Too Much White Currant Wine

by Christopher Barnes

String puller Sholto's picnicky feast
petered out
when the grain weevil came to Alderney
upsloping the sun-dried barleycorn
with a fete of meandering squirms.

In the tunic-maker's window box
a Cabbage White butterfly
bell-tinked the cabbage rose
and the hand-in-hand next doors
abstracted cold snacks.

As the fruit fly straggled on sugared silk
a moody breeze skidded easy-peasy
capsizing the lacquered skirts
of a quintuplicate of ambroiia bugs,
dog-hairing (a point of no return) their gippy tummies.

A bristle of fudgecake beetles
scraped pretty-pickle legs
underlit by the bottom-up salver.

But it wasn't until the honey ants
slobbered into the Tucker porcelain bowl
downturning in a syrupy realm of light,
that the upstairs maid, Jacquetta,
glumly threw up.

Copyright © Christopher Barnes 2003

Topsy-Turvy

by Christopher Barnes

In widow's weeds, the bull, the sun,
the flower, the light bulb—it clings
to room 7 of Centro de Arte Reina Sofia,
Guernica, the fizzled-out horse, the woman.

Copyright © Christopher Barnes 2003

The Exador of Froth and Beards

by Christopher Barnes

... whereupon the Orator tows on a party-going reservoir of Fosters lager flattering the sputter that has undersurfaced the pips of his ensuing 23 minutes pricetag of substance to utter and the stupendous flow gaspsBEARDS! and the dainty bubbles overspill his brain with an excrescence of tenuous mouthfuls to chew on the speciality of nursing a beard. Beards! Beards! With top floor hands he stakes the promised land nudging Tesco's trolleys bulldozing the Big Issue jump jockey with his erudition and pretty soon he snares an imaginary legion of biblical-beer extent. But the lifelike be-a-nobodies plenty-to-do along with blood running cold hide-and-seeking his eye supposing a put-up to this mucking about excited bean belly-butterflies—he might bend a knee to the explosive riddle of the philosophy of fuzz.

Copyright © Christopher Barnes 2003

Nudge-Nudge

by Christopher Barnes

There is no light-grey snow
to soapflake the afternoon.

The cufflinked pimp is at Mother's graveside.
He's a headstone limpet grasping
a stylingmousse-blue African violet.

He thinks of something Rilke said,
"the round edge of the wall in the monastery garden
is full of mosses
and has spots of an utterly luminous green,
such as I have never seen."

Bully-boys the leafstalk like a pin-up girl,
stomach-turning,
a thumb-crawl in slow-time ...

Copyright © Christopher Barnes 2003

Mr J Cloth

by Christopher Barnes

He's teeming rain-slips thin
as he sentinels the ground
for throw-aways of dross.
Cosmic background comes, then suns
to gloss
his friendless store-bought clothes.

Turn and turn about
from dead of night to six
in drips and drabs you hear him.
He harmonizes wheelie bins
in a pandemic of lanes to vanishing point
and wipes away what dogs expel.

Four corners of his being
are this—obsessively—obsessively
as no slip-up can be shut out.

He disposed of a lover they sigh
and has been ferreting for Cupids ever since
behind every gleam of litter.

Copyright © Christopher Barnes 2003