nouspique.com » Verse

Poem: Living As An Act Of Protest

David Barker — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:26:52 +0000

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 who said I’d save
a lot if only I’d hear him out.

I paused:

a hiccough in the turning wheel,
a gap-toothed gear that kept the deal
from closing at its proper time,

the TSX, a market blip,
the Dow of Pooh had gone to shit,
all because I scratched my head and paused,

the meter broken, the line unscanned,
the wristwatch smashed, the second banned,
and not a tick from the ticker.

but my pulse
marches
on

Poetry In A Prius

David Barker — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:12:27 +0000

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 a photo/poetry chapbook which I printed in a softcover 8×8 format and gave to my wife for her birthday. Maybe I’ll print more and sell them here. In the meantime, you can download a pdf copy (24.5 Mb) to gawk at on your computer. It’s my favourite kind of book (lots of pictures).

Poem: There’s a thread runs through everything

David Barker — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:38:58 +0000

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 the thread, you know.
Whoever said that was prevaricating.
What they do is jam us flush
to the other beads they’ve sown in place
so we can’t see our comrades strung
out way down the line. Except when
it gets late and they fold the cloth
and they stuff it in the linen closet.
There, we huddle, afraid in the dark,
rubbing up against those with whom
we feel so connected it makes us puke.
With their breath on our faces, and
their stink and their sweat and the
strangeness of their strange tongues
worming wet willies into our ears,
we complain that it was better when
the cloth was laid out flat and
we could hold our pattern true,
lines neat, all the while bragging:
There’s a thread runs through everything.

Thanks a shitload, Karen Armstrong

David Barker — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:36:10 +0000

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 agreed, adding …
“Hospitals are not for intelligent people.”
Woof. I must be super stupid, thinking
illness was the cause for my admissions.

I wish you could have met my friend
who was so smart he hanged himself.
If only he could have been stupid
and gotten the help he needed.

I get the freedom of diagnosis: how
it drops the scales from your eyes
and lets you see you are not mad,
your mind, not “irretrievably flawed”:

the world has been given back to you.
Has it been taken away from me?
Don’t make me the baby you toss
out with your tepid bath water.

This is a poetic response to some passages I read in The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness, a memoir by Karen Armstrong. I read it as research for a novel I’m writing in which one of the characters is an ex-nun. As I had hoped, the memoir gave me insight into the experience of transitioning from convent to the secular world. I admire Armstrong’s writing and her work to promote understanding amongst the world’s major religions. However, I tripped over something that I couldn’t ignore. Armstrong recounts mysterious episodes of fainting, forgetfulness, finding herself in strange places, experiences of anxiety and panic. The sisters of her order believed she was hysterical and engaging in attention-seeking behaviour. Later, as an academic outside the convent, she was referred to a psychiatrist and even hospitalized for psychiatric treatment. Eventually, she received a correct diagnosis: epilepsy. However, her relief was accompanied by an “it could have been worse; I could have been mentally ill” sentiment. To which I respond: so what if you were? In the long run, would it have made any difference? Should it make any difference?

I suppose what bothers me is that, although she is sensitive to the problem of stigma, at least in relation to epilepsy, she nevertheless writes in a way that contributes to stigma in relation to mental illness.

No related posts.

The Well-oiled Pistons of the Juggernaut

David Barker — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:50:58 +0000

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
in the light up there,
the bright crisp, while
kobo kobo kobo
the well-oiled pistons
of the juggernaut
metal leviathan
jaws wide, throat
ready to swallow
swim, you minnows,
you selfish
shelf-ish shell
fish, you inky
preoccupied
octopi, swim,
you albacore
and dolphins and
plankton, don’t
forget the plankton
kobo kobo kobo
with its sonar
and torpedoes dark
the underbelly hull
swim, for reading
is at a premium
now the looming mass
of capital slicks
over the deep, its
killing drops adrift
on the roiling swell and
seep into our scales
still it rumbles on
kobo kobo kobo
circling overhead
for another pass

No related posts.

Two Poems for a Wednesday Afternoon

David Barker — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:00:11 +0000

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 not powerful
an inheritor of nothing
then to the church graffiti
the living word tags back
and forth i merely stared
from my pew never joined
the conversation a xylene
apostate I watched a show on tv
criminal minds propaganda
the mountie always gets his man
the one in charge authority
they profiled a killer an outsider
so outside even the outsiders
rejected bland unto namelessness
he had a disorder that meant he
could register but not feel pain
some kind of symbolic coincidence
i wonder if i’m like that killer
there is no difference between acts
of poetry and violent crimes

No related posts.

