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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 12 NUMBER 1 JAN 2010
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CHRISTOPHER BARNES ___________________________________________ three poems by CHRISTOPHER BARNES Poem for Father’s Day
Without letup I’m petulant At not for the life of me
cremating my parents. A warming lie-in-wait with
tongs, Would have saved me. No ticklish squeeze Real coal fires To stoke the house down, In the future of being four. By the havoc of eight Their salt rubbing was a
grasping ulcer. This good-effect blond is
still heart-black. Smoulder cigarette. A soured crackle haunts the
room.
The Recyclers Boys heavy-eyed on the hay, budging, spring - they'll
step to the ladder of morning, warily cold-shouldering the
doorposts, stretching from their nest - a discarded Coke can - to swim the hours till noon. Against fun-loving wind is the punched out way in. Fizzy sunlight rims
factory-built aluminium. Tube-vault grey fits to the
decking, a dross of patted hay. Distant, a whistle of rivers flat-out to piers.
The Screenager And The Groover His life is a campus novel, a
legend in passed time. He mellows his beard, dustball feet in hippy
flip-flops and does not catch the drift of his one ostensible son. Offshot Zachary's wordy way beyond jive, pronounces old man tree
hugger, whose nosh-ups are frankenfood. A brewpub dodderer, a pilot without jumpstation. A dainty palate of bytes,
chips and cursers are cakes and ale
for Zach. Getting wired is sternly
off-message. But there's a Mexican chorus,
(something 'bout Boogaloo) he reminisces, a lullaby from
the cradle. It's been intensifying like
new, in meatspace, between the
ears, it tickles now and then waiting to
connect. CHRISTOPHER BARNES, UK The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded 1999,
based in the US. Copyright © 2009 Christopher Barnes. Nothing in this magazine may be downloaded, distributed, or reproduced without the permission of the author/ translator/ artist/ The Writers Post/ and Wordbridge magazine. Creating links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within other framesets or in other documents is copyright violation, and is not permitted. |
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