Nature will provide
There’s enough for you and me
Riches all around
haiku and images ©copyright rp 2016
Nature will provide
There’s enough for you and me
Riches all around
haiku and images ©copyright rp 2016
The other day I had cause
to open your wardrobe and shoes
fell out like maggots
from a corpse.
New shoes
old shoes
blue shoes
broken shoes.
A pair for every day of the year
it seemed.
Try as I might
I couldn’t get them all back, for
I don’t have your gift
for packing or hoarding. So I
put some in my wardrobe
because I don’t buy any shoes.
poem and image ©copyright rp 2016
A light held aloft
nature’s path to liberty
treasure in a field
words and picture ©copyright rp 2016
Don’t hold out a torch
for me, I am not free of blame. This
is the dance of life where all are
culpable, soon to be drowned in
washes, the mangling gears
of pain. But who knows, these maelstroms
might be wormholes, revealing other
worlds and tableaux of night; dressings
of props across cold stone walls, taken
and rebuilt from dishevelled remains.
And where bards once played on stages,
hidden behind arras stitchings
and nom de plumes, we are all still
mere punters in pits macabre, holding
torches for celebrity – look at them, drunk,
high up with their gods of gold
© poem copyright David F. Barker 2013
She still puts on lipstick the same way,
calls it ‘lippy’ like it was a toy
One time she was his Venus
emerging fresh onto the shore of him
Now it’s Saturn who looks back
from the mirror
smeared,
croaking lame words of age
poem © copyright David F. Barker 2013
Inspiration is a leech on the
creature of conflict. How much
better it would be if our lives were
merely plain and ordinary, transcending
this light and shade, our existence
reliant only on plucking fruit
from a tree, cupping clean
water from a stream; and that
all my words and lines,
such as they are,
derived solely from love and light.
But we’ve seen to it, you
and me, have decided
to find out and exaggerate
every little nuance we have, to look across
at each other from these
dubious divides with poison eyes, our fixed
minds like two scorpions in a bottle.
And what we can’t steal or bribe or starve
from each other, we will fight for
to the end, till every last
sap of strength and all our blood is gone –
for that sweet taste of victory.
We’ve all spoken these platitudes,
though only seldom act
or relent. Even in our shadowy beginnings
the weary Gilgamesh knew; primeval
battles between dark
and light still raging on inside.
His remorse and grief leap out
at us from figures in dried clay like
they were made today, a reflection
of ourselves, our tears,
the lessons never learned. So,
if you must – go ahead.
Do your worst! Though please
make it your best
and I will write, endlessly
poem © copyright David F. Barker 2013
Sometimes
even when all systems say go
and blue skies beckon
like a smile that never ends,
it’s best to hold back,
to stop
and think
that any decision taken now
at this pining hiatus,
however right it may seem,
might turn our worlds
into something neither wants.
Your face, your smile.
Those eyes.
I shall wear them inside
© copyright David F. Barker 2013