Poetry - Lynn White

Through the Glass A long time ago, Alice saw herself in her looking glass and walked through into a topsy turvy world  where everything was back to front and inside out. She drifted into a dreamscape of madness and unreality, without breaking the glass. She wasn’t cut by the shards of her mirror or the place she entered into. She had only to wake from her dream to make things the right way round again. But with a clear glass, a transparent window to the world, things would have been different. She would look towards a place where everything seems the right way round, where everything makes sense and adds up sweet with reason. There seems no madness in this place which looks easy for her to enter and welcomes her without sharp edges. But the clear glass is an invisible barrier to the life on the other side that seduces and entices her. And to step inside she has to break the glass whose sharp edges cut her, really cut her. And then propel her crazily on. Una...

Dawn Chorus It starts with one. One skylark singing. One Carson warning. Then the robins and blackbirds join in.  The early birds, like Carson. Then the wrens and warblers as the daylight warms them. Listen. Can you hear them? The warning calls are warming up as well, strengthening their numbers  as the bird song dies away. Listen. Listen. Can you hear them? Listen.  Don’t sleep. Don’t wait to hear  the silence. First published by Ealain, Extinctions Issue 7, April, 2015 http://www.magzter.com/ZA/MPA-Publishing/Ealain/Art/142103?

Behind the Mask Will I ever see the man behind the mask? I think I can  sometimes through the eye slits, sometimes when they are open. Eyes are revealing, after all, and difficult to hide. Maybe they’ll tell me enough, tell me all I need to know. So I will have no urge to peel off the mask, to tear it away from the skin underneath. It would be too painful, anyway. Too raw, for both of us and would leave behind a soreness that would not heal. And still not all would be revealed by the exposure. http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php?news_id=944

Butterflies So many new warriors grown from the seeds planted by the invaders  sent by the money men, the arms traders, the super ego-ed politicians. So many dead warriors lying whole or in pieces, destroyed by the invaders sent by the money men, the arms traders, the super ego-ed politicians. Dead warriors. Soon to be transformed, transformed into butterflies, according to the Mayans who knew about transformations - and about warriors. Butterflies with the souls of the dead warriors. Butterflies that can fly across continents, cross oceans and borders. There are no barriers for butterflies. And they are experts in transformation, experts in disguise. They will consume them, the money men, the arms traders, the super ego-ed politicians. Will worm their way inside them, infest them and destroy them all, Yes, they should beware the butterflies with the souls of dead warriors and the memories of slaughter. They carry karma with them. First publi...

Spark He looked down, aloof. Eyes deliberately  downcast. Not to be met. “Hmm”, she said, "Aunt Celia." He looked up. Surprise. Contact. Charge. Eyebrows twitched, a spark. The spark. The spark that would ignite the fire that would consume them. First published in Leannan   http://www.magzter.com/ZA/MPA-Publishing/Leann%C3%A0n/Art/

Then She’s standing still  pale as England,  slim and serious as I stood  then. Hair chopped  above her shoulders with a little curl allowed as mine was  then. A little curl allowed, in memory of it’s ringlets earlier than then. Then it grew longer  and we pulled it straight. So now, it’s more like it was  before then. Before then,  when it was longer still, and ironed straight under thick brown paper. It had been shorter still before then it’s feminine length curtailed, but with a little curl allowed, a reminder of it’s ringlets earlier than then. Of it’s earlier hated ringlets grown  from loose curls. Ringlets cut  when  father died. Not until then. First published in Silver Birch Press, Looks Like Me series 2015 https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/then-poem-by-lynn-white-looks-like-me-ekphrastic-poetry-series/

Washed Up So many dead people caught in the crossfire created by the the money men,  the arms traders, the super ego-ed politicians. They lie dead where they fell. Flesh and blood transformed to fertilizer to nurture the seeds and grow the crops, in a future they will not see. Their bones decaying to dust to form the building blocks of homes they will never inhabit. Dying where they fell, over there, not here and not looking like us. Unseen or soon forgotten by us here. But the dead washed up on holiday beaches look like our flesh and blood. They’re wearing our clothes. They’re washing up to haunt us in the Old World. Then there’s the living, washed up alive and by any means necessary moving on to bear witness, if any one is listening. To bring the horror home to those who created it in the Old World. Bringing it home to the Old World, but not as yet to the New. First published in Whirlwind, Issue 6 2015 https://issuu.com/whirlwindreview

