Poetry - Lynn White

Free Fall I was on the way up, full of can do confidence. Fearless. In control. Now I’m falling. I’m in free fall. Still in control, but barely. I stretch out my arms wishing for wings to help me up, help me soar again. I’m still in control, but barely knowing that below there’ll be nothing. Nothing that will break my fall. https://eventhorizonmagazinecom.files.wordpress.com/…/issue… https://eventhorizonmagazinecom.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/issue-2-free-pdf.pdf eventhorizonmagazinecom.files.wordpress.com EVENTHORIZONMAGAZINECOM.FILES.WORDPRESS.COM

How Will I Know You How will I know you, the man behind the mask. I can recognise you with the mask in place. And sometimes it may slip and reveal .... another layer, another mask, perhaps masquerading as an unguarded comment wearing stage clothes, even if naked. You are in there somewhere. But even though I peel off layer after layer, uncover mystery after mystery I still never find you. https://tropicalacedmagazine.weebly.com/magazine https://tropicalaced.tumblr.com/

Sunrise, Sunset Do you remember how in the bright days of our youth, we walked out hand in hand to watch the sunrise? Our sun is setting  now, as all suns must, but we can still hold hands and remember. https://creativetalentsunleashed.com/2018/02/22/writer-highlight-featuring-lynn-white-10/

Competition entry - go to link to read https://johnkaniecki.blogspot.no/2018/02/summer-in-gaza-by-lynn-white-contest.html?m=1

The Spark There’s always a spark. The spark. The flash that ignites the fire. Just a glow at first, then a blaze. Flames shooting out randomly, choosing their directions. Out of my control. Out of all control. Creating and destroying as it will. Joining and melding together or forcing apart as it will. First published in Written Tales, February 2018 http://www.writtentales.com/the-spark/

Always Alone I wonder where he has gone, the man who would sit here every day before the snow fell, always alone with the view. Perhaps it became too cold for him, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen him there on colder days, always alone with the view. He would stretch out his arms across the back of the bench so that he filled it. Though he was always alone there never seemed space for anyone else. So there were no conversations, or even “good mornings”. He didn’t seem to need them. So we all passed by. And now in the snow we can sit there with the view, with his view and wonder where he is. And wonder if he was always alone. First published in Vox Poetica Prompts, February 2018 http://voxpoetica.com/prompts/

Refugees At school there was a weekly collection for charity. I saved up my biscuit money so that I did not seem different, more impoverished than the rest. And so that I had something to give to those less fortunate. I knew what charities were, you see. Well, except for the one called ‘Refugees’. I did not know what refugees were. This was 1956. Only six years after the ending of a war creating millions of refugees and I had to ask what they were several times. Even then, I didn’t understand. It made no sense to me. I didn’t understand. First published in Tuck Magazine, February 2018 http://tuckmagazine.com/2018/01/30/poetry-1255/

Reach Out Where are you? There was a time when I knew where to find you, knew the places and spaces you inhabited in my dreams, in my day and night dreams. You would be waiting there, waiting to be found, waiting to come to me. Now it's harder to find you, to recognise your shape and form. You are becoming fragmented and ephemeral, floating forms in a damp mist. Reach out. Hold on to me. Don't pass me by. It's such a long time since you left, perhaps it's me who's letting go, me who has forgotten how to reach you. Forgotten to reach out to you. Reach out. Hold on to me. Don't let me fade away. https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems…/category/lynn-white

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. https://www.amazon.com/Cupids-Arrow-…/…/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til… https://www.amazon.com/Cupids-Arrow-Raja-Williams/dp/1945791489/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=c0d4a-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=b97c7ca8c318616ed1850d26d4339a6f&creativeASIN=1945791489

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://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems4/category/lynn-white https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems4/category/lynn-white

The Vase The kitchen looked tired and worn like my mother did, the last time I saw her there. I felt no nostalgia for it. It was not my childhood kitchen. It held no special memories, I thought. And then, I saw the vase on the counter top. My friend found it on the Kings Road. Bought it and brought it home. I’d asked her to buy me something, a souvenir of swinging London. She bought the vase. I never much liked it. Dark and bulbous, it spent most of it’s time at my mother’s, though she didn’t like it much either. Then time stole it away, took it from my memory, erased it. And now, here it is again, sharp as ever bringing the past home as it stands empty on the counter top. It seems that her death invested in it a poignancy that it had not known before. I took it home with me. https://eventhorizonmagazinecom.files.wordpress.com/…/issue… https://eventhorizonmagazinecom.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/issue-2-free-pdf.pdf

