Tag: poetry

Grieving


Anne Boleyn? Hans Holbein the Younger [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

(a response to Holbein’s sketch,
purportedly of Anne Boleyn)

So, is this really you? Those full lips
well kissed, I have no doubt,
your pretty duckys hidden, fit for ravagers
we call kings. Holbein’s profile, it
simply shines your intelligence, courts
with language, love and ideas,
perhaps a little too much for kings
and enemies to take, at a time
when your sex are meant to be
little more than slaves and vessels
for petulant princes.

But no one can stop me grieving:
I imagine you blink, turn
and smile at me. Oh,
you are strong and keen, yet tender
and kind like all mothers
and lovers should be. No wonder
other men may have dreamed
on those lips, carried away
by your verve, which only victors
ever get to call treason. Now I wish
I could touch your fine chin
and whisper: “Elizabeth—
remember Elizabeth!” My words
vanish into air like justice, while you
stare blankly through Traitor’s Gate;
but this little girl takes the better part
of you, better than any king before
or since, of this abject state

poem © copyright David F. Barker

Too Many Faces

They call it intoxicating. Spices full
on humidity, shrinking circles of heat run
down the small of my back, diesel
drips in sweat, salt on my lips— so
why do lungs full of carcinogens
feel like a relief? In the end you tire
of the faces, always staring, smiling
all the time like marigold hearts
worn on loose sleeves. Not so much
an assault on senses as an attack
on my sanity; overindulgence
in samsara. No wonder, then, this
belief in rebirth, endless circles of pain
to match this growing pain in my head:
There are, after all, only so many faces
to go round

© copyright David F. Barker 2012

Peterborough, England, BST

Open Link Night ~ Week 54

What is Left

So a Brit wins le tour, a bit
like a Brit winning Wimbledon— not! A rare

thing and pretty unlikely, but
do I care? I’m supposed

to care about Olympics, about flames
and once in a lifetime things

but I don’t. It’s not me and like
Thatcher said, there is no society, no ‘us’

at all and certainly no UK because Scotland
is on its way and Wales isn’t far

behind. Little England is
left to carry the can, where all

the cash used to be and her castles
burn. And then, there’s me

© copyright David F. Barker

Poem ‘A Tale of Love’

I first fell in love with you in a map,
a sort of pentagon, sacré, teased out
a touch like a stretched piece of dough. Then
it was the names, the easy non-phonetics
conjuring visions and colour through
Fontainebleau and Versailles. But then,
of course, it’s the history that defines me
and you, those first tragic lines etched
large, bold and bloody by le Bâtard, a family
dispute of a single culture cleaved
by hatred and greed, melded by chivalry.
For so long la Manche was not a divide
(and never la différence), more a conduit
of ideas flowing north, longbows sailing
south. Oh, we have divided since; your gift
for re-invention, dispensing with kings, that’s
something I cannot conceive, even though
we did have a go. But I only have to
look at Claude and Edouard, Paul
and Vincent, to get it, to understand— there’s
a love neither can openly express, though
look more closely, you will find it in our eyes

© copyright David F. Barker 2012

Poem ‘Fugitive’

fugitive

for so long you said nothing,
you let it all well-up inside.
It swelled like some geyser beneath you,
or some vast unstoppable tide

but clearly the choice was yours;
to sit quietly and safe in silence,
or face the dangers of disclosure.
what use was there in pretence?

so you told those cowards straight,
to carry on with ignominious lies,
because you knew the whole truth –
heck, you saw it with your own eyes!

so now you ride trains in the night,
mingle quietly in busy queues;
the world doesn’t want to see you
nor cares of the state of your shoes

and then one day, maybe quite soon,
you’ll vanish with barely a trace;
at least you knew your rabid enemy
defined the justice of your case

© copyright David F. Barker 2012