Poem: Benjamin

baby sitting on man s shoulder — Photo by Maria Lindsey Multimedia Creator on Pexels.com

Benjamin is the younger son
and I am your youngest.
The little things meant the most:
A bike trip to collect samphire from the marsh.
We saw Boston Stump rising from the mists,
perpendicular to that great horizon
in a silence broken only
by a lone redshank’s cry.
Years later when you gave me that last look;
just a glance which said so much –
that you didn’t want me to go.
None of us want to go, or even know when
but I’m sure you had an inkling
you’d soon leave this succession of goodbyes

Poem: Memory

adult-close-up-dress-2269723 — Photo by **Luizmedeirosph** from **Pexels**

When you told me the story
I could see the fire in your eyes.
How do you live with those memories?
How do you push all that
to the back of your mind
and move to another land
where you’re hated and vilified
simply for being who you are,
by people who have no idea
of what happened to you,
to your family who you left behind –
dead in the city which was once your home

copyright Francis Barker 2019

Poem ‘Perpendicular’

I’ve been baffled by this talk of
perpendicular, amused by the students
drifting by
in lurid hats and long scarves. Some are arm-
in-arm, quite oblivious to me, their
languid strides taunting
my age.
It’s a peculiar English thing, this style
of architecture,
(I know it hurts you to say) but I pretend
not to care, because my
recall of art history class is minimal
at best, a choice
that perhaps I regret now in these
idle moments,
sitting hunched in this cafe on
the square, bleeding its pasts. Maybe I’m jealous of
these boys, their short-skirted girls
with dark tights going on forever. And that bell,
it has a continental ring; I see
other occupants here, the shadows
of angular men in martial grey, mingling
with the smiles and chat of stylish women. But
now I have to watch you eat, your
gannet-eyes sucking coffee, washing
down the sachertorte you wolf. The mere
thought of those cobbles out there just beyond
this warping glass— you know
they are as hard as the freeze
which grips this place, the tissue of
your frozen heart

Poem ‘Hitch’

Hitch

A throbbing disco bass
callously pounding my chest,
turning symptoms of flu
into something feeling serious.
I’d dragged myself there
against good advice,
that trashy little down in Drab County
whose only claim to fame
was its fine timber spire,
which made historians
and architects alike, drool;
the sort of town which made
the English feel proud of their past,
even if the present bore no hope,
no prospect of colour. A future

And pride! What was I doing
knocking back gin like tomorrow
did not exist?
Barely able to stand—
but still lord of the dance!
But it was you who held the cards,
the full deck.
You knew what you wanted
and how to get it.
I was the hopeless case,
a clueless pawn in your set up
with worldly guys from the Smoke
who were waiting by the door,
(forever waiting by that door!)
deriding us country boys—

but
this
country boy
knew enough about language
of the body, its gestures.
The cold morning brought eerie clarity,
despite pain in my head
to match the dagger in the heart. Oh—
you could keep your magnanimous lift.
I was hitching back.
The full seventeen miles,
even if only the bravest of drivers
would dare stop to pick up
this jerk
in the sick stained jeans

poem and image © copyright df barker 2012

Poem ‘Chicxulub’

Chicxulub

I may never get to the Yucatan
to touch the KT boundary at its thickest

that iridium layer exposed
like a line of fat in the tastiest bacon

yet this was where the asteroid slammed,
when the dinosaurs were fried

atomised or blasted by the wind;
when Cretaceous gave way to Tertiary

and little shrews crawled out
into a scene like a nuclear winter.

Chicxulub— how the strange name grates
like the sound of the still ringing earth.

Merely saying it, I get a sense of deja vu,
like a sudden blinding flash

where I glimpse the endless burials
high on the mountain of Kailash

screened on some future sky

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