Home » Poems » Best » Barry Freeman » Best Barry Freeman Poems

Best Poems Written by Barry Freeman

Below are the all-time best Barry Freeman poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

The Arrival of Sound

Once upon a long time,
The silence blanketed my world
Like snow covering an arctic forest.

The nooks and crannies of my days
Were filled with the wispy webs of quietude 
Worked by whispering limbs

Mine was a vast tundra
Of silence
Across which great unheard herds 
Of thoughts could roam
Freely, gambol and graze
Encountering nothing to disturb them

Rivulets of words
Gathered and trickled
Over the schisty shingles
Of my mind

Eons passed

But one cold, silent, snow flaked January morning
A pioneer strode manfully, meaningfully
Into my wilderness without warning.

Falling in love with all that he saw
He began to sharpen his axe.

Now the hordes of herds have all but disappeared
And the rivulets have been dammed and channelled
Into a thousand subterranean pipes
And there is TV and MTV and DVD and MP3
And my world
Is rich with sound.

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

Another Lifetime

Goodbye to Sunday, Today is Monday
So I switch to auto-drive.
It’s a cold, grey steel-edged dawn
And I curse the fates that I was ever born
As I head off to work with my face down-drawn
And shout a goodbye to my wife.

It’s a cold grey, spitting day.
So I stay on auto-drive
I check my watch at the factory gate.
It tells me I’m ten minutes late.
There’s no time to even contemplate
That someone’s having the time of my life.

Every day goes this way
So I stay on auto-drive
I clock in and clock out.  I’m left in no doubt
Someone’s having the time of my life.
I work through the days in a robotic daze.
How else am I supposed to survive
When from Monday to Friday, no day is my day?
I’m just the boss’ from nine-to-five.

Then at night the television shows me a vision
Of a world that’s been so contrived
That I know when I own all the things I’ve been shown
I finally will have arrived.


I live for the weekends when being with my friends
Is the only time I feel alive.
I’ll give up one day but it’s once again Monday
So I’m back on to auto-drive.

There’s no use moaning; It’s just Monday morning
And the cold dawn cuts like a knife.
								
© Barry Freeman - January 2003

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

In Sandy On a Sundy

In Sandy on a Sund’y
Can’t even buy a pie
The High Street is a ghost town
From some Kafkaesque sci-fi.
Not a single caf is open
No point in asking ‘Why?’
So I’ll just go down
To the Rose and Crown
And give their roast a try.

The film set has now altered
To a Sergio Leone
The barman with the hang-dog look
Is sitting all alone.
I enquire after Sunday Lunch
His reply comes Brummily spoken.
‘No food today,
I’m afraid to say.
The chef’s right arm is broken.’

So homeward I trudge
To a can of stodge
That I’d been keeping handy
And I curse the day
I decided to stay
In this Sabbath-subserving Sandy.

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

Dad

You were not perfect
But you were good.
You were decent
And I have only recently
Understood
The true meaning
Of that word
And what it can cost.
You were a man whose moral compass
Never seemed to falter,
Whose honesty would not alter
No matter what, in consequence, you lost.

You stood there quietly firm
Committed, through ups and downs,
To providing a safe home
For your wife and your three sons;
A solid rock upon which 
We have been able to build with ease.


In these steps I have tried to follow
Often stumbling; sometimes falling,
Falling short of the mark you set
But you always forgave my folly
Forgiving my hurtful failing
And this, above all, I’ll not forget.

(C) Barry Freeman - 21st March 2019

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

Tag You'Re It

The following poem is a poem trouvee made from a collection of movie poster tag lines.

Let’s play a game
When he comes home
It’s date night
Ready or not here he comes
It’s date night
When the darkness comes
It’s date night
Some homes are born evil
It’s date night

Fear comes full circle
He knows where you sleep
He’ll shatter your dreams
Into your dreams he’ll creep.

