Poetry - Lynn White

    Ruby Oh Ruby Ruby, oh Ruby, black skin, white dress clear as the white and black in a black and white photograph. Ruby, oh Ruby, born to build bridges and grown to cement them into society. Ruby, oh Ruby, standing back to watch their bridges burn behind them. Ruby, oh Ruby, growing up a triumph, growing old triumphant. https://heyzine.com/flip-book/32dfef28d9.html

  Scourge Who will help the prisoner lying on the floor, lying there alone, unwashed   and bleeding. No one came. They said he deserved the scourging, that it was their job to administer punishment and keep society safe, safe from such scourges. So no one came Only angels, those fat cherubs   of empathy and kindness, they came down to help him. But only in his dream. https://opayearbook2026.wordpress.com/2026/05/28/lynn-white/

  Death of Empathy When empathy died the soldiers could dance in the streets they’d cracked wearing the underwear of the women whose homes they had destroyed. And dance they did with pride. When empathy was dead   the soldiers could take children’s toys from the rubble of their bombed homes and repurpose them as tank trophies mascots to be flaunted with pride while the street cracked under the weight. When they had killed empathy   the soldiers could shoot babies in the head or gut - they chose, and someone’s daughter 200 times,   or 300 - they could choose. And they filmed it with pride from the street’s rubble and cracks. When empathy was murdered the soldiers could capture children and imprison them in cages, one metre square, or whatever they chose until they told them   what they did not know and then laugh with pride in the smooth Israeli streets. When empathy was dead and buried deep down below the streets’ cracks and only silence could be heard Israel wa...

Unreal Reality Dead or alive, seems it no longer matters. Perhaps it never did. And now AI is a perfect fit, to get the job every time, no live performance needed now. And it was always a performance, live or film or funny cartoon, always staged, unreal. Dead or alive. Perhaps some of it was once real. Perhaps once it mattered. Perhaps it still does, real or unreal reality dead or alive.   https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/07/unreal-reality.html

          Blue Period         The vases were pink         from my Rose period                   but then          when I was   feeling blue             and all cut up,                    I made                a paper cut                   in blue      like Matisse might make, I looked at the roses despondently         wishing they were blue.          I’ll break them up               and start                 again.  https://online.fliphtml5.com/obsvt/THE-SOLILOQUIST-Summer-26-issue-peMK/#google_vignette

  The Music of My Dreams I have such beautiful dreams. They sing sweetly to me inside my head.  Inside my head such sweet dreamy music growing louder and harsher as it struggles to be heard, as it struggles to get out into the ragged, jagged outside life which passes for normality. Such beautiful dreams. Such perfect sounds. Such a perfect life playing inside my head. as I would like it to play out on the outside. https://online.fliphtml5.com/obsvt/THE-SOLILOQUIST-Summer-26-issue-peMK/#google_vignette