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Glenn Barker

@rotherwrites.bsky.social

870 followers 830 following 1.6K posts

[My words] "are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only" [I could interest them], Sylvia Plath

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · Jul 14

Have you got your 'Beautiful Little Fools: Poetry of Glamour Obsession and the Gilded Age' yet?

tinyurl.com/4t867sfa

Thank you @thebrokenspine.co.uk editors @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social for selecting 'Beautiful Untouchable' and 'Let's Pretend' in superb hardback format.

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 6h

Oh, the fragility of souls hammered into a frozen and sensitised stasis.

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 6h

Thank you Dean; it all came out after a lot of washing and rinsing words. Spare but clean. 😎

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 8h

Yes, and somewhat gross and raw, raw-fleshed.

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 9h

I'm always left asking where that violence comes from, or rather, who.

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 9h

Time may stop and hold us prisoner, or we may want it move quickly, for it to be over or never have happened. And we are left with the inevitable scarring, mind and body, with time the inanimate observer.

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

Karen Pierce Gonzalez @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social · 18h

Another #poem that can speak for herself. #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #StayCreative #PoetsSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky

My Clock

Bare feet on the hour hand
metal edge slicing my soles

I cannot stop time.

Fingers on razored minute hand
pushing hard to rewind the moments

I cannot stop.

Tick tock, tick tock.

His touching me like that
has already happened

too many times.
A warped cycle.

I cannot

even slow down the seconds
of innocence lost.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Karen Pierce Gonzalez

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 9h

An interesting thought; how we depend on others to keep us real and straight Andy, obscuring our realisation that they may in turn be depending on us for the same. We are no island.

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 16h

Turning the imperfection around into an honest reflection of why a relationship failed for #poemsabout #imperfectme. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk & @thebrokenspine.co.uk for the prompt and glad to be back writing after an enforced break!

What you wanted

you wanted someone
to save you
rescue you
from past mistakes

someone fearless
their perfect life
sorted out
to sort yours too

without you
giving any energy
or second thought
to what kept them

awake
long into the night
if they exist
it isn’t me

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 9h

This resounds starkly with the imagery and angst-ridden output of the German Expressionist movement Jan. Pain and purgatory. Unsettling Gothicism.

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom @janpsolivagant.bsky.social · 16h

#PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#adaptation: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#Expressionism #Trakl #PoetryInTranslation #DepthPsychology #TheShadow #CainAndAbel #Blake #Nightmare

Dread

After Das Grauen (1909) by
Austrian Expressionist poet, Georg Trakl (1887-1914)

I drift through deserted rooms.
Frenzied stars dance upon a blue backdrop.
Dogs bay in beck-rimmed yards.
Manic chinook roots through the treetops.

Then all stir ceases.
Aglow with choleric ardour,
Venomous blooms sprout from my mouth.
Blood-drip sap from marred branches
Shimmers pale as dew.

From the mirror’s specious void,
From the mirror’s pearly shade,
Contours merge vaguely into the
Visage of Cain.

Curtains rustle softly.
The moon stares vacantly
Through the window.
I’m alone with my killer.

Free adaptation from the German:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

"The Body of Abel Found by Adam & Eve", William Blake, circa 1826

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 12h

You pull off the humour with that deeper edge well John. A person or the bowels of Gaia. We're all fragile tessellations rubbing together, until polished.
(I may be off at a tangent though)

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

John Adlam 🌈🌍 @johnadlam.bsky.social · 13h

For #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe on #worldmentalhealthday, here's one of mine posted here earlier this year 🤜🤛
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk

$Insecurity alert We can argue the toss over separations and losses, but this much is for sure – I am insecurely attached. Mostly I depend upon your warmth and acclaim to scaffold the edifice of my ramshackle sense of self. But hey – no pressure! It's not like you owe me any special consideration – no need, as such, to frack my mudrock offerings for depth or distinction. I'm not proud – I can do naked and abandoned in the void every bit as easily.$

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 13h

Thank you Carolyn. The genesis was much more protracted than its simplicity implies, even for so few lines. 💚

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 13h

Sparse indeed; than you Jan. It came about from a supposed quote about Michaelangelo(?) when asked how he knew what to chisel, to remove; to which he says that he removed nothing, but simply revealed what was already there.