Roots It’s said that you should remember your roots, remember where you came from, remember where you belong, anchored by your long tap root. But I have fibrous roots too, growing out strongly from the main tap. I have spread them out and put them down in many places, taken sustenance from them. They’ve been part of my growth, fed my main stem and it’s splits and branches. I’ve branched out from them and belonged in them all, all those places. And some rootlets have broken free and I’ve left them behind there no longer belonging to me. And I’ve left something of myself behind. Would I find it if I returned? I don’t think so. But others may still. First published in Writers Ezine, November 2015 https://www.facebook.com/writersezine/photos/a.212677528928918.1073741826.212673548929316/419794431550559/?type=3&theater

Leaving Last night at the theatre I saw you again, Your smile in a face so much younger. My confusion, my thoughts, my stares made him turn And your warm smile chilled me. The past and it’s future all came flooding back. The shock of sensations long gone. The dance and the music, the books that we read, the memories that we must both have of the pain and the pleasures, that were part of our love a long time ago. So I ask myself now, can anything stay to give pleasure to us in remembering those days? For my remnants now seem to be only pain, and their sadness engulfs me and halts my return. So I left, in the end, as I left you, my love, Saying nothing, taking nothing, leaving nothing behind. Without saying goodbye. First published in Leannan, ‘Lovers’ Issue 1, October, 2015 http://www.magzter.com/ZA/MPA-Publishing/Leann%C3%A0n/Art/

Michel Traveling through northern France with Michel driving. The Beatles singing on the radio, “Michelle, my belle”. A sky of uniform grey, dark, dark grey. And then, a surprise rainbow. And then, to one side, a helicopter  outlined black. Mosquito like. Black. And then, I bottled it. I can still remember. First published in Silver Birch Press, Song Series, November 2015 https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/11/01/michel-poem-by-lynn-white-when-i-hear-that-song-series/

Aftermath How can it be that someone I don't see, only think  about sometimes, but never contact, or try to, leaves such a gap, in their final leaving. My life has not been changed. All is the same. So why the difference now that you're really in the past, when you were already part of my past and not of my future. Nothing has changed for me, not really, not in reality. So why do you occupy my thoughts in a different way. Why does my future feel different now you cannot be part of it, even though you never would be and I knew it. Perhaps because I can no longer dream you there. But why not when you could never be there and I knew it the same then, as I know now. Why is it different, now even to dream? http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php?news_id=926

There’ll Be Ice Cream After If they hadn’t asked her to smell the nice scent. If she hadn’t remembered the scent from before. There would have been no screams, no stamping up and down on the trolley. The nurse would still have her cap on and the doctor would have no fist or feet marks on his white coat, no red hand mark on his pale cheek. There would have been no shock, horror reports to those who had put away Red Riding Hood and were waiting anxiously for news of their little girl. But they did ask her. They did ask her. The scent wasn’t nice. She knew it. And there was no ice cream afterwards either. They’d lied about that as well. A disappointing day. (first published in Calliope 2015) https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/therell-be-ice-cream-after-poem-by-lynn-white-my-sweet-word-series/

Through the Glass Alice saw herself in her looking glass and walked through into a topsy turvy world where everything was back to front and inside out. She drifted into a dreamscape of madness and unreality, without breaking the glass. Uncut by the shards of her mirror or the place she entered into. She had only to wake to make things the right way round again. But walking through a clear glass, a transparent window, it would have been different. Her reflection would float towards a place where everything seemed the right way round. Where everything made sense and added up sweet with reason. A place without madness, which looked easy to enter and had no sharp edges. Apparently. But this glass forms an invisible barrier to the other side and the life that seduces and entices her. And to get through she has to break the glass, whose sharp edges cut her and propel her crazily into a place where she cannot wake. A jagged, topsy turvy place where everything spin...

Doll My little princess. My china doll with your peachy skin and golden hair.  In pink frills I dressed you up, combed you and curled you. Made you into my special pet, my little angel, to be loved and cherished. My creation. My little girl. But all the time you were making up yourself, getting ready to  smash the porcelain, and break out to become  the creation you had already made up even before you painted  and inked your pearly skin, combed your hair straight, and gelled it  into jagged spikes with a pink splash. Shockingly, piercing the past, you broke out into your future. For you were never a princess, never a doll, and most of all, little girl, you were never mine, never mine to mould. https://thankyouforswallowing.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/doll/

