Month: May 2025

The Quietest Krisis

humanist55

Krisis does not always come with a bang
a storm heralded by a clap of thunder
or even a whimper, a cry for help
krisis can come like a big cat
creeping, camouflaged the colour of
golden grass until so close to it’s prey
escape is impossible

Pity the partner who too, close by has
failed to spot the marauder
– to sound the alarm until too late
and krisis has sprung, jaws locked on
to suffocate – flight impossible, frozen still

For something that arrives so quietly
depression nevertheless rules the roost
changes more lives than the victim’s
spreads it’s blight to partners
children, siblings, friends
and moments of freedom
are hard won – the result
of planning, cajoling
caring persuasion
and often a short reprieve
results in a reactive tightening
of the snare that binds
– would have the victim
knaw off their own leg
if only they had the energy

The only hope – to roll back the
malaise in the same way it came
a single step at a time
hoping a habit will take hold
and the novel become the norm
once more…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, paeansunplugged in Poetics asks us to “write a poem about any pivotal moment in your life that left you with gnawing regrets or you could cover the entire gamut from anger to forgiveness and reconciliation. In short, you will be writing about a krisis in your personal life.”

Tears of Remembrance

humanist55

My mother fought in the war, not hand to hand of course, but she ran the switchboard at the underground fortress on the Isle of Portland where the D-Day invasion was planned. She was a target of a spiteful fighter who strafed her landlady’s garden and had to dive under the hedge with the children. She alerted her base to a spy who was subsequently caught and she said there were six men, any one of which she might have married if they had not gone off to fight and never came back. Her tears on Remembrance Day taught us to tear up…

each Autumn brought tears
of Remembrance for lost loves
fallen in the war

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

My mother sitting at the back of her landlady’s house on the Island of Portland where she was managing the switchboard at the fortress where the invasion was being planned. She looks calm and happy here but just a few feet away, she had to grab the landlady’s two sons and dive for cover when a German fighter strafed the back gardens for no good reason…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Frank J. Tassone in Haibun Monday, invites us, on America’s Memorial Day, when those who have fallen in service of their country are remembered, to write a a Haibun recalling those whom we lost. This is about my mther’s Remembrance but from her example, we learned the meaning of loss and the response of tears.
I wrote a longer poem about Remembrance and an exploration of my mother’s story in the memoir I wrote in this year’s A to Z Challenge here.

An Interview and an Epic Poem on Collaborature…

humanist55

Since January this year, my friend Melissa Lemay, has been publishing her online journal Collaborature. As the name implies, it is a place for collaborative writing and other forms of creativity to thrive. You can find out more about Collaborature and how to submit work here.

Melissa also interviews some of her contributors and I was recently the subject of just such an interview. Amongst the many things we talked about, was our own collaborative project in which we are writing an epic saga called Shipmates.  It was inspired by “The Golden Gate”, a novel by Vikram Seth, written entirely in sonnet form in the 1970s. He, in turn, was inspired by Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, though I only found that out well into the project. We don’t know how far this project will carry on – it will publish in chapters, mostly around seven sonnets each, every two weeks. There follows, the first two verses of Chapter 1…

Shipmates

Whale Struck and Love Struck

1:1
Mid-ocean is a lonely place
But some seek there to sail
The Pacific is the greatest space
But not to run into a whale
As Kate found snoozing in her bunk
She woke to find her whole world sunk
With barely time to don Mae West
And swim out leaving all the rest
Before her precious yacht and home
Dove downwards to Pacific deep
Kate left ringed with flotsam and foam
She searches but finds nought to keep
Some way off the whale’s spout she espies
And though a tough cookie, Kate just cries…

1:2
Alas, the salt, it dries her skin
And oil it overcompensates
Causing blotches, discoloration
And what of it if true love waits
O’er yonder past the waterspout?
She thinks perhaps a whale to mount
Could be an achievable task
Should she calculate around the blast
Choose wisely time to take the reins
Lest end up shot to Port of Spain
Though, admittedly wouldn’t be so bad
A holiday in the Caribbean
Kate snaps back to reality
In just the nick of time to see…

Continue reading…

Otter Games Are Available

humanist55

Walking back along the ledges
from a fruitless fishing expedition
fruitless but for the pleasure
of sunshine on tons of lazy swelling
clear Atlantic water
shifting glassy at my feet
 – I encountered an otter.

Seeing me first it fled
across my path and
slipped into the sea
I searched the swells for it
and when our eyes met  – it dived again.
We played this game several times
until I turned the tables
 – dropping to my knees I crawled
crouched low over the serpent stone
snake fashion for ten yards until
carefully lifting my head
I saw the otter now searching for me!

We could have played all day
but the knobbly fossils of solitary corral
were hard on my knees
and so we parted with
a final interspecies gamers salute!

