobs
while turning his ear
to strange sideband sounds,
smirking to Southern drawl charm
engaging cool Transvaal
I knew it was his way out,
released and briefly lost
among the wild waves,
bringing some colour to his world
before I’d hear the clock wind up,
the curtains being drawn
poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Chances
You watch me do the washing up,
clean surfaces and toilets.
All the time you’re standing there,
moaning, swaying in your underwear,
sleepily spooning chocolate cereal
into that stale and coated mouth.
You must look at me and think
this will never be you,
that someone will always be here
to do this, the menial things,
the responsible things.
Maybe in twenty years
your swelling salary
will provide the foreign cleaner,
so you and some lover
can roam that glittering world.
Maybe sooner than that;
this huge lottery win
you keep hankering for
will surely drop the easy life
straight into your lazy lap.
Chances are, it won’t.
Do you still want to know
what the future might hold?
Take a look at me.
poem © copyright df barker 2012
The Artist
Black paint on the front door
was peeling badly. Before knocking
I ran a crackling finger over it,
flakes falling into shade around my feet.
A small grey lady in garish pink
dressed for bed, squinted up at me,
something akin to Stravinsky
played in the darkness behind her.
“Take a pew!” – words betraying her age,
her station, a headmistress perhaps,
Arnold’s paintings in primaries all over low,
leaning walls in a room of gloom,
as if yellowed by years of smoke
and smelling of rose and age.
His preference for palette knife
and fingers were evident at once –
then a portrait, blue eyes staring at me,
almost violet, gorgeous like Liz Taylor
and hints of a grey uniform with pips.
Tea and scone arrived on Royal Albert
with shuffles of pink slipper.
“The portrait,” I pointed.
“Oh, that’s me, circa 1944,” she croaked,
standing bent. “But not his usual style.”
“No,” I had to agree, writing frantically,
excitement like sap
sent tingling up my spine.
So, let’s get this right:
She had trained in Ireland,
was deployed to France,
following allied troops into Germany
all the way to the end, in Berlin.
Hers an eccentric family of noble stock,
a quite irregular life lived on the edge.
Did I believe her? At first, yes.
At least until I closed the door
with that peeling paint.
Then I noticed the corner in the road,
breathed in the fresh air,
saw the rush of wind in poplars
and rooks cawing their honest presence.
The further I drove the less I believed.
Narrow roads led into town, a realisation
that still – the artist had eluded me
Poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Subliminal
They put it up on billboards.
It made the headlines,
the tickers scrolling in Times Square
and TV screens back home.
It was like hearsay going viral,
became banal talking points
in satellite drivel,
a tsunami of information
which hid the pearl of truth.
This notion that everyone
who has ever lived
could be alive again today,
our eight billions souls
matching totals for the past;
all of us primed, exposed
for some terrible judgement.
How many saw the subliminal flash,
I’m not sure;
reputedly like an ad,
the split second image of cola
that wets your thirst,
though not on screens – in the sky.
A judgement? No ceremony, no glitz,
no alarming lord riding the clouds.
But word quickly got around,
between lines of copy,
in the things not said.
Tickers in Times Square
stuttered, then stopped;
people draining away
like water down plug holes.
Wi-fi was gone,
it’s just something else
we can’t grasp in the air.
The only tickers now
are the clocks, our watches,
while we keep one eye
on the sky
poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Ciscography 