Mike Barlow: Selected Poems E-Book

Mike Barlow

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 66

Beschreibung

Charmed Lives: charmed as in surviving, as in getting away with it, as in possessed, as in fortunate. The lives and moments in these poems are about being vulnerable, getting by and sometimes being at one with the world. This visually evocative and grounded writing is able to cross and recross the divide between the familiar and the strange.

Leseprobe

This ebook original Selected Poemspublished 2014 bysmith|doorstop BooksThe Poetry BusinessBank Street Arts32-40 Bank StreetSheffield S1 2DS

www.poetrybusiness.co.ukCopyright © Mike Barlow 2014ISBN 978-1-910367-22-3

Mike Barlow hereby asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design and ebook generation by alancoopercreative.co.uk

smith|doorstop Books is a member of Inpress,www.inpressbooks.co.uk. Distributed by Central Books Ltd., 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN.

The Poetry Business is an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation

Poems selected from:

Living on the Difference (Smith/Doorstop 2004),Another Place (Salt 2007),Amicable Numbers (Templar 2008),Charmed Lives (Smith/Doorstop 2012)

Acknowledgements

Versions of some of these poems have appeared in the following publications:

Ambit; Essex Competition Anthology 2003; Magma; The North; The Independent on Sunday; Poetry Nottingham; Poetry Review; Other Poetry; Penniless Press; The Rialto; shadowtrain.com; Smiths Knoll; Staple; Spotlight One; Ware Competition Anthology 2003.

‘Winter Coat’ won first prize in the Amnesty International Competition 2002.‘Rosie’ won first prize in the Ledbury Poetry Competition 2005.‘The Third Wife’ won first prize in the National Poetry Competition 2006.‘Mack’ won third prize in the Strokestown International Poetry Competition 2011.‘From the Cabinet of Idioms’ won third prize in the Larkin & East Riding Competition 2011.‘Wireless’ was a finalist for the Manchester Prize 2008.

Contents

Living on the Difference

Winter Coat

If You Were a Spy

The Absent House

Dark Matter

Treading Water

The Cellar

Initiation

Idle Talk

6 O’clock Tuesday

The Day’s Bite

Interlude

The Silence

Shadow Eater

Forensic Angel

They

Gamekeeper’s Son

No Trouble Between Us

Chosen Tree

Rolling

Offshore with Edward Hopper

Another Place(Salt 2007)

Aubade

June Bug

The Illustrator

Two Poems after William Maxwell

Evening Wind after Edward Hopper

Another Place

House of Winds

Butterfly

The Boat in My Brain

South Westerly

A Night Out

Versions of Heaven

Something Between Us

The Third Wife

A Hunger

Mapmakers

Fireproof

Confabulate

Unattended

Nocturne

Amicable Numbers(Templar 2008)

Twenty Something Going On Immortal

Out Of My Body

Shift

The Wedding Ring

Your Hand on My Heart

The Moon Unfinished

Stranded

The Long Loss

Driving Home

Abstinence

Charmed Lives(Smith/Doorstop 2012)

Notes Towards Charmed Lives

Wireless

Last Minute Leave

Her Father, Sharpener of Knives

From the Cabinet of Idioms

The Blue

Mack

Atlantic Room

Through the Blizzard a Man Walks

Starship Mazda

Flying Blind

As Is Our Custom

Local History

The Attic Fox

Rosie

The Four Houses

Prospect Street

Life

Thin Air

Holding the Door

Footage

The Dance

Living on the Difference

(Smith/Doorstop 2004)Winner of Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition 2003Short-listed for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize

Winter Coat

We were dancing when they came

but the four four of heavy boots put paid to that.

The chill sent us indoors to dig out what we could

for warmth. I found my uncle’s greatcoat from the war,

heavy, drab and mildewed, but double-breasted

with brass buttons and a collar I could hide behind.

It taught me how to stoop, to shuffle and queue

like an old man suffering from damp and memory.

