Christopher Barnes

Waiting For The Love Train



White-out. We’re in the portacabin, a winking of slides.
Collingwood’s monument piking a matt finish Tyne
is newsprint grey. Then a lovely mistake
a body-snatched Midas is found axed
his twin hears a rumour of a skull in a cistern,
in black-gothic print. (The ink unheard)
Anita Harris swallows
the crystals of Peter Pan. (What’s this lesson about?)
Ah…the media, the peeling back of trivialities.
There’s gnashing inflation
and dustmen write Marx flame-swirling barricades.
It’s Social Studies (excuse me sniffing) a diamond-studded version
by the dangerously well-heeled. Then
fog pulls plug on dog racing. (Are you sure?)

Quick-melting night was a lopsided spiral galaxy.
Gobstoppers, blackjacks, a hard rubber
space hopper, Thunderbirds are go!
And ten minutes of spine-chilling spectacle
through the atoms of a sizzling tv
   -        a big old Isley Bro. whipping up
white-light spandex and fool’s gold boots
and a deal of blind poker
chucking shadows on an easy-wipe table.






War Criminals In The Government-To-Be



“Snivel-sob,
you’re turning over our bleeding dossier.
I eavesdropped the phone.”

Miss Anyface, a plonking redhead
with a saddle-horse list,
hummed permissively.

“Top Drawer sent you?
Analyse and Smear Department?”
She maims a false docket
in sticky-hot fists.

“Our initiative is the Labour Camp.”
She deletes words from a document.

“Shall we march on
to Black Markets, the thick-of-things,
Spoiling Tactics,
the downgrading of murder?”


from the ‘Spooks’ poems





Christopher Barnes: in 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. On Saturday 16th August 2003 I read at theEdinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St. Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, I entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. I made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains my poem The Old Heave-Ho. I worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bioscience Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life. I was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children's literature building. In May I had 2006 a solo art/poetry exhibition at The People's Theatre why not take a look at their website The South Bank Centre in London recorded my poem "The Holiday I Never Had", I can be heard reading it here. I have written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine and in August 2007 I made a film called 'A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot' for Queerbeats Festival at The Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem...see http://www.myspace.com/queerbeatsfestival







Michael Wilson Barry Seiler Chrissa Sandlin Mary Ocher G David Schwartz Jesse S Hanson Adejoh Momoh Keith Nunes Christopher Barnes Tiffani Hollis