Scorched Ink (1995) - Early Poems by James Albert Barr

 

These 16 poems make up my very first collection of poems which I titled, Scorched Ink, in 1995, when I was 27 years old. They were composed between 1992-1995. There were only eight copies printed off a friend's word-processor, which I handed out to a very choice number of close friends, so this posting of these poems on my blog is their "official" debut in a public forum. Scorched Ink was followed-up two years later with Owls on the Roof, which consisted of 27 poems, and then over twenty years after that with my most recent collection, which is still available, at least on Kindle, on Amazon: Such Late Fugitives. I included one of the poems in Scorched Ink, slightly revised, for Such Late Fugitives - a poem titled, "Convalescence".

The image above was intended to be the cover (back and front) for Scorched Ink, illustrated and collaged by New Brunswick artist and poet, Madison Shadwell. It's being used here for the first time in public, so my thanks, again (30 years later!), to Mr. Shadwell. I didn't use my middle name back then like I do now when presenting my poetry.

Contents:

1. distillment

2. Conception

3. The Stage of This Play

4. This Paradise Needs Sowing

5. An After Thought

6. The Virtue Conceived

7. The Reprimand

8. My Own Private Phantasmagoria

9. Convalescence

10. The Ill-Deciphered Tongues

11. Darkness and I

12. The Aspiring Doors

13. The Redemption in Music

14. The Seminal Pulse

15. The Inspired

16. The Gift Relinguished

distillment 

A decorum impoverished

from lack of...

                   Light.

A smouldering array of hopeless despair,

refrained buoyancy; a bastard's tear.

Resigned to the abyss where no

resilience abides to any degree of continuity.

The mind is a slave to sloth unwanted.

I borrow a grin from a pixie to carry me

through the drudgery of a day.

                  Will 'o' the wisp

                        for the famished heart.

                   Will 'o' the wisp,

                        and the fears embark. 

Conception 

We have sated our throats for now.

Our minds in question have yet a further

quest in this, the endeavor of the soul.

The enterprise to climb the altitude of

rapture and sip from a cloud, to muse and

tease the buds we have graciously enjoyed

in this embryo we call thought.

The Stage of This Play 

Lying virtually parallel to a ghost

that sings a sweet melody and gifted

in rhetoric as lyrics are born under a Fall

sky. Revenge is a kind of kiss, but a sanction

is required, for a boiling point would only

mean chaos in these troubled times.

To be understood in a courtroom is to

write the human language behind a

set of bars all our own,

with enough room to fill a decade

and dream of a masterpiece able

to rival Shakespeare under means of

borrowed love, for thou which has it,

loves through words at his beckoning,

and breathes through stanzas to 

be adored a century more and studied

under foreign roofs, employing a

madness for love but hated for

its sincerity, only to be understood

through misunderstanding.

This hilarious tragedy is still running, and

tickets are to be won.

This Paradise Needs Sowing 

My earth is able to be dug. but

the soil is sour and my ears hear a

billion cries. The archers bow is arrow-

less, and targets are flourishing

behind walls of eccentric minds just

waiting for bridges to cross and feelings

to meet. Pondering is dangerous in this

town, where tongues flap in constant

directions unforeseen, but needed never-

the-less, more and more and more.

Does a child have a chance in

this thorned garden to kneel and pray

as mother and father had or had not

done, and wish for a fantasy to take

them away to peaks of immense

Imagination as an escape

for what must come.

Underruled governments hold you for payment

before dreams can commence reality.

Eggs are cracking under a scorching

Sun, frying its hopes on my soil and

poisoning this modern Eden.

An After Thought 

Could there be an uncut truth?

To moods where smoke is felt,

but never seen?

Unfixed motion runs a barren course

through rainbows of emotion,

and hated, though loved, to extents

never dreamed.

The petals to these

flowers are dead to be born again

under a freezing sun, for laughter

and fierce anguish, as minds struggle

to withhold its growth under extreme

knowledge that only makes sense to

other people but never understood.

A cunning song is heard through a 

rusted throat as notes are bellowing to the

smoking sky on days when children are

reeking from the heart and question

marks haunt their thoughts.

         Where's it all begin?

What do I lose to gain in a world

of beauty so vile,

it would embellish through demons?

The Virtue Conceived 

The instruments to my leisure lie

solely unbalanced, under a darkened

cloud where the weather is unpredicted,

and dances could only be

performed dressed in a faulter's cloth.

Life's divinity is a shy smile

willing to shout in joy when 'tis safe

from nature's crimes, and denial of reason through

feeble minds.

