Writing

Blood from a Stone

humanist55

Hani Mahmoud is starving
his face has presented the afflictions of Gaza
on Al Jazeera throughout the conflict
but now, shrinking like a prune
his face tells its own story

Today he covers the shortage of blood
blood is life and however much iron
Gazans fortified their souls with
there is not enough iron in their blood
for it to be usable and besides
they are too weak to be able
to give blood without fainting

Israel calls a special meeting
of the UN Security Council
to complain about the starvation
– the starvation of hostages
and calls it an act of propaganda!
No doubt there was a time
when hostages were looked after
as the bargaining chips they are
but now there is not enough food even for the captors
whatever sympathy he may feel for
the family member who voices the complaint
and pleads for the return of his relative,
the Palestinian Ambassador ripostes
that Israel is starving a whole people

In other news today
it is eighty years since the destruction of Hiroshima
by a bomb so small that some today dare to classify it
as merely tactical and threaten to use such on their enemies

So much for the “War to end all wars”
and we are come to live in the moral wasteland…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Hani Mahmoud screenshot from a broadcast of Al Jazeera

I had not watched Al Jazeera news for a month or so, partly because the news about Gaza was moving more into the area of political and world people’s awareness and response, but also I confess to emotional overload. Yesterday, also the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima, I watched Newshour on the station and was shocked and upset to the point of tears, to see how Hani Mahmood’s face reflects his own malnutrition as well as the ongoing stress of reporting from Gaza for Al Jazeera. The screenshot above is from a while back, but I urge you to view Al Jazeerah news, not only for its coverage of the genocide in Gaza, but for a different perspective (non-American/Eurocentric) – even their weather forecasts cover all areas of the world…

Al Jazeera

Tonight, hosted by  Björn Rudberg (brudberg), is Open Link Night over at dVerse Poets Pub and so I am posting a link there and there will be a live meeting at 10 AM and 11 AM New York Time August 16th…

Sadly, Decrescendo, Rubato…

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There are songs too sad for me to sing
to sing that is, without tearing up
and who can wait for the singer to recover
and compose themselves sufficiently to continue…

At first there was just one song I couldn’t manage
Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” – I could listen
but when I tried to sing it -my throat closed
and my eyes watered – I could not perform

As years go by more songs are added to the canon
of those I cannot get through without weeping
and often I cannot listen either – are they
songs of mourning, laments, requiems

nothing so formal, but tales of the human condition
the mere brevity of which is tragedy enough,
or the near impossibility of finishing a shared life
at exactly the same moment…

Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colours” might be considered
kitsch if it were not true or true enough and I weep to hear
the sweetness of her sometime collaborator
Linda Ronstadt who has lost her voice to Parkinson’s
and sings only within the loving circle of family.
The exquisitely sad songs of Charlie Dore – a woman pretending
her lover lives on the other side of the world in “Australia”
so as not to acknowledge his abandonment
– he must be sleeping while she endures the day…
The rubato moments when Patsy Cline’s rich voice
almost catches, falters, as it lays down
the tragic tales of loss, longing and betrayal
sung to cheerful melodies that belie the sentiment.
Joni Mitchell wishing for a “River” to skate away on
surely the saddest Christmas song
Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit”
a lump rises in my throat even as I write
and to think of all those who left us too soon
their lives driven, and driven down, by the need
to perform, entertain, be loved…
Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Prince
John Lennon, Jim Morrison
Ian Dury who sang of “Sweet Gene Vincent”
“Young, and old, and gone…”
so many more…

These are the singers and musical moments that undo me…

I used to say that I listened to sad music when I was happy
and that happy songs could elevate my lower moods
but boundaries blur and I see poignancy everywhere
and there are songs too sad for me to sing…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

The cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to write about music and this is also the theme for next month’s meeting of my “in the real world” local library poetry group…

Birthday Reflections

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Seventy trips round the sun
My life has now journeyed
A race:
Times good, times bad, even times fun
In my body reflected
And face…

Reflection moves to centre stage
On loves and legacy
And how:
Did I with life engage
With passion, efficacy
– Weighed now…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us – for Laura’s prompts usually offer a challenge in form, if not in subject – to write about “moments in time that stand out from time; they are the momentous days we recall and revisit, year in and year out as holidays, as anniversaries. Formal or informal, they are replayed in memory…” and as to Form – to use Emily Romano’s Memento poetry style:

Poetry Rules:
rhyme scheme abc, abc
2 stanzas
6 lines per stanza
2 tercets (2*3 lines) per stanza
syllable count per tercet: 8,6,2; 8,6,2

Play

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would you like to play with me
says one grubby clothed
sticky fingered toddler
to another – no question
of race or status entertained
a playmate is a playmate
to be shunned only if
they won’t share and play fair

playmates with fluffy tails
stride statuesquely on stilettos
around the Playboy Mansion
of one who either likes to
play the field or has
commitment issues or
perhaps just has a
thing for bunnies

my mother gave us no pets
to play with – carriers of disease
she reckoned – except once
she did allow a tortoise
but you can’t play fetch with
a tortoise nor even give them a squeeze

I ache in the places that I used to play
sang Leonard Cohen – he was
definitely a player
play us a song
play with your hair
wrap it round your fingers
like you mean to wrap me too
play with your fan and
send secret signals
play me like a harp
with playful fingers
plucking at heart strings
gently please for I am
still bruised from
previous playtimes
play all night and play all day
play chess like a warrior
play Monopoly to practise
world domination
flirt play
sport play
game play
cos-play
and don’t come home if
you’ve dared to play away

life is not a rehearsal
but they don’t tell toddlers
that, when you grow up
they’re not playing any more
but try to make room
for playing somehow
some day
just to keep you supple
keep on playing…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  sanaarizvi in OpenLinkNight invites us to post a poem of our choice. This poem was written to the monthly theme of my local library group – a small group of poets almost none of whom have an online presence. Keighly Library is one of many in the UK which were funded by Andrew Carnegie the Scottish-born (in poverty) US Steel magnate from the Gilded Age, which presents me with an awkward feeling – he was typically, for the times, exploitative of his workers but then donated huge amounts of money to foster literacy in Britain – grey areas, not black and white.

