blackmail press 28
David Barnes
Australia

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Kitchen - Charles Olsen
David Barnes has been an active poet since1996 and published in Australia and at many online poetry venues in America, England, and France. His work has appeared in Paris/Atlantic, anthologies released in 2001 & 2002 by Empowa Inc, Firefly Magazine U.S.A., Anthology Number (ll), Inside Out:  A Gathering of Poets, Blackmailpress Issue (11), and The Australian Journal of Arts, Ethics & Literature: Issue No. 12.  He also publishes and edits a poetry journal called Numbat pdu: http://www.aceonline.com.au/~db/numbat/
entreaties

i do not sleep much anymore
unremittingly it is naps and snacks
pen in hand, inscribing words
at 5 am

i have prayed for relief
there is no answer conversing with God
if thought exceeds the velocity of light
would he hear
a single muted plea

it seems life
is a continually moving flash
an inside-outside ache
this leaves no thought
on how to spend
the days

its Easter holidays
and the only man
with the solution died
carrying his fated cross
i surmise
i will have to continue
carrying my own

somewhere
between toast and coffee
the aftertaste lingers, like prayers
waiting for God





on the edge

if you could hear me
screaming not being heard
invisible in this world i did not shape

an ageing man
eyes looking for shadows
of where I have been- where I am now -

if you could see the shrunken soul
curled up in silent solitude
incapable 

i must close the windows- pull the drapes
lock doors; the time of the interloper’s draws near -
two legged crows are what they are

Crows would delight in my delicatness 





in still places


  it was on friday
i said i would be there
help, raid the storeroom
supplies.

  “i was caught creeping
                 in the shadows.”

the cobwebs
of my mind– burn
the thud of discipline –
strikes

i flew elsewhere
down indistinct fissures
away from consuming
claws;

  “in to the longed-for
             abyss–of– nonexistence.”

i was neither here
nor there
although my friends knew
where i was;

i did not see, feel hear
rain beating against windows –
or  the howling
wind

infinite in
my childhood-mind
a phrase kept hammered me.

  “hey things
            are, as they are; it’s time.”

time to
make, your final run –
no more
walls

after, there were
no more
Walls.