Writing

Tinder

humanist55
The Pallisades fire seen on KTLA5

“It needn’t be tinder, this juncture of the year” Conor O’Callaghan – January Drought

         I – Hand-wringing…

Tinseltown they called it
The Hollywood sign above it
On mountain and canyons covered
With scrub like gasoline tinder
Rich palaces of dreams rendered
To which many young locusts aspired
But Santa Ana winds have burned
Those houses to naught but ash
Chimneys only gravestones to the cash
Will Angelinos now have learned
Money, for Nature is no match
Challenge it and there’s a catch
Will L.A. be a lesson to us all
That Damocles’ sword’s about to fall…

         II – Thunderbolt slinging…

“Come friendly bombs and rain on Slough”
Quipped English Poet Laureate
Enough with all this rational debate
No one heeds “We the People” now
Let Mar-a-Lago flooded be
With Trump inside preferably
Let insurance baulk at rebuilding
The Palace-ades of rich and famous
And let’s see what Trump really does
When Global Warming’s truly a thing
So unlike wise old King Canute
The science is no longer moot
And yes, for sure we all will suffer
Till Nature trumps the monstrous duffer…

Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites us to write a Palinode in which two verses take contrary views and around a quotation relating to the New Year. I chose the Conor O’Callaghan one which seems almost prescient to the L.A. fires that are occurring so early in the New Year…

Adornment of a Butterfly

humanist55
Meadow Argus / Photographed in Solomon Islands / Michael Sammut

Adornment to attract an amour
Sets of eyes bigger than a bird’s belly
To scare off avian appetites
And what sex is this butterfly beauty
Flamboyant female like those of our species
Or Cock of the Walk like most birds do
Or did a Creationist God get carried away
With his paintbrush in an inspired moment…

Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics celebrates the photographs of Michael Sammut and invites us to write ekphrastcally using one of his photos for inspiration…

Hasbara

humanist55

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, msjadeli in Haibun Monday, invites us to write a Burnt Haibun, a reductive poetry form that distils a longer prose poem down to a shorter one and finally to Haiku. The emboldened words below form the second poem and likewise with the second one distilled down to the haiku.

It would have been nice, given the New Year ‘n all, not to have to have written this particular piece but sadly there is no end in sight and awareness needs to be kept alive… Trying to understand/explain the conflict which this poem describes has been both an internal and external journey for me over many years and when I finally found the accounts of the term Hasbara – everything fell into place and I understood a great deal…

However – a Happy New Year to everyone at the pub!

HASBARA

It is hard to translate Hasbara
once it would have been called Propaganda
but for the truly unpalatable
you need a subtler, more insidious word
so hasbara, nearly enough
means explaining

You want to explain
why one people are entitled to
take the land of another people
who have lived there for
two thousand years – hasbara
why two peoples genetically identical
are not in fact equal
paint one of them as evil with hasbara
you want to justify how large farms
can suck the water from the wells
of smaller neighbours don’t mention it
that’s no part of hasbara
but happy, sun-bronzed people
claiming their homeland with confidence
that’s hasbara.

The world attacked us
and they attacked us first
we have the right to defend ourselves
hasbara
they are evil – we are good
hasbara

Hasbara treads carefully
hasbara paints a picture
hasbara targets the diaspora
and the politicians where they live
hasbara accumulates
in the brains of its targets
in the corners of the internet
and on the pages of newspapers
hasbara makes lies palatable
but hasbara cannot paper over
too big a crack between
reality and the lies
genocide is too big to hide
but hasbara breeds hubris
and overreach
and years of hasbara
can deflate instantly
like a burst balloon

Explain that to the
purveyors of Hasbara

Hasbara –
once called Propaganda
a subtler, more insidious word
means explaining

why take the land of people
who lived there for
two thousand years
why genetically identical
are not equal
– paint them as evil – hasbara
happy, sun-bronzed people
claiming their homeland
that’s hasbara.

