Over at dVerse Poets Pub, msjadeli in OpenLinkNight, invites us to submit a poem and since we are, in Lisa’s words “just a week away from the spookiness of All Hallow’s Eve”, I have chosen one that references magic and ghosts…
Hell’s bells and buckets of bloody blood! My mother used to say and after Australia she said it every day
It used to be just Hell’s bells and buckets of blood but bloody was a word oft heard in the land of Oz you see
Hell’s bells—an apt description for news now from everywhere it would have given her conniptions were she still here
Hell, I’d even use the cuss she bequeathed me except I don’t accept religious geography and know that Hell is here on Earth and not some seven circled place beneath
Hell’s bells – the cuss abbreviated hardly reflects the place we’ve come to climate change, genocidal wars from decency and democracy we’ve deviated
Hell’s bells and buckets of blood for greater impact our world is in the toilet and that’s a fact
So still I hear my mother’s voice raised in exasperation uttering her curse of choice Hell’s bells and buckets of bloody blood!
Is there anyone who does not love the display of Autumn colours that nature puts on each year if you live in the latitudes where deciduous trees flourish? A love that is, tempered by the knowledge of the meaning which this colourful transformation signals – the end of Summer and the advent of Winter – only young children are blissfully unaware of the message and thoughtlessly kick their way through the ever-deepening piles of fallen leaves. The change begins on the edge of some leaves on a certain side of some trees and gradually creeps across the entire tree, to be joined at differing rates and with subtly different palettes by other species until whole stands of woodland are ablaze save for the odd patch of evergreens. But this extravagant show, which has us humans travelling to see its most spectacular examples, is not some random quirk of nature, but a necessary part of the plant’s process – one without which the trees would not survive the coming cold of Winter. The green, chlorophyll-filled engine of energy conversion which is a leaf, exchanging liquid food from the tree and using sunlight to power the tree, now switches its production to producing a kind of anti-freeze which the tree reabsorbs into its twigs, branches and trunk to protect itself against frost damage. Once each leaf has done its job, sucked dry by its parent, it shrivels and falls to the ground where it will rot down and feed the tree through its roots and complete the cycle of its life but the byproduct of its transformation in Autumn is a breathtaking, spectacular, partial rainbow from yellow to rich reds…
The greatest feat of the Washington Witches Coven was to remain in plain sight as this rare photograph from the 1960’s reveals. Gathered together outside the premises of their leader, a veterinarian by trade, the members of the coven are each accompanied by their witches’ familiars – black cats each and every one of them. In any other age, such an unprecedented number of black cats in one place would undoubtedly have rung alarm bells and resulted in a witch-hunt, but this group of fashionably dressed (for middle-aged women) were merely perceived as slaves to the growing trend of pets as fashionable accessories and their predilection for felines of a noir colouring, merely a fashionable affectation.
Under the election and presidentship of renowned misogynist Donald Trump, the words “witch-hunt” found renewed currency, though not, ironically, in connection with actual witches! By now a little more discreet in their public gatherings, the Washington Coven played their part in fighting the menace of arse-trumpeting but just as all right minded people had been staggered by the election of the great, orange baby, so too, the matrons and even the younger members of the coven had found themselves wrong-footed and at a loss as to how best to combat the orange menace. The audacity of Trump madness fuelling false news such as baby-eating, paedophile rings operating behind Pizza restaurant fronts, beggared belief! By the time the coven were getting their ducks in a row, lining up the most potent spells to use on His Orangeness, he failed to be re-elected and a huge celebration ensued under full moon in the Washington Woods and much debate was had about the extent to which the power of the coven’s spells had contributed to the orange downfall.
But Trump is back, once again riling up his base with the same tired tropes about “draining the Washington swamp” – if only he knew the real powers ranged against him… Go! Black Cats!
I read a book by a Serbian revolutionary sharing his experience of nonviolent action to bring down dictators and even military juntas his greatest tool – laughter poking fun utterly defeats them imagine trumpety-Trump the big, inflated, orange baby wouldn’t he just hate it…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Mish in Poetics invites us to write about laughter and since I have little time before work, and as I am getting into the whole Quadrille thing, I have written something in just 44 words. As a child, one of our favourite records to come on the radio, because it inexorably activated our audio mirror brain cells and had us giddily joining in – I give you “The Laughing Policeman” by Charles Jolly/Penrose…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Uncategorized invites us to write Zeugmatically. The word zeugma is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses”.
