About Bartholomew Barker
Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in the Triangle region of North Carolina where he has hosted a monthly feedback workshop for more than decade. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he lives and writes poetry.
Living Poetry 
Waging the war with the tides of life, bringing on waves of emotions, challenges, and joys, I am met with at once the desire to sail away and to remain ashore. Sailing beyond the shores, allowing risk to be abandoned, feeling the breeze flowing while knowing there are at least planks beneath my soles, is tempting. Staying the course of the foundation of the sands, only adjusting to the effects of the tides, I can still stand while being sure of not going too far. To go astray has such appeal as much as being on solid ground. Oh, to be grounded, but in movement is even more.
Staying on life’s course
Keeping my feet on solid ground
Moving as I will
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | August 5, 2019, 12:30 PMVery nice Haibun. Well done!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 5, 2019, 9:08 PMThank you!
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | August 5, 2019, 9:22 PMI had one too many syllables in the second line. I will fix that.
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | August 7, 2019, 8:50 AMWhatever. You can call it an American Haiku.
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 7, 2019, 6:36 PMTrue!! 😀
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | August 7, 2019, 7:36 PMOne decision away from forever
Stay and pretend
Or
Go and thrive
Forever Conflicted
Along this narrow road I drive
On the left, I stay and try
On the right, I run and hide
Tonight i toss and turn in turmoil
Tomorrow, to the beach I drive
The sand
The ocean
The salty breeze
All have a way of consoling me
Decisions are easily reached
When my feet are on the beach
Therapeutic for the mind
Lost direction finds clarity at the coast
xoxo
♥️me
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Posted by amazinggraceandpersonalspace | August 7, 2019, 9:22 AMWell done. The shore always makes for a good setting.
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 7, 2019, 6:38 PMThank you! Definitely thinking about a drive there tomorrow
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Posted by amazinggraceandpersonalspace | August 7, 2019, 6:41 PMThe crowds weren’t as large as I expected
Waiting in the sticky summertime air
rich with salt and the smell of low tide
the smell of the dying and living of uncountable numbers of microscopic fauna and flora
While I was young, I went to the mountains
With their great heights and sweeping views
A place of great power that my youthful mind could see and acknowledge
Where the flow of life was a spectacle in the circus of the seasons
Spring into Summer and Summer to Fall
Fall’s assured slide into Winter and, in due time, back again to Spring
But now I am old and while the mountains still rage on
I will go to sit at the foot my true teacher
and listen to a drone I heard less clearly in my youth
where each wave is a day
and each tide is a season
and each daybreak is the same as the one before
as the wavelength of my life asymptotes
to a Schumann resonance of all things
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Posted by Chris Clarke | August 7, 2019, 9:25 PMVery nice. Great use of odors in the first stanza.
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | August 7, 2019, 10:08 PM