Steve Barfield | weareyouproject

Bio: Steve Barfield

Steve Barfield is a poet, playwright and screenwriter. His poetry has appeared internationally and has been translated into Spanish for various journals and anthologies. His books of poetry include Festival of Stone and Skullgrin, with poems in venues such as the anthologies New Generation: Poetry, The Living Underground, La Adelfa Amarga: Seis Poetas Norteamericanos de Hoy, The Immanentist Anthology, Mantras: Anthology of Immanentist Poetry, Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places plus Intermission Magazine, the Chicago magazine of drama and literary arts, Ann Arbor Review, The Bitter Oleander, Black Moon, The Cultural Journal, Ghost Dance, Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Leaf Garden, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Poet Lore, Poetry Review, South Florida Review and University of Tampa Review. Author of several plays his play "Asteroid" was produced at Towson University in Maryland. He is currently at work on his third screenplay. He is best known as an established poet of the Immanentist style of poetry. Steve Barfield makes his living as a Medical Journalist and Editor working out of his West Palm Beach, Florida home. As President of the Iron Overload Diseases Association (IOD), his expertise is in the nutrient iron’s role in human health.

(Photo by Christian de la Paz)

THE BORDER

Young man,

wrap your hopes

and desperate needs

into the last of your clothes. Leave your family with promises and all of the desperation

you were unable to pack.

Join the economic refugees trekking the sharp edges

of La Frontere,

seeking the famous

land of opportunity.

BORDER # 2

Trusting this trail of broken glass we wander

through a barbed-wire desert.

Here is a land without moisture,

a land without mercy

a land without end.

Hallucination or mirage

the horizon floats

offering no explication.

If I could only catch my breath,

I could keep up with the others. Maybe I can live here

in this cactus garden?

To El Norte

the path is littered

with the brittle bones

of the unprepared.

Oh Lord!

What makes my soul so sore?

BORDER # 3

If attempting a run at the border,

be careful of the word hope.

It is a word that leads to the wasteland. You will find the scarce plants

all have barbed needles and thorns

for they know what it takes to survive. This land has the fever

of a being at death’s edge.

A thirsting fever to humble

even the Maya and Aztec.

Here lies a wayfarer

with a heavy black bag of hope

in a desert of white light.

Really his hope was not to suffer.

In a cosmological sense

his wish was fulfilled.

BORDER # 4

A widow dressed in mourning

casts a long shadow across this land.

She is sad for the land

and all who attempt it.

In order to understand the desert,

you will need to know its jargon.

Desert Lexicon:

"Sand" is the broken crystals from a ceramic oven. "Dryness" that will hollow your bones.

"Sun" loved or avoided but always constant. "Desiccation" of all exposed.

"Water," what a wonderful word.

This two-syllable word rains in your mouth.

Know also that God

has taken away the ancient sea

and turned his back on this land.

Thus, leaving it to Diablo.

BORDER # 5 ECONOMIC POLEMIC FOR AMERICANS

Conservatives have turned capitalism into a religion.

A faith good for all with the U.S. as its church.

Let the Market choose is the mantra. Which means

that the market makes decisions about what is right

and practical. Yet which Americans are allowed

through the door and to the alter? Access to the temple

is a decision made by conservatives

instead of the sacrosanct market.