Think of me
please pay your respects
to the dust trodden into carpets,
ingrained in chairs
and in curtains,
all along these tired window ledges
Then will you write my name
on the dusty shelves
where my books used to lie?
For in truth
they were more surely me
image and poem © copyright dfbarker 2012
Underground
By night the town paints clandestine shapes,
broach spires pierce a black arras
and decorated naves of Barnack rag
drape like sepia backcloths for ghosts
and revellers who may pass unaware
on equal terms, merely inches
yet centuries above charcoal rivers
channelled underground,
flushing silently till the night
draws out heat
and chatter of day
Streets swarm with strangers now,
unspeaking shadows in recesses
cupping whispers of gamy tongues,
smoking pipes like brittle bones
with fresh memories of tides
and the deep keeled boats
dragged up onto gravel headlands
by gangs of gruff rovers
and rippling Thracian soldiers
from legions awake to chance,
their unwrested sin
poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012
Mare Incognito (for J)
Somewhere between
Southwold and Saltfleet,
that’s all I’m prepared to say.
Where eastern seaboards
lose out each year,
glacial moraines fall away
with no answer to tides
that even kings couldn’t resist.
England crumbling in eye and mind.
Cliffs.
Now that could be a clue
but they’re not too high,
though high enough to sit on
and savour the grey seas,
the view, such as it is.
Does it matter?
Fine days won’t do, not to this mind.
Sea mists, fogs, or battleship skies
which leave enough to be imagined,
whose easterlies cut me into me
whatever I wear—they’re best—
when the only way to keep warm
is to keep moving, jogging
below the sleek aerobatics of herring-
and black-backed gulls,
super-marine harbingers of storm
doing their best to bring life to
Mitchell’s drawings of seaplanes—
and the spitfire.
Such an elegance in death.
But I’m here to forget about war,
about politics which can only
divide and kill.
Grey days mean I’m alone
in a moody make-believe.
I turn my back on all that was,
think about what might be,
where nightmares a few miles away,
that lost world within my right hand,
might just be gone when I return
or answer the bleep which says
I’m connected, branded for life.
Leave me now.
For a little while longer
let me say I’m free
image and poem © copyright df barker 2012
Safe Distance
Another old soldier who never speaks.
Sitting stiffly in braces and polished leather,
his medals left in bric-a-brac drawers
with sovereigns and half crowns,
concealing the nugget –
the tale worth telling from this safe distance.
A story of a corporal who carried
a limp subaltern from no man’s land
to safety through a Belgian quagmire.
Lieutenant Turnbull was a right bastard,
but no point in resentment or fear
when a bullet could tear through your head
at any time. Simply had to do it and get on.
His blank eyes, though still blue,
cannot disguise the bare brown soul,
like the pounded landscape, the kit bag
he carries around everywhere.
Until the lights go out.
© copyright df barker 2012
First published in poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available at amazon.com
Your House
I’d arrived there at noon
stunned by the view
from your window,
that vast sweep of shoreline.
I had earl grey tea, some carrot cake;
you made do with strong coffee.
You said we should talk, walk,
try to mimic the clockwork sanderlings,
laugh at comic turnstones,
all busy birds of the beach
I hadn’t realised
how far we’d walked.
The polar wind which swept us along
brought stinging tears to my eyes,
though little could detract
from the sight of your house
standing steadfast against the shore;
nothing except for the florid face
all cheeky smiles and winks,
that prodding finger in my side
image and poem © copyright dfbarker 2012
Ciscography 