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Poem: Living As An Act Of Protest
I wanted to write a protest song then realized how, all along I’d been beating time with my pulse. My cardboard sign was turned to mush in the rain, and the slogan, gone in the rush of feet pounding it into the mud. My chant was the choked hello I gave to the Mumbai caller [...]
Continue reading...Poetry In A Prius
5. April 2012
Last September, my wife and I took a month and drove across western Canada, from Toronto to Victoria and back again. Along the way, I recorded my impressions as poems which I posted here at nouspique. As is my habit (or obsession), I also recorded my impressions with a camera. I blended the two as [...]
Continue reading...Poem: There’s a thread runs through everything
27. January 2012
There’s a thread runs through everything and a seamstress with a camel the size of a needle’s eye, though it’s not the eye that worries me, but the other end, a steel point that runs me through like the pin the entomologists use to fix their bugs to the mounting board. The Fates don’t clip [...]
Continue reading...Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong
13. January 2012
Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong. I mean, I’m happy for your diagnosis and all. I mean, not knowing is worse than floating in medical limbo. I get the stigma of epilepsy: how people can be cruel, even smart ones, with puppy words that never bite, at least not until they grow teeth. “No Karen,” she [...]
Continue reading...The Well-oiled Pistons of the Juggernaut
9. November 2011
Have you heard the news? Publishers Weekly reports that a Japanese insurance company purchased Toronto-based ebook seller, Kobo, for $315 million dollars. My initial response registered somewhere in the anger/betrayal range of the emotional spectrum. Rather than spend a lot of time bitching, I channeled that anger into a poem.reading underwater, words burble and pop [...]
Continue reading...Two Poems for a Wednesday Afternoon
19. October 2011
Half-choked Blooms I give my best to the morning and the balance to the afternoon in the half-choked blooms of the roses and the thorny brambles of a dying quince. Profile of a Poet i used to worship in a church but the air was stale and dead i slunked away an outsider not meek [...]
Continue reading...Poem #22: Back by Popular Demand
1. October 2011
what a fucked up thing to nail Jesus Is Coming to a tree beside a highway in north ontario a via dolorosa which is latin for road through the middle of nowhere and prompts an eternal question: if a soul declares its christ in a forest and there is no GOD to hear it… a [...]
Continue reading...Poem #21: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights
29. September 2011
“As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” – Luke 21:6 there’s a path in The Forks where we stumbled on a humble little man dressed in a loincloth and armed with a walking stick a [...]
Continue reading...Poem #20: The Legend of Lanigan
28. September 2011
as we drive into Lanigan population next to nothing a pull out and a sign and on the sign a map and above the map in bold- faced caps the word LEGEND I’m not thinking cartography and imagine a bright marquee flashing The Legend of Lanigan like The Legend of Zelda every place has its [...]
Continue reading...Poem #19: Boring
28. September 2011
I hate to drive through the prairies. It’s boring. It all looks the same. I love to shop at Wal*Mart. All across this great country, Wal*Mart is the place for me. (if performed, this verse should be repeated at least 300 times, once for each Wal*Mart in the country)
Continue reading...Poem #18: West Edmonton Mall
27. September 2011
Imagine our world is dying. Imagine survival depends on journeys to distant suns settling strange planets colonists voyaging for generations whirling in cigar-shaped tubes tribes of ten thousand adrift between the stars. Now imagine these crafts of our salvation are designed by the Ghermezian brothers: worlds of endless shopping salted by breaks in water parks, [...]
Continue reading...Poem #17: Stolen from a New World
26. September 2011
1. You can tell I’m not from here the way my jaw drops to let out a gobsmacked wow the way I pull out my camera wield it like a geologist’s hammer try to hack away a piece of beauty and haul it home with me. You can tell the ones who are from here [...]
Continue reading...Poem #16: The Wildest Thing
25. September 2011
What was the wildest thing you saw in all of wild Canada? Was it the roaring waters of Rearguard Falls? Or the black bear swimming across Mud Lake? Or the pine beetle chewing its way down the North Thompson River Valley? Or the protesters haranguing politicians on the steps of the Victoria Legislature? Or the [...]
Continue reading...Poem #15: Economic Action Plan
24. September 2011
self-congratulating signs litter roadsides all across the country harper masturbating on our shoulders what a good boy am i tearing down mountains raising up valleys wrapping ribbons of highway around the nation knotting a tight bow like mickey mouse ears a great big beautiful package three lanes each way squirting goods from a to b [...]
Continue reading...Poem #14: this is where
23. September 2011
and now it’s time to say good-bye we liked the fantasy of living here an almost perfect daydream imagining anew a new house a new view a new routine Paul, who made the leap from fantasy, gives the grand tour: this is where I worked my first job we had our first date our boy [...]
Continue reading...New eFiction from David Allan Barker
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13. April 2012
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