Five Wonderful Poems by Randy Barnes

 

Running In Place 

 

Where does it go from here

the walls have cracks

I’ve had a headache since 1968

that’s no marching band stunned to know

observe the pathology of current electorates

revel in serfdom your best shot

once the cops leave mop up the mess

written while falling recall the results

that chain around your neck nice touch

before you know it a whole country on the skid

when we reach the bottom positions’ secure

these voices you hear neurons frying on auto-mode

your vacuum suit right for shape-shifting

shadow walking a night on the town

heart attack habitat you in?

lured for the kill whipped up and ready to boil

back to the bricks common survival reflex

what may follow could be your ticket out. 

 

 

Slip Factor 

 

We’ll pass on the impostors in their trenches

think it through how a world exists by numbers

I’d rather throw bones to the crows

stripped down the movie doesn’t play nor alleviate

she thanked me for what I can’t remember

whose eyes in that dream caught the glare

cable strain dropped the link a window beyond

another crisis in gem pause random stretches

slip the noose we’ll twirl awhile

and what about mortality this rollercoaster shakedown

bars intact security burb-style

no net for the low flyers

any ditch will suffice this need for sleep.

 

 

That Dollar You Spent Could Be Your Last 

 

The overkill idiocy machine has turned its corner

rather a flip job on the fib dial

just a little sweat in high places

a lock-up psychic sequence

pervasive fear of press and memory fade

so pass that invisible ink

there’s holes in the lunar tightrope

one step away and roadside epiphanies in conjunction

we agree the banter was enough to boil your oil

time lapse rewind honed to the bone

but nice rooms down at the white-collar plantation

it’s slab-sleep or cot-rot

pick your poison when the lights go out. 

 

 

It’s Called Woodshedding 

 

And when the paper arrives it’s two days ago

got something against the past well you know

rose garden dead now but glorious in recall

here comes that wicked wind from the north

with wit dismantled and the tassel show

there for the touch and an absence of heat

somehow the yellow diminished red now fingers in sun

could never make a living collecting this awareness

those glassine spires noticed not attained

who would care where emotion hangs

deep in the core of some imagined front

looks different today but later anew

back of the room where telling begins

that radio just sprayed bullets across the square

three died of stab wounds approved by the king

new-hires from the maggot ranch just enough to bleed

these mood swings will require professional attention. 

 

 

Beauty Queen Death Trap 

 

Run the ramp a whole new scene

heavy aspirations with feral expectations

it’s all good in the reflection magazine style

cough away those fears it’s slowing down

nothing more to report but page count wins or carnal law

all the heroines and their moneyed bulges

distance kept from a botched past

spreads that begged entry but no thanks

thought on an alternative link

just an attraction so why the concern

go all the way for adequate pay

the world craves objects what do you want. 

 

 

Randy Barnes was awarded the Lifetime Honored Historian/Beat Poet Laureate, Washington State, from the National Beat Poetry Foundation, in 2020.  He has published sporadically since the 1970’s in magazines and anthologies both nationally and internationally.  He has published three books of poetry, now all out of print.  He currently resides on an island in the Salish Sea.