Perchance A Dream

'To sleep perchance to dream'.
Who said that?
Sounds so gentle,
but there's a rub,
a rough edge to it.
Not the long deathly sleep, though
but drifting away in night time slumber.
It can take you anywhere.
Take you to places you haven't been
and may not want to go.
Send you spinning,
tumbling,
raging,
spiralling,
crashing
out of control
to an indeterminate end,
with demons and dragons
as companions.
Daytime dreaming is preferable,
more gentle than it sounds
fitted into a busy schedule.
In wakeful dreams
you can determine the beginning,
at least,
and invite the participants.
Sometimes
they may act out an old story
with a predictable end,
sometimes
they can drift into a new story
and then
the demons may join in
your daytime dreaming
as well,
perchance.

http://stanzaicstylings.blogspot.co.uk/…/perchance-dream-by…

Perchance a Dream by Lynn White

Perchance A Dream 'To sleep perchance to dream'. Who said that? Sounds so gentle, but there's a rub, a rough edge to it. Not the long deathl...

STANZAICSTYLINGS.BLOGSPOT.COM

Out Of Place

There’s something out of place.
I can see it now
but I’m still not sure
of it’s implications,
or my inclinations.
Will it cause me to trip up
and fall flat on my face?
Perhaps I have already
and not yet noticed.
Or perhaps I’ll take a step up,
grasp the opportunity to grow.
Take the first step towards
learning to fly
away.

http://voxpoetica.com/prompts/

prompts

Here's your prompt! Submit poem responses to: voxpoeticasubmissions@gmail.com. And if you have a photo or piece of artwork you took that you'd like us to consider as a Prompts image, send that as w...

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Barcelona Sandals

Standing in the Andorra snow
shivering in our Barcelona sandals.
Glad of a lift down to Foix
as darkness was falling.
And the driver knew a hotel,
Hotel du Centre.
Very grand
and full
of people looking down
long noses.
But the driver knew the owner
who was a kind man,
a nice man.
So we shouldn't worry
about the cost, he said.

A lovely room
and in the morning,
breakfast!
We must eat
the owner said.
Warm bread and jam.
Coffee with hot milk
which tasted sour.
But I don't like
the taste of milk,
anyway,
so most likely
it was sweet.

And then the bill.
But there was no bill.
Save it for the journey,
the owner said.
A kind man,
a nice man,
who believed
the driver's story,
whatever it was.

A few years later,
we returned to Foix
and went to find
Hotel du Centre.
But it wasn't there.
No one knew it.
It didn't exist.
Did it ever exist?
Did any of it happen?
Or did we somehow
share
a memory
from our
imaginations.

http://beneaththerainbow.com/poetry-by-lynn-white/

Buzzing

I can hear the flies buzzing
since I died.
In life I could shoo them away,
open a window
to persuade them through,
though usually they were
too stupid
to grasp the chance of freedom
offered and escape.
Now there is no window to be
opened.
This is a closed space.
Eternal night.
No possibility
of freedom,
or escape.
Not for me.
Not for them.

First published in Armageddon Issue, Pilcrow and Dagger, February 2017
http://pilcrowdagger.com/

God Save the Sheep

God save the sheep
baa aah.
Where would we be without them.
Who would lead if no one followed?
Why bother to whip up their storm of frenzy,
to feed them on blades of rumours
ready to become knowledge, to become fact.
Baa aah.
Say it again,
baa aah.
And only white sheep allowed,
of course.
No black or pink or purple
to shatter the consensus.
Colours cannot be tolerated,
along with druggies and drunks
and survivors of abuse.
Oh dear me, no,
not appropriate here.
Baa aah
And suppose they stay?
Baa aa aah
Plant their hooves in our cheap wet fields,
sneak inside our friendly flock
and contentedly munch
a thistle here,
a spikey rush there.
Baa aah.
Drown them out
baa aah,
baa aah.
God save the sheep.

http://www.lulu.com/…/issue…/paperback/product-23227558.html

Issue II (Special Access) by The Borfski Press (Paperback) - Lulu

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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.

https://www.cyberwit.net/publications/998

Taj Mahal Review VOL. 16 NUMBER 1 JUNE 2017

Taj Mahal Review VOL. 15 NUMBER 1 JUNE 2017

CYBERWIT.NET

A Disappointing Day

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.

http://beneaththerainbow.com/poetry-by-lynn-white/

Fragment

It’s all that’s left.
A gossamer fragment,
The headband still attached
but nothing left to cover the face.
I wonder,
what happened to the rest
of the veil.
I wonder,
if it went the way of the marriage.
The way of the faces hidden
behind the net curtains.
It’s all that’s left now.
A gossamer fragment
floating like a cobweb
in a dusty room
Ready to be swept away
with the rest.

https://www.createspace.com/7206291

"Metaphor Issue 7" by April Mae M. Berza

Sergio A. Ortiz Terri Muuss Ann Christine Tabaka Drew Pisarra Michael C. Seeger Lena Ziegler Lynn White Adrian Ibarra Don Kingfisher Campbell Volodymyr Bilyk Gary Beck John…

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Tomorrow Never Comes

The orcas decreed
that the dolphin’s wedding
should be delayed by a day.
Delayed till tomorrow,
if tomorrow ever came.
This would give more time, they said,
to decorate the wedding gowns,
to weave more shells into the kelp,
the tiniest of muscle shells for him
in every shade of blue,
sweet pink cockle shells for her,
sometimes veering towards red
as if warning of danger.

