Fraiku: Brood

Posted on 2024/05/10 by Bartholomew Barker

Every 13 years poems dig
themselves up — molting metaphors
open mic drone

(Found this little guy, legs up, twitching on the sidewalk. I took this shot after turning him over. Hope he gets laid and dies well.)

Posted in Ephemera | 13 Comments

When I Woke Up in Panoply

Posted on 2024/05/04 by Bartholomew Barker

I am very proud to announce that a new poem of mine, When I Woke Up, has been published at Panoply. Many thanks to the editors Andrea, Clara, and Jeff for accepting my work.

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Fraiku: Free the Press

Posted on 2024/05/03 by Bartholomew Barker

Reporters are annoying
but even noisy busybodies deserve
to live and witness

for World Press Freedom Day

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Savor the Confluence

Posted on 2024/05/02 by Bartholomew Barker

I’m proud to announce that one of my poems was included in the anthology Savor: Poems for the Tongue! by Friendly City Books. I haven’t received my contributor’s copy yet but it looks like a delicious collection of food poems.

(BTW, if you like food poems, I published a chapbook of them a few years ago called Milkshakes and Chilidogs.)

And, for my readers in the Triangle of North Carolina, I’ll be performing at the Confluence Exhibit opening reception tomorrow in Pittsboro from 6pm to 9pm with a bunch of my favorite poets from Living Poetry. We all wrote poems to the objets d’art in the exhibition. I’ll be reading One, the poem-a-day I posted April 13th. Hope to see you there.

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Poet Trees

Posted on 2024/04/30 by Bartholomew Barker

Some poets take the reader by the hand
and guide them through the forest.

Some poets blaze a well-marked trail
but leave the reader to walk alone.

Some poets climb the high branches
and throw acorns at their readers.

And some poets hide among the ancient
trunks, like Bigfoot, barely glimpsed
between the words.

 

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend.

Thus concludes the 2024 edition of the April Poem-A-Day Challenge.

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Elegy

Posted on 2024/04/29 by Bartholomew Barker

You gave me my first telescope
yet never felt the full shadow
of a solar eclipse.

But if you’d lived to a hundred
and ten, one would’ve come to you,
as I did, a pilgrimage to your grave
in the path of totality.

You kept a database of all my relatives
on hand-typed index cards sorted
in second-hand library card catalogs,
begetting my love of genealogy.

And though you never visited
the archives of Scotland, you carried
me there, your world wandering grandson.

You are the giant
upon whose shoulders
I now stand.

For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt, Pilgrimage, and NaPoWriMo Day 29 Prompt, use a word from Taylor Swift‘s new album, The Tortured Poet Department, as your title.

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Dancing with the Stars

Posted on 2024/04/28 by Bartholomew Barker

“You need chaos in your soul
to give birth to a dancing star”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve seen stars dance
in my telescope—
a slow sensual clutch
around their barycenter,
bound by attraction.

I am exaggerating like a poet.
They are not holding hands,
not having hands, no arms
around a waist or neck,
not having arms or waists or necks.

They’re not even moving
at least as far as my eyes
can see but I’m merely human,
a vague chaotic flicker
in a vast and ancient universe.

(Earlier today, I took part in a Living Poetry Germination Workshop, where we wrote to a series of prompts. I was only able to participate for 45 minutes but I still got four poems started and this was one of them. The prompt was the Nietzsche quote that I used as the epigram. We’re doing most of our meetings on Zoom these days and poets of all levels are welcome to join us for review workshops, open mics and various other poetry events.)

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Like a Tree in April

Posted on 2024/04/27 by Bartholomew Barker

We hold deep conversations
when you’re not around.
I explain why I don’t enjoy
Star Trek: Discovery
and what could convince
me there was a god.

You’re the perfect companion
always asking the right questions,
never probing where I don’t want
to go. If you were really here
I’d fumble and wouldn’t say
what needs to be said aloud,

like a tree in April whose buds
have not yet broken into leaf.

Today we’d like to challenge you to write an “American sonnet.” What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but . . . fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter.

And I’m proud to announce that one of my poems, Happy Hour, has been published at the Lothlorien Poetry Journal. I hope you’ll read this “bonus” poem-a-day that I wrote years ago so it doesn’t count. Thanks, Strider, for granting this one a home!

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Fraiku: Campus

Posted on 2024/04/26 by Bartholomew Barker

Listen the protestors,
unkempt, thin and idealistic,
they are usually right.

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Seven Questions I ask all my muses

Posted on 2024/04/25 by Bartholomew Barker
  • If you were a flower, what kind would you be?
    • How would you feel if you received a bouquet of yourself?
  • If you were a cloud, what shape would you be?
    • How would you feel about meteorologists?
  • If you were a color, what shade would you be?
    • How would you feel if all the lights went out?
  • When holding hands with your poet,
    • do you caress the callous on their middle finger?
    • do you trace the veins and tendons on the back?
    • do you read their palm for clues?
  • When watching a movie in the theater with your poet,
    • do you ask why they were the only one laughing or crying?
    • do you sneak in a bottle of wine?
    • do you sit in the back row?
  • When the moon rises orange behind the trees,
    • do you say La Bella Luna in a different language each month?
    • do you turn your poet to face the east?
    • do you howl like a wolf?
  • And how can this poet inspire you?

(Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and adapted by modern interviewers.)

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