offcourse literary journal Issue#31 Poems by Christopher Barnes

https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
http://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975

Laundromat

Maria’s vocation settles on account,

The innings are irksome, her set-up low-ranking,

Until today that is, from the word ‘go’ she will be,

The essential one in a sea of faces

As seen on CNN.

She’s whiffling to the back number love song,

Lets the saxes wheeze fripperies in her brain.

The steamer and the tumble driers rasp

To the crack of doom, forever and always.

Detail:- the khaddar and duffel of a wardrobe

Parade in a showcase of pop-bang cellophane,

Star-spangled like new.

No. 46 is the Lewinsky truss,

Minus the smithereens of chocolaty nibbles,

Insubstantial things on the linings,

Indigo snow from the beauty aid box,

The dancing light of tapioca,

Sugarless jump-back of tough perfume,

The President’s sap.

Lautrec’s Eye

The light was yeastier that day

She pulled out the creases in her silky stocking

Like a grammarian combing through a text

He watched her framed in a tenement window

A disrobing Frenchness

In the moonlight

Chalked in white at the hip

Streaked over plum breasts

Clearing the punctuation

Of a pink chiffon scarf

Quickly he scratched

Her humanely observed lines

Flyfishing for the essentials

Below the ripples of a page

Leading Forms Into The Light

Let me throw in a single mess-mate of mine,

Milady of this toast of the tour club, bachelor girl,

Pitch-dark Medea with a Soho chuckle,

The test case: Miss Muriel Belcher.

She has an on-the-loose locution,

Fumes of slop-beer and sweat, blends drinks

For a motley crew coven

Who smarm into retreats

In the hole-and-corner lay out

Of the Colony Room.

I’ll paint her many times

Surroundings dipped bice against jade

With a whacking impact

Of the lip and gullet as she tos and fros

To curse a mortal soul.

The casts in red will be volatile

And the commotion of her audacity

Schismish against the laid-low coolness of backdrop.

They’ll not be passport true-to-lifes,

Though that discernable neck,

Sure thing nostrils, crystal-clear hair-line,

Categorical cut-off of eyebrows,

Will leave an echoey tenderness.

Another time. You will scrutinize

And see the things I see:

The head is human and yet

There is something about the bracing,

The soaring bend of the homing shark.

(based on an extract from Francis Bacon

by John Russell)

Leazes Park

Wan moon beating slow

A cricket chirps in long grass

You too make bubbles.

Legend

In Jesmond they’d call it chichi

Though parties are done now,

Faded dresses apathetic in wardrobes

Plucked out in the frosty moiré of afternoon –

She checks for stains, wool-gatherings past.

Brackish wit sliced those nights,

A shimmer, chandeliers, hotel lobbies,

Gold dripping from wrists, angles to glint

The sheer god-damn extravagance

Of coke.

At forty passion, red carpets, men

Leaving steam hot, probing other tangles.

A stomach the size of Moscow. Sagging

Breasts female fingers have touched,

Streaked with wax, flaming lipsticks.

Ten years on she’ll never be Jean Muir again –

She fingers the label, sizzles up the zip

Scratching bobbles off the hem, folding it

In tissue for an Oxfam princess.

Leicester Square

(after Miroslav Holub’s Subway Station)

Here-and-there

They elbow bored tunnels.

With sundown chins,

Hollow-eyed, they’re snoringly lifelike.

Behind nine spurts of warm air

Night light will be fully-charged with pleasure,

A love-in of abdomens and feelers

Will sneak out the bliss they crave.

Grid reference – The Circle Line

Where day jumped off.

Eastbound, eastbound, eastbound,

Stuck-in-a-groove.

I clack jagged-edged jaws,

A menacing crush

As Mr. X shrugs at a late edition

‘downcast man blows track’,

Then

Forty seven bring-downs step on a train.

I’m static in the chink

At the upside of a hard sell

For a shaky tickled-to-death operetta

In a pit for drones.

Christopher Barnes work has appeared in Offcourse numerous times. Search for him at https://www.albany.edu/offcourse/index_all.html

Some bio details...

in 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.

On Saturday 16th August 2003 I read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.

I also have a BBC webpage www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/gay.2004/05/section_28.shtml and http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/gay_history.shtml (if first site does not work click on SECTION 28 on second site.

Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, I 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. I 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 my poem The Old Heave-Ho. I 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. I was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children's literature building. In May I had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre http://ptag.org.uk/whats_on/gulbenkian/gulbenkian.htm

The South Bank Centre in London recorded my poem "The Holiday I Never Had", I can be heard reading it on www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456