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
The honored fallen
lined on hallowed land
marble placeholders
mark where once you stood
bright-eyed with young dreams
I wish you were not here
gone back to the farm
to the city streets
stickball games with siblings
looking up to you with awe
But the pressure and the heat
turned the limestone metamorphic
lead and white phosphorous
turned burnished gold to rusted heme
pools on the contested earth
More fitting would be
row after row of sunflowers
heads shining like little suns
poking out of lines to see
like the schoolboys you once were
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Posted by Chris Clarke | June 6, 2022, 8:53 AMThe Package at Our Door with God Inside
Stereotypes are useful
in the way leaf rakes are useful;
to gather up the un-glamorous
And the fallen.
On the other hand, we have
how we see ourselves.
We can scrupulously avoid
stereotypes and sugar,
over-eating, and buying stuff online.
Until it arrives, brown boxed at your door.
We keep the box knife nearby,
become knowledgeable of tape,
Good at collapsing boxes.
Folded cardboard fits better in the dump
blooms damply in the rain.
Drop the pretense.
Rationalize the pain of purity’s ill fit,
too narrow over our spreading selves.
Once tarnished, and wide, we may get on with it,
saving the re-usable:
beauty, toleration, sunrise, bird food.
The beggar comes to your door;
open it.
What is not ours, remains not ours.
What we have left is this plot of ground,
these sunflowers,
a brazen bouquet
To place upon the table of our repast.
Sunflower seed feeds cardinals,
watch them come, evidence
Of breaking free from hunger
from the need for fields of flowers
bending heavy with seed.
We, the powerful, find
that we are kind,
good at resurrecting holiness
by the dispensation of our hands.
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Posted by ts19page | June 6, 2022, 9:00 AMEspecially love the “Drop the pretense.” stanza. Great work!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | June 6, 2022, 8:17 PMThank you for the encouraging feedback.
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Posted by ts19page | June 7, 2022, 9:50 AMA lovely tribute. Thanks for sharing!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | June 6, 2022, 8:13 PMFields of flowers for a requiem. I just heard that sunflowers are also planted in Europe to sequester and remove dangerous lead from the soil.
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Posted by ts19page | June 6, 2022, 8:58 AMSunflowers for Ukraine
Hold out for Democracy
Needs blue sky blanket
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Posted by JeanMarie | June 6, 2022, 2:34 PMLovely haiku. Thanks!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | June 6, 2022, 8:18 PMsunflower fields
oh how freeing it is
to finally love
a seeming enemy
blessing him with
all of life’s bounties
seeing him through
his true identity
poised, gracious
glorious and exalted
forgetting the facade
he proudly wears
through his personality
such profound
beauty in his Being
as he exalts in joy
beaming, streaming
a thousand suns
shining within him
glorious as
ever will be
to the path
of joyous ascencion
oh how lovely it is
and quite endearing
to be a graveyard
of negativities
like a million
sunflower fields.
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Posted by Audrine Max | July 19, 2022, 10:34 PMNice work. I especially like the last five lines. Thanks for sharing!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | July 20, 2022, 4:55 PMthank you. much gratitude.
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Posted by Audrine Max | July 20, 2022, 7:19 PM