Poetry - Lynn White

  An Alphabetical Error We had a map,   of course we did! And the names of the streets   were clearly written in English. The names on the streets were also clearly written but in Cyrillic Greek, of course they were! This was Athens in 1966 and we were struggling   to find the Folk Museum. Then we had a stroke of luck! We spied a grand building   with sentries in national dress standing outside and we knew we’d found it! So we went inside and wandered around for a bit. It was unusually empty, the rooms and corridors devoid of the expected folk exhibits. A smartly dressed woman   descended the stairs carrying a file of paper. We asked her if she had a Guide. She threw us out!   Of course she did! The Royal Palace was not open to tourists! It was to be an unrepeatable incursion. A few months later the colonels took power and everything changed except the alphabet. https://dashboardhorus.blogspot.com/2022/06/lynn-whites-poem-alphabetical-error.html

  Sister Millicent The teapot was full catering size perfect for the church function where I first met Sister Millicent. She was balancing it on her head. Her eyes were uplifted so were her lips. It was her party trick. I didn’t know nuns did such things. https://www.amazon.com/Odes-Praising-People-Places-Things/dp/B0B54WHS9N/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3N4D8APHQONX2&keywords=highland+park+poetry+odes&qid=1656500157&sprefix=highland+park+poetry+ode%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-1

  Voice Of An Angel Once I thought love would be enough to fly us away spinning   past planets and stars reaching up to them breaking through   the atmosphere to grasp that moment and put it in a glass, our own shining orb that would stay forever gleaming and shimmering and singing at my touch with the pure notes of the voice of an angel breaking through   the atmosphere, your voice a voice so pure it will never shatter the glass. It’s lustre has faded now but it will stay forever a still shining sphere in my memories   and dreams. http://www.southernarizonapress.com/downloads/

  Dead Poets Outside the night was filled with stars, a sky full of dead poets if van Gogh is to be believed. But he was inside now   and all he remembered was the red curtain coming down over his eyes. Red first and then black. So black it turned everything black. They told him that   he had died for a few seconds, or was it a few minutes. Then he was back   looking out   on the starry night. He wondered how long it took for a dead poet to become a star. Was a few seconds, or even a few minutes, sufficient. And now,   now that he was back, was he still shining undead, living up there with all the dead poets. Unless the raising of the curtain put out his light. http://www.southernarizonapress.com/downloads/

  Joining The Dots She saw the night sky as a join the dots puzzle. She was an expert far better than the adults who could never work them out. They told her that these formed a plough and those a bear, well two bears, Great and Little. She couldn’t see it. They were quite wrong she knew the stars   were glittering cairns pin point sharp marking the pathway to the moon, to Venus, to the sun and beyond. You just had to join the dots and follow the paths to find your way to paradise. http://www.southernarizonapress.com/downloads/

  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...

  Nothing Is Impossible Even when the window is obscured entirely draped in white fabric it can’t hide the outside, not completely. In the filtered light I can still see shapes shift outside and even a sliver left open lets me feel the draught of a breeze, and inhale the scent or stink carried on it   from the outside. Even when I bury myself in the cool white sheets, even then I can sense it. And I know exactly what it’s like out there. Nothing is impossible. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B4HMWZ6W/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0

  Sitting Squarely Beach chairs are so uncomfortable. I was sitting squarely for a while now I’m squirming around trying out new positions without success. I look down at you with envy lying there. “Let’s have a change,” I say, “you try the chair”. But there’s no budging you from your comfort zone and really, I don’t blame you. You were right, we should have bought two beach mats. https://fixatorpress.home.blog/2022/06/20/sitting-squarely-by-lynn-white/

 Move On It may not look that way but I've done more than survive my time in this city. It may not look that way but I’ve done more than survive in the time since I left. Now I'm ready for whatever comes next. I'm ready to come back. And I will come back. And then I'll be ready to move on to find a new way through the old streets make my way afresh. And I will. https://www.journalofexpressivewriting.com/post/move-on