Which Way I’m on the edge of the horizon looking back. There’s no looking forwards. Looking up I can see the sky, blue or grey like the sea. Reflected sunlight, clouds rippling like waves making shapes in the sand. Wave shapes on the land. Sometimes it’s so bright I can’t tell the blue from the grey, the cloud from the clear, the sky from the sea. The light blinds me. It’s too bright for my eyes and leaves me confused on the edge of the horizon, on a thin line with only one way to go. First published in Calliope, October 2015 http://www.calliopemagazine.com/

In The End In the end  I’ll be like you. Dust with flakes of skin and bone wrapped in long hair. Teeth chattering With no voice. No sense of taste or smell. No reason. In the end we'll be invisible, impenetrable, anonymous, figments. But then, we always were you and I, we always were. Published in Saudade, Issue 1 Half of the proceeds of sales will go to the schooling of underprivileged children in the Philippines. We have chosen Virlanie Foundation. Virlanie Foundation was established in 1992 by Dominique Lemay, a French social worker, with the help of his Filipino friends. Virlanie cares for children in need of special protection - those who are among the poorest of the poor, the abandoned, abused, exploited, neglected, and orphaned.  https://www.createspace.com/5522912

A Rose For Gaza Gaza is a garden full of roses. Stone roses. Rock roses. No petals to crush and bruise to release their fragrance. Only dust. Dust and the stench of death. No green space left. No sweet tranquility, peace or quiet. No escape. No garden of Eden here. No gateway to paradise. Rubble and rock roses. So I shall plant a rose for Gaza in my green space, in my tranquil garden. I won’t bruise it, just gently sniff its fragrance and hope that one day fragrant roses will bloom again in the garden of Gaza. What else can I do? Published in Zaira Journal 1 Half of the proceeds of sales will go to the schooling of underprivileged children in the Philippines. We have chosen Virlanie Foundation. Virlanie Foundation was established in 1992 by Dominique Lemay, a French social worker, with the help of his Filipino friends. Virlanie cares for children in need of special protection - those who are among the poores...

Sunshine and Shadows There are black clouds lingering over me. Casting shadows. Even though there’s a big red sun above  shinning down on me. Warming my face. Caressing me. reminding me of other sunshine days when the rays beamed more sweetly. The clouds make today too close, too hot, yesterday too far away. And the rays are stabbing me sharply. Hurting me. No longer warm and sweet but hot and sour.  Piercing me.  Cutting me like icy splinters. Because there’s cold there as well, coming from somewhere. This sun is too bright for me to see clearly, too red and swollen, like my eyes feel now. Heavy. Black with shadows. So I’m waiting for the rain to fall. Fall away. Drop by drop until they’re empty and cold. And I’m waiting for more cold days to come. And I’m waiting for the empty clouds to pass  and the sun to shine again and warm me if it can. First published in Aubade, September 2015 ...

Transformed We were such special people then,  flying high above the rest, like the arrogant angels we saw  playing way above the clouds. We could almost touch them with our arms outstretched as we danced our way through  a youth of endless possibilities. But other people were unimpressed. They had no wish to touch the angels,  or reach the stars, even if they could. They looked down to us, not up. Laughed and shook their heads at our strangeness and waited for our dreams to fracture as theirs had done. We did not hear the soundtrack of their voices. Did not see that their dreams had split open  and rotted away consuming them in the decay. Now we have become the rest and know that we were not so special then.  But just practicing for a life that would elude us  as our dreams remained dreams. Dreams which became decayed imaginings  growing dusty with time and fading. Like them, we were consum...

                         Washed Away         Cool cleansing water running over me,         washing away my sins, my impurities,         Cleaning me up, getting rid of the villainy         and lack of chastity.         Absolving me.         But who’s to say they should be washed away,         like the scruffiness of childhood innocence.         Who should judge these scents and tastes and sweats          of a life cleanly and clearly remembered.         What sins, what villainy?         I wished they could remain unwashed and pure          retaining their essence within my reach.         Hanging about me in my lived in face....

The Bucket Man I saw the Bucket Man today, Upside down, his head in his bucket, his arms folded tight to entertain the crowd. “It’s my living”, his sign says, “puts a roof over my head”. Such focus and fitness, such determination, such imagination, such creativity. Will it lead him him  to a different place, one day, this man and his bucket? And what if his parents were wealthy and had sent him to Eton or Harrow, What then for the Bucket Man? Such focus and fitness, such determination, such imagination, such creativity. Would it lead to a different place for this man and his bucket? But he does well, it seems. And for every coin in the bucket there’s a ‘thank you’ and a thumbs up from an arm released from it’s fold. He’s a popular entertainer, on facebook now and Twitter. So, what if one day his head meets up with the treasure in his bucket? Will he kick his bucket away and pay to send his kids to Eton or Harrow...