The wit of her womb must penetrate

love's soul and pervade the generations

before the rot is in the air

and blood.

Streams aflow with wines of the

finest lessons in all creation, to free the

chained and bounded hearts.

To soothe its kiss on the lips

of all who prance, though wearily, on 

the banks of nature's fields, where

vile deeds are born not.

Birth to the words are mine to follow.

The Reprimand 

The dankness of dawn wept by a prosaic dusk

Impeded my morning's rest with imminent revile,

As the snappings of bones and endless drones sunk

My sloven soul to the bottom of a pitiless earth.

Enraged! I slammed the listless self of my being

On a dry bike, my coach to the ominous proceedings,

Which awaited me before a committee of trees;

Nature's stalwart fringe enveloping the plaintiff's circle.

With the fervor of an assassin's lawyer, I spewed

My litany upon the foliage of an unsuspecting syndicate.

The shameful sky could only gape, hoisting a multitude of clouds,

As I reproached my muse for its indifference and idleness.

Vindicated by this torrential awakening, I proclaimed

My ascension with the bards of the past and the poets

Of the future: "Make way for the enraptured one, fiery

Pen in hand, brother to the denizens of Azure!"

My Own Private Phantasmagoria 

The entry was curious; not impervious to the absurd.

I wore my scowl like a blazoned shield,

As the music's vulgarity smothered my reflections.

Salvation was crucified, creation was stupefied.

I grappled the lands and oceans with desperation,

Imbalanced at the core of my exploited soul.

Where there lacked reason, eruptions culminated

Into thick-tarred nonsense stifling all hope.

I was rendered naked by this corrupt trance,

Knelt before a demon's symphony of idols.

Dancing shamelessly, red-eyed nymphs teased

The very nerves of my oppressed erections!

Shattered in tattered gardens, warped vegetables imploded,

Stealing the faint light from the vigilants guarding

My heart, whose rampart's mortar melted helplessly,

Creating an avalanche, snuffing the wills of life.

I slumbered on, oblivious of any direction,

Collapsing, where lay a shabby raft before

A sinister and pure black sea, devoid of any horizons.

Blinking, I then found myself relenting for a perilous journey.

The blinding sky incarnated one phoenix after another,

Scorching my eyes, yet transfixed to their blasting

Infernoes as deafening laughter from familiar voices

Whipped my tongue for some infantile screams.

Amidst this hellish clamour my shield cracked,

Revealing a fissure, containing the embryo of surrender.

The skies tore open with a tempest of salt rain,

For I could no longer stave off the welling in my eyes.

My state seemed irreparable, as I languished

In this most nightmarish horror, coerced to beg

For release, away from all my perpetual suffering

At the hands of some senseless, tormenting nebulas.

The sudden clang of time awoke my conscience

In pools of sweat, fully aware of the anguished tides

That now dissolved into silent beats of denial,

Arresting now the dormant knocks from Hell.

Convalescence 

Darkness peers behind a jaded tear,

unabashed at its willingness to evoke despair.

A meek and meagre hovel for a heart indeed,

to only beat in silence, aloof from optimism's flame.

The daily mirror reflects a venom of contempt,

where a new gash degenerates into an indefinite scar.

The transitory days rupture the soul,.... fade out

                 ..... fade in .....

This elevation has a butterfly wingspread

beautiful and meticulous,

like a lover in a stillframe, locked

and eternal.

There's a fond repulsion from storybook

complacency.

Hug a horror from the past,

letting it free at last,

biding its time in oblivion,

as far away from me as existentially possible.

A wayward child applies an ointment of innocence

  and vision is now widescreen,

   and the senses bite, they gnaw

    and tear:.... Awakening!

The Ill-Deciphered Tongues 

         "What exactly do you mean?"

I ask myself in judgement's spotlight;

Consumed in anxiety, that I should accost

my thoughts with such a stern, insinuating finger,

as my ego lay helpless before an arsenal of

irrepressible doubt and suspicion.

What so-called education presents itself now as

my vanguard of defence? Wit? Facts? Theory?

All caves in upon me at once; merciless, sinister,

impalpable.

A source unknown to the surfaces of my immediate state!

An eruption of nerves with reverberating intensity

exposes a would-be charlatan, if not for this internal

disturbance that so diligently screens my every

thought and force-feeds me truth serum.

The liberties of honesty have cross-examined my

objectivity.

My mind's in calamity as it possesses my

subjectivity.

Labyrinths and mazes teeming with symbols and archetypes

seize me from the four corners of my being.

And I shudder instantly as the seconds die.

"Logic and reason are hereby accused of treason!"

