It’s My Leg Again

No-one noticed my performances.
The blank stares
Free-floating logs of anxiety
The oh-yes-Mr. Barnes
Spoken over the Zulu woman’s screams
And the palpitating games of hopscotch.

There might be something in the room
There might be something in another room
Something black and spidery.
I’d better go and check
This room, that, how many rooms are there?

Calm down! You’ll create a disturbance.
Incapacity. Death.
Miss one, two three, hop one hop two.

Then the tremors came
The laughing, the sweating
The crying…

It’s incurable
I’ll have to have my leg chopped off
One day.
I was conscious…
I could see myself going off the rails.

Then the terrible flower grew
Like a great smiting sun
Pushing out comfort
In a bleakly human way.

Itinerant

I drink anywhere I please,
The White elephant,
Club De Lisa, Sylvios,
Other blues joints,
Louisiana bayous,
Muddy ole swamps.

One of these days I’s goin’ to Chicago
To buy myself a handsome
National steel guitar,
Run it right down to the 708 Club,
East 47th Street.

Heard my man on Alligator Records
Moanin’ ‘bout whiskey in his eyes,
Followed ‘im blue to Cairo Town,
Flat ‘cross the Mississippi River,
Rollin’ down to Jackson.

Never did find ‘im so I’s cryin’
Smack back with my sistah,
Dusty brown dog, chickenshacks,
Mosquitoes at dusk, moon reflectin’
White sheets, twin-stride tracks,
Gardenias before dawn, sycamores lynch high
Swaying wet with mornin’ dew.

Christopher Barnes in 1998 won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 he read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology Titles Are Bitches. Christmas 2001 he debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of his poems. Each year he read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and he participated in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of his collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh. On Saturday 16th August 2003 he read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

He also has a BBC webpage BBC and Video Nation
(if first site does not work click on SECTION 28 on second site.

Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored him to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. He made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about his writing group. October-November 2005, he entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. He made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. The film is going into an archive at The Discovery Museum in Newcastle and contains his poem "The Old Heave-Ho". He worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University before touring the country and it is expected to go abroad, funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bioscience Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life. He was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children's literature building. In May 2006 he had a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre. Take a look at their website Gilbenkian

The South Bank Centre in London recorded his poem "The Holiday I Never Had", and he can be heard reading it on Poetry Magazines

Email: Christopher Barnes

Return to Table of Contents