Poetry - Lynn White

  Brenda’s Turtle When I was a child, Brenda’s turtle walked into the hot, hot embers. No one knew why. So badly burned we thought him ready   for an easeful, sleepy death. “No, no” said the vet, “very resilient, turtles, could live to be a hundred.” I would like to tell you that he made the hundred, but he’s not quite there yet, though he still seems happy enough. https://www.blurb.co.uk/bookstore/invited/9147032/4f388b493ed81ff97bac08fa8ca533b167ccbc94

  Midsummer Madness I saw a rabbit in the clouds it was eating something, but what was it? Didn’t look like a carrot, more like an ice cream cone, well it was a hot day. Perhaps it was no rabbit but a hare with a touch of   midsummer madness. Later it re arranged itself   and became a cat, quite definitely cat, a Cheshire Cat   no doubt about it hoping to join Hare and Alice at the tea party. And who knows, if the White Rabbit is on time maybe he’ll bring ice cream for all. Anything can happen   on a midsummer   afternoon. https://freeverserevolution.com/2021/03/27/midsummer-madness-lynn-white/

  Al-Chemists Still they try to find it, the secret of eternal youth, searching out lotions and restorers for the men with their toupees, and the creams and fillers for the women's made-up masks.   When that fails   the nip and tuckers,   the stretchers and smoothers are ready to apply their trades. Like the alchemists of old searching for the secret of turning base metal to gold and the source of the fountain of youth, the new commercial al-chemists are searching for the potions, that will transform the heavy leaden flesh of age back to the bloom of its youth. They know we’re also searching, searching, searching, endlessly searching magic and science, as we get older and older still. For the fountain of youth remains elusive, but not all the alchemists are dead. https://www.consilience-journal.com/issue-4-al-chemists

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  https://florafiction.com/product/volume-2-issue-2/

  On The Inside The circles are in such a tangle it’s impossible to explore them impossible to see what’s inside impossible to plumb their depths the coloured threads of a life intertwined. So I’m left with the outside which is much simpler much clearer much duller less colourful and yet still   incomprehensible. Sometimes   even when things are straightened and appear clear I can’t make sense of them can’t manage to join the dots and the dashes and the tangles are more beautiful which seems to be important. The colourful threads of a life intertwined round and round on the inside of my head. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZBPK4B1?fbclid=IwAR23eR3pEr7rAodwsK55ClpoFMS3m4GyYkUjoymnoRVgN04Q8TCblIpvi-s

  River I look into the river and see myself in reflection. Colour fast but unstable, I move helplessly in it’s flow. I am constantly being moved and changed, but left stationary, moved but not moving on   like the fishes and pebbles.   Here I am, disturbed and abstracted, surrounded by this rippling, babbling, watery world,   which leaves me unclear who I am and, more unclear about the solidity of my background and what is happening around me. I look into two worlds which are intermingling, becoming inseparable before my gaze. My own distorted image fades and breaks with the images behind and beyond me in the background of my life. This river is becoming a metaphor for my own confusion. For the displacement and fragmentation I feel inside.   I am in danger of being broken up and washed away. Unable to bring myself together, I remain in pieces, undecided, lacking definition. It is also a metaphor which stretches beyond my person,   into the confusion and fragmentation beyond it’s edges

  Images Am I fat, am I thin which mirror will show me the shape I’m in. Which mirror will show me   the rolls of fat,   the bony ribs which mirror will show me me, if I exist outside their gaze. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZBPK4B1?fbclid=IwAR23eR3pEr7rAodwsK55ClpoFMS3m4GyYkUjoymnoRVgN04Q8TCblIpvi-s

  Predictable I feel such a bright energy flowing, zipping through my veins. I can’t wait to move with it, to uproot myself, to be transplanted and reborn, to recreate myself   at the time when all of nature is recreating itself and starting afresh. I will be reborn too in another place. I’ve done it before and felt the new buds open, bursting and shooting into a new life. I've felt the excitement of the new spaces, embraced the interest in the new peoples’ faces. And then.. I’ve opened up my blowsy petals and let my heart show through pulsing, exuberant, ready to turn towards the summer sun, not believing it will destroy my bloom, make my petals fade and fall when the shock of the new wears off and the fresh green shoots start to brown, and prepare for the season of wrinkles, which always follows, as my life folds out as before. Soon I’ll be getting ready   for the ice of winter in this new place. A new place, but with the same person in it. To change where I am is the easy part.