Let’s play house.
Who will be his bride tonight?
Till death do you part.
Sharing is scaring.
The tell-tale heart
Love never dies; it kills
And if you love chills and thrills 
It’ll be the night of your life.
It’s date night.
A night to die for.
Evil has a destiny and 
Tonight evil gets raw.
It’s date night.
Will it ever stop?
A different set of jaws
You’ve been warned
It’s date night
You’ll be dead by dawn
Cause if you don’t wake up screaming,
You won’t wake up at all.

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

Flat City Interrogative

When I was younger
My lover died from hunger
For God had not flung her
His scraps from the sky
So I covered her over
Neath the cold clay and clover
I buried my lover
Where the hungry all lie

In Flat City, that city
Where I heard the people cry
It taught us and brought us
A reason to die

Then I drank myself numb
Of that Flat City slum
For the trucks had ceased to come
And the taps had run dry.
So I prayed for death to score me
But she chose to ignore me
And as though she never saw me
She simply passed me by.

In Flat City, that city,
Where I waited for reply
But its answers were just chances
To repeat the question, “Why?”

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

In His Image

In the religion
Of the pigeon
Possessing a feathered pinion
Stands as proof of the opinion
That the pigeon holds dominion
Over all creation

For in the Holy Word
Of this enlightened bird
It is the avian creed,
That not intelligence, but speed
Is the gift that God decreed
For this, His chosen nation.

So in their highest perches
That serve them as their churches
The bird world’s chosen few
Will strut toward their pew
And with bowing neck will coo
In pious adulation.

©  Barry Freeman - July 2016

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

A Place In the Sun

"We have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession." - Kaiser Wilhelm II - 1901

The temperatures rising
It’s hardly surprising
That tempers are beginning to flare.
The ceasefire’s broken
Ultimatums have been spoken
The brinkmen have issued their dare

And the jet planes are flying overhead into Ashkelon
Everything is coming undone
And it’s hot out here in the sun
But every one of us wants a place in the sun.

The rockets are flying
While another boy is dying
Caught with his hands in the air
And the mother is crying
For the son who is lying 
In a pool of crimson despair

While the jet planes are flying over, heading to Ashkelon
It looks like something’s begun
And it’s hot out here in the sun
But every one of us want a place in the sun.

And the tanks are rolling boldly
Like wolves upon the fold 
Leaving nothing but destruction for all
And the President is beaming 
As reports are now streaming
In telling of the enemy’s fall

And the jet planes are dealing out death over Ashkelon
While we tell ourselves, the good guys have won
And it’s hot out here in the sun
But every one of us wants a place in the sun.

© Barry Freeman 	15th May 2021

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

Time Gentlemen

Never believing that I was deceiving myself
(I guess it must have been a dream)
That I could ever be the man I thought I’d be
And not the man I am today.

Living and loving
With life ever leaving me
Ever leading me on
Through life.
I’d have taken time to be someone
But that time is gone,
And I am left here, now, alone,
With nought to carve upon my stone.

© Barry Freeman - 11th February 2017

Details | Barry Freeman Poem

Poets of a Certain Age

"Arma virumque cano"

No more the Viking sagas
Singed by the dragon’s breath
No more the valiant charges
Into the Valley of Death.
No more the knights of chivalry
Bewitched by a maiden’s pallor.
No more the sword-drawn cavalry
Galloping with dash and valour.

Who now hears Roland’s mighty blast
As loyally he stayed
To fight on to the very last
Though he had been betrayed
Gone, the Homeric heroics
Of those who made their final stands.
Gone are the stalwart stoics
Who charted the icy lands.

Gone, are these men romanticised,
All hailed with trumpeting noises.
For poetry’s now been feminised
And speaks with softer voices
Of emotions deep, internalised,
Of relationships and choices.
Of mother’s love of a child prized,
In whom the heart rejoices.

And who am I to say it’s not
A better voice, addressing
The struggles of our daily plot
Of our hidden hearts’ undressing,
A kinder voice that speaks in verse
To the need for understanding
Our place in a godless universe,
Infinite yet expanding.

But I do so miss the surety 
Of those heroes crowned with laurels
Whose valiant deeds and purity
Filled our minds with higher morals.
Of dignity and integrity
Of knowing right from wrong
That gave our lives some clarity
As we listened to their song.