How indelible are their philosophies, with such a vast

gallery of identities, when so many tongues have used and abused their

quasi-constitutions?

Death has intervened, masquerading as war,

by political children in their best tribal apparel,

resolving their credence disputes, with self-imposed

atrocities, believing them to be sacrifices for justice.

   Ah, yes! Sweet justice - she's forever misconstrued.

   But isn't everything? - echoes abound.

I'm forced to concede in accordance to that

infinite question, under sieged by mirrors.

So why this malicious attack upon a soul

willing to self-deprecate in the name of truth,

that ineffable answer to Man's perpetual struggle?

Tongues have been attempting to decipher

its cryptic terms at great cost.

Honor? Veiled in flags and emblems; statues and

anthems; kings and queens; priests and popes.

Insignia for the pompous?

Has that anything to do with truth?

I sense the scale tipping,

Then drip, drip, drip, my mind salivates, but from where?

And trip, trip, trip, a stumble and a grumble.

              "What exactly do you mean?"

And, alas, I realize the first great stumbling block

that has incited so much hostility.

Darkness and I 

The night, the uncertain night

has fashioned its shroud around my soul,

dispensing with a day's worth of illuminations,

and now negates all my heart's delight.

What force unknown has aroused such a disarray

of tremulous feelings upon my hours of searching?

I'm as confined as Hamlet, a slave of delaying,

a deceiver of time.

I'm as helpless as a newborn, relying on my

fictional guardian's care.

              An incubated man.

The castrated shortcomings of a severed nightcrawler,

dragging a cerebral trail of lost thoughts.

Involuntary abortions, miscarriages of mind, grappling the

enormities of a wounded Anima.

Locked in and thus locked out!

Tronced and poised for an unruly demise, begging

for a feminie grace to open her gates,

emitting the inspired rays of a new day's sun, dripping

the dew to intoxicate anew the withering muse.

The night is my muted companion, and we wait with urgency

for our soul's lucidity.

The Aspiring Doors 

I know not where to go!

My mind abandons me, due to a repressed mental dominion.

This scentless air has suffocated the immensity of all

possible dreams.

The muse circumambulates, waiting for its call

to this duly adorned engagement, chock full of

motley anomalies with hidden faces. but audible

snickers.

The colors are nuances, waiting for the make-up crew

to provide a suffrage.

Then violins will weep in technicolor, and cellos

will master the strokes of calligraphy.

The celebration awaits.

The Redemption in Music 

Violins of sympathy have wept this symphony,

a restoration for a languished soul.

Notes of majesty have conquered this travesty

and regained the vanguished gold.

Melodies so moving, blessed in soothing, a phrase

that welcomes the new kingdom.

Songs of azure and angels as pure, commence o Joy,

a found soul's lost freedom! 

The Seminal Pulse 

The backyard swans infused the street lamps

with celestial calm that penetrated the lushful

foliage of the neighbouring trees and sublimed the 

visions of a wakeful nomad,

disturbing his pen's coma.

which now danced silently across his page

with lustful passion,

begetting verse,

as if Genesis had travelled full circle

to create again the Earth's first 

innocence.

The Inspired 

Lurking harlequins, imbued in blue, have

fermented the folklore of some past sanctity.

Ushering doves

form their gliding

gyre, milking the autumn 

sky with desire's funnel,

and quenching my thirsted

mind's eye,

coating my ears with creation's elixir.

Cascading sound

waves of iridescence

embraces a child's sway.

Prancing     about

                      in     joyous

     frolic,

               inviting exotic climes from

Netherworlds,

to possess and nurture the myriad visions that

   s       u

w           n 

    i       i

r             s

    l  in  on before a bevy of

stolid senses, famished like lost worlds,

praying for the bountiful to come and replenish

the once infertile soil of yesterday's dreams,

awakening now in sweet verse received from the plentiful skies.

The Gift Relinguished 

The severed correspondence from nature, a faint light

where once whirled a vigorous muse in all

its zesty colors, scents and sounds, now dies a

slow, woeful death with only strength enough

to recall a child's garden of abundance.

Imagination's thriving song has given way to forward grey.

Why does Man's vital gift yield to reside in Limbo?

It drowns and suffocates, succumbs for beguiled treasures.

It clutches with obsession to a lineage of material desires.