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 13h

I like the way this turns darkness to light, with that repeated first line. There is always hope; things happening for the person in the mirror rather than to them. 💚

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

Lin Hart @poetry-with-hart.bsky.social · 14h

A piece from my would-be manuscript (probably now a zine series because I'm now a zine-obsessed twaffle) "Behind the Mirror". A bit more simplistic than my usual fair, but it's got a hopeful side to it that you may appreciate. Enjoy 🤗

@alanparrywriter.co.uk

#poemsabout #imperfectme #poem #poetry

Behind the mirror
sits the woman
I hope to become

So much more a sister
a daughter, a partner, a friend
so much more than the sum

of all my pieces
once jagged now soft
from trying to put me together again.

Even a shattered prism
shows a rainbow cavalcade
when put to the light.

Behind the mirror
sits the woman
I hope to become

From this shade
of past folly
a paragon of future promise

-Lin Hart

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 16h

This is beautifully spare, each phrase feels carved, not written

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 15h

Thank you Fifty. I thought it looked a bit too spare, but less can be more. As I was writing it I was inhabiting the rock, clay and marble; how they might feel. So yes, I was mentally carving! ⚒️

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 16h

The perfection of our own imperfection Debbie; how we find a way to shed society's skin and become ourselves. A life process.

Reposted by Glenn Barker

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 17h

Good morning #BlueskyPoetry Community. A grand start for #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe today. @alanparrywriter.co.uk & @thebrokenspine.co.uk here’s my experimental draft. Weird form for the 1st but the rhyme is intentional. 2nd’s a Haiku as it seemed appropriate. Will catch up on the rest later. Thanks.

A poem by Debbie Ross

Super Model
I used to be bothered about my hips, my tits, my lips - all the bits that didn't conform to some societal norm of what a girl should be
it was my Dad who shaped me - never good enough at what was important to him.
Now
I embrace the 'flaws':
the love of books and poetry,
the lines of learning, this errant body -
imperfect, perfect ME.

A photo of a grey bowl with the text of a poem by Debbie Ross overlaid as follows

Kintsukuroi 金繕
We are travellers filling our imperfections with thin lines of gold

A definition of kintsukuroi underneath

kintsukuroi
(n.) (v. phr.) "to repair with gold"; the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 16h

The mirror, the person in it, both you and not you. This is a bold and violent voice Paul, the narrator gripped by loathing. Who am I. Time to face the world; hello 'Stepford' me. Peace is the final grace, though it takes until the twelfth of Never.

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Reposted by Glenn Barker

Paul @paulwritespoems.bsky.social · 17h

How is it Friday?!

This week it’s #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe

This is ‘Sudden Impacts & Ripples’

Will try to catch up through the day and after work.

@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk great to see the community growing

Sudden Impacts & Ripples

i punched a mirror once.
watched the glass splinter
outward
like quicksilver tremor

there was my true face
a clusterfuck

abandoned mineshaft eyes
knucklefat nose
lips midgrimace / midgrin
receding-tide hairline

behind flesh was mayhem—
psyche spinning between
self love / self loathe
self doubt / self determination

impatience is a virtue—
i ripped face from wall
abandoned to landfill

replaced it with
Stepford smile.

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Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 17h

Thank you John; I wasn't sure. It felt that giving them a kind of voice allowed the Creator's imperfections to show through. They could have said anything imperfect though.
There's nothing worse than a block of marble scorned, we might have said a while back.

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 17h

Thank you Debbie 💚 It was that feeling I occasionally have about a poem that can never settle. Those three italicised voice lines could be written in so many ways....

Glenn Barker @rotherwrites.bsky.social · 17h

This is reality's grit John, how the perfection of man, the innocent at birth is drawn out of us, the the products of human creation twisted out of shape; rejection from Eden, forever. A phenomenal piece.

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