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics, invites us to write a poem about an intimate moment. This encounter with the “other”, a sea-otter, on the West coast of Ireland where I lived for ten years, took place on ledges of “serpent stone” fossil solitary corals, solitary corals that with horizontally across the plane of the rocks…

Compassion for Strong Men – a Democracy of Love…

humanist55

What if we approached the authoritarians
who have asserted themselves
around the world – with compassion?

Perhaps Putin suffers from Napolean
Complex – the plight of small men
and yearning for the late, great days
when he fought metaphorical rats
in dark corners with the KGB
Was he stunted by the starvation
that took his brother, is that why
he cannot have enough of everything?
He is the Strong Man, bare-chested
on horseback projecting his lost
glory days onto his country and trying
to obliterate a country that was there
when Muscovy was just a swamp
– is that what it will take
to make him feel better?

Has Trump really found a friend
who understands his needs
facilitated his election – twice
or is Putin playing him for a patsy
to suit his own purposes?
Did being born with a silver spoon
in his mouth – paid $20,000 a year
by his father, a millionaire by age eight
set impossible expectations that
made a seedbed for hubris and
underhand shortcuts in the attempt
to make the grade?
In bed with a somewhat Mafia connected Cohn
– another avuncular mentor
who gave him a love of litigation
was Trump needing more of a father’s
love than he could possibly find
in reality – is that why he turned
to reality TV and ultimately to presidency?

Post colonially
India seemed like a beacon of
spiritual inclusion, diversity and equality
with its mixture of religions
living side by side
for the most part, peacefully
but Modi promoted Nationalism
but only for Hindus, Moslems
don’t belong – old hatreds
once more resurrected
in the service of party political
power and concomitant
self-aggrandisement.
Was it being born into a background
of Other Backward Class
as his neighbourhood was classified
or serving tea to haughty strangers
on the station platform with his father
that made Modi aspire to climb so high?
What shame did he bear for denying
his marriage to become a pracharak
in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
a leg-up the social ladder
for which celibacy was a requirement?
How many people have to die in
religious pogroms to wash away
the scars of humble origin?

And in another place riven
with religious but not racial
differences, one Semitic people
try to delete another
– to take their place
by God given right, they claim
led by a man terrified to
lose it all, the power, the respect
on account of personal corruption
– the prison that awaits him if
he lets go for a moment
of the extreme nationalist narrative
that keeps his country behind him
even though they slide ever downwards
in the eyes of the world

I don’t know about Orban
or President Xi, but
what are the chances that these other
strong men have a weakness within
that drives their story?
We can react with anger, horror
disbelief, to the authoritarian
network that has overtaken
the global village of recent decades
even with all its village quarrels
and sometimes worse
it was better than this divisive
hate filled place we now find
ourselves thrust into
– but where will it get us?
What if we all wrote to
the strong men and spoke
to their hearts with
understanding
of their personal pasts
their fears and disappointments?
Would a million letters each
be enough to salve them
with a democracy of love?

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice which can also be read out on the OLN live meeting on Saturday…

This poem attempts to look at current events from a slightly different angle…

4.45 am this morning, On Ilkley Moor baht ‘at

humanist55

Bradford is this year’s City of Culture and as one of the events of the festival, this morning, in time to greet the sunset, except it dawned cloudy and cooler than of late, some 300 people assembled in the quarry next to the Cow and Calf above Ilkley and on the edge of Ilkley Moor for the start of The Bradford Progress. However, far from the popular song in the title of this piece, we were treated to Handel’s ‘Eternal Source of Light Divine performed by 27 members of Paraorchestra and a Counter-Tenor, the falsetto song commanding absolute hush. Mindful that one can’t fully appreciate or be present for live a performance whilst videoing it, I took only a short sample of the performance.

Then, the Commoners Choir took over. Based in Leeds and led by Boff Whalley, former guitarist in Chumbawumba, the Leeds punk/anarchist band catapulted to unexpected fame with their chart hit “Tubthumping“, which is not a song about drinking but the resilience of the Working Class (“He gets knocked down, but he gets up again…”). I was too taken with listening to the choir harmonies this morning to really take in the lyrics but I heard a reference to Noam Chomsky…

The choir were then going to walk across Ilkley Moor to continue with a series of performances across today and tomorrow culminating in Millenium Square, Bradford.

In other news, my friend and poetry collaborator, Melissa Lemay, who runs an online Journal called Collaborature, published an interview with me that we recorded a few weeks ago. As an experiment, she recorded our Zoom call and then had the AI integrated with Zoom, transcribe it. This worked in so far as it kept track of our separate voices, and was surprisingly accurate and yet there were many misheard words that made editing quite arduous for her and she had to refer a few passages back to me for clarification. You can read the interview here.

