Simon Barraclough Poems

For I will consider my Star Sol.
For I am the servant of this Living God and daily serve her.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East I worship in my way.
For this is done by fixing espresso and watching the pinkening light on The Shard.
...

The house had grown too small for us and so
we spent that final summer in a tent.

At first we interlocked our sleeping bags,
each row of teeth zipped into place like cogs,
...

The second before and the eternity after
the smile that split the horizon from ear to ear,
the kiss that scorched the desert dunes to glass
and sealed the sun in its frozen amber.
...

I've been giving the miraculous a whirl
but what have I got? A stomach crammed

with cheap chimichanga, a shoulder-check
from Christian Slater and, though I don't know it yet,
...

Open on the galaxy, dolly zoom
through Doppler shifting stars, leave the local planets
in our wake, brush off the moon
and rummage through the clouds to find
the crouching continent where Paris piggybacks.
...

If I fall in love, and I think I will,
I may have to leave Miami first.

Who wuz it now wiv whom I wuz in wuv?
...

You're so blue
you probably think that Jarman's Blue
is about you.
...

Et ellu é bellu e radiante cun grande splendore
—St. Francis of Assisi, Cantico delle creature

I heard of one who thought himself too much i'the Sun.
...

The universe hurts.
But you knew that.

I pity you your brief lives:
...

Photon, get a move on.
a million years or more
pushing through the crowds,
...