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
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,
into the reality outside, which is pressing in on me.
It excludes any coming together, any resolution as
it embraces me in it’s ripples and sounds.
Such sweet, watery sounds, cooly relaxing my spirit.
Shutting out the incoherent babbling outside.
But still, even as I put my hands over my broken ears,
I know it will find a way inside and overwhelm me,
in any case.
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.
To change who I am is difficult, hardly possible.
But without this change,
nothing will change,
except that summer will have gone,
winter will surely follow fall
and spring will be a long way away.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08ZBPK4B1?fbclid=IwAR23eR3pEr7rAodwsK55ClpoFMS3m4GyYkUjoymnoRVgN04Q8TCblIpvi-s
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 if he preferred not to know if any were missing.
I like to think he knew she bested him
with her roasted pork and crispy bacon.
https://litbreak.com/odyssey-in-the-afternoon-the-power-of-gods-a-familiar-story/?fbclid=IwAR3-9uLuID9PJN1716hprS-MA9VXCDEr8Y8p_ZQbERwSpUEIyaq4KM-z58k
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_9pzQt8evi9sZSP1u9IG0Rp9jsQ
