Poetry - Lynn White

In This Space Concrete and glass, marble and shiny stainless steel, reflecting images of distorted strollers, shoppers and coffee shoppers passing each other by. Walking purposefully or aimlessly footfalling on the spotless tiles, still damp from their overnight mechanical wash and brush up. Texting or talking into phones clamped to ears. So much space. No narrow streets of tenements and courts and terraces with washing hanging and children playing or sitting on steps. With women gossiping to each other. Human sounds and smells, and animal too, but working or wild, not petted. Carts on cobbles, the sounds and smells of industry. Workshops, docks and factories spewing noise and dirt and dust and fumes to be mixed in with the living space. A different place for sure, but, in the same space. So, scratch the shiny surface, lift the cheap veneer, dig a little deeper. Take up a tile and scratch up the dirt. Sniff. Look behind the...

Ten Minutes In the next ten minutes I have to go, and you can’t let me just walk out of your life again. Can’t let you! Can’t stop you, I said, and I won’t try, won’t try. How can I? What should I do? Follow you from place to place? Sit outside your house and chance being turned away, by someone? I don’t know where it is, in any case and I don’t want to know. So what’s it to be? A thread? An occasional e mail to keep in touch? I don’t think so! Our lives are so distant in every way, how to join them up? The trick would be to store the memories and leave behind the sense of loss. Ditch the sadness. But we’ve tried before. And failed. And we’re running out of years. If we meet a next time, the chances are we’ll be to old to care. We need to achieve a modus vivendi, that will at least allow our lives to touch each other. Nothing less? And, in the next ten minutes! I said. http://harnessmagazine.com/poem-series-ten-minutes-fathers…/

Pure Gold We were the pure gold people. The golden generation of bouncing baby boomers who had it all, the best music, the most fun and the security and optimism of a golden future. Now we have had our golden future. it is done. Tarnished, cracking up, fragmenting, turning to sharp dust and black mud. And ashes, darker still. We were there at the beginning of the gold rush. Now we’re at the end and we know there will be no more future. The gold has melted away. Only base metal is left and even that is fragmenting, turning to sharp dust and black mud. And darker ashes already to bury all those golden dreams. https://literaryyard.com/2017/10/28/poem-pure-gold/

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. http://www.thestraybranch.org/previous-issues/20-fallwinter-2017/ "The Stray Branch" by #20 Vol 17 Poetry by...A. Marie Kaluza, Abigale Louise LeCavalier, Adam Levon Brown, Ainsley McWaters, Amber Tran, Amy Jacoby, Andrew Hubbard, Ayaz Daryl Nielsen, Betty J. Sayles, Bradford Middleton, Claudia Messelod,I Cody Robinson, Daginne Aignend, Daniel de Cullá, Debbie Berk, Dr. Emily Bilman, Erren Geraud... CREATESPACE.COM

Help Me Over Help me. Help me over. Help me cross. I can see the sky framed by debris, by rocks, by wire, by dereliction. Framed by sharpness and impenetrable barriers. I want to see it clear, clear and unblemished creamy white and pink and blue. Help me see it. Help me over. Help me cross. I want want to see it framed by trees, I want to see the rocks become flowers again. Help me. Help me over. Help me cross to the place where the birds are singing breaking up the sky with flight. Does it still exist, this place? I must think so. Help me find it. Help me. Help me over. Help me cross https://worcestershirepoetlaureateninalewis.wordpress.com/2017/06/20/world-refugee-day-in-poetry/

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. First published in With Painted Words, February 2016 http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php?news_id=986

End of the Season The season of wrinkles and over ripeness has arrived too soon. Shriveled buds. Fruits bursting open, their seeds drying out, beginning to crinkle and wrinkle. Beginning to split and break. Beginning to moulder and dribble with damp. Their past spring a distant dream. Or not remembered at all. Faded away like the fresh shoots of hopeful green growth. Even the memories of the florid, blowzy summer’s blooms are fading. Fading fast and faster. Perhaps this season of dry dampness has been here a while and I haven’t noticed. It’s been approaching a long time. Slow at first imperceptible. Speeding up, then quickening. But still imperceptible almost unnoticeable as everything slows down quickly. So quickly now. I think that winter has arrived. Darkness returned. The season is over, finished lost beyond returning. http://poetrypacific.blogspot.co.uk/…/2-poems-by-lynn-white…

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. http://www.highlandparkpoetry.org/themusesgallery.html

Suffocating I am being suffocated by this society, pushed into a corner until I can't breath any more. Pressed up against the other screamers, the can't breathers. Crying out. I am not being suffocated under the weight of immigration. Or even the armlocks and bullets of police out of control. No, I am being suffocated by the vile venom of normality or what has come to pass for it. By indifference, by dishonesty, by power used to abuse. What will it take for us to learn how to distort this normality, how to smother this sickness and heal us all. http://tuckmagazine.com/2017/08/02/poetry-947/ http://tuckmagazine.com/2017/08/02/poetry-947/ Tuck Magazine 2017 Online Political, Lit, Human Rights and Arts magazine TUCKMAGAZINE.COM

Pool I have a small pool out there. Not dark like night, but full of pale milky light., and shimmering smoothly, rippleless. It's not deep either, hardly more than a footfall. Just deep enough to hide my dreams without them drowning. http://www.versewrights.com/ VerseWrights VerseWrights is a community for those who enjoy writing poetry, and who want to post their work for others to read, experience, and comment upon. The site is open to all who write and wish to join. VERSEWRIGHTS.COM