Primal urges await, clad in cunning facades labelled with love.

copyright 1995/2025

That One Album You Love, But Just That One

 Albums in My Collection I Find Essential from Artists with Several More That Aren't Essential 

by James Albert Barr

"Only you and you alone can thrill me like you do." - Only You by The Platters

Over the years, as a music lover/collector, I've noticed that I have accumulated many "one-offs" in my ever-expanding music collection. What I mean by "one-off" is those albums by artists whom I'm fairly familiar with and have heard at least three or four or more of their albums in their respective discographies. But, for some reason, either aesthetically or more subjectively, only one specific album in said catalogs has "hit my sweetspot" and remained singular in my affection for and appreciation of. Here's a list of some of those special albums from mostly well-known musical artists that sit snuggly, though solitarily, among other artists with more than one album to show for in my beloved collection. I'll use numbers as markers, but they're really in no particular order of preference or significance:





   

1. This Is the Sea - The Waterboys (1985)

The Waterboys have about 15 albums to their credit, but I've only heard maybe the first five, up to Room to Roam. and it was 1985's This is the Sea that completely captured my love and attention. Of course, the band's most famous song appears on it: "The Whole of the Moon", which is a bona fide classic. But I also love tracks like, "Don't Bang the Drum", "Medicine Bow", "Be My Enemy" and the sublime title track, which closes the album. This was also Karl Wallinger's last album with The Waterboys before he left to form his own band, World Party, whose 1990 album, Goodbye Jumbo, incidentally, is the only album from them that I consider essential, but is currently missing from my collection; an omission I hope to rectify in the near future.

2. Yanqui U.X.O. - Godspeed You! Black Emperor (2002)

I remember, back when I actually gave a shit what Pitchfork said in their reviews, that they "forked over" a pitiful 5.6 rating to this fantastic album, saying it was "sluggish and lacked any invention". I wholly disagree with it being sluggish. I find it, to this day, to be utterly captivating and dramatically sweeping in the best possible way. Yes, maybe it wasn't particularly "ground-breaking", but that's hardly a deal-breaker with me when the material is so memorable, such as the album's centerpiece, "Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls". I've heard their first four albums, and even used to own a copy of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, but it never really grabbed me hard enough to stick, though it was still pretty decent. I, admittedly, haven't been keeping up with Godspeed You! Black Emperor's more recent stuff.

3. Face Value - Phil Collins (1981)

Phil Collins was literally everywhere throughout the 1980s. You could not escape his ultra-sheen, piercing caterwaul, especially between 1984-1989 (with Genesis or solo), when "the 80s sound" became bigger, louder, more insistent and antiseptic, production-wise. This was the period when Patrick Bateman's favorite music was being mass-produced and shorned of any real soul and authenticity, at least in the mainstream. Before the music industry went "over the top" (to quote from a, by then, typically bad Sly Stallone movie of the same obnoxious period) post-'83, in my opinion, although I was mostly on-board with it all, being a mere teenager myself, Phil had recorded and released a couple less extroverted albums that still, however, evinced the new (and soon to be over-used) studio "gated drum sound". In fact, it was on his solo debut album, Face Value, that said gated drum sound was historically employed, most memorably on now classic song, "In the Air Tonight", a song that was initially a moderate Top 20 hit in 1981, but would be launched into the florescent-colored/padded-shouldered stratosphere after being brilliantly played at a crucial moment in the classic debut episode of Miami Vice. Anyway, Face Value is the one and only Phil Collins album I feel deserves to be included in my vast but eclectic music collection.  

  

4. Nomads Indians Saints - Indigo Girls (1990)

I heard this stellar album at a very impressionable time in my then young life when my social consciousness and liberal self-righteousness were "ripe as young pain" and beginning to insist itself on many unsuspecting (initially, anyways) acquaintances with a modicum of opinion-asserting regarding all things musical, cinematic, literary, environmental and political. The Indigo Girls were, themselves, a very liberal, left-leaning folk-rock duo who associated themselves with many of the musical acts I was into around the early 90s, particularly R.E.M., who were, by then, my absolute favorite band. I liked the Girls' earlier stuff and some of their subsequent material as well, but Nomads Indians Saints, featuring the outstanding "Watershed", "Welcome Me", "Hammer and a Nail", "Keeper of My Heart" and "The Girl with the Weight of the World in Her Hands", was the only album that really blew me away.

