John Barfoot has been writing stories – and occasional poems – for as long as he can remember. 
Some of them have been published. More recently, he has been making collages with Adobe Photoshop, 
using copyright-free images.  


 

Fair Trial

The defendant said,
Look within your own hearts first,
then decide my guilt.

The black-robed judge said,
Innocence is a concept -
Guilt exists always.



KAFKA'S AXE

I read recently that Franz Kafka
thought of books as the axe for

the frozen sea within us. He meant,
I think, that if books don't dent

our smug sense of who and what we are,
then what's the point? To jar

the ice-sheet within us is surely
what we need, to see that purely

escapist reading's a sugared teat 
we suck when bowed down by defeat. 

If the point's to be happy, why read 
at all? Under information's slow drip-feed

what you are's revealed clear and stark -
turn off the flow; shut the book; stay in the dark.



How to listen to a joke

Drain the face 
of all emotion.
Stare coldly.
Become stone.

If the joke
is funny,
raise one 
eyebrow.

If the joke
is not funny,
raise one 
eyebrow.

This way,
humour falters,
doubts itself,
begins to wander.

If humour
cannot survive,
crush it,
stamp it out.

One day,
they will
thank you.
Then you can laugh.