Rock Pool Just a small gap in the cliff side, dry and bare, unremarkable. Then in came the sea on a high tide washing over it, some staying behind leaving a little pool of salt water, full of living. Like a pool of salty tears filling the gap, bringing it back to life temporarily. Tears can sometimes do that temporarily. https://treehousearts.me/…/poetry-by-lynn-white-its-rainin…/ https://www.treehousearts.me/2018/01/06/poetry-by-lynn-white-its-raining-again-rock-pool-and-weeping-mask/

A Long Walk It's been a long walk with no sign of escape. A long walk and a deep walk. Every step I sink deeper. Deeper and deeper, as I tire and drag my feet as the white snow crystals give way and reveal the darkness beneath. But I can see the forest on the horizon and I'm getting close. But it's not the first time I've seen a forest on the horizon and it hasn't ended. The snow fields have continued. Deep, deep, deeper and deeper. Will this time will be different and bring me to a new horizon. Or will sink yet deeper until the darkness engulfs me with no escape. No end in sight. http://www.quailbellmagazine.com/…/poem-a-long-walk-by-lynn… http://www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/poem-a-long-walk-by-lynn-white

Standing High Sometimes standing high above it all adds colour to a life. Sometimes you can only see the monochrome, the black and white, the greys. But perhaps then I’ll be seen in colour by those looking down or looking up at me, wondering if I will fall. https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems…/category/lynn-white

Thoughts on Swallowing a Butterfly Butterflies, such a fragile incarnation of what went before. Warriors, according to the Mayans, dead warriors ready to be transformed, transformed into butterflies. Butterflies, surely too fragile to make warriors, too easily destroyed in their new metamorphosis. But they can wait, they can wait for their next transformation So take care if you swallow a butterfly. Butterflies, vigorous egg layers that can reproduce themselves, warriors, mutating again to find new ways to fight back, to invade the invaders, enslave the enslavers, exploit the new possibilities. So take care if you swallow a butterfly. And I can wait. I have been waiting a long time to see Henry Kissinger choke on a butterfly. I can wait. Perhaps there’s still hope that the butterflies will worm their way inside and destroy them all. I can wait. So take care if you swallow a butterfly. https://formerpeople.wordpress.com/2018/…/02/three-poems-35...

Blue Blue skies, blue sea, a day of sparkling sunshine, with a shimmering horizon. And then, out of this blue, You, smiling sadly with your lovely blue eyes. I knew you from the back, you said, the cut of your hair, your bright blue mac. I wanted to see your face again, it’s only fair, you’ve seen mine. You must have done, me, being who I am. I wanted to smell your clean hair smell. So I took a chance, and here I am. I wanted to abate the sadness. I nodded. Yes. I know it’s true. It’s all been said and we won’t be sad. No blue moods on this bright blue day of smiling sunshine. We’ll go together now, for now and be glad. After all, one way or another, everything will end in tears, I said, So let’s take our now time and chance the rest. https://www.amazon.com/Cupids-Arrow-…/…/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til… https://www.amazon.com/Cupids-Arrow-Raja-Williams/dp/1945791489/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=c0d4a-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=b97c7ca8c318616ed1850d26d4...

It’s Raining Again The weather god doesn’t speak Welsh. She’s tried. She’s really tried. She’s wept tears of frustration. She’s wept tears of anger. She’s wept tears of sadness that flow from the mountains to the sea. It’s the vowels she finds hard. And the consonants. And the mutations. And the way it’s spoken form changes over the distance traveled in the time it takes her to make a small cloud and a tiny puff of wind. A tiny puff, not enough to to raise the cloud above the mountains. So it hangs in a sad, sullen mist. Or blows in angry swirls. And still she tries. She really tries. She weeps tears of frustration. She weeps tears of anger. She weeps tears of sadness. Floods of tears. Lakes. Tears which fall in cascades from the mountains to the sea https://treehousearts.me/…/poetry-by-lynn-white-its-rainin…/ https://www.treehousearts.me/2018/01/06/poetry-by-lynn-white-its-raining-again-rock-pool-and-weeping-mask/

The Fishermen The wall ran all along one side of the bay, steps up from the port at one end, down to the beach at the other. I climbed up the steps and looked over. So many fish. Huge fish. Swirling silver moons in a day blue sky. A net would have scooped them up and broken with the weight. The fishermen were there with their rods set up, like the fish almost touching, so many and so close, making parallel black lines against the sky like a blue print for lunch provision. I walked down the steps to the beach. Few people were there so early. Morning was the fisherman’s time of day, not the sunbather’s. I went back along the wall when the fishermen were packing up, heading home for lunch. Carrying their fish, I thought. But no, it was a delusion to imagine they would eat fish for dinner. Not those fish, anyway. All were returned to the sea. Such is the sport of the fisherman. https://www.scarletleafreview.com/poems…/category/lynn-white