David Edward Barnes

Born in Australia - 1943 - Paddington, New South Wales, .
He began writing at 18 years of age when he took up folk guitar, song writing, and performing at folk centers around mainland Australia, and Tasmania. He worked as a carpenter in Melbourne, leaving for the bush in the early 60's, finally settling in Perth in 1972. He worked as a Real Estate Agent for 24 years until the death of his wife; becoming a fulltime writer poet in 1996. He has been an active Internet poet and has been published in Australia America and England. Recently he was published in the Paris/Atlantic, an International Journal of Creative Work. Spring issue: 2000. He is also the Publisher of Poetry Downunder an online poetry site in Perth Western Australia. Recently some of his works were published in an Anthology released in Perth W.A. November 2000.

Aroma of grass

Dedicated to Elisha Porat

Until I reclined
in summer's warmth,
aroused by the fragrance
of fresh cut grass,
blades piercing
into my disfigured flesh;
I didn't believe
I was back home from the hospice--
back stricken
from the conflict
of the surgeon's scalpel:
I started to rise
but the weight of the sun
flaunted my weakness,
Drunkenly, I climbed the hilltop
like a child, wrapped
in the sweet fragrance of grass.


(c) deBarnes July. 2000 -20

Pledge

A band of Gold,
worn faithfully thirty years
round her finger,
did not count in her favor.
He covets youth,
fears age,
turns on it like a predator
to absolve his fear:
age is his master,
and she,
she is cast aside, discarded.
Age treats her cruelly
in the autumn of life...

(c) deBarnes Revised August 2000 -12

Marbles...

Mankind
simply marking time,
in time,
the zones, between light, darkness;
in the sea of humanity
so many face stare,
mysterious...
once spirited,
clear, illuminated
like a boy guiding ships,
along shores...
of tranquillity;

is the robin's song the fifth element?
The voice in the wilderness
naked...
in snow, creating snow angels;

So many elements stir
on the easel:
love sweat tears
blood hate pain...
framed on the museum walls, captured
pigment, crammed colour on canvas.
Picasso's haunted
haunting look,
Madonna beguiles...
the bones, dust destined to walk on, pass.
Chaos, man earth,
marbles...
rolled by the boatman
through the cosmic swell;

is it so strange to ask?
has another,
the other side of time, found,
a black hole...

Revised deBarnes December 2000 -08

Précis


Shade, moves to the rise
and fall of the sun...
it has no profile, no force
shape of its own... no colour, motion;

yet casts an never-ending
array...
of intricate patterns on shifting
landscapes.

Flying, soaring on earths face.
Shade has followed
wavering paths, all her days;

and I shall not be in rage
dying... a shadow,
when my shade fades, into...
the dying sun;

who will ever know?
I basked in sun... shadow soothed,
at twilight;

watching waves flow,
each new thrust curling up... half the body
half its shadow acquiescent.

Let the glitter of stars and time
fill your eyes...
let the end of all define you, against
the dying night;

And not be in rage
dying...
a shadow...

(c) deBarnes December 2000 -6