Virgin Words

By David Barlow

For centuries scientists have used math to predict what they will observe next. Their accuracy is remarkable. Verse serves us similarly. Brought to the edge of ourself the view often defies description. Keep at it and these efforts to speak back an understanding can predict who we become. This collection features only a few characters, most are a straight shot. Using words to scout that frontier. A path I suspect we each have known, its signposts both familiar and unknowable. Virgin territory humans traverse in bringing us all forward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Barlow
• Release date: Jul 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370635658

David Barlow

Author, novelist, screenwriter, poet, fiction (and other keywords) David Barlow grew up in the cushy suburban digs of Ridgewood, New Jersey. Graduating up there in his class at Emerson College with a BFA in creative writing he pilgrimaged to Los Angeles for the script business. Skittering through several big Hollywood near-misses David plied a trade in writing copy, PR, and professional collateral. All while honing that edge for prose, verse, etc. Some time now those efforts have been enjoyed from the wilds of New Hampshire.

Book preview

Verse vs.

This strange city funnels

past important doors

each window

turns on its axis

to frame you passing.

In your pocket a

blanched jewel, no

a crumpled sheet, a

secret message. You are reading

these lines.

A gilded door revolves.

Careful quiet

twirls ready words

all about as I

strip away your cloak, your

nakedness almost

my own.

But you are not naked,

my hands around your neck

to clasp a gasping necklace.

The light you wore

unborn

waiting for deep dark

to spill

ever open

Onto these busy streets

each face stares,

are you the one

from the glowing poem,

misplaced among us?

or just another sun

muted to cinders

of maybe

maybe

not.

The crumpled sheet

spins in your pocket like

a diamond but

you don’t

believe it, you don’t

read on

Deeper Than Knowing

We were walking a far shore

dusk still gathered its confetti

our first vacation day

nearly gone.

Turning to you candlelight

flashed its mothwings

across your face.

A nugget, its belly

burning pearly orange, passed

down between watery pillars

into a sunken world.

In the twilight of this

sandy afternoon, night’s thin gauze

billowing in around us I

saw graying waves

uncurl memory of that place.

as if I stood above the well,

a single eye stares up

slow and certain

as a pyramid.

It blinks and I

again walk the setting shore,

stumbling among ripples of

some second skin

as the ember drifts deeper

than knowing.

I turn to you your

cuffs rolled up soggy,

a hand swinging rhymes from my stride.

I cannot see

beyond those flickering columns

without cupping the wind

from your face.

Without dropping a pail

to pull up this

thirst for drowning,

a feel of you in my lungs

like water

or perhaps light.

Here’s the Deal

No knowing

what’s to find

in the underground.

Maybe heart

maybe mind

maybe bonus round.

Some kind of something

unwinds tonight.

Ribbons unreel

that nighttime feel.

Here’s the deal --

they was wound

way too tight.

Sidewalk sound

fiddles a bow

but it sat down to

watch what’s coming

cuz it comes slow.

Like balloons about to pop

the moment won’t stop,

it won’t do the don’t,

it won’t give up.

Yup.

Only the wind

growling from a pipe.

And you sharp

and dark

as a tiger

stripe.

D-word

That long-worried leap,

up into no mans land

and across to you

is nothing now

like the fear

of ever going back.

Forays flash my sleep,

mortars blind the stars

and tip morning

on end.

What tumbles out

wraps me in barbs and

useless moods. I’d

close my eyes

to kiss you

but

still I’d see it.

A nazi box

of wiggling fingers, the

ring removed only

for the gold.

Kissing Electra

Around our lives is sewn

a seething web of

tiny thunderbolts.

Careen thru the days,

each mild consideration

charged with impatience

we cannot trace.

Even our sacred ceremonies

hasten.

The slowness of poetry

a corrective, no a

sedative, no a

relic from a

null age.

Maze

For some time we

have wandered this maze

of blankets

hanging musty and thick,

left from a war

gone quiet.

We know well the inch

they leave above the floor,

last light of dusk

sneaking beneath

like memory of a

dream.

Or maybe movie,

the luxuriated man imagines

hands of his audience

reach in from the dark.

The olive blankets rise

high as night and vanish

in shadowy rafters

where the room stretches away

larger than doubt.

Some way surely leads out,

a last ray of sun sneaks

in long and sharp

as flame.

We search our lives

to touch it but

can’t help stop,

and harken

He watched their response and knew

the beauty she must be. My

movie is a good one.

Though a hand

moves the folds

from the other side, still

we’re always each alone

meandering this dim

labyrinth

blankets hang down

drab and green, padded

with the rich old smell of forgetting,

every breath an attic of

summer air.

Devil in My Soul

Which to better be?

an ecumenical ecdysiast

dropping veils of

barmecidal bodhi bombast

or the hard-up chump

folding a wellworn faith

beneath that oh

so slender

strand.

Hymn to Her

Thunder rumbles into my dream,

is she too woken?

Doddered I take her hand

and wait.

When it comes

white suns flash my lids glassy.

The counting begins.

All expectance I

in magic realism

wait upon the

dauntless sound of enough.

This pause her song.

Sheer size

comes lagging in

across the heavens.

Doddered I see she indeed

sleeps.

Eyes loll her sockets as

fulsome force rolls away.

She imagines bright flashes I

spend the