Poetry - Lynn White

  Listen To The Birds She asked me why the caged birds sing. I couldn’t tell her, not for sure. No mate will arrive this year, just like last year. I wonder if they remember, perhaps they still live in hope or sing in contentment for their good board and lodging. She asked why humming birds hum, if it was their song, a mating song or song of joy, of freedom. I told her it was a work sound made by their wings like bees buzzing, a song of struggle and survival. “Do they still sing,” she asked. https://visualverse.org/submissions/listen-to-the-birds/

  Out-Spoken I didn’t silence easily, not even as a child I spoke first and listened later to the embarrassed laughter or pourings of outrage from adult mouths. I resisted my mother’s attempts to quieten me, I knew it would ruin me, arrest my development, curtail my growth, my flowering. So I was ready for you   when you tried. Yes, you tried. But by then I was ready, I knew who I was, knew too much altogether and there was nothing we could do   about it. I had already spoken out. https://ephemeralelegies.com/2022/03/28/out-spoken-by-lynn-white/

  Cinderella In her dreams she would go to the ball. She’d meet her prince. and dance with him unforgettably so unforgettably that he would search for her later, search until his lost love was found again. With a poetic little spell and a wave   of her wand the fairy godmother   made her dream come true. We read it!   We heard it! We know it! Well, we know that the ball gown and transportation were sorted but who the fuck taught her to dance? Cracked ankles.. crushed toes..   bruised feet.. these things might have led to   a different outcome. Maybe the glass slippers were magic and carried her, step perfectly in time with the music. But we should have been told even in a fairy story, especially in a fairy story we should have been told. https://spillwords.com/cinderella-by-lynn-white/?fbclid=IwAR3nhxLRoQKlD1fnUYNK4e6gJd2q0rD8zn_ATw4Oi7tlDmLHxaM3bsplCy4

  But Some Of Us Are Brave Scotland was not the place to be a witch, it really wasn’t. There were more than four thousand witch trials in Scotland putting Salem to shame, the Witch-Finders boasted. One would suppose that  wise women did not become witches, but it seems, many did and paid a hot and heavy price. So not many would be dancing, even on Halloween, even in spirit  few would rise for the occasion, not even the white witches. But there will always be some, some women brave enough  to celebrate. https://braveandrecklessblog.com/2022/03/27/but-some-of-us-are-brave-lynn-white/?fbclid=IwAR3Nra1X1UbPUm2xdO8-AY94votBT5moQPqMVlsfgYBhDN7Ub5WT888-8ik

  Performance Art He’s the last man standing. Whether comedian or statesman performance is all for the last man standing. Standing in the rubble of the city. Standing on the bodies of the dead heroes, those lions led by donkeys once again. No more laughter, no more tears, the final curtain came down on them. Hollow victory or glorious defeat it’s all the same to them. But the last man still stands, the star of the show temporarily. https://www.topicalpoetry.com/performance-art/

  Angel Angel came down   from heaven to earth   on her first trip abroad. Her friends were envious as word was that earth was   the most beautiful of the planets, so beautiful that it had been the model for building the paradise that was heaven. Many had never really believed it some things just weren’t believable, like heaven,   few people on earth believed in it anymore and even fewer believed in paradise or angels. But I believed in them. I told her how pleased I was to meet her, how glad I was that I’d believed in her, how sorry I was that she had to leave before we found paradise on earth. But that’s life   on earth. Ekphrastic Review Sonya Gonzalez Challenge, January 2-22

  Third Birthday Until I was three I had a pet rabbit. For a long time I took him everywhere with me. He was made of felt and stood upright tall and thin holding a bright orange carrot in front of his yellow chest. I held him by his ears which were dark green like his back. And then my mother decreed he had become too shabby, too dirty to be my constant companion. A wash did not improve his appearance too successfully. So he became my sleeping partner and I still loved him as much. And then for my third birthday he was allowed to come to tea. I was sick, too much cake, my mother said. Yes I was sick all over my pet rabbit. And then he disappeared. No one knew where. “He’s gone,”   they said hippy hop. I never saw him again. https://www.continuethevoice.com/zine

  What Is To Be Done History is littered with stories of imaginary futures unattained. Bread, land and peace were Lenin’s promises and the Bolsheviks believed them and, like others before and since, believed in themselves, believed they could achieve them then. But, they weren’t uncontested.   Power intervened power and conflict external and internal and internal contradictions all in the mix and look where it took them. What was there to be done then. Education, re-education, terror, year zero nostalgia for primitive simplicity, they’ve all been tried. Such promises, such imagined futures, have a long history and even longer future similarly re-imagined every time. So, what is to be done now. Once my generation thought we’d done it, achieved the imagined hopes of Lennon’s song and created the basis for a future based on peace and love and civil rights. Even a pandemic couldn’t stop us at Woodstock. We were unstoppable! Invincible! Peaceful! In diverse countries we saw the reb...

  Good Thick Darkness The darkness enfolds me like a cloak, a good thick winter one with a deep velvety pile warm and comforting matching it’s shape to mine, the good thick darkness. It was blue before, then blue black turning purple purple black before the good thick blackness came the good thick blackness that I need to wrap me, the good thick blackness that I like. And I know that all too soon it will be broken penetrated, first by the harsh, pinpoint lights of stars glittery things pointlessly breaking up my dark and then   as the day breaks through splitting it open   cutting it blue, the blue day breaking like a knife opening up a wound ripping through my comfort, my darkness. Not thick enough at all. https://braveandrecklessblog.com/2022/03/19/good-thick-darkness-lynn-white/

  Odyssey In The Afternoon I remember that day of the voyage from the moment the dawn rose out of the golden globe and stretched out pink fingered roses into the blue of the morning, without knowing   what was to come after, in the afternoon when the wind took us to a strange land. But I embraced its strangeness and its indolent contented people who showed me the lotus and smiled   as I bit into the delight   of its flowers and fruits, savoured   it’s dreamy sensations with no need to wonder what would to come after, there were only afternoons, forever afternoons. But the moment   when I woke, shook myself awake, I dragged us all away out of fear of forgetting,   forgetting where I’d come from, forgetting where I should go and before   I forgot to leave that place with it’s sopheristic days   of perpetual afternoon.   And in the evening as night fell to envelop me stretching out its grey blanket and touching me with black, I wondered if ...

  Raining Tears It’s raining again, endless rain or so it seems the clouds breaking, fracturing, letting it all pour out as I watch feeling my heart breaking bleeding like the rain, the raindrops of my heart pouring out like tears of blood. https://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-lynn-white/

  Keep Your Hat On There was a time when going out   was an occasion to be dressed for. You could not be seen, should not be seen   without your hat. You would be ostracised, talked about,   stigmatised, left alone shamed. Hats were mandatory, a smart felt trilby or bowler for the men and a fashion statement of flounces or formality for the women. Even later   my visiting aunties kept their hats on   while drinking their afternoon tea indoors. They left them on in cafes and bars, it’s the generational norm from the time when one knew the dress code and conformed. But not everyone did so even back then. Some were daring, daring enough to go without a hat and they still found company. Others followed the code   and kept their hat on but still sat on their own the code didn’t admit everyone, some were left outside. https://synchchaos.com/poetry-from-lynn-white/