Poetry - Lynn White

  Message Understood He rescued it from the ocean, just a note enveloped in glass as fragile as the love that once enveloped him. He could make no reply, knew there could be none, that it was all washed up and all that was left remnants ready to float away in an ocean of tears, But he won’t let them go. Before, he’d felt as lost and pointless as the pages of an unread book as hollow as the coconut shells scattered there around the deck empty broken bereft. Soon the shells will be floating to join the ship again. But he has left they have left, him and the boy, he could only take one, though he tried for more. They walked away. A...

  Now I Am Bald Now I am bald and a fashionista by default, as it was never my fashion before and no one followed me but now,   heads are shaved as if following in my footsteps, following my trail   of discarded hair now lost   with my identity.   Now I am bald, my head as naked as my fears fears I can’t lose,   fears unattached while my hair is un-attachable, filling the teeth of my comb, and lying on my pillow in tufts of terror. Chemo does that - forces me to hunger for my loss forces me to follow or face my fate bewigged   Now I am bald. https://maatsfeather.digital/Lynn-White

  Valuables Once I had so many. Now they’ve metamorphosed but still I will carry them with care, those precious things filling my head, once dreams,   now memories. https://maatsfeather.digital/Lynn-White

  It’s Behind You Sometimes you just can’t see it however closely you look, a case of the wood hiding the trees with the elephant there in the room.   For safety's sake you need to take a wider view three hundred and sixty degrees if there’s no audience to shout it out. Get ready to run. https://stickfigurepoetry.com/issue-21/#behind-white

  Figure of Speech “Mad world, mad kings, mad composition,” said Shakespeare’s King John speaking anaphorically. Who could disagree in those times or in these or in most times in between. It takes an abstraction   to show it clearly,   to figure it out. A figure to illustrate it perfectly. A figure that sums it up   A figure that says it all. https://poetrywivenhoe.org/2026/04/day-1234-figure-of-speech-white/

  Wasted How many candles must I light to commemorate all the dead souls, all the lives wasted in wars without end. So many that candle making   became a profitable industry, its candles even surviving death. I have never lit such a candle. My time wasted has been   in protests for peace, in dreams of peace. My voice has been wasted in words of peace in poems of peace. And now I wonder   if there be anyone left to waste a candle for me. https://www.ivoreview.com/issues/issue-three-confession/