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam invites us to write about Grief – paeansunplugged in Poetics. My poem is about grief long dissolved before the loss itself and I hope I will not be judged harshly for it…
If you have not been following this blog for the last month of April, I have been participating in the A-Z Challenge in which participants write alphabetically on a topic of their choosing. Writing is only half the story – with some 218 participants, the idea is to read the blogs of old friends and newcomers alike and if you don’t manage to do that during April, then the Roadtrip that follows in May is the chance to see what everybody else has been up to…
Ronel the Mythmaker besides being the splendid Graphic Designer who furnished the A-Z Challenge 2024 with all its banners and letters this year, Ronel is a writer whose books deal with the Fae or fairy world and for her own A-Z this year, she has given us as compendious a guide to all the forms of the Fae in world folklore. Ronel lives in South Africa and I find it hard to imagine that in that land of bright sunshine and big skies, there lives a soul whose fascination with the Fae, have led her to explore the often dark side of folklore but that she has! Everything you might want to know about the creatures of the Fae but never dared to ask… As well as her writing and graphics, Ronel is a mistress of the dark arts of all digital media including sound, and illustrates her posts copiously, including the one I have linked to – Dark Fae: Ghouls…
By Sarah is a blog by Sarah Whiley from Australia and she must post late at night for she often pops up in my Jetpack app just as I, am getting up. She posts poems and photographs each of which, incrementally reveals the character and life of the eponymous Sarah. I don’t always comment on her posts some, like the photograph below for “Wordless Wednesdays” do not require an answer, but often a comment has followed hard on the heels of Sarah posting – winging its way from and to the antipodes by the miracle of modern technology. Sarah has become part of my life and her photographic theme for A-Z 2024 was about corners – corners of things and things found in corners – dip into Sarah’s quirky view of the world…
The Multicoloured Diary is a blog by Zalka Csenge Virág Storyteller from Hungary and is another one dealing with Folklore from around the world. I enjoyed Zalka’s previous A-Zs so this was like connecting with an old friend. This year the theme was Romance tropes in Folklore and like Ronel, Zalka is compendious in her research and posting – despite the fact that she had family issues pulling at her, Zalke finished the challenge in flying form once more…
The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…
By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day! The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!
In 2022, worldwide trade in Zinc Ore was worth $14.1 billion and it was the 297th most traded product.
If you have ever looked at say, steel railings and noticed a blotchiness to the surface, you are looking at crystals of zinc applied by hot dipping the steel (Galvanising) to protect it from rust.
Zinc is an important metal that has been used since ancient times – long before the element was properly isolated and named. It is also vital to life as a trace element but can be toxic in excess. It has many uses – one third goes to galvanising steel and iron and so as a commodity, watching the demand for steel – especially in China, is a key indicator of demand. Other uses include alloying – most notably with copper to form brass, Diecasting metal parts for such things as Automobile parts, zinc oxide is used in many industries, including paint, rubber, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, plastics, inks, soaps, batteries, textiles, and electrical equipment, and Zinc sulfide is an important component in many products, including luminous paints, fluorescent lights, and x-ray screens.
You may have noticed that the trading figures at top refer to Zinc Ore rather than Zinc itself which suggests that the places that mine the ore do not necessarily wish to refine the ore into metal and in any case, as we can see from the use of zinc compounds above, metal is not always the desired form of zinc. It also suggests that the zinc content of the ore is sufficiently concentrated as to make shipping the ore financially viable. The diagrams below show the major exporters and importers of Zinc ore.
