Poetry - Lynn White

  The Melon Market It was a small town, Pec, in Kosovo now, then in Yugoslavia. It was 1966, the year before watermelons became illegal  in Palestine. It was a small restaurant with no menu so communication wasn’t easy. But the guy on the next table spoke French opening up a channel of communication for us. John wanted to eat melon but there was no melon. Our French speaking friend, he was a friend by now, Had a late night solution. He took us to a large dry field, a melon market, he said. There were huge heaps of watermelons, dark green globes waiting in heaps. Each heap with its sleeping seller resting on a bed of melons. He shook one seller awake  and carefully chose a melon. We all went home with him, he called the neighbours in and there we had a melon party eating great juicy slices  off tin plates in a small house in Pec in 1966, the year before Israel banned watermelons in Palestine. https://www.europeanpoetry.com/2026/03/lynn-white-poetry-popular-uk-poet.htm...

  Game On Even as a child she could play a mean game of dominoes sometimes it was just against her mother, sometimes other members of the family as well, or her friends and their mothers. Games were always sedate, well mannered, even tempered dominoes carefully placed on the table with a gentle click clack. She usually won. Later she discovered that the pub game was quite different. Every move was contested. Dominoes were slammed down noisily   with a bounce which disturbed those already placed and led to heated debate about where they had been and where they should be now. And there was always an audience   which joined in as well shouting advice and abuse, whichever was deemed appropriate. Excitement mounted as the beer flowed. And she won again. https://beaboutitpress.substack.com/p/game-on

  A State of Terrorism There are tunnels everywhere, they lie, under every road, under every building, every field and every tent, they lie. They are all terrorists, they lie, the old men and women, even the children,  even the babies born and unborn, they lie. The journalists are terrorists, the aid workers are terrorists, the artists and poets are terrorists, the medics and nurses are terrorists, the teachers and cooks are terrorists, the dying, the dead and the buried are terrorists. In a state of terrorism, a state of terrorists, they will lie and they’ll lie and they’ll lie. https://www.europeanpoetry.com/2026/03/lynn-white-poetry-popular-uk-poet.html

  The Enigma Hitler was an enigma, Dali knew it, he could sense it even in the nonsense of his dreams he knew Maldordor was malodorous. Yes, Hitler was an enigma, such a master of communication, but Dali knew that his communication would be as broken as his old black phone, no more likely to function than an umbrella is to change into a bat and fly away when the end came. But that was then and now Dali is dead, perhaps more dead than Hitler, who seems again an enigma, a still unbroken influencer  of malodorous malevolence in the era of mobile phones  and the reality of fake news breeding New Pretenders to the crown he left seemingly broken beyond repair. So many now ready to pick up the pieces  and put them together to fly with no umbrella for protection in the perpetual rain of the present which spells the death of dreams. https://www.europeanpoetry.com/2026/03/lynn-white-poetry-popular-uk-poet.html

  Barriers There were so many fences there, in that place, so many barriers, so many ways of excluding so may locks needing keys. Then came the war, the last one in that place, when everything collapsed, the war which ended everything. Afterwards the fences were broken the doors stayed open with their secrets exposed. The gold melted away. The locks grew rusty. Their keys abandoned, hung out to dry on broken fences left to decay  like the people. They’re all useless now with no doors to open and no doors to lock. There is no place now for keys or people. https://www.europeanpoetry.com/2026/03/lynn-white-poetry-popular-uk-poet.html

  Colonel America Calling   The dove sat carefully on Liberty lining her nest with down. She cooed sweetly but her new chick   said ‘coo-ark’ mimicking her, then ‘quark, then ’yawp’ as it grew stronger, she saw her cuckooed dove hatchling was a mocking bird, calling in New-Speak straining to be understood, straining   for more space,   more gas,   more gold,   more like   a colonising colonel balanced precariously puffing out his dovey chest,   as his eagle’s eye preys south then north, the Middle East then West. If we don’t clip his wings where will he go next? https://newversenews.blogspot.com/2026/03/colonel-america-calling.html