
Eternal battle
There is only one victor
Bless all the angels
Copyright Francis 2020
Eternal battle
There is only one victor
Bless all the angels
Copyright Francis 2020
I am the hated
I’m persona non grata
I will inherit
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
The silence is deafening,
tension taught as the tightest string.
We face not armies
but a hidden host
against whom we play
the game of our lives.
Who is first to blink?
Chequerboard duality
Playing the long game
copyright Francis Barker 2020
In the heat of battle
it’s easy to lose faith.
Give up, run away.
Watch something else,
bury your head in the sand
and pretend it isn’t real,
like a movie scaring you
which can be frozen any time.
It won’t go away
This hiatus must be faced
Remain in our faith
copyright Francis Barker 2020
copyright Francis Barker 2020
*To the uninitiated, a haibun is the combination of a prose poem and a haiku.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
The car parked marked with an R, as if your spirit had hovered for half a millenium to mark the deconsecrated spot. A few inches either side and you may have been lost forever, though there was little chance of that, so precisely did you engage with the living, the aggrieved who wished to dig up your true reputation with those poignant bones. The sight of that curved spine, it touched our hearts, wincing at the thought of you holding a sword and swinging it, yet swing it you did to save your country, your soul. The wounds so clear, graphically revealed the ignominy of your passing, the blood lust and hate of those thrusting at the legally occupied throne. History is just a story, after all, to which most of us consent, but I think of you often, Richard, the bloody white rose cut too soon on a dark August day.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Although Hannibal was to ultimately fail in defeating the Romans in the long term, he came very close to succeeding. The Punic Wars were all about who controlled the Mediterranean and beyond. In the early years the Carthaginians were masters of the region, with settlements in Sicily and Spain, as well as their burgeoning homeland in north Africa.
When Rome began to flex its muscles and seriously rival the Carthaginians during the third century BC, war was inevitable. Hannibal famously took the war to the Romans with an incredible invasion with a massive elephant led army through the Alps and into Italy, an audacious attempt to finish off the Romans once and for all. It nearly came off – but not quite.
Eventually, as the Romans later got the upper hand, they were to literally wipe Carthage off the map in one of the most heinous acts of revenge ever seen.
copyright Francis Barker 2019
copyright Francis Barker 2019