Poetry by Sam Barbee

Poet’s Statement

Growing up in North Carolina, gothic overtones are prevalent in my writing – dark themes’ credibility and significance to personal gospels. My poetry reflects scars, gray hairs, and other such nuances of the southerner, Sam Barbee.

No subject is off limits: a trip to the graveside, or to the dentist can be written with equal enthusiasm; a love affair you can't dismiss; or becoming enamored with your new coffee cup each deserves suitable attention. My early influencer was Mr. E.A Poe.  More recently, Robinson Jeffers, Li-Young Lee, Keith Flynn, and Dylan & Morrison.   

If you want to write a poem, then, damn-it, write it. Of course, competent poetry calls on conventional components of  image and metaphor and so forth, but also include a sprinkle of magic or mystery, humor or misery, peace or thunder: those authentic things that add up to genuine life.  

My newest collection is titled Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, Redhawk Publishing). He has three previous poetry collections, including That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), which was a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016, and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. I just received the 2026 First Place prize in the annual flyingSouth anthology contest.

I have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines in the US and abroad, and is a two-time Pushcart nominee. My poem "Phantom Pain" won First Prize in the Orchard Street Press Malovrh-Fenlon Poetry Contest; and received the 59th Poet Laureate Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society for my poem "The Blood Watch". I was awarded an "Emerging Artist's Grant" from the Winston-Salem Arts Council to publish his first collection Changes of Venue (1997, Mount Olive Press). 

I served as President of the Winston-Salem Writers, and NC Poetry Society, and am one of the originators of Poetry In Plain Sight – now in its fourteenth year – a poetry initiative to feature NC poets on broadside posters to display statewide in NC towns.

The Gray Stone

The man who had always 

enjoyed listening

woke up with a third ear.

He was upset, because he had

always prayed for

a third eye to see more things.

His third ear made him a better 

listener but he remained 

certain a third eye, placed in 

the middle of his forehead, 

would help him 

see things never seen.  So,

again he prayed, 

but this time also

rubbed a smooth grey stone.

And with dawn, he had 

his coveted third eye, 

but all three ears were gone.

Rouge

A smudge. No dispute.

Deferring her ashen skin.

Akin to a bruise. Amber 

fingertips grapple with repair.

Congenial spice to color his grip's pattern.

Shadow applied to eclipse sundown.  

Moods, dreams to crawl from. Ground

down above dimples and worn scar.

Aligning herself in vanishing terms.

Cheek varnish. Evokes knuckle.  

Smear of blush to confuse as dust.  

Never confused as enough.  

Black and White Romance

Film-lovers rage over reckless colorizing. 

Precious things persist, on their own, 

enduring into night, peaceful and untinged. 

Scrambling for Neilson shares, computers 

manipulate our classics: tint favorite starlets.

Assign heartless texture, blur tasteful boundaries.

Greenish garlic could never deter 

the silent Nosferatu rising from his coffin,

stalking chambers of his pastel castle.

That smudged-over vampire now emerges

from amber forests and yellow spider webs 

to arch over a pink virgin’s bed.

Through the years, I have silenced a 

personal vampire, impaled her time after time.

Grouted her away in a frosty black and white 

tomb, and left her for dead. But this phantom, 

even with flesh-tones bled, skulks 

my weary defenses by way of risky gray areas 

where the undead thrive. My stark pride 

knows a sharp bronzed stake merely keeps her 

numb. In their day, memories infuse themselves 

with implied color. I remain poised, content 

to maintain my fleshed-out vigil, preferring 

reverence to highlight all I hold dear.

Noir

He eases her cellphone into a pocket.

Advises refuge in embrace.

Her cigarette’s tip glows at dusk. Boughs

applaud with gut-screech like tweaking violin;

like teacher’s hard pink nails raking a chalkboard, 

scratching open dark knowledge. 

He kisses each butterscotch tear 

from milk-white cheeks. Off chin’s tremble, 

soft freckles sweet on his abrasive tongue.

It is late, but will make it all better.

Her bleeding lip stains Pinot Grigio

into Noir. 

Secrets Shadows Do

Love’s dark bile bitters the dream –

not delectable 

as once seemed.

Grayscale dusk craves the benign –

begs the erratic 

to align.

Fictions just before the rot –

secrets shadows do,

then do not.

Sleep’s severe damage,

unavenged.

The Crying Girl

                                                                                        -- after Roy Lichtenstein

Roy's primary colors blend Pop-Art scorn—

a stark face blemished by a grid of thorns. 

A girl's eyes weep, hints of midnight damage—

of what might haunt her as blue morning breaks.

His bruises of ink cannot temper rage. 

Regret awakens, pink overlays cheeks:

question of violence, red shame engaged.

My empty canvas, my blank page of script—

can I tally dark blotches across her face...

no doubt sidetracked, waylaid by wanton lips.

Roy dabbed splotched temple, daubed her disgrace.

Each wound solved by a Colt revolver's clip.

My girl's white tears dry. My blanched words adorn—

dots unite shared pain on our blemished morn.