You will notice that the largest producer is Australia and the largest company mining Zinc there is Rio Tinto – in fact at one time it was known as RTZ – Rio Tinto Zinc. In recent years, Rio Tinto (you can read their history here) were embroiled in a massive scandal after they blew up an aboriginal shelter in the Juukan Gorge which had evidence of continuous use for 46,000 years – in other words – throughout the last Ice Age! Although this demolition was in order to expand an iron ore mine, it brings into sharp relief the colonial occupation of lands all over the world and the issue of who has ownership of the land and mineral rights – the native populations or the colonial occupiers. As a result of the worldwide condemnation of this act of cultural vandalism, the Western Australian government was able, just this March, to ram through bipartisan legislation further protecting aboriginal lands although as the deadline for the implementation of the act approaches, there is huge debate about the perceived draconian nature of its clauses and what impact that will have on Australia’s economy – choice, choices…
The carpet-bagging, swashbuckling, vicious age of Imperialism and Colonisation may be in the rearview mirror of the past but aboriginal/native peoples around the world are finding a voice in the present and questioning their right to own what was taken from them and where such actions are taking place in what were remote sites out of sight of the world, are now open to live scrutiny and monitoring in the modern age of satellite technology and the whole world is connected by an internet that can mobilise at an instant – so no longer are dark deeds out of sight – out of mind… If laws like those in Australia make it more difficult to exploit the environment without concern for the planet and the local environment of the extraction, then it gives us pause for thought. Of course, some native peoples may be delighted to benefit from resource extraction, but more commonly, those people’s attitude to the environment is one of stewardship and we could learn from their wisdom. We also have to be careful that if a battle for the benefit of the environment is won in one place where vocal stewards succeed in making their voice heard, the environment of some other, less visible part of the world does not suffer instead – we live in a global village and there is no place to shit with impunity – as the effects of global warming are increasingly demonstrating. Unfortunately, it is still the case – as it ever was – that the resources we “need” often come from the Third World and so it is doubly unfair that they are the ones suffering the most from Climate Change. If Zinc could only be found beneath New York, how different do you imagine the extraction process would be?
Because Zinc was not fully recognised or understood in ancient times , even if it was contributing to metallurgy in instances such as Brass – and the many uses of Zinc in the modern world only followed on from 18th century developments in smelting – zinc or its compounds were discarded in earlier mining of other metals such as lead (zinc often occurs with lead and other metals) and the dumps of the past mining operations can leach zinc and cadmium into the environment polluting rivers. A little zinc may be necessary for life but too much is toxic.
Zinc is used as the anode in Zinc-Carbon batteries and its property of attracting oxidisation to itself above othe r metals, means it is used as a sacrificial anode – attach a strip of zinc to an iron rudder and the zinc will gradually erode but not the iron. There is so much to say about Zinc but we are nearing the end of the A-Z Challenge 2024 and both I, and I imagine you, dear reader, are getting saturated with reading and so if you want to know more facts about all aspects of Zinc, then Wikipedia, as ever has an excellent article…
And so to the poem of the day – the form is Zuhitsu and unlike other poetic forms originating in Japan, this is no tightly specified set of rules about syllable count, line length or even appropriate subject matter – meaning “Follow the brush…” – Zuhitu is the very opposite! Although seen as early as 1002 AD, you could be forgiven for mistaking it as very modern because it is eclectic, “composed largely of interwoven writings in prose and poetry on ideas or subjects that typically respond to the author’s surroundings” (American Academy of Poetry). It is not unlike the modern Lyric Essay an example of which is Cluadia Rankine’s ground-breaking American Lyric trilogy, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004), Citizen (2014) and Just Us (2020) – you can read an extraact here. Another modern eponymous example is “Zuhitsu” by Jenny Xie. It seems appropriate that as I draw to a close my theme of Commodities, and as I reflect on the themes of imperialism, exploitation and environmental damage, this is the final poetry form I encounter…
Zinc – a Zuhitsu
I like to trace the outline of zinc crystals in the galvanised surface of metal railings – a secret of chemistry hiding in plain sight for those who know. How dull the world without that knowledge and how multi-layered my view is – like wearing Google glasses and looking upwards to see “Blue sky – an effect of atmospheric diffusion of sunlight” superimposed across the sky. Does it spoil the sky to be so emblazoned? No I turn off my knowledge at will and simply enjoy the change from blue to black and all the sunset colours in between.
We are all the children of chemistry, and physics melded together in biology and we need to know the elements that make us tick even though we hand that research off to specialists – trust them to find the answers and point us down the paths of health – learn what you can, from ancient practices like naturopathy to modern science explained in clearest terms in New Scientist – inhabit yourself through knowledge applied with wisdom.
I am growing old – sixty-nine journeys round the sun and each time my cells regenerate (I am not the man I used to be) they accumulate tiny errors like a multi-generational photocopy which in my case manifest as wrinkles, age spots – blotches of brown on the backs of my hands. A secretary’s cheeky photocopy of a breast unwisely persuaded at an office party, once copied then copied again and again would too, lose its perky perfection…
I drink an effervescent, orange flavoured glass of Vitamin C with Zinc each morning in case a deficiency of zinc might hasten my end by means of multi -faceted effects on my body and I know I should read the science and see whether it is necessary or whether I have just been seduced by the marketing but I haven’t yet – after all, I’m only human…
