Uncategorized

Yule Log

humanist55

The
shepherd
Attis who
killed himself
for shame because the
Goddess Cybelle forbade
him to look at anyone
other than her – but he was weak
– lay with a nymph – died beneath a pine
Cybelle brought him back to life, now faithful
– pine log
now holy…

Andrew Wilson, 2024

Attis died by castrating himself beneath a pine tree following the awful wrath of Cybelle, a Roman Goddess of Fertility whereupon she had a change of heart and brought him back to life – needless to say he did not stray again… But this myth was celebrated by Romans (strange but true) by the bearing of a Pine log through the streets – Pines now being sacred to Attis. Christianity often subsumed old festivals into itself and this is one possible origin of the Yule Log…
I wrote more about it here.

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft asks us to write an  Etheree poem about

Christmas tree(s) imagery, meanings, memories etc

or Conifer/Fir tree(s) imagery, mythology, memories etc

  • must be an unrhymed poem
  • no specific meter
  • one stanza only
  • 10 lines with no paragraphs
  • graduating from 1 to 10 syllables
  • [add lines 11 & 12 with just 2 syllables per line – my optional extra]

Thus the first line is monosyllabic; the second line has two syllables, and so on, until there’s ten syllables on the tenth line (then reverts to 2 syllables for lines 11 & 12 if you want this optional extra). The outline of your poem takes the concrete shape of a fir tree. Centre it on the page else left or right aligned it’s only half a tree! (X=syllables not words)

Does Magic Believe in Us?

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If a man dies never having described
the magical experience he once had
does it mean the magic never happened

Magic is not the same as conjuring
which is a trick, usually sleight of hand
though a trick of the light may be magical…

“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s where the light gets in”
sang Leonard Cohen with a voice so low it may count as magic

Counting off the things on your bucket list
you may miss the magic
you never thought to list

Thinking about magic you have experienced
you may be in danger of dissecting
it to death and why would you not just accept

Accepting the existence of magic
is a personal prerogative
one person’s magic is another’s commonplace

Magic can happen any place
any time
to anyone

I believe in magic
but not magicians
or ghosts

I defend the rights of others
to believe in ghosts, and
to share what magic means to them

Magic, like love – just is
it cannot be reasoned or conjured up
though you may set the scene for it to manifest

The manifestation of magic
cannot be forced
but only prepared for in receptivity

The reception of magic is easy for children
but what they achieve easily
we struggle to hold onto with age

A life may well be weighed
by the amount of magic
we have observed to be…

Perhaps the real question to be asked
is not whether you believe in magic
but whether magic believes in you…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

An image created using Midjourney, of a certain magician…

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1942511719&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true

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…

I wrote this in my writing group in the shadow of “Belief in Magic” by Dean Young.

Hell’s Bells…

humanist55

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!

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, dorahak in Poetics inspires us with a very fulsome prompt, to write using repetition as a poetic tool…

Autumn Colours – not just for show…

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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…

Autumn colours show

as leaves transform their sap to

save the tree from frost

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Frank J. Tassone in Haibun Monday invites us to celebrate Autumn colours and the passage of the seasons…

The Witches of Washington…

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The image above is from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection.

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!

This was written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction #FFFC

Revolutionary Laughing

humanist55

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…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

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…

Oh, and the book – Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popovic

Alone Is the Star I Follow

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“alone is the star I follow. In love & in solitude”
 – from February & my love is in another state – by José Olivarez

to live with the one you love
Is to immerse one’s self
in the illusion of not being alone

but alone we truly are
Coming into, leaving &
passing through the life of this world

so when illness, short of death
physical or mental, intrudes
we are shocked by our solitude

reminded we are alone even
in the presence of the other
and all the constructed togetherness

house, history and family
are all props in the play
& all of us but strolling players

not to disrespect the construct
which is our way of fighting entropy
creating meaning amongst disorder

we weave our fabric and let our flags
flutter in the winds of vicissitude
for friends and family to rally round

but in. the end, we are all
fallen soldiers in a battle
that nobody can win

Take the timely reminders
of essential solitude
to wrap your flag more tightly

around you & your loves
and Reaffirm the meanings
you choose to fight for…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam – paeansunplugged in OpenLinkNight offers us the chance to post a poem of our choice. This is one from my writing group after discussing and writing in the shadow of “February & my love is in another state” – by José Olivarez

Breaking News and Hearts…

humanist55

Breaking news and hearts…
he’d waited all his life to see the Northern Lights
and when they finally shimmered – he slept through it

Breaking news and hearts…
he was her Pole Star
and without him she lost all direction

Breaking news and hearts…
the last Polar bear had
no Arctic ice to hunt upon

Breaking news and hearts…
she broke the mirror her grandmother
smuggled beyond the reach of the Holocaust

Breaking news and hearts…
the baby drove the boy away
and not surely into her arms

Breaking news and hearts…
a premmie did not heroically make it
as the movies teach us to expect

Breaking news and hearts…
the dead in Gaza top forty thousand
and Zion still hasn’t had its pound of flesh

Breaking news and hearts…
another little babe is born
somewhere under the stars…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Created in Midjourney

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”. 

Memento Mori

humanist55

When my mother died
I did not succumb to grief
rather the opposite, it was relief

I wanted to be overwhelmed
to demonstrate a filial flow of tears
dry eyes triumphed over social fears

The truth is her life was set in aspic
the repertoire of stories repeatedly told
the only objects I would have valued, long ago sold

So if I imagine that feeling as a place
it is a saccharine sitting room
as stuck and unchanging as a tomb

I carried bits of it away to remind me
a group of disparate ducks now grace my bookshelf
tiny, sculptural memento mori – notes to self

that she was gone and feeling ended
long before the final breath was drawn
and being now the eldest, I entered a new dawn…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

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…

Roadtrip Review N0. 2

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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…

https://bysarahwhiley.wordpress.com/2024/05/08/wordless-wednesday-8-5-24/

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…