tincture - stuart barnes

tincture

our prickly pear’s
eleven copper
suns have expired.
bellies of Rainbow
parrots flare against
a Henson sky like
matches. fireworks
ridicule horizons. a
stray cat blackens.

stuart barnes
http://bluepepper.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-poetry-by-stuart-barnes.html

Modem - Stuart Barnes

MODEM

London by night all alone,
London by night on my own
The KLF

3 a.m., 3 a.m., 3 a.m. Eternal like
those Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
I snap awake, buzzy from my
purple shrinking pills, to stagger
to the loo to take a piss. Passing
the computer it startles
me still, this little black sarcophagus
with the boisterous proboscis and
kaleidoscopic lights, electric blue.
May it mourn for a tampered field
of corn? Is there something more?

Stuart Barnes
http://www.pool.org.au/users/stuart_barnes

Landscapes - Stuart Barnes

LANDSCAPES

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes
Marcel Proust

(I) Collingwood

the Magi are imaginable

a poultice for sizzling footpaths

jasmine’s in clusters like jellyfish

or brains over ramshackle wooden

fences – missing pales, missing teeth

sepia light smogs broken warehouse

rooftops, cracks the jade-green eyes

of stray white cats you stalk,

face ringing like a church bell

(II) Clifton Hill

alarming palaver! blue Mary,

grey child OshKosh B’Gosh

buggies, brown and black – they pass,

slow as hearses birds-of-paradise

fly fabulous crests’ molten colours

at the air; I stare and stare the light

of the day is starry, and comes

from the eye of the cardinal mountains

you come out of nowhere

(III) Abbotsford

a shock-haired man rubs lamps

of Technicolor glass graceful

as giraffes, nuns unfurl dark habits

hands rub like papery leaves

in November there’s mayhem

at the manger last winter I witnessed

a froth of hops, like sheep or a crime,

across the water you in white

across the water fire in the sky

Stuart Barnes
http://pool.org.au/users/stuart_barnes

Separation - Stuart Barnes

Separation

As if echoing feverish
prayer, she held the black comb
to her temple, fought to drag it
through the knots
and ampersands. She
stopped, stared into the glass,
and cracked my eyes,
and cried, "Tomorrow!" -
touched the baroque pearls
wetting her neck, and stepped into
crisp new blacks.

Stuart Barnes
http://www.pool.org.au/text/stuart_barnes/the_fourth_floor