  Abracadabra Abracadabra! All we need is the magic word to open up the past and step inside the mountain long gone, and enter an age of cold and ice, a vastness,   a void of unknown ice caves recreated   in our warming times. Abracadabra! All we need is a touch of magic and it will be back the worn down, vanquished vanished past   united now for us to step inside, a new old world waiting for us to enter. Just say the word before it melts away! https://visualverse.org/submissions/magic-word/

  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 http://www.pikerpress.com/article.php?aID=8256

  Starlight They’re hanging like spangled banner draped over the night black globe. Pin pricks in the blackness. But no red blood flowing. Silver spangles oozing   gleaming white light. The red will follow soon enough as the sun plots its rise to power. As it schemes to flood the black, obliterate the white, drown them both, blind them in it’s   golden glow and blood red heat. https://www.secondchancelit.com/white

  Are We Any Older? Am I any older my dear, tell me I cannot tell   can you tell me, are you any older, my dear tell me if you can   tell, can you tell? Can you tell if we have aged   from the inside out or the outside in or is it just on the outside only on the outside. I think   we should keep it outside. Tell me that we can keep it outside my dear, tell me. https://freeverserevolution.com/2021/03/13/issue-i-available-for-download/

  The Power Of Gods He would have had an easier journey if he hadn’t harmed Neptune’s son. He should have beat a hasty retreat from the sailor-eating giant leaving him unharmed by anybody or nobody. And Aeolus’s gift of winds to speed them homewards was not a blessing when Neptune heard about it. So unsurprising that he magicked the sailors into letting the winds out of their bag   with a chorus of   “all together now”. What did he expect! Gods are powerful,   some more than others. The blinding his son was a fairly big offence in Neptune’s eyes and having control of the seas is a pretty impressive power. So, Odysseus paid the price. And then there was Circe. Not only the goddess daughter of Titan, Circe was also a witch, of course she was,   she was female   so it went with the territory, but her magic skills   were more renowned than most and thus more feared by men and rightly so. I wonder if he ate pork in his year long stay. I wonder if he counted the swine restored to sailors or

  Leading the Way The male will always lead, so it’s been said, a flamboyant rooster strutting his stuff while the fluffy bird-brained   females dutifully follow, so it’s been said. But, we say no not here, not now. We’ll only follow where we want to go. We’ll let him stride on ahead, strutting his stuff, and make a diversion for a little of what we fancy. We’ll scratch up a juicy morsel here, reach out to catch a flighty creature there. We’ll have a nibble of this and a nibble of that. And he won’t know, he never looks back,   we know so we’ll chuckle away to ourselves while he strides on alone, unknowing, strutting his stuff thinking he’s leading. We won’t be watching. We won’t be following. We’ll make out own way. We’ll stray. http://www.praxismagonline.com/international-womens-day-series-leading-the-way-by-lynn-white/

  Scared They scared me as a child, those scenes of madness in Jane Eyre with the wild hair and ripped wedding veil. And for years after I was still afraid in the wakeful night even though by then I’d come to understand her, to sympathise with her situation still it scared me, scarred me even, the memory of those scenes. Then there was Psycho. I was only fifteen but looked older. I was my friends ticket to all the horror movies. After Psycho, shower cubicles   would have made me uneasy if they had existed in 1960s Britain. Fortunately they didn’t so the fear   of knives and blood slashing and splashing   lacked context and was less. Next came the vampires occupying my dreams along with the triffids, the monsters,   the demons and the possessed. They all stacked up until all of a sudden the magic was gone and they were just movies, laughable almost. https://cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com/2021/03/06/cajun-mutt-press-featured-writer-03-05-21/?fbclid=IwAR3xQPph22P2kKxXTfv8CTAM_jzbnTqf_9pzQt8