I am the hated
I’m persona non grata
I will inherit
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haiku: ‘Dystopian Inheritance’
Tag: Battle
Haiku: Into the Light
Steadfast warriors
Flinching is not an option
Forward into light
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haiku: Coup de Grace
Lack of protocol
He is breaking all the rules
Coup de grace actioned
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haibun: The Long Game
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
Haibun: Keeping The Faith
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
Haibun: War is Never Civil
Some arresting civil war portraits,
they are not easy to share.
Two young men posing awkwardly,
bow ties for battle, their absent smiles
due to the long exposure.
A picture may say a thousand words
but raises profound questions too.
It’s brother versus brother,
one in blue, the other in gray
and no quarter will be given,
courtesy of sponsors miles from the front.
There’s no fear in their eyes,
only the vacancy of open fields.
They will show allegiance to their flag,
let’s hope it protects them.
Both think their causes are just,
but many have come this way
and many more will follow –
in the name of liberty.
Their country may need them
but is it theirs?
These faded pictures
Forgotten names of young men
Sacrificial pose
copyright Francis Barker 2020
*To the uninitiated, a haibun is the combination of a prose poem and a haiku.
Haiku: Brothers
Brother fights brother
Egged on towards destruction
The blind are not led
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Sunday Poem: The Blooded White Rose
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
On This Day 218 BC: Hannibal Routs the Romans at Trebia
The first serious encounter of the Second Punic War ended in a decisive victory for Hannibal and his Carthaginian army at Trebia in northern Italy in 218 BC. Whilst the Carthaginian losses were relatively few, the Romans sustained massive casualties, quite possibly losing up to three quarters of their 40,000 strong army.
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
Haiku: Civilisation
Civilisation
The first city is unearthed
Let battle begin
copyright Francis Barker 2019
Poem ‘English Blue’
English Blue
Walk with me
into the grey breaking dawn
where that sticking ridge of blue –
an English blue
rolls on into soft distances
and strange dancing names
Stand with me
by those set whispering stones
in a steadfast line –
a sore English line
of rasping pipes and howling socks
mouthing our memory
like a warning to tomorrow
a land forlorn to all but itself
Then help me to bury him
not on some crying strand –
in firm English land
where hallows’ calls are grounded
our grief laid open
in the whitening bones of heroes
on this high scoured hill
*First published in ‘Poetry 24’ June 23 2011 and in the collection ‘Anonymous Lines’ available at amazon.co.uk
poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012
This was initially inspired by the summer solstice at Stonehenge, the large gatherings there.
Then I thought of all the other generations, what they thought of the standing stones, what they meant to them.
This is also a tribute to pre-Norman England, its freedoms that were lost, so almost takes the form of an elegy to a fallen Old English hero.