Querida

humanist55

You told me your schoolfriends called you little frog
because of your slightly bulging eyes, amiga hermana
and like an amphibian, you emerged from the river
into a new land without meeting those who
would have called you “Wet back”
and sent you whence you came
which is why to me, querido, you are Amfibio
for you brought me the gift of insights
of one who has travelled between borders
you are Alebrije – your travel has given you wings
wings that brought you and your fantastic colours
into my life, querida.

What Divina Providencia brought you to my door querida?
What spirit guided your path, melded our destinies?
You asked for work as a live-in ama de casa
to support your family back in Mexico
and you fulfilled a need I didn’t even know I had
and our relationship became hardly that
of employer and employed

Then came the Orange Chupacabrón
the devil who demands all the attention
consumes all the oxygen and sucks all the blood
– this trickster wants to send your kind
back to Mexico and elsewhere as if you are
una cifra insignificante
he would make you an apachurrado
a hat run over by a truck
but he did not reckon with me

At first you shrugged “ Ni modo…”
but I was encabronada
well and trulypissed-off but also I had Susto – fear
down to my very soul
fear for me, for you,
for your family, for my country
I would not see you become
Un pobre infeliz and so
We sealed off the entrance to the cellar
concealed a new entrance behind the mirror
made a safe refuge for you and others
told the shop where you used to shop for us
not without irony, that you had been swept up
and disappeared by the orange one’s minions
and I arranged for a Mexican run shop
with simpática, to deliver discretely
enough food for whomsoever we hid…

Now we have an underground railway
– not to escape victims of the orange one
but to hold them until safe houses can be found
– we did not need the magic of shamans
to defeat the Chupacabrón
we did not need to pick poisonous Toloache
or summon the Cenzontle to do battle
on our behalf because, after all
we are hermanas bajo la piel

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Dora in Poetics, invites us to write a poem using one or more of the poetically interpreted Spanish words in a poem by Sandra Cisneros…

Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954), in Chicago, the only daughter in a family of six brothers. In her stories and poems, she deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of being caught between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and the constant migration of her family between Mexico and the United States, “always straddling two countries but not belonging to either culture.”
In “I Have No Word in English For,” Cisneros lists twenty-five Spanish words dictionary-like but non-alphabetically, yet seemingly objectively. You soon discover that each definition appropriates a keenly personal shade of meaning.

I Have No Word in English For
By Sandra Cisneros (The New Yorker print edition, September 16, 2024)

Apachurrado. Hat run over by a truck. Heart run over by unrequited love.
Estrenar. To show off what’s new gloriously.
Engentada. People-overdose malaise.
A estas alturas. Superb vista with age.
Encabronada/o. A volatile, combustible rage.
Susto. Fear that spooks the soul away.
Ni modo. Wise acceptance of what fate doles.
Aguante. Miraculous Mexican power to endure conquest, tragedy, politicos.
Ánimo. A joyous zap of fire.
Divina Providencia. Destiny with choices and spiritual interventions.
Nagual. Animal twin assigned at birth.
Amfibio. Person with the gift of global perspective due to living between borders.
Alebrije. Amfibio with wings from geographical travel.
Ombligo. Buried umbilical. Center of the universe.
Toloache. Love concoction made with moonflower and menstrual blood.
Tocaya/o. Name double. Automatic friend.
Amiga hermana. Heart sister closer than kin.
Un pobre infeliz. The walking wounded maimed by land mines of life.
Un inocente. Mind askew since birth; blameless.
Chupacabrón/a. Energy vampire disguised in human form.
Cenzontle. Tranquillity transmitter in bird or human form.
Friolenta/o. Tropical blood. Vulnerable to chills.
Chípil. Melancholia due to an unborn sibling en route.
Desamor. Heart bleeding like xoconostle fruit.
Xoconostle. Must I explain everything for you?

I have used some of Cisneros’ words, sometimes with her poetic meaning and sometimes their literal meanings, given below.

Apachurrado – squashed, down
Encabronada – pissed off (slang) angry
Susto – fright
Ni modo –  “that’s life”, “oh well”, or “what can you do”
Divina Providencia – divine providence
Amfibio – amphibian
Alebrije – a type of Mexican folk art sculpture, typically a brightly colored, fantastical      creature made from paper-mâché or wood
Toloache – literally – the plant with nodding head – Datura, a highly poisonous flower
Amiga hermana – friend sister
Un pobre infeliz – a poor unfortunate
Chupacabrón – a legendary creature, or cryptid, in the folklore of parts of the Americas. The name comes from the animal’s purported vampirism.
Cenzontle – the mockingbird, a bird known for its ability to mimic the songs of other birds

