You are here. Wax poetic about it in the comments below.
(Photo by Stephanie Katz)
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
Standing on the roof
Watching for your plane to leave
Hoping for one chance
You might have a window seat
Taking one last look by chance
Remorseful, my heart
Yearning for your now gone soul
Pooling from my eyes
Drenching from the rendering
All because I let you go
Erroneously trashed
The note could have changed all this
But I was stubborn
And I let you go away
Willing one more chance to see
Would that plane return?
Would the tail be turned around?
Just another chance
This I need to know, my love
Just one more chance to love you
Burning in my soul
Rib cage cracking from the pain
Is this way too much?
Will we ever meet again?
This much I don’t know, my love
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | February 4, 2020, 5:42 PMHeartbreakingly excellent. Well done!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | February 4, 2020, 9:27 PMThank you! I wrote it first directly and it got lost. I wrote again as best I could in a doc and pasted. That’s my usual m.o. duh
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | February 5, 2020, 5:57 AMI love how the words flow into a rhythm like a song.
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | February 8, 2020, 7:55 AMThank you!
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | February 8, 2020, 8:13 AMJet Plane
I’ve never been this high before
flying solo on a plane full of people.
I know you’re down there, somewhere
invisible in the painted landscape.
But I’ve got my eyes on the horizon
and my hopes on a strong tailwind
cause I’m five miles high without a net
in a hurry for freedom and fresh air.
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Posted by JeanMarie | February 5, 2020, 7:47 AMAh, escape! Very nice.
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | February 5, 2020, 5:43 PMLove the feeling!
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | February 5, 2020, 8:31 PMLovely!
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | February 8, 2020, 7:55 AMTravel Away
There is something about packing up your bag
to travel away from all things
unresolved, unresolvable, underserving of resolution
There is this escape to
an unknown, unfamiliar, understating place
where your story is new, fresh, mysterious
worthy of all the attention from strangers
The you on a travel trip
is you
is the you never expressed
isn’t you
isn’t the you known most of your lifetime
A plane carries you away
to a land of wonder
only you define it to be
when the troubled waters
flooded home
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | February 8, 2020, 6:57 AMBeautiful and honest!
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Posted by Lisa Tomey | February 8, 2020, 8:22 AMThank you Lisa! 😊
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | February 8, 2020, 8:28 AMThis is why we travel. Great work.
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | February 8, 2020, 10:04 AMThanks!
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Posted by Cassa Bassa | February 8, 2020, 3:36 PM