        Don’t Go When I’m with you I feel I am whole. Captured and completed. Engulfed by you. When you kiss me all my fears disappear in the kiss. Where do they go? I don’t know. Do you wrap them round your tongue and swallow them whole? I don’t know. I only know the comfort I feel, such peace. So don’t go. Don’t go. Please, don’t go. http://writingknightspress.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-squire-page-day-poetry-anthology.html

In The End In the end  I’ll be like you. Dust with flakes of skin and bone wrapped in long hair. Teeth chattering With no voice. No sense of taste or smell. No reason. In the end we'll be invisible, impenetrable, anonymous, figments. But then, we always were you and I, we always were. http://www.typoetic.us/latest-issue.html

Perfectly Imperfect It started when we stood hopefully,  with our thumbs outstretched by an English roadside. We were heading towards Italy and Yugoslavia without maps or money,  or sense of direction. And we made it to Italy.  and swam off the rocks,  with a man we’d met in a cafe, because he said we could. And we swam and swam until two policemen came,  (one very stern and one very twinkly), and said we couldn’t. Nor could we leave the rocks without clothes on, or with clothes clinging to our still wet bodies,  or lie on the rocks until we were dry, in case we disconcerted the traffic or populace.  This being the main street in Trieste. And we made it to Pec and lived  in a house ‘typique du Turque’  with a water pump in the garden and a toilet, also ‘Typique du Turque’,  which made us very ill indeed. But the parties were good and  the conversations interesting, Even t...

On the Edge I’m standing on the edge, on the rim  of the perimeter, on the outside, looking.... I’m not sure where I’m looking, outwards over the horizon or inwards to the inner depth, the inside of something. The inner void or the outer space. Face or about face. But there’s no confusion. Both faces are the same, I think... Can somewhere be full of emptiness? First Published in Calliope, June 2015 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=calliope+magazine+june+2015&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjL3YCVpofMAhVBfxoKHWbxCwYQsAQIKw&biw=1659&bih=828#imgrc=WUWyGcLCrMeEWM%3A

     Am I Dreaming? Is this a dream, a mirage? I could be sleeping. I was looking out on trees with rooks calling and nesting when I started to eat  my picnic. But am I asleep now? The trees are dancing, but no longer trees. Young people from another time are dancing to the music, swaying to the music of the crows. No longer crows though, but fiddlers and singers making raucous music for the dancing. So am I dreaming? The cheese is real though, and I’m still eating. I’m still chewing the bread  and drinking the wine. And I can feel a stone against my back,  digging into me. I’m sleepy now though. Will they be there when I wake? Or will I come back into life to see the trees and rooks  as I clear away my picnic and pack up. First published by Pilcrow and Dagger, Midsummer Night’s Dream Issue, June, 2015 http://go.epublish4me.com/ebook/ebook?id=10084703#/0 http://www.p...

                      Where is the Real World There was a broken circle in my field of wheat this morning. Can’t explain it. Walked through the wheat scratching my head with a stalk. Can’t explain. There are shapes in the circle, shapes which look like the shapes and spaces of this world. Lands and seas. Can’t explain them. Fell asleep in the scratchy stalks of my field in the sunshine. Can’t say why. Awoke in England, I think, lying there, floating above it, I think. Lying here, drifting away, like a balloon out of control, but avoiding the sun and the stars and the other worlds. I think. Or am I lying below, in my field with my heels on the ground? Difficult to know.  Hard to discern this place and know my place in it.  Can’t explain  why I’m floating here, unsure if I’m drifting above or below. I might fall. I might fall up or down. I don’t know which. Can’t ...

Legacy Vera Lynn was a famous singer, the Forces Sweetheart, no less. My mother was Vera, so I should be Lynn. My mother liked things to be right. But even more than  the correctness of Vera and Lynn,  she abhorred diminutives. They were definitely not  right. So I must have a name which could not be shortened. Joy was a contender, but,  just suppose that I was a weepy child. That name would not fit me. For me it would not have been right. She needn’t have worried. But worry she did. So, Lynn it was and Lynn I am. My legacy from my mother. First Published By Silver Birch Press in All About My Name Series, June, 2015 https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/legacy-by-lynn-white-all-about-my-name-poetry-series/