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All
Ear
By Christopher Barnes
The
Harrow School bathwasher
Enters
into the spirit
Of
acoustics wrapped in cisterns.
Chit-chat is babble
At
hand in a prune can
On the
kinkless end
Of a
passage of string.
Ear-witness to pleadings
Of a
Tommy gunned boy
Shot
for emptying a bath,
Heard
his gasps,
An
invisible choir.
A bump
so deadening
It
flushed him
With the hollowness of life.
* * *
* *
Also Ran
By Christopher Barnes
No more for me this Purebred zeal.
* * *
* *
An
Ignoble Liberty
By Christopher Barnes
“The
unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.”
Insidious red hair flames the Shire,
His
charger’s bolted on heels to collapse.
Stitch-plagued sapiens on foot from his sting
Dash
giddy faces, throat-cut red.
Gad-zooks!
It’s a fur-leap quickening pulse
When
the fox swoops a horsewhip,
Christens himself Master, collar-slips hounds
From
the bloodthirstiness of sink-money wage slaves
And
gads-about the dock leaves
Wild-geese chasing lordships and
ragtails alike.
* * *
* *
Antiseptic For A Foot-Stomped Ego
By Christopher Barnes
Infirm
afternoon.
I’m a
red-lead peahen from Apia,
Or a
chained marionette.
This
is a dark-leap mood.
You
pass me a sprig of witch-hazel,
Cajoling.
* * *
* *
Appetites
(after
People Hide Their Love by Wu-Ti)
By Christopher Barnes
Dogmatic in a Tsetung cap (Oxfam’s gift)
I
think of sterling. Purchase me an entertainment.
The
spoiled are visible from this window;
Money
oils the wheels of consumption.
The
buggers foxhole clinking silver. Pah.
I’m
wistful for what they’ve not poured out.
I
could guzzle economy-class vermouth
‘To
us’ on this chopsuey-perfumed sunset.
In
China moneybags are buying gongs
To clink absent interminable hours
* * * *
*
As
Harry Puts The Bomb Under The Audi…
By Christopher Barnes
A
streak of school uniform cross-crosses the driveway
And
morning on the boy’s lack-lustre hair
Nudges blameless.
* *
* * *
From the Spooks
poems by Christopher Barnes, UK |
