zafusy

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.

Christopher Barnes

(after Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘Hurrahing In Harvest’)
The leaf-down season’s a suffix. This moment has
a dummy’s charm. Serviceberries grease over.
Top-heavy, split level, blue sky’s Plexiglass.
Wait for unsprung embankments,
silver-grey scud clouds,
a celestial sphere of junk,
acid dyes, volatile chlorine clusters
stinging the tips
of a GM harvest.

Christopher Barnes

In sync jaws swing;
woodworm in the baton.

Christopher Barnes

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

Christopher Barnes

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.

Christopher Barnes

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

Christopher Barnes

The clap and slam
of kitty-eyed marbles
over orange-pink and purplish wagon wheels
of a polyester bedroom rug,
shallow cut as gossamer threads,
a one-dimensional, under rub to on-ice air.

Blasts skim the nonstick door,
back up from lilac skirting,
rat-tat-tatting a grey-glass window,
that sash with a buckshot peephole
condensing powdery snow.

He was a prettyboy pocketmouse, I clinched
into the mousebox, monofilament eyebrows,
epileptic whiskers,
a gnaw of indifference
to cuddlesome nerves of fur.

Blanched on the fire -
I’d been black-sheepishly forgetful,
“it’s dead, it’s dead,” I screamed,
blind to the mask of hibernation.

Christopher Barnes

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

Christopher Barnes