Poetry - Lynn White

     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/

American Dream We were such special people then, the two of us, 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 cinemascope 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 towards us, not up, fulfilled and sacred to each other, with a specialness unknown to us. We did not hear the soundtrack of their voices. Did not see the fractures of their dreams, or of ours to come. But 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 dreams remained dreams in cinemascope. Dreams which became decayed imaginings growing dusty with time and fading, as ordinariness reclaimed us and the angels let us fall. First published in Amomancies, Americana Issue, 2015 ...

       Soundtrack The music of my youth still sings to me. Inside my head it still plays Dylan and Baez as part of our song, our time, our places.  Subversive music, coming from the streets. Out of tune with the surround sound monotone. Undermining it with a discordant challenge. Harmony and discord,  the songs of peace and love sitting side by side with war and revolution. Then as now they still speak to us,  still sing in tune The lyrical passion of the words,  the movement music of  the songs,  has crossed our time and space. Melodies of movement  which still can break our boundaries and join us back together. Moving rhythms which still excite and words which dance for us. These moving patterns on a page, have make different music now,   wrapped in our emotions and melodies which have few boundaries  and are timeless and placeless  when in tune with changing...

 Dream Lovers I am in love with an imaginary person. A Hollywood image flickering on the straight line of my horizon, a mirage created by my dreaming, as all lovers are. Then transposed to sit on top of flesh and bone, stuffed into a skin, which doesn’t quite fit, as all lovers are. Some parts I hide inside. Others are in the forefront of my imagination, filling out the skin, adding more flesh to the bone. I live in a soap opera stuffed full of imaginary people with imaginary lives interspaced with commercial breaks. It’s more satisfactory, easier than engaging with the dangers and tedium outside. Even so, love can still hurt me, but not as badly. Imaginary events are more controllable. So it’s more satisfactory. I can change the situations that trouble me without stepping outside,  without exposure or failure. The real world is hard and it’s people even more transitory than the mirage lovers who flicker in and out on...

May Queen They crowned her the queen of May, the little girl. Chose her for her purity. Pure and white and smiling. Unblooded. Golden curls held by red ribbons, and entwined with flowers topped with sweet smelling may. Spring is here, you see. New shoots springing into life, so we’re ready to be reborn and ready to play the game. Ready for the circle. Ready to go round and round again. Like the dancers she watches weaving their ribbons round the maypole. The maypole phallus they’ve planted in the ground and bedecked with ribbons. Red and white. Red and whit ribbons of menstrual blood and semen. Round and round She watches from her throne. Round and round. Then come the Morris Men. Bells jangling their presence. Sticks clashing with their power. Flags waving to announce their virility. They crowned her the queen of May, the little girl. A crown of sweet blossom and hidden thorns. First Published by Community Arts Ink, Reclaiming O...

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 own. First published by ITWOW, She Did It Anyway Anthology, May 2015 http://www.itwowinternational.org/anthologies/she-did-it-anyway-itwowfest-2015/

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 Snapdragon 2015 https://www.facebook.com/SnapdragonJournal/photos/a.387135344771906.1073741825.387134538105320/482593015226138/?type=1&theater

I Am A Child I am a child of the revolution created by the wake of fascism and imperialism, that sought to construct  a more just society. I am a child numbed by poverty,  stultified by working class conformity, of a mother who wanted better for me, but also wanted to keep me the same. I am a child of these contradictions who became a rebel  in the cultural revolution of the rock and roll generation. Who was liberated by student life, by control of fertility, by other places,  by the music and art  all parents hated. I am still that child. This is what made me. This is what shaped me and became part of my present,  became part of my future. Sometimes I have tried to escape it. Sometimes I still do. First published by Ealain, My Heritage, Issue 8, May 2015

Father Christmas I was so excited. It was nearly Christmas and I was going to meet Father Christmas himself. I was so excited,  wearing my best coat and bonnet, hopping from one foot to the other in the long queue of children waiting with their mums to be allowed into Santa’s Grotto. I was so excited. We were nearly there. I could see the grotto with it’s tinsel and fairy lights twinkling. I was going to sit on his knee  and have my picture taken, and that was in an age when photographs were even rarer than Christmases.. I was so excited. There were the elves... But wait.. they were cardboard. Where were the real elves, the magic ones, why weren’t they there? “They’re much too busy”, my mum said. “But Father Christmas will be real”. We paid our money and there he was. He really was. I couldn’t wait to climb on his knee and examine his beard. I’d never seen a beard before. But he was very tetc...

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 it’s fragrance and hope that one day fragrant roses will bloom again in the garden of Gaza. What else can I do? Degenerates, Voices For Peace Anthology, Weasel Press, June 2015 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25544202-degenerates

       Meeting You spoke to me.  A smile on your lips and a sadness  behind your eyes  to match my own. I could see it, recognise it. I knew it well. “Hello you”, I said. “Hello me?” A gesture, a question in your voice, laughter caught  in the back of your throat and eyes that smiled. Momentarily. At least momentarily understanding. First published by Amomancies, Comittments issue 4, April 2015 http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/916943?__r=26454

                                                              http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/916943?__r=26454

    Getting Married Let’s get married, you said. I sat up quickly and  just in time, stopped my mouth saying,  After two days? You’re going mad! Why? Where’s the gain? We’ve already said we’ll stay together, You with me or me with you, and care for each other, and make love to each other. We don’t need a piece of paper saying Mr and Mrs. Anyway, you don’t have a good record when it comes to marriage. Or so I’ve heard, I said. I think I want an extra tie, another binding, a public one. So that your friends  would ring you up, concerned, and warn you not to go ahead. And mine would try to find you to do the same and worry about my sanity. But not for long. We’ll do it quick, you said. And then we can smile behind their backs as they check our progress down the years, amazed that we’re still together, still like each other, still love. And, after all, I have a much worse record  of ...

     The Best Medicine Humour heals better than hate. You can confront hate with reason but humour is best  if unreason prevails, if more hate is your only return. You can wind up the anti, add hate to the hate,  add aggression to aggression, madness to madness. But he'll like humour less. Anyway it's more fun. First published by Harbinger Asylum, Literary Review, Spring, 2015 http://www.amazon.com/Harbinger-Asylum-Spring-various-authors/dp/1508603960/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432848259&sr=8-1&keywords=Harbinger+Asylum+Spring+2015