Poetry - Lynn White

  Haunted I am being haunted by my ghost. It must be my ghost, it knows too much  to arise from someone else’s body. It remembers my past.  Remembers my dreams, the ones I forgot so quickly on wakening and the ones I left behind later, only to revisit in future dreaming. It knows too much. It remembers the past I prefer to forget, the mishaps, the missed opportunities, the opportunities grasped too soon, too impetuously, the people left behind, happily or not, the feelings I felt. It remembers it all and stalks my present with it’s memories. It must be my ghost. It knows too much to arise from someone else’s body. No one came that close. Not for so long, a lifetime. I made sure of that. But how can it be my ghost? I’m still living. Still alive. And ghosts belong to the dead, to those with no future. But it must belong to me, this ghost of my present living in my past. https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/parabnormal-magazine-june-2020-edited-by-h-david-blalock

  Immortality They tried them all, the amulets and potions of their time and place. Some worked for a time but death overcame them in the end   and proclaimed their ungodlike mortality. They were buried like treasure with their treasures   from this life readied for the next, living on only in memories which faded like funeral flowers. It was not enough. So portraits were painted   on the bindings of mummies or the wooden lids of coffins, stone effigies were carved   on tombstones, but only   for the rich and already godlike. It’s democratised now. Ceramic portraits carefully incorporated into gravestones, likenesses to be viewed   down the centuries, glimpses of a life passed, a brush with immortality. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094T52YPQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=perception+open+skies+collection&qid=1620967313&sr=8-1

  The Crow Remembers Through the mist the crow is watching the beach party as they pile up the stones. He watches them build them higher and higher but he’s not impressed, he knows that the stack of stones   was even higher once. Their ancestors built it first and the crow remembers them remembers their faces through the mists of time in life and in death. Remembers that it formed a stairway all the way to heaven. That’s what they told him in life. That’s what they tell him in death. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094T52YPQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=perception+open+skies+collection&qid=1620967313&sr=8-1

  Seaside Holiday No one swam in the seas around Britain when I was a child. The water was empty beyond the edge of the shore even on the warmest of days. Paddling was as adventurous as it got. Nothing wetter was allowed, nothing wetter was desired in that cold, cold water with our trousers were rolled up, or skirts tucked in knickers we took care not to kick or jump, care not to let the cold wet waves go too far. Now the seas are warming and clothes purpose made   for playing splash. No one sits in deckchairs wearing overcoats and newspaper hats even on British beaches it’s bikinis and sunscreen and most are on the Spanish Costas now Affluence and climate change have changed traditions. Soon we’ll really feel the heat where will we go then. https://seabornemagazine.com/issues/

  It’s a Worry He bottled up his worries, his fears, and sealed them in securely. Put them inside a bottle firmly   corked. Then he thought, suppose they grew agitated   and, expanding with the heat   produced forced the cork free from the bottle, releasing all those fears and anxieties to reoccupy his being. It was another worry for him   to ponder and fret about. He knew a screw top bottle would have been better, would have kept them confined more securely. Too late   now though, to have that thought done is done. The best ideas are, always too late. Past has always passed. And then, another thought came to him, so timely. Maybe he could he transfer them, move them to the bottle with the screw fastening and screw them up tight without letting them out of the bottle. Without letting them escape. Without giving them   freedom, freedom to invade   his soul, his dreams, his being   his reason for being.   Such a risk though. Such a worry. ...

  Through the Glass Alice saw herself in her looking glass and walked through into a topsy turvy world where everything was back to front and inside out. She drifted into a dreamscape of madness and unreality,   without breaking the glass. Uncut by the shards of her mirror   or the place she entered into. She had only to wake to make   things the right way round again. But walking through a clear glass, a transparent window, it would have been different. Her reflection would float   towards a place where everything   seemed the right way round. Where everything made sense and added up sweet with reason. A place without madness, which looked easy to enter and had no sharp edges. Apparently. But this glass forms an invisible barrier to the other side and the life that seduces and entices her. And to get through she has to break the glass, whose sharp edges cut her and propel her crazily into a place where she cannot wake. A jagged, topsy turvy place   wh...

  After The Storm After the storm comes the quiet time. Even the birds aren’t singing and the streams have ceased to rage. All natures anger seems spent, it’s noise chastened   damped down, it’s heat lost for now. So we will walk in the stillness relishing this quiet time, this interlude of peace. https://www.amazon.com/blizzard-Nightingale-Sparrow-Literary-Magazine/dp/B08WSFX17T/

  Broken The crack became a slash almost splitting her in two. She could have sought help, could have striven to heal it, But after a while she quite liked it. It had become part of her and she felt it became her and who knew what would emerge   to wriggle   and squeeze though the gap. https://thedrabble.wordpress.com/2021/05/26/broken-2/?fbclid=IwAR1r8ajnLmKp1kwOWq83tsEuPLsncsquL3BkoIUJ13oXBTST8_HrxCSrdKk

  After The Storm After the storm comes the quiet time. Even the birds aren’t singing and the streams have ceased to rage. All natures anger seems spent, it’s noise chastened   damped down, it’s heat lost for now. So we will walk in the stillness relishing this quiet time, this interlude of peace. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-writing-challenges/ekphrastic-challenge-responses-istvan-farkas

  Seed Shells   The first seeds were sown a long time ago. When these small seed shells burst open they were scattered locally. They grew patchily at first, in Palestine, in Israel, in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world. There were only little streams to irrigate and fertilise them, so they often failed to thrive. But that was then.   Now the shells have grown bigger and the seeds have flown further. Further and further. And the streams have grown wider and longer. And more nutritious.   When the seed shells have burst in this century, they found ground that was even more fertile. So more and more has come under cultivation, irrigated and fertilised now from rivers,   rivers of blood. So well irrigated, so well nurtured and tended that the patches of brown soil became rare indeed. But there were some. Later seeds spread wider over Gaza. As larger seed shells broke and splintered they found and colonised new areas   outside the brown patches where it was ...

  Invisible For a long time, such a long time, invisibility has ironed out the creases   in my soul,   so I can hide, so I can decide if I want to be seen. I was always hiding. But now invisibility hides me   even from myself.   It imagines my future as it has distorted my past,   separated me from my history. But I cannot abandon it now,   since I no longer know who   I am. If I could make   a new person to fit this moment, a new me for the now.   Maybe then for a short time, I could step inside, find myself and no longer need invisibility. https://ephemeralelegies.com/2021/05/17/invisible-by-lynn-white/

  Alchemy Still they try to find it, the secret of eternal youth, the women with their heavy made-up masks, the men with their toupees, the nip and tuckers,   the stretchers and smoothers. Like the alchemists of old searching for the secret of turning base metal to gold, they’re searching, searching, searching, endlessly searching magic and science as they get older and older still. And still   the fountain of youth eludes them. And all the alchemists are dead. https://freeverserevolution.com/2021/03/13/issue-i-available-for-download/?fbclid=IwAR3bjf1O6-rsc_8ujWODwrGASRa2mq6p43JOWt_mf2KBk5K0KPspTAZuIMw