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Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 23

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 23 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…
Before I post the last poem I sent but whose sender was the first I received – the next eight cards, two at a time, are ones on the list that I sent but didn’t receive from, – given what happened to the 23rd to arrive by way of Trinidad – I have not given up hope – so if you recognise a card you received and you know you sent one – please let me know in the comments and we shall presume it travelling still, the backwaters of the postal system…

Dear Jesse

Forgive me for sending
coals to Newcastle for
Seattle must have many
tiny moss gardens
nestled in the crook of branches
but though we are strangers
and I have only your address to go on
as one poet to another
I hope you too see
moss gardens growing in the trees
on rock
by streams
wherever you look
and I would like to share
this garden of mine…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Harrison sounds like a surname
Andina a forename
but must I trust the form
as you filled it in?
So little to go on
in reaching out with a poem
to a stranger who may
yet turn out to be  a friend
stranger things have happened.
I read about Seattle in “Stay”
by Nicola Griffiths and I
try to picture you living
across the watery way
and unknowing you
I send this picture of Friendship
Bracelets given by my partner
It’d some kind of message…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Between the Bullets and the Bombs…

humanist55

A detective contemplates a corpse
stabbed so many times that
he concludes – this was personal
so I am called an evil terrorist
as if the zombies in a
first person shoot-’em up
were suddenly weighted to win
I don’t want to witness my crime
by seeing the enemy as people
so I remember my X-box
shooting down Nazis
whose Holocaust
ironically
helped justify
our Palestinian “displacement”
between the bullets and the bombs

I press the button
which drops the bomb
but I don’t see the blast blossom
the seven stories pancake down
all in my rearview mirror
I don’t even see the confirmation
back at base – nothing to learn
about smart bombs
and our TV does not show
the dead children
or traumatised living
amongst the rubble
an angel of death
my hands are clean
only the world seeing
the blood dripping from them
between the bullets and the bombs

I am an old woman
whose heart has just given out
on the refugee road to elsewhere
surrounded, shelled
we took the only road they left open
my children will go to Kuwait
via camps in Lebanon
where they will be displaced
again by Saddam Hussain
and die in England
they will call this The Disaster
but my great-grandchildren
will have a good life
far from the bullets and the bombs

I am an old woman from Poland
I escaped the Holocaust
of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals
and the less-than-perfect of mind or body
only to find myself taken
to another prison camp
where the Jews are outside the wire
my husband and I helped the inmates
driving them to hospital
and I learned their language
so they have scheduled me for early release
and I will not die
between the bullets and the bombs

I am a baby who died
as the grossest provocation
the loudest shout-out
to a world that has long since
stopped listening and covered its eyes
whilst I am a baby crushed
into my mother’s breast
my grave a concrete sandwich
but we two babies
separated by bullets and bombs
whose ancestors lived here
side by side in peace
for millennia
if tested genetically
cannot be told apart
brothers and sisters under the skin…

Written for Poetics: Why war? over at dVerse Poets Pub Posted by paeansunplugged 

Evolution – Found Poetry 2

humanist55

Out of the court
up the street
the roofs all shining grey
in the grey dawn
plodding along the
black dusty road
the groaning of the pit-engine

Soon the road grew white
at the wall’s foot grew
long grass and gay flowers
drenched with dew
the skylark saying his matins
the pit-bird warbling in the sedges

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This is a found poem with words derived from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley.
The image is derived in Midjourney.
This series was inspired by my friend Misky over at It’s Still Life who has been producing a series of Found Poems…

Evolution – Found Poetry 1

humanist55

That short name
you heard it before
heard of God, of Christ
in words which you
never have heard

He cried half his time
for the way of the world

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This is a found poem with words derived from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley.
The image is derived in Midjourney.
This series was inspired by my friend Misky over at It’s Still Life who has been producing a series of Found Poems…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 22

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 23 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…
Before I post the last poem I sent but whose sender was the first I received – the next eight cards, two at a time, are ones on the list that I sent but didn’t receive from, – given what happened to the 23rd to arrive by way of Trinidad – I have not given up hope – so if you recognise a card you received and you know you sent one – please let me know in the comments and we shall presume it travelling still, the backwaters of the postal system…

Dear Albert
I wish to report a crime!
On a recent visit to Blackheath,
London, I came across this
Jane Doe – provisionally
identified as Barbie.
The naked body dumped on a wall
evidence of torture with
a cigarette lighter
to the breasts – otherwise
no obvious sign of fatal injury
no witnesses, no motive.
Who would abandon
such a doll?
Who can fathom
the workings
of the human heart…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Dear Mario

In Washington State great trees abound
but Olive trees are not, I think there found
these are the flowers of the Cretan Olive
grown more for oil than eating
olives now are threatened by global warming.
Pray for the farmer’s harvest
when next year comes around
I am guessing from your
name that your family
is no stranger to olives…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 21

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 23 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…
Before I post the last poem I sent but whose sender was the first I received – the next eight cards, two at a time, are ones on the list that I sent but didn’t receive from, – given what happened to the 23rd to arrive by way of Trinidad – I have not given up hope – so if you recognise a card you received and you know you sent one – please let me know in the comments and we shall presume it travelling still, the backwaters of the postal system…