Poem #22: Back by Popular Demand

David Barker — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:41:34 +0000

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 tree-spiking evangelist is
no concern of mine no souls
harmed in the posting of this
sign only a narcissism fed
by an imaginary friend on a tree
or what about the lady ahead of me
in line at tim horton’s
who goes on and on about
The Conway Twitty Tribute Show
how she brought the show to town
packed five hundred into the hall
could have booked a second show
only HE wouldn’t let her
more interested in the stampeders
three hundred tickets left unsold
for that one, no wonder HE got
fired from managing the motel
don’t you hate how some people
go on and on as if you should
know what they’re talking about

Poem #21: The Canadian Museum for Human Rights

David Barker — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:33:34 +0000

“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 strange sight in Winnipeg though less strange if we had stumbled on him in wintertime we would have figured the cold froze him solid instead of the rabid pack of corporate sponsors who encased his memory in bronze behind him a whorled latticework of steel and stone sprouting comic book crystals to the sky and the hope that with Jor-El’s wisdom and with Kal-El’s strength some good might come from these cranes and lifts and banging and clanging and barcodes to an official website of mission statements corporate governance board of directors partners of friends of already I can taste the foie gras society dinner fund raisers and feel the chokehold of black ties around the neck stuck on top of the structure a metal something to pierce the sky a spire or a penis hard to tell from down here where little people walk on the ground I wave good-bye to the frozen little man wander down to the river a grocery cart toppled into the water blankets stashed in the shrubs by the bank auto-racks trundling across the trestle spray-painted bubble letters delivering messages from the planet Krypton which is dead just like Ghandi just like Jor-El and just like most things you find stuffed and mounted in museums

Poem #20: The Legend of Lanigan

David Barker — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:18:24 +0000

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 legend
here we see its traces
here the dusty gravel roads
here the façades like on a wild
west movie set here the rusted
rolling stock by the railside
legend is what archaeology
destroys and I with my hammer
chip away at Lanigan

Poem #19: Boring

David Barker — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 12:23:56 +0000

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)

Poem #18: West Edmonton Mall

David Barker — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:41:18 +0000

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, wall-climbing,
water slides, roller coasters, kiddie
rides, bumper boats, pirate ships,
Omnimax, ice rink, mini-golf.
After a thousand years of play and after
settling into orbit around their prospective
home and after opening the hatch
and after stepping onto terra subpono,
how will our descendants, bloated on fun,
rise to the threats of an alien planet?

Poem #17: Stolen from a New World

David Barker — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:08:56 +0000

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
the girl in the grocery store fr’instance
the one with the hunting knife in her belt
the dulled-edged look of her eye
or the boys with the pick-up truck
the ones who strut their ordinariness
and roar away at first light
to fish as a reason for drinking.

2.
They say Hemmingway drove
around on safari blasting the hell
out of elephants and shit
because he was gay.
He shot as compensation.
It was a cryptic declaration
of his fear that if he showed
the world his softer side, his
sensitivity, his pink fuzzy-slippered
heart, the world would snicker
and he’d wake in a cold sweat
from a dream where he was in a
boxing ring with Rocky Marciano
his lover and both of them
dressed in lace knickers.

3.
I carry my camera the way
Buzz Aldrin carried the flag
he drove into the lunatic dust.
I don’t bag sample moon rocks
but the same obsessive queasiness
seizes my chest, a desire
worse than lust, to possess
everything I see, to monetize
wonder, my very own ingots
stolen from the new world.

4.
When it comes to Hemmingway
I have my own theory about his
brain-spattered date with Thanatos:
you can’t both write and be
the thing you write about,
(no more than shoot and be shot).
You’ve got a real conundrum
if you write about real men
and want most to be one,
the kind who drives a pick-up truck
and likes to fuck women who wear
hunting knives clipped to their belts.

Poem #16: The Wildest Thing

David Barker — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:33:00 +0000

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 drivers speeding across
Vancouver bridges? Or the junkies
hunched around their pipes
on Upper Johnson Street? Or
the wild style graffiti in
the parking lot off Herald? Or
the puffed up chest of Robson
flaunting his white nipples
to the sun? I nod at each suggestion
but answer with my own. The wildest
thing I saw was Tamiko when she
thought I forgot to pack the gift
we bought for our daughter.

Poem #15: Economic Action Plan

David Barker — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 02:53:54 +0000

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
k y gel efficiency
but nowhere
not a single stop
no pull out rest area
place to stretch and gawk
no snow caps and treetops
and rocky river beds below
no place to whip out
my long lens and shoot
shoot shoot

Poem #14: this is where

David Barker — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 02:36:39 +0000

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 was born
the drunk driver spilled diesel during the salmon run
you can get great Vietnamese food
we take the dogs for a morning run
I got my tattoos
that Korean guy killed his wife and kids
the woman gave us the evil eye
when the dog pooped on the path
the cruise ships berth in transit to Alaska
my cell phone thought it was in Washington
and almost cost me some dineros
I found the body
I get kombuchi
we fell in love
and when the day has faded
and when we’ve settled into our not-house
and when we’ve nestled beneath our not-sheets
we remember our own this is wheres
the ones that belong to us
the ones that we belong to