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. https://treehousearts.me/…/poetry-am-i-dreaming-red-roses-…/ https://www.treehousearts.me/2017/10/11/poetry-am-i-dreaming-red-roses-and-the-lighthouse-by-lynn-white/

A Grey Place? This is a grey place, there's no denying. Grey slate, grey granite, grey houses built of both. And it rains a lot, there's no denying. Vertical, or horizontal, or swirling rain falling greyly from heavy misty clouds. But when caught by a sunbeam it makes glistening slides shimmering across the slate and falls in bright white tails or snakes like silver where the mountains leak it. And spills heavily over rocks, it's foaming, frothing, yellow ruffed cascades catching rainbows as they crash then spitting them back out in a fine spray of colours. And now there's no grey in the dark blue, black sky filled with gold and silver twinkles. No grey at all in this place now, there's no denying. http://www.thestraybranch.org/previous-issues/20-fallwinter-2017/ "The Stray Branch" by #20 Vol 17 Poetry by...A. Marie Kaluza, Abigale Louise LeCavalier, Adam Levon Brown, Ainsley McWaters, Amber Tran, Amy Jacoby, Andrew Hubbard, Ayaz Dary...

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 the screen behind my eyes. Are they the same for you, these ...

Rock Pool Just a small gap in the cliff side, dry and bare, unremarkable. Then in came the sea; a high tide washing over, leaving a little salt water. Like a pool of tears filling the gap, temporarily bringing it back to life. https://allthesins.co.uk/2017/10/12/issue-5-is-live/ Issue 5 is live From contemporary to future to mindscapes, Issue 5 reimagines and challenges how we think of landscapes. ALLTHESINS.CO.UK

Red Roses I thought they’d furnish our bed, the red roses you gave to me. I threw away the hard stems and the thorns, just kept the soft sweet smelling flowers. But the flowers disintegrated, fell apart, like our love, mirroring our love, those red petals. And now I lie alone cushioned by rose petals. Spreading petals like tears, like falling tears. Red tears bleeding from the bloody thorns I thought I’d discarded. https://treehousearts.me/…/poetry-am-i-dreaming-red-roses-…/

Beach Combings On each beach they’ve been different. at home there, though washed up gently by lapping waves or thrown by high seas. Now they’re at home in my house. Each beach together. Pretty shells from a bay in Minorca, where the sea was freezing and the sun bright hot above. I remember the exhilaration of my swim there. Then there are the large curving shells dived for in Sochi by the son of a Russian family who became good friends. Captured memories now. Those bits of wood from a Scottish loch side now decorate the wall behind this computer. Remember those midges? Oh my! And now all joined by these from the Basque Country. Beautiful oysters that seemingly tried to swallow stones. Beautiful oysters decorated with barnacles and wormy fossils. Now lying on the slate of my hearth. I’ll remember that beach with the waves lapping gently and the first sight of something strange. Half hidden. I remember. http://visualverse.org/submissions/beach-combings/

Frogs That Can Fly Three ravens flew over loudly croaking. The frogs below were intrigued. “How do we fly?”, they croaked in reply, “how do we fly?” “How do we swim?” croaked the ravens down to them. “If you fall from the sky we’ll teach you to swim,” together and loud the frogs croaked in reply. “So tell us, please, won’t you, how do we fly?” Frogs That Can Fly poetry, flash fiction, microfiction, online journal, literature, , mark antony rossi, ebooks, kindle, ibooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, nook ARIELCHART.BLOGSPOT.COM

Expectations I had never been to the seaside. I knew what to expect, though. I had a book about it. There were lots of pictures of rock pools and the strange creatures living there. My favorites were the hermit crabs. I was looking forward to those the most. I had a little bucket to collect them in. But there were no rock pools, at this seaside. Just flat sand with a thin distant line of cold grey sea. Why? No one said. I found some shells to put in my bucket. I liked the tiny pink ones best. But most were broken and not worth collecting. Why? No one said. No shells, no hermit crabs, but they showed me how to put damp sand into my miniature bucket. with my miniature spade and how to pat it down and tip it out to make ‘sand pies’. I was supposed to like doing this. Why? No one said. They gave me some paper flags on thin wooden sticks. I could stick them in the top of my sand pies. I was supposed to like doing this. Why? No one said. I thought I’d save up my flags until I...

Candles 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 has become a profitable industry. The more deaths, the more candles. Will there be anyone left to light a candle for me? http://www.poetsinnigeria.org.ng/…/across-the-oceans-ii-is…/ ACROSS THE OCEANS II (ISSUE 7) ACROSS THE OCEANS II (ISSUE 7) Three Poems by Lynn White CANDLES How many candles must I light to commemorate all the dead souls, all the lives wasted in wars without end. So many that candle makin… POETSINNIGERIA.ORG.NG

The Purple Boat The purple boat sank. There was no explanation. Our father made us three, blue, green and purple, from sheets of coloured paper, blue, green and purple. We thought they were hats at first and ran around holding them on our too large heads. But he said they were boats and showed us how to sail them, pushing them from the side with long twigs until they made a small bright flotilla, blue, green and purple, in the glass clear water. And then the purple boat sank leaving only the blue and the green. A sad flotilla, of blue and green in the glass clear water. There was no explanation. But I think, most likely, it was spied by some creature below, who, loving the colour purple, grasped it and took it below to make it her own. But I don’t know. Now I have found that life is often like that. http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php… http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php?news_id=1180 Read The Purple Boat by Lynn White on www.withpai...

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 tranquillity, 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 https://issuu.com/whirlwindreview/docs/whirlwind_11_w_cover Whirlwind #11 Our three year anniversary issue featuring poetry and artwork celebrating resistance. ISSUU.COM