Sometimes I hate you, I must
avert my eyes.
Other times I love you
and I’m crazy, I can’t leave you
alone.
Mostly though I’m indifferent,
you’re something there out
of my window on any
random day,
like the sparrows who chat huddled
side by side
on their privet hedge.
But whether you’re friend, enemy
or mere acquaintance, you are all
outsiders—
intruders in this precious
secret space
poem © copyright David F. Barker 2012
The window is
ajar,
just enough to
let in some air, to
tantalise the cat
hooked by
night’s soft invitation.
Something outside
is burning, hangs
in the yielding light, though
I’ve never
seen those crimson clouds
phase
to dusky pink
and then to grey.
It’s a flux which
eludes me
every time.
Magic, you might say,
like being in space,
and now
© copyright David F. Barker 2012
Subliminal
They put it up on billboards.
It made the headlines,
the tickers scrolling in Times Square
and TV screens back home.
It was like hearsay going viral,
became banal talking points
in satellite drivel,
a tsunami of information
which hid the pearl of truth.
This notion that everyone
who has ever lived
could be alive again today,
our eight billions souls
matching totals for the past;
all of us primed, exposed
for some terrible judgement.
How many saw the subliminal flash,
I’m not sure;
reputedly like an ad,
the split second image of cola
that wets your thirst,
though not on screens – in the sky.
A judgement? No ceremony, no glitz,
no alarming lord riding the clouds.
But word quickly got around,
between lines of copy,
in the things not said.
Tickers in Times Square
stuttered, then stopped;
people draining away
like water down plug holes.
Wi-fi was gone,
it’s just something else
we can’t grasp in the air.
The only tickers now
are the clocks, our watches,
while we keep one eye
on the sky
poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Days in Magic May
And I opened the eyes
you’ve been opening ever since;
from the sweet wafts of mayflower,
whose banks of pure white
herald the long summer days,
to the sudden sight
of all manner of flies,
all busy living their fast fuse lives.
You’d point to the swifts swooping close,
yet so completely removed:
how could we comprehend
a life spent solely in the sky?
But you spoke to me in magic—
the old names for flowers and trees
sitting soft in lush landscapes,
either lost or quite alien now
poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Rain
He was looking at the rivulets
stuttering down the glass,
ignoring the sodden cat on the windowsill
and the puddles in the grass.
Sitting down, I braced myself:
He’d say it wouldn’t do any harm.
I suppose it was his way of seeing things
when in the safe and warm.
Never mind that spring was passing,
never mind that I’d forked the grass over
for five darn days on end,
to drain away the numerous ponds.
Yet still there are some who insist
that we are the lucky ones!
So I put on my best April gear,
braving the cold and the wet.
I had to get out of his face, you see,
to hear some pessimism instead,
about the weather, the world,
or the state of this or that.
Sadly though, I have to say,
rain makes even the shy ones talk,
though they’d better watch out —
because I’ll be stabbing with my fork!
poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Ciscography 