The world  attacked us first
we have the right
they are evil – we are good
hasbara
treads carefully
paints a picture
targets the diaspora
and politicians
accumulates
in brains
the internet
on pages of newspapers
hasbara makes lies palatable
but genocide is too big to hide
hasbara breeds hubris
overreach
years of hasbara
deflate
like a burst balloon

Explain that to the
purveyors of Hasbara…

Hasbara explaining
they are evil – we are good
a burst balloon

Andrew Wilson, 2025

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)

I Love Lucy

humanist55

At five or six years old
on holiday near Swanage
we watched TV for the first time
and what we saw was
I Love Lucy
an American sit-com
my Dad was not a fan
American rubbish
he declaimed
but with a longer view
the series was quite bold
ahead of it’s time
depicting as it did
an inter-racial marriage
that might seem
commonplace today
back then caused
moral outrage
but we British children
more taken up with
the novel medium
saw nothing amiss
in the union of
the eponymous Lucy
and her husband Desi…

Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Uncategorized invites us to write about favourite TV shows…

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

humanist55

The eponymous Great Wave
circles the centre of the woodcut
in an exaggerated piling up of water
as when two waves pass through
each other and multiply their height
and over-face themselves.


We are far out to sea off Kanagawa
as we can see once we notice
the dwarfed Mount Fuji
placed as if the wave is
about to crash down on it
spume dropping like snowflakes
onto the snowclad mountain top.
The mountain once noticed.
is made up of different curves
– those of a volcanic cone
and not these monstrous imaginings
of the Great Wave.

We can be forgiven for not noticing
a whole mountain, not least because
the same limited palette of Prussian,
Cerulean, and Sky Bue with hints of
black are used throughout
with a mushroom coloured sky
louring over the distant Fuji
camouflaging its presence
– hidden in plain sight
– even when framed by the action.

On further examination, we may realise
we have missed two fishing boats
lying flush in the curve of the troughs
between the Great Wave and its siblings
each boat crewed by ten souls
in peril on the deep
– eight clinging for dear life
in the stern of each boat and two
for some unaccountable reason
further for’ard.
Certainly these boats and fishermen
are in peril, as are all seafarers
though I am not
convinced their craft are not
designed to weather
such waves as these
shipwrights know their seas…


The Great Wave of Kanagawa
is an artist’s conceit
a representation of possible peril.
to capture the imagination
of a people who live in permanent peril
– from volcanoes, earthquakes, and
they gave us the very word tsunami
and this representation of
perfectly frozen in place peril
is the epitome of Japanese style
– an image that like few others
is known around the world
printed on bags and worn on T shirts
or simply hung on walls
from Fuji to Finland
from Tokyo to Timbuktu
a universal icon of the raw power
the peril and heedless beauty
of the sea – indeed of all of nature
before which all we
mortal men
may tremble
and do defy
at our peril…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

It is OLN – Open Link Night over at dVerse Poets Pub which is hosted tonight by Mish. As a mini prompt she shared Katsushika Hokusai’s  “Tiger in the Snow” which may have been his final creation. But I had already written an Ekphrastic poem about Hokusai’s most famous image “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa” and it is that poem I chose to share tonight. it was written in my writing group where we considered the woodcut…

Old Dragon

humanist55

I am an old Dragon
To be precise an Old Draconian
Old in man years anyway
Almost three score years and ten
Though that is probably young
As dragons go – joined in ‘62
Leaving class of ‘66.

We wore a uniform of
Rufty-tufty, navy-blue corduroy
No namby-pamby
“How To Train Your Dragon” this…
Boys with siblings from older clutches
Inherited the faded battle dress style
Uniforms – wore them with pride.

We learned to swim in a river
Conquering our fear of Willow roots
Reaching for our doggy paddling legs
And on the playing fields in late summer
A whole barrel of cherries would appear
For our delectation and at another time
Also, we presumed, the gift of an Old Dragon
A crate of pomegranates appeared
To introduce our tastebuds to the exotic.

Seasonally, we played marbles
Tricky enough when our playground
Sloped from all directions
To a central drain and my best friend
Espying the gathered horde collected there
Lifted the grate and clawed up
Aggies, bottle tops and common spirals
But lost a nail replacing
The heavy cast iron piece
Causing blood to flow
Unfelt with the shock.