The music was to be rock ‘n’ roll,
played by the Killers, of course
on improvised pianos.
The octopus was responsible for
the wedding breakfast.
He had enlisted the help of every friend
to enlarge and beautify his garden.
To transport rocks with anemones attached
and bring a multitude of coloured pebbles and shells
to enclose the fishy titbits collected specially for the feast.

But in spite of their reassurances,
still he worried about the guest list.
So many orcas and dolphins
who did not have a good reputation
so far as the octopuses were concerned.
But the garden was beautiful
and surely it was a fact
that tomorrow never came.
He had always believed it.
Now time would tell.

https://oddballmagazine.com/2017/06/14/poem-by-lynn-white-2/

Poem by Lynn White

Artwork by Ira Joel Haber.

ODDBALLMAGAZINE.COM

Days

As the days go by, I know that

I will remember some of them in their passing.

If only I could choose the ones to remember,

put them on a spike and keep them safe

so I can revisit them with a smile,

while I throw away the rest.

Watch them blow away

in the wind,

uncared for 

these days.

But I can’t.

They’re self selecting,

those memories of

my passed days.

Looking back,

it’s the ones

they chose

themselves

that I remember

and I wonder if they 

will spike my choices

all my days. 

First published in Light Journal June Summer issue - Solitude

http://www.light-journal.com/so/fLna04ek…

Beached

He’s standing on the beach
with a small suitcase.
Not sure if he’s coming or going,
if it’s an arrival or departure.
It’s unclear.

It’s unclear
if the suitcase is full
or if it’s empty.
Once he packed it full
of his dreams, but now
it’s unclear
if any remain.

If any remain caught
in the lining, perhaps.
Or if all have been carried away
and are gone forever on a storm tide,
or washed up and buried in the sand.
It’s unclear.

All that is clear
is the emptiness
of a long horizon.

https://www.amazon.com/Along-Shore-Select…/…/ref=pd_ybh_a_2…

Sea Horse

It was on the first day of our seaside holiday
that I found him
washed up,
stranded,
spat out by the sea
and swimming alone in the rock pool.
I had never seen a sea horse before,
only pictures in a book.
I used my shoe to fish him out
and ran back quickly,
one shoe on and one shoe off,
before the water leaked out.
I put him in the sink
and watched him swim.
He didn’t seem quite right.
Or maybe it was the pictures that were wrong,
or my memory.
He couldn’t stay in the sink.
My mother made that quite clear.
So I found him a jar in the cobwebby shed
and put him in that.
I fed him on bits
of bread,
minced meat
and mashed banana.
He spat them all out angrily.
I thought he would die from lack of food
and my mother said he couldn’t come home with us.
So I took him back to the waters edge
and released him,
gave him back
to the sea.
The next day I found him lying on the pebbles.
The sea had rejected him,
spat him out,
just as he had spat out my food offerings.
I carried him back,
in my shoe again
and put him
back
in the jar.
I’m older now and when I look at him,
I’m wise enough to know
that he is no seahorse,
but not wise enough
to know his name.
Only that the sea rejected him,
spat him out,
as he had rejected me.

First published in Visual Verse, June 2017

http://visualverse.org/submissions/sea-horse/

Parrots

It was a large structure, metal and conical shaped

perhaps an arbour awaiting it’s climbing plants

or a cage for a very large bird. 

It seemed empty 

unless something was hiding in the undergrowth.

I asked the woman sitting reading in the garden,

“Do you have a parrot?”

“I’ve got two”, she answered.

I peered into the structure

and looked at her questioningly.

“Oh, they’re not there now, they’ve gone out.

One’s round next door

don’t know where the other one is!

When it’s a nice day they go for a wander”

Well, it really was a beautiful day!

https://theflyingdodojourn.wixsite.com/the-flying-dodo/issue-4-january-2023

The Keys of the Kingdom

The kingdom had so many keys,
keys to its doors,
keys to its gold,
keys to its time,
keys to its secrets.
Nothing moved without a key.
Everything was controlled.
Nothing was free.
Then came the Great War of the Keys
and the kingdom collapsed.
Its doors stayed open,
its secrets exposed.
Its gold melted away.
Its locks grew rusty.
Time stood still.
All it had valued
rotted away,
decayed,
collapsed
into a heap
of useless keys.

https://cavalcadeofstars.wordpress.com/

Jeanette Cheezum's cavalcadeofstars

A place to read fiction and poetry from some of your favorite online writers. Don't be surprised if you see some of mine sprinkled here and there. I love to write with great authors.

CAVALCADEOFSTARS.WORDPRESS.COM

Turning to Ice

Snowflakes lit by sunbeams
blowing gently,
fragile as shadows
making rainbows in the sun.
Smiling in the soft light.
So soft.
So soft.
Catch them quickly in your hair
to melt them.
Time has past and
they're already harder now,
even though the sun
is still shining and smiling.
Blindingly bright.
Crunchy crystals.
Jewels
glistening still.
Shining like diamonds,
but harsh
in the sunlight
while it lasts
Cooler now as
the light starts fading.
The surface is melting.
Shiny where the sun
still catches,
but fading,
giving way to ice.
Losing it's smile.
And we're skidding, sliding
beyond control.
slipping away,
blinded by tears of ice.

http://poetrypacific.blogspot.co.uk/…/2-poems-by-lynn-white…

poetrypacific.blogspot.co.uk

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