Perfect Holiday

The sun is a big pan
With a prawn in it

Your bubblestorm smile
Relieves the heat
Of its redness

Oxygenated we sit
Unbalanced in dunes

When the solar hinges its web
Gold breathes of grey

Oiled acorn lids
Remind us
We smelled the pond’s grass

Where the blue hills are dying
Like a smashed glass vase
Under a watery tansy

Personal Mute Sufferings

Monday.
I’m a peel of skin about to rip
From deep-set pressures. The sky is waiting.
Freckle-coloured Ahamed Yacoubi wants to learn
The chromatic scale of my art.

The eye of Ahamed is all cheetah,
He’s tutoring a gingery technique;
Under dried-up stars we distinguish fine detail,
Moonlight spice on a brush.

Wednesday.
The last cloud died two days ago.

Catastrophe’s louring – he’s interned
Without the suspense of trial
(tempting a 14 year-old German Adonis)
Scuffles leap out, a real to-do.

Burroughs takes time out from The Naked Lunch,
Scribbles to Ginsberg,
“The Arab dogs are upon us.
Many a queen has been dragged shrieking
From the Parade, the Socco Chico,
And lodged in the local box
Where 60 sons of Sodom now languish.”

Thursday.
There’s a strain in bleached mortar,
Butterflies trembling in the dirt.

I’ll drag on nevertheless.
Bundling gifts of food and canvases
Past the prison-house commissionaire.

From the Francis Bacon Poems

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.

Email: Christopher Barnes

Return to Table of Contents