Christopher Barnes


The New House

Next day the burn of high summer.

I was dewy when the thundering beak
scabby heartstopping feathers
plunged through a full-face print of Malcolm X
sabotaging the props of the room.

Next day the burn of high summer.

At rush hour a bloated daddy longlegs
belly flopped onto the valance
dancing like a paralytic
across the sunbaked nodes of lino.

Next day the burn of high summer.

A nocturnal bogeyman of rotten gales
came and went, began again,
plunked open the sneck
unfolding the endless passage.

Next day the burn of high summer.


Mothballed
(after Ezra Pound’s The Garden)

Hollyhocks on her orlon midi blouse
gum up infectious railings.
A sundial fields this exquisite birdcage.
Blue-mould sky is analgesic
applying pressure on plumago, kingcup, buddleia.

Explosions have arisen, fixed:
coming out hop, a love-lyric from Mosley,
a hundredweight of turning traitors,
vehement months.
At 80 her keepsakes are cliff-edged.

Beige-cheeked sprogsblah-
blah through the side-path
to Comprehensive doors.
Swankpots, stiff-necked,
flagrantly dressed and feisty,
starkly alive.


Test Tubes

Once only the tussock’s
bananaslide of obverse moon
blanched its fool’s gold
waxing into a ubiquitous moth, glassy scales
vapour-like with fine drawn night lungs.

Legend in a blinding flash,
L.S.D. is my drug.

And again it’s unwrapped
a soaked-up compound.

Gather sounds in the Dene,
goblins crackle in wild flowers,
rats and chiffchaffs
on the jungle-green leaves of twiners.

Maytime and Whitsun,
Michaelmas and winter,
the nights are always sable black
edges tinged with pale purple…

…and little-butch Kristina,
insisting with reflection
image-building and invention
are wings on which we fly.

Disbanding infusions of Blue Note jazz
with Malcolm and the universe,
I had a Sun-Ra fathomable eye,
gobbledegook to plot
the electric orb of life.

And trips were like river Oz
with lighthouses,
a galaxy of broken water,
incredible bearings to find
before climbing down from the bar stool.


In The New Art

Polarities flux,
there’s a palpable distribution of shade
when you’re packing a gallery
- like braiding the wind
around a stranded hair.


This Way

All roundabouts light
and tomorrow’s look
backs
are casual
in themselves.

-all poems previously published at Zafusy