Dear Lisanne
Like so many places in America
I knew the name of Berkeley
but I had to look at the map
to know exactly where it was.
Can you see the Pacific
framed by the Golden Gate Bridge
do waves cross the bay
to wash up on a Berkeley beach?
I first saw Dianne Arbus’ work
in a Sunday supplement
and I had my own Dianne Arbus moment
on the beach at Clacton
this lady pushing not
a baby in a pram
but a poodle…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Dear Rodda

I will not say Wish You Were Here
since this moment in time
was frozen digitally
a good few years ago
pre-Covid, pre-Trump, pre-War
and if we could have stood there
then it was a wet and windy day
not like the sunshine
eternally associated in the
imagination as shining down
on Stearns Pier, your pier.
Of course I know the Pacific
is not always peaceful
any more than the North Sea
splashing Blackpool is always stormy…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 20

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Karen

I should like to say this
painting is my own work
and in a small part it is.
I prompted an AI to make
four pictures in sixty second
“Village beside lake style of
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
“La Rue de Soleil” palette
knife oil painting” – it obeyed!
I am still trying to wrap
my head around it
perhaps I will copy it into
real oil paint on canvas
pondering with each brush stroke
how an AI went from 0- 60
in sixty second times x 4…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Due to an error in reading my meticulous recording of what card was sent when and which arrived when, I posted Karen’s beautiful handpainted watercolour trees a few days ago when it should have been the equally beautiful ink colour sketch of Paul Klee’s “Conqueror” with an Ekphrastic poem to match – my apologies to Caren and Karen for the mix up…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 19

humanist55

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Dear Allison

I see you live on a hill
perhaps on a road that encircles it
there are many Chapel Roads
in England, more still in Wales
where you are CHAPEL
rather than Church.
Writing to a stranger
in Epistolary form
there is little enough to go on
so I send you the view
from another hill
looking towards
Wuthering Heights where
I snooze for an hour
during Barbara’s Reiki session…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

Allison’s card was the 23rd and last card I received – not that Allison was tardy in posting it – she posted on 5th of July and it arrived 3rd of October having been “Missent to Jamaica” (as rubber stamped on the back!) Who doesn’t love a well-travelled card!” And on the back of this angelic card was a Haiku on the subject of the relationship between music and angels.

Casserole Dish Gardens

humanist55

You planted me two years ago
myself and my sister casserole dish gardens
– you who have always been fascinated
by the miniature worlds of Bottle Gardens and Bonsai.

Bottle gardens grew too lush
in the sweet-jar worlds
of your teenage window sill
Pennywort and Maidenhair ferns
an unruly tangled jungle
and Bonsai you studied and realised
you needed a Master
not just to teach the art
but from whom you could inherit
because a hundred-year-old tree
needs a hundred years to grow
no matter how small it is kept
by tortuous processes…

Coming back from Covid lockdown Crete
you smuggled fragments of plants
to create me – a miniature garden!
In Crete, Jade trees the size of bushes
a plant you didn’t even know had flowers
now grace us gardens as tiny trees
planted next to choice rocks
a nod to the Bonsai plantings
of your dreams

We are mostly filled with succulents
which flowered this year in ways
which surprised and delighted you
reaching a flower-tipped tendril
towards the light but then shrivelling
and dying – perhaps not to return…

One of us you inherited
from your late sister in Ireland
whose partner delighted her
by planting  a pink-dyed
spiky phallus of a cactus
along with succulent friends
in the lopsided glass
of a washing machine door
– the self-seeded Shamrocks
came along for the ride
the tiny Mexican-hatted miniature
of Tequila – “For Emergencies”
redundant, since she
had already encountered
her final life emergency.

You took us to work
where there were wider window-sills
than your open-plan hayloft conversion
and you see us and celebrate us
whilst weekly watering us.
People think we succulents can survive
without water but in truth
like most plants – we like it weekly

Meanwhile, as your eye wanders
through we miniature worlds
do you feel in control of your creations
or are we in your life
a living reminder of
mortality and fragility.
Do you wonder if we will outlive you
and carry on, watered by another –
inherited by another?
Do you wonder whether
anyone has even thought
to water us these weeks
you’ve been consumed by covid
when, head full of cotton wool
you forgot to ask anyone
to fill in for the gardener?

Don’t worry – we can manage
the occasional drought!
Can we say the same for you…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This poem is posted in response to Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at dVerse Poets Pub

Sunflowers

humanist55

Trauma is nowadays
seen as implicated
in almost all ways
in which people are derailed
in their mental health.

Addiction to drugs or alcohol
sex or over neatness
– these are the symptoms
and not the diagnosis
– whichever label eventually applied

Those who are traumatised
are often complex souls
and doctors often feel challenged
and give up on their role
to get to the bottom of things

Borderline personality disorder
is a favourite soubriquet
for those that cannot be rendered
silent about the roles their trauma plays
and refuse all other labels

Some disorders may respond
to the doctors’ pharmacopoeia
hardest is the slough of despond
a symptom so common it’s hardly seen
as mental health but just a frequent human condition

Bipolar is stabilised with lithium
yet patients constantly reject its spell
preferring the rush of manic fun
and whilst the black dog they would quell
prefer half a life than all life levelled and flat

Vincent van Gogh would today be told
he was bipolar and given lithium not talk
He said “Normality is a paved road
– It’s comfortable to walk,
but no flowers grow on it.”
And we would be deprived of his flowers…

© Andrew Wilson, 2023

This poem is posted in response to Haunted – Tuesday Poetics over at dVerse Poets Pub hosted by Melissa Lemay in Uncategorized