I also used some other Spanish phrases

Querida – Dear (one)
hermanas bajo la piel – Sisters under the skin
ama de casa – housekeeper
una cifra insignificant – an insignificant person
simpática – sympathetichermanas bajo la piel – Sisters under the skin
simpática – sympathetic

Flight

humanist55

I have no skills for flight, or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself unaided, but I have flown in man-made machines, looped the loop in a Tiger Moth, watched men practise dropping food-sacks from inside a low flying Hercules. I have circled and landed in a glider and watched kite-boarders risk life and limb lifting off from Elounda Bay where once Imperial Airways flying boats landed on their way to India. Recently I saw a replica of the Wright brothers first flyer, one which is occasionally towed up to fly, briefly, perilously and from that to the climate polluting jets that crisscross our skies with contrails, from which I have had my share of gazing with wonder at the Earth below whilst transported unimaginably far, I have most certainly flown even though I have no skills for flight…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery, invites us to write apiece of prose using no more than 144 words, including a quote from Ada Limón‘s “The Magnificent Frigatebird,”. The italicised lines at the beginning of the piece are the given quote…

America (Krisis: at the Crossroads)

humanist55

America I would still like to visit you
perhaps even more urgently
– the rough beast slouched
towards Bethlehem now born
– a second coming the world
thought impossible
now come to pass
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

How long before those Great Lakes
are poisoned by polluters
set free to do their dirty work
and national parks still safe
from the graffiti of the poor
but not from the mineral mining
gutting of once again empowered rich
cost corner-cutting pipelines
fracture and spill their black gold
on sacred reservations and beyond.

To appease his base your President
has pulled your role as policeman
to the world citing the cost
but alongside military might
your soft power saved lives
now already doomed as
vaccinations, retrovirals
and simply food are withdrawn
allies against oppression abandoned
in favour of the oppressors
and that is without the chaos
of world markets disarrayed
the world order disrupted
by a thoughtless
human hand grenade.

We British cannot talk
– we also had a Prime Minister
unelected, full of hubris, who
made leader by her party
with no electoral mandate
fancied herself a disruptor
and lasted less time than a lettuce
but whose damage lives on

– small fry compared to POTUS
whose power, mandated, he claims
has already hurt the whole world
in ways no magic reset can reverse
and in truth, his mandate was
less than half of “We the people…”
his vandals slashing government
to smash the laws that hold them back
from moving money – poor to rich
once more…

The “Land of Opportunity” that
favoured my grandfather’s brother
and many another immigrant
now demonises the souls who
would make their way too
to share the possibilities
of a bright future for their families
even as the undocumented
labour that oils the wheels
of the American economy,
– fentanyl and the war on drugs
a fig leaf to the injustice
of forced repatriation of those
already embedded in America
their dreams and families shattered
by the spurious scourge of
anti-immigrant sentiment
pitting the poor
against the poorer still.

So America I would still like to visit you
but I am not sure you would let me in
with my opinions here on record
– sewn into the worldwide web
where creepy billionaires now
rule the roost and spread the lies
that fooled America’s poor
into electing their nemesis
by inflaming the emotion of their
abandoned sensibilities with
false promises wrapped up in fake news
– how long before you see the truth
and can Americans, as they have before
revolt against the white minority
who would install Gilead
the billionaires bent on plunder
the bigoted descendants of
the slave-owning South.

And if you, the people of America
find your voice and strength again
quell the krisis
reassert the values that had
America support the world order
the rule of law, the equality of man
then perhaps I will yet
get to visit America…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

This poem was written for the dVerse Poets Pub call for submission for a soon-to-be-published real world anthology of poems to be entitled, provisionally, Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. It is also a sequel to a poem I wrote in my writing group back in 2023 “America (I Would Like to Visit You)” which in turn was a response to “America (Superstorm)” by Kathleen Graber. I read the previous poem at the dVerse OLN in July 2023 and I am sharing it for the current OLN #383 which is being hosted by  Grace . Since 2023, President Trump has been re-elected for a second term…

Black Widows

humanist55
Georgia O’Keeffe, Three Women (1918), watercolour and graphite on paper, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, gift of Gerald & Kathleen Peters

Widows’ weeds is what we wear
Stiflingly hot in midday air
Houses usurped by eldest sons
Post-husbands, post-menopause, we
Convene daily, really to see
That we still live, it’s hardly fun
But beneath each blackened shell
Bright colours of our glory days
Belie this ghastly latter phase
We dream of Heaven, live in Hell
Gossip our only consolation
The fauve follies of the young
Who’s deserving, who should be hung
Judgment brings but scant elation…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to write an ekphrastic poem inspired by a selection of paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe…

Melissa also gave us a selection of art terms to incorporate into our poem and I chose just one fauve, the French word for “wild animal” that gave it’s name to the Fauvists who painted in very bright colours…