Poetry - Lynn White

  Figure of Speech “Mad world, mad kings, mad composition,” said Shakespeare’s King John speaking anaphorically. Who could disagree in those times or in these or in most times in between. It takes an abstraction   to show it clearly,   to figure it out. A figure to illustrate it perfectly. A figure that sums it up   A figure that says it all. https://poetrywivenhoe.org/2026/04/day-1234-figure-of-speech-white/

  Wasted How many candles must I light to commemorate all the dead souls, all the lives wasted in wars without end. So many that candle making   became a profitable industry, its candles even surviving death. I have never lit such a candle. My time wasted has been   in protests for peace, in dreams of peace. My voice has been wasted in words of peace in poems of peace. And now I wonder   if there be anyone left to waste a candle for me. https://www.ivoreview.com/issues/issue-three-confession/

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  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://inalove.world/2026/03/18/immortality/

  Time And Place What did he do that little boy when he Resisted the Occupation, for that was the charge against him. If he killed, it seems it was a soldier out of place illegally placed in that place. But sometimes in some places illegal becomes legal and resistance is criminal. Sometimes in those places, to exist is crime enough for some,  those whose childhood is stolen whose youth is stolen whose land is stolen like that boy in that place where power not law defines legality. https://inalove.world/2026/02/18/time-and-place/

  Only Time Survives Time is digging graves again graves of bones and flesh graves of ideas memories avenging a life lived a spent or mis-spent youth all buried now  the running away has stopped and only time passes. https://inalove.world/2026/01/21/only-time-survives/

  Meeting Your Match D H Lawrence once wrote that there were lots of good fish in the sea but as the vast majority were mackerel and herring, unless you were mackerel or herring yourself, you were unlikely to find your fish-mate. But that was in the teeming wilderness of then. There are a lot fewer fish now than in his day and even mackerel and herring are in short supply. Perhaps that will make it easier to meet your match amongst the precocious survivors. But maybe he would have something wilder in mind, for our times,   a salmon perhaps. There are even fewer of them now so only the wildest will meet their match   in today’s emptying wilderness. https://4fpfish.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRQgAZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeHWo_yAE5x6Rb2S8VgBRJ0txzKOTOnyNymL0FSZJdzrrT0wzmsVQee2_mzjg_aem_k_Q5jJwyYO0QBM_VypkKTg

  Gone Fishing The fish were there gathered at the shoreline almost asking to be caught. But that was then. They’re all gone now replaced by plastic replicas. https://4fpfish.blogspot.com/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRQgAZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeHWo_yAE5x6Rb2S8VgBRJ0txzKOTOnyNymL0FSZJdzrrT0wzmsVQee2_mzjg_aem_k_Q5jJwyYO0QBM_VypkKTg

  Sea Glass And Driftwood I see them everywhere on the beach, sea glass and driftwood. Pieces of Art now strewn like a shipwreck drowned and sculpted by the sea. I see the sea in every piece of glass. In it,   not through it. I can’t see through it, though I know once it was clear. I remember the film ‘Sea Wife’ as I gather up the shiny sea glass and arrange it with the driftwood. The driftwood will be my ‘Biscuit’ trying desperately to see through, searching for her face washed up broken   and stained   in glass. Searching in vain beyond that beach, her face well hidden   as a nun in her habit. I view my collection, see exotic creations made by the sea and long to make one of my own to pay homage   to the beach, the sea and an old movie. https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/belinda-scott-ekphrastic-writing-responses-curated-by-kate-copeland

  Kinds Of Blue From the blue of the sky to the blue of your eyes and blue of the sea where sunlight reflects blue on blue. On such a bright blue day as this darkness cannot encroach blue is kept outside, doesn’t move in to infect us. But I know that surely later there will come a kind of bleary blue-black night and bring its bruising   blue tones blue notes   which will move inside. There are all kinds of blue. https://hotelmasticadoreshouse.wordpress.com/2026/04/17/kinds-of-blue-by-lynn-white/

  The late  Brian Patten  (1946-2025), Liverpool poet, is the designated Bard of today’s apostrophe poem by our Poetrywivenhoe poet  Lynn White –  a clever cento composed of lines from eleven separate poems. Lynn’s own interjections appear in italics.  To Brian Patten (A Cento and Apostrophe) Yesterday   you were my favourite living poet, there, watching and smiling, now yesterday seems so far away. So I wonder -   did you build your ship of death, knowing you would need it, or did you rage - rage against the dying of the light and not go gentle into that good night when it was time to go, to bid farewell to one’s own self, and find an exit from the fallen self and falling skies. With one quick call dreams can be aborted and become like a marooned whale. Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul,   has her footing washed away, as age dark flood rises, cold dash of waves at the ferry-warf - posh and ice in the river, a gray discouraged ...