Simplifying Animals And Objects by Christopher Barnes

The line. Painting, absterging. Meticulousness
Pinched, boundaries of opal blues, fire-lit
Boleros. Radiance of a bull’s curve spiked,
Pricking dealers who thought he was mad. Drawings
Sold, ten rusty sous in a Paris-shade junkshop:
Marks on white paper, depictions of common people,
Cubed segments planed in earthly chizzled-out strokes.
There is meaning in colour. A garnet-red mattress
Can be delicious.

Through haze of xanthic squalls memory of man
To man, love in the pleasing rub of afternoons,
Harlequins, saltimbanques parading rough-toothed
Canvas, sensuous as drawing, a line.
Devil-may-get-you twist spins his Surrealist verse,
Unpunctuation learned from plays acted out
By lamplight. Smell of oil, Max Jacob,
Moon crumbling on books. War, undoing,
Necks twisted, broken lines, dinner with Matisse,
Smudging Thursday evenings. A request
“Pablo pass the wine”.


Christopher Barnes, UK