Most Dragons scions
Of the rich and good of the land
Knowing their path to wealth
Would be smoothed at every step
But I came from humbler stock
Yet my parents, believing that
Rubbing shoulders with the best
– Though not a comfortable experience
For the young dragon, I was-
Suffering mildly from imposter syndrome
– Would alone be preparation
For life’s later battles
They scrimped and saved
That I might attend
The Dragon School, Oxford…

Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics invites us to write about Legendary Creatures which as you have read, I, albeit modestly, must count myself amongst…
https://www.dragonschool.org/

Fake News

humanist55

The last time that the president-elect was indisputably seen in public, was at his inaugural rally at which a third presumed unsuccessful attempt on his life resulted in his being whisked away and out of sight.
After a night of panic by his supporters, a reassuring video was released of the now President, sitting up in his hospital bed and raising a fist in a defiant gesture. Thereafter, the POTUS made no live appearances, his team stating that three attempts on his life were quite enough.
The irony was that the techniques which had served the president during his candidacy for re-election, to smear opponents, were now used to supplant the presence of the ageing and unstable would-be dictator. Deep fakes, AI-generated speeches flowed forth, for God knows, there were enough speeches to train the AIs in the rambling, vitriolic, and emotion-soaked appeal that was the President’s trademark. The crew that had pushed the president forward over the last four years, not to mention his long-suffering wife, breathed a sigh of relief and prompted the AIs to generate a more coherent presidency which went exactly to plan…

Winter has come forth
freezing forever the fruit
of misbegotten dreams…

Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Frank J. Tassone in Haibun Monday dares us to create a sci-fi Haibun…

Wind Riven

humanist55

Two types of wind encircle the earth
Trades, Westerlies and Easterlies
Blow steady and dependable

They let wind sailors venture forth
West-East, East-West, trade routes they plied.
Moving Saharan red dust fabled

Steering the cyclone’s rushing curse
Yet land too creates strong breezes
Sometimes too, quite seasonable

Hot, cold, blowing for all they’re worth
Wet, dry, flood, drought, make people flee
Winds can smash man’s plans to rubble

Or bring the life-sustaining rain
 – Wind never the same – blows again…

Andrew Wilson, 2024


A ship sailing in very light winds leaving the Doldrums from “Sailing Round Cape Horn” by Gunther t. Schultz – an artist’s record of the last days of commercial sailing ships. 1954 – London – Hodder & Stoughton

Over at dVersePoets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write a Trillonet on the subject of Wild Winds…
A Trillonet is a special form of sonnet comprising:

14 lines
4 tercets (3 line stanzas) ending with a rhyming couplet
rhymes scheme is ABC, ABC, ABC, ABC, AA (or BB or CC or DD)
in iambic pentameter of 10 syllables (5 feet) per line
or iambic tetrameter of 8 syllables (4 feet) per line

Fouling the Nest…

humanist55
Image by Andrew Ridley

Are we in the Autumn of our days
will civilisation as we like to call it
fade to red and wither beneath
climate over warmed skies

when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man*
who has fouled his nest
which is the whole world

watching the world go by for lockdown hours
viewing live streams from the ISS
the Booker winning author of ‘Orbital’
reflected on our devastating impact

mostly at night the impact of man’s
expansion to every corner of the Earth
can be seen spelt out in light pollution
other damage scarcely visible from space

damage like smoke from wildfires
once natural – now stoked by climate change
more frequent hurricanes and worse…
and one-time lakes and reservoirs now dry

these things you may see from space
however pristine the planet appears
but the truth is out there
and space itself is littered with debris

a layer of debris – mainly plastic
marks the Anthropocene
and future, alien archaeologists
may label the sign of our demise as –

fouled nest syndrome…

Andrew Wilson, 2024
Last night down the dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics offers us reflection as a prompt of the photo above paired with the italicised lines marked *. The lines are taken from “[what if a much of a which of a wind]” by E. E. Cummings.