I patched the lining with bits of coloured rag,

embroidered words there, whatever came to me:

tomorrow, sweetheart, polka, apricot, yesterday

and the names of friends I’d never see again.

Sometimes I’d stand out on the corner, whip it open

like a flasher, then run for the shelter of an alley.

One night I dreamt thunder, woke to hear the city sigh

as if a heaviness had just passed down the street.

Dead leaves scratched the pavement.

Across the yard someone tuned a fiddle.

Today we’re in the square again, dancing.

I wear the old coat inside out, sweat a fever underneath.

If You Were a Spy

you’d quote me Wordsworth as I pass:

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows

Like harmony in music;

your face uncrackable as code

awaiting my reply: There is a dark

Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles

Discordant elements...

Nor would you bat an eyelid

as dangerous ideas pumped round my heart.

You’d sacrifice your flesh to mine.

You’d do it for your country, let me in

without a visa, steal my DNA.

In the middle of the night

you’d slip out like a dream,

phone in to your anonymous controller,

download my fantasies

from a chip secreted in your navel.

If you were a spy I’d not see you again,

except as a distant figure in a crowd

who might be someone else.

The Absent House

Nights now the current of sleep cuts out,

jerks me conscious. I disentangle from our leglock,

slide from the bed’s raft, push through dark to find

beyond the bedroom door the house is gone:

a maze of shadows and a slight stir in the air as if

the words that chose us yesterday won’t let things rest.

Across the valley’s black lake hills rise up,

car lights sweep round a bend, crest a hump then sink.

Caught there in a stranger’s skin I cast a prayer up

to the crush of stars, step forward like an astronaut

towards a world caught at its end or its beginning.

Behind me both our threads unravel,

yours in sleep, mine finding its own way out.

Dark Matter

2 a.m. There’s a bright new sun

low down in the east where I’d expect

Jupiter to transit Gemini ­–

Cowkins’ halogen yardlight

triggered by a stray leaf

or a cat after mice.

If I could make dark matter

I’d dump a load right now,

fork it over their gate, scatter it

round the yard, spread it on meadows

to leach into land drains, the run-off

washing downriver to swallow light waves

the whole length of the valley,

extinguish floodlit mansions,

obliterate street lights, cut car beams

with the abruptness of a head-on crash.

I’d post some to the City Council.

As the young clerk slit the envelope

the illuminations round Morecambe Bay

would pop their bulbs, permanently fused.

We could look up then and find our way

from Cassiopeia to Aldebaran

with all the time in the Universe

to contemplate Andromeda

hurtling towards the Milky Way

at three hundred thousand miles an hour.

Treading Water

I learnt the art of treading water early,

clinging to his shoulders

as he swam the river from the garden end;

he’d give the word and I’d let go, the pause

before he turned and caught me

lengthening each time.

Later we’d cross side by side

to the far bank, stand on the bottom,

feet slithering on roots and rocks;

from this fresh angle gaze back at the house

to see it as a stranger might;

exchange a few words, what was meant

still left in the air unsaid.

In mud-brown rivers now

I celebrate this buoyancy,

strike out for the middle where

the land’s a place apart,

the memory of his voice

amplified across the surface,

carrying an awkwardness as if unsure

exactly how to put things.

The Cellar

The bare bulb my father hit his head on

stuck down from the ceiling at an angle,

its crooked pool of light tilting at empty boxes,

the broken pram, an armchair with its stuffing out,

a spade with a snapped worm-eaten shaft.

Cold shadows watched me, breathed dust.

I’d catch their voices in the scuff of mice,

the crack of plastic in a draught.

And if I thought out loud to reassure myself

I’d feel a footstep cross my grave.

Once the river flooded, three feet of water

unlocked it all. From the top step I’d look down

on empty paint tins, broken planks, a scuttle

bobbing in a scum of dust, hear a splash

as something swam across the dark.

At night my father would return from work,

strip to underpants, descend by torchlight, wade

waist deep to fill the meter with tomorrow’s shillings.