Anyway, I resolved to try and write about subjects other than the current appalling state of the world and so this topic fitted right in…

Rotten Shark

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Is it a crime to sup on a Sleeper Shark
Genus: Somniosus microcephalus
the solitary fish swimming in the dark
waters beneath the Arctic ice
so few and far between
this shark is seldom seen
but in the photographs captured
the curves confirm this clearly is a shark
but unlike its cousins – sleek Silvertips
the Greenland Shark is no beauty
it’s skin blotchy and rough…

On an exchange visit to
an Icelandic ladies’ choir
did I commit that crime?
Our own ladies, scandalised
at the first stop on our itinerary
a swim in the Blue Lagoon
– by naked women brazenly European
walking around in the changing room
were equally horrified in Reykjavik’s
covered market to be offered
seagull’s eggs and Rotten Shark
– kæstur hákarl a national delicacy
but foodie as I am I agreed
to give it a go…
“Best hold your nose”
our host’s advice but not before
I’d caught a whiff like ammonia
I took a small white cube
upon a toothpick and ate
nose pinched
it was not as bad as some
wimpy celebrity chefs have claimed…

I was not told that this was
Greenland Shark nor that
it is now known to be the
longest lived vertebrate
thought perhaps to live as long
as four to five hundred years
one hundred and fifty before
the poor creature is ready to breed
imagine then it’s lonely search
for a mate deep in the Arctic dark
and the secret of this shark’s longevity
– slow living – snail’s pace metabolism
which is why, flesh full of bodily toxins
the freshly caught Sleeper is poisonous
but the peoples of the Arctic
are not ones to waste a food opportunity
and so they figured out to
bury the shark for six to twelve weeks
weighted to press out fluids
whereby fermentation detoxifies
to feed the nation it’s infamous dish
at the midwinter festival þorrablót

Now that the Methuselah nature
of the Greenland Shark is known
it is not legal to hunt or kill this
oldest of fish but fishermen’s bycatch
provides sufficient specimens
to feed the Icelandic appetite
for Rotten Shark – so it was no crime
to taste this long-lived being
whatever my fellow singers said
of the smell, but now that I know
of what I ate, I carry the thought
swimming in my imagination
of this patient, slow-living
denizen of the dark depths
the Greenland Shark…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write about sharks as we approach Shark Week! So I dredged up this dark tail…

Turn

humanist55

…turn up for the books
turn the country, no – the world upside down
turn the law. no,-the constitution on its head
turn pawns into knights to do your bidding
but turn tail and run when pictures
of you and him speak truly…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, where the various customers are celebrating the 14th birthday of the pub, Lisa or Li challenges us to write a Quadrille, the pub’s own special poetry form – a poem in exactly 44 words…

The Chaos Section Poetry Project

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The Chaos Section Poetry Project is an anthology of poems of resistance in the age of Trump and other authoritarian miscreants. You can read all the poems here, including ones by Merril D. Smith and Melissa Lemay as well as by myself, Andrew Wilson.

Furthermore, they are making the anthology available in print
Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age

Print Edition 

ISBN Number: 979-8-9993042-0-9

Barnes and Noble
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/record-of-dissent-the-chaos-section-poetry-project/1147784379?ean=9798999304209

Bookshop
https://bookshop.org/p/books/record-of-dissent-poems-of-protest-in-an-authoritarian-age/9515d69e43f1f892?ean=9798999304209&next=t

Book People (Austin, TX)
https://bookpeople.com/book/9798999304209

Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGCZB9B7

Enjoy – if that is the right word…

Record of Dissent

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I have had a poem published in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025

This is the first online publication by The Chaos Section Poetry Project and they selected my poem “Ubuntu”. Merril D Smith and Melissa Lemay, both of dVerse Poets Pub also have poems in the publication…

Kintsugi World

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When the last redneck Republican
realises his true enemy
and stirs with his Democrat neighbour
the great melting pot of
red and blue to an unroyal purple

When an eighty-year-old
Israeli and Palestinian
jointly place the last skull in the
Nakba-Holocaust Ossiary Memorial
and agree to share a country

When single use plastic is abhorred
and the use of oil for
virgin plastic rationed
and whole towns comb their beach
for plastic to recycle

When the last billionaire
gives away his last coin
to the last poor person
weeping as he is
buoyed by sheer relief

When global warming is stabilised
and the last bird species
threatened with extinction
breeds the first nest of
the rest of their species

When the last petrol head
learns to love the glint of
sunlight on windmill blades
and drives off in a small electric car
which is no fashion or status symbol

When the last piece of
the fractured world
is fitted into place – fastened
with a seam of shining gold
and balanced once again

When…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

When I dropped a jar of jam on my favourite butter dish, I turned to Kintsugi to fix it…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Mish in Poetics invites us to write about “Building from the Broken” which could be a reference to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, in which a broken piece of porcelain is mended with a glue containing powdered gold resulting in a new and enhanced aesthetic…