5. High Violet - The National (2010)

There was a relatively short period of time in the early 2010's when I truly thought I was going to become an "official fan" of the American indie band, The National. I had purchased their 2010 album, High Violet, and quickly picked up their 2007 release, Boxer (which I sold later). I really liked Boxer, but I loved High Violet, and was "planning" on getting 2005's Alligator after listening to it on YouTube but never did. High Violet was my 3rd favorite album of 2010 and the tracks, "Anyone's Ghost" (which reminded me of the late, great Mark Sandman of Morphine), "Bloodbuzz Ohio" and "England" were among my favorite songs of that year. Then their 2013 follow-up, Trouble Will Find Me, was released. I heard it, again on YouTube, but was not especially enamoured with it, although I didn't hate it either; it was just kinda, as the kids say, "meh", just not very memorable, so I chose not to buy it. Hoping they would bounce-back with their next album, I waited until Sleep Well Beast came out in 2017, and I was just as disappointed with it as their previous snoozer. That's right, a "snoozer". The National's music, post-High Violet, has been a crushing bore to me, and to be perfectly honest, kind of beta and cucky. What the hell happened to them? They used to ROCK, as only capital-L liberal, indie bands are wont to do from time to time, but do less and less now over the last decade or so - Hmmm. 

6. Love - The Cult (1985)

For me, and unequivocally, Love is the Cult album, bar none! Even though I do like some of the songs on their subsequent albums, no other Cult album has even come close to this one (sorry Electric and Sonic Temple fans). It has their undisputed (generally speaking) greatest song, "She Sells Sanctuary" (a set-in-stone classic that I never tire of listening to), and an overall sound that perfectly captures a melange of gothic/punk/alternative rock. "Rain", "Revolution", "Nirvana" and "Black Angel" are highlights as well.

 

7. Become What You Are - Juliana Hatfield Three (1993)

This was the only album released under the moniker: the Juliana Hatfield Three. Of course, she had previously been in a well-regarded band, Blake Babies, but after they broke-up Juliana usually recorded new music as a solo artist, with the exception of Become What You Are, the best thing she ever did, in my opinion. And it doesn't surprise me that the closest Juliana Hatfield ever came to "rock stardom" was with this album too. There isn't a clunker in the bunch, with particular standouts being: "My Sister", "For the Birds", "Supermodel", "Feelin' Massachusetts" and "I Got No Idols". Being not exactly the extroverted type, perhaps this brief brush with "semi-fame" scared her straight, and she decided to be a lot more unassuming a singer-songwriter from there on. 

8. Aqualung - Jethro Tull (1971)    

Only in the last decade or so have I finally begun to more thoroughly appreciate progressive rock. During the 80s, I was predominantly a new wave/synth-pop/college rock fan, and almost exclusively into alternative rock and some Brit pop while traversing the 90s. At the turn of the millennium, I was hooked on indie music/chill electronica/art pop and, to some degree, its hipster pretensions. By the early 2010s, I began noticing the hollowness (and questionable dispositions, particularly regarding the notion of reality) of many of the indie artists I continued discovering and attempted to "get into", seeing as I learned more and more of them came from well-to-do backgrounds with nary a credible pedigree for truly counter-cultural artistry. This sea change of sorts, taste-wise, opened up my ears to a long-neglected genre, i.e. prog-rock. Jethro Tull, however, were a band I got somewhat familiar with having lived with a couple straight-up prog fans back in the 90s, so I heard a few of Tull's albums in my day, but the only one that really, and eventually, took to my "wheel-house", was this deliciously derelict gem.  

9. Sports - Huey Lewis and the News (1983)

Quite an ironic "left-turn" here, huh? Yup, the "coming-of-age" period for this Gen-Xer was indeed the glorious 1980s! What a time to be a teenager who loves music. As I said earlier, my "predominant tastes" in the 80s were new wave/synth-pop/college rock, and Huey Lewis and the News were really none of these in the strictest sense. They did however, because it was all the rage afterall, display "some" new wave qualities in their music, a la "I Want a New Drug" and "Heart and Soul", in particular. I only recently procured a used CD copy of Sports long after owning a cassette copy of it in the 80s. It's, without a doubt, the only Huey Lewis and the News album I could ever own, and mostly for nostalgic purposes. Having said that, it's still a wonderful collection of catchy-ass tunes from a long-lost time I would seriously consider giving up a body part to go back to.

10. Octopus - Gentle Giant (1972)

I belatedly discovered these immensely talented British prog rockers about five years ago while watching the YouTube channel, Sea of Tranquility, and hearing Pete Pardo gush over them and their relatively short life-span as an active band, 1970-1980. I've heard most of their 11 albums, and genuinely liked a few of them, but there was only one that wholly impressed me, nay, blew my frickin' mind, and that was Octopus! It features eight tracks of some of the most creative prog rock compositions, displaying magnificent musicianship and wonderfully odd vocal arrangements and harmonies, such as those featured on "Knots". "Dog's Life" and "Think of Me with Kindness" are beautifully heartfelt ballads of a folk-prog quality.