A blog about anything and everything…
Here in Yorkshire
it is not unknown
for a man of my years
to be addressed by
a bus conductor (male)
as “Love” but “Flower”is a
term of endearment
reserved for intimate
family and friends
and “Petal” is reserved
for moments of real affection…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, lillian in Quadrille
Give me not statins
those white little pills
give me good greens
let me not eat too much red meat
whose production decimates
our blue marble planet
white meat takes a lesser toll
I will not eschew the yellow yolks
of eggs and go full vegan
limited to the orange, brown
and greens of lentils
the gold of grains the
white of rice and others
of the blond grasses
but let me sway more
in their direction
– to healthy balance
whatever colour that is…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write a poem with a colour motif and optionally, an Imagist poem.
Three years before I was born, my parents drove to London only to be wrapped in the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, the last London smog – born of ten million coal fires insinuating their smoke into the streets and passageways and parks – those lungs of the metropolis – fog turned to smog -mixing its sulphurous poison with fumes from the growing tide of motor vehicles to burn the lungs of the pulmonarily challenge – trees recoiled and people died…
A fog so thick my mother had to walk in front of the car waving a torch – a fog that recalls Dickens’ opening to Bleak House, and at least there weren’t motor cars in his day, but this twentieth-century fog too far, sealed the fate of future smogs by ushering in The Clean Air Act and the advent of smokeless fuel…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Prosery, invites us to write a piece of poetic prose in exactly 144 words to include a line from T.S.Elliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – “The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes”. This recalled for me, one of my Mother’s stories about driving to London in 1952 and encountering the last great London smog…
Buy a proper bread roll
and it will have flat, crustless sides
where it swelled during baking
touched and melded with its neighbour
though not so hard that it
could not be separated
– bakers call this the “Kiss Point”
Do partners’ bums whose owners
both turned their backs to sleep
from argument or mild estrangement
– softly reach out to gently flatten
and warmly kiss their loves behind
baking a fresh start into
each beautiful new morning…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetics invites us to post a poem of our choice. As a salve to all the bad news and hatred in the world at present, which even we poets must do our bit to suppress, I offer you this gentle poem of coming togetherness…
Where are the days of our young passion
Where are the parts participated
In more than some or other fashion
In fact, in lovemaking delighted
Where are the springs in our eager steps
Crossing the threshold of our new doorstep
Painting our very special bedroom
Yet there it was came the cloud of doom
From early, unknown trauma, came down
To settle like blight on our good life
Occasional sunbeams and some strife
Now forty years and more gone around
Where are the lovers are they still there
Still searching for sunbeams, loving pair?
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites to write to the question UbiSunt… Where are they 0r Where oh where?
Title your poem with the question – where are the/they…
Use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition
DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical
Employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia
Suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore;
Employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet
Our house is upside down
in more ways than one…
I wake in “my” bedroom
also my dressing room and study
to my right, from a huge shelf
hang my unenclosed clothes
a subdued rainbow – a male palette
with chests of drawers beneath
for more clothes and craft materials
Two bookcases bracket the bed
their shelves double stacked
with precious books and on
a pile of storage containers
my to-be-read are perilously perched
next to my desk – the space beneath full
four ukuleles lean against a bookcase
yearning to be played
one shelf above them
loaded with music
The ceiling is high since
horses once resided here
and through the window
our cobbled yard is packed
with plants and trees in containers
their aspirations to growth
also kept contained
Mock Orange, Olive and Winter Jasmine
now struggling with alternating
Yorkshire rain extended and
sun and wind induced drought
Rising I go to the spacious
though windowless bathroom
also given grandeur
by the high ceilings where
I had to lower the light
for effective illumination
and after some time checking
emails and doomscrolling
on the throne
I shave and brush my teeth
before breakfast
as per the latest thinking…
I look in on my partner asleep
at last, in the other large bedroom
where I began the night
falling asleep as she listens
to her talking book and enjoys
moments of snuggling up to my back
safe now the day is over
cut off from the world
by an evil disenchantment
forced to lie in bed like Brian Wilson
she may be asleep now but she knows
I am here and will feel safer for it…
I climb the winding stair
to the living area
once the hayloft
where two doors into open air
allowed the rapid transfer
of horses’ hay at harvest-time
Now made safe with Juliet Balconies
from which we can survey
the backstreet below or
the strange sight of our
garden yard seen from above
at night all a-twinkle with
sun-powered magic
The landing at the top of the stairs
is a library where recipe books
compete for space with novels
and therapy books and all open-plan
blends seamlessly into dining table
kitchen and sitting room
all traversed by a great King-post beam
in the centre of a roof rising
to twelve feet above me
I breakfast to the awful news
from Al Jazeera garnered
from around the world
and enough to make me as
depressed as my partner
if I were not able
to take action in polemic poems…
And so I descend to my study
and open the computer and work
at what the day provides
en route I note the cobwebs
and dust on the stairs
and when they get too bad
I will sweep them away
but not today
our house is upside down
in more ways than one…
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to write a poem “wandering from room to room like a man in a museum.”
Speaking truth to power
can be frightening
that’s the whole idea of all those
big men in black uniforms
all leather and shoulder pads
masks and dark glasses and of course
scary looking guns…
(Where do they find such types you wonder
ready to do the dirty work)
Imagine if you dare
this sorry lot in the changing room
at the end of their shift – they will
certainly look a lot smaller out of
uniform and you will then recognise
the usual suspects of High School bullies
And you may feel yourself
to be too small a number
knowing as you do that the one in power
pays no heed to Polls and
if he chanced to think of you at all
he would imagine a very small number
“So very, very small!”
But numbers add up and if you can
share the secret password – K1ndness#
to find like-minded souls
with whom you can conjugate
– like times tables and become
the very thing that fascists fear
“We the People!”
© Andrew Wilson, 2025
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics invites us to write about “Power”.
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
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…
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…
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
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…
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
