Krisis does not always come with a bang a storm heralded by a clap of thunder or even a whimper, a cry for help krisis can come like a big cat creeping, camouflaged the colour of golden grass until so close to it’s prey escape is impossible
Pity the partner who too, close by has failed to spot the marauder – to sound the alarm until too late and krisis has sprung, jaws locked on to suffocate – flight impossible, frozen still
For something that arrives so quietly depression nevertheless rules the roost changes more lives than the victim’s spreads it’s blight to partners children, siblings, friends and moments of freedom are hard won – the result of planning, cajoling caring persuasion and often a short reprieve results in a reactive tightening of the snare that binds – would have the victim knaw off their own leg if only they had the energy
The only hope – to roll back the malaise in the same way it came a single step at a time hoping a habit will take hold and the novel become the norm once more…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, paeansunplugged in Poetics asks us to “write a poem about any pivotal moment in your life that left you with gnawing regrets or you could cover the entire gamut from anger to forgiveness and reconciliation. In short, you will be writing about a krisis in your personal life.”
My mother fought in the war, not hand to hand of course, but she ran the switchboard at the underground fortress on the Isle of Portland where the D-Day invasion was planned. She was a target of a spiteful fighter who strafed her landlady’s garden and had to dive under the hedge with the children. She alerted her base to a spy who was subsequently caught and she said there were six men, any one of which she might have married if they had not gone off to fight and never came back. Her tears on Remembrance Day taught us to tear up…
each Autumn brought tears of Remembrance for lost loves fallen in the war
My mother sitting at the back of her landlady’s house on the Island of Portland where she was managing the switchboard at the fortress where the invasion was being planned. She looks calm and happy here but just a few feet away, she had to grab the landlady’s two sons and dive for cover when a German fighter strafed the back gardens for no good reason…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Frank J. Tassone in Haibun Monday, invites us, on America’s Memorial Day, when those who have fallen in service of their country are remembered, to write a a Haibun recalling those whom we lost. This is about my mther’s Remembrance but from her example, we learned the meaning of loss and the response of tears. I wrote a longer poem about Remembrance and an exploration of my mother’s story in the memoir I wrote in this year’s A to Z Challenge here.
Since January this year, my friend Melissa Lemay, has been publishing her online journal Collaborature. As the name implies, it is a place for collaborative writing and other forms of creativity to thrive. You can find out more about Collaborature and how to submit work here.
Melissa also interviews some of her contributors and I was recently the subject of just such an interview. Amongst the many things we talked about, was our own collaborative project in which we are writing an epic saga called Shipmates. It was inspired by “The Golden Gate”, a novel by Vikram Seth, written entirely in sonnet form in the 1970s. He, in turn, was inspired by Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, though I only found that out well into the project. We don’t know how far this project will carry on – it will publish in chapters, mostly around seven sonnets each, every two weeks. There follows, the first two verses of Chapter 1…
Shipmates
Whale Struck and Love Struck
1:1 Mid-ocean is a lonely place But some seek there to sail The Pacific is the greatest space But not to run into a whale As Kate found snoozing in her bunk She woke to find her whole world sunk With barely time to don Mae West And swim out leaving all the rest Before her precious yacht and home Dove downwards to Pacific deep Kate left ringed with flotsam and foam She searches but finds nought to keep Some way off the whale’s spout she espies And though a tough cookie, Kate just cries…
1:2 Alas, the salt, it dries her skin And oil it overcompensates Causing blotches, discoloration And what of it if true love waits O’er yonder past the waterspout? She thinks perhaps a whale to mount Could be an achievable task Should she calculate around the blast Choose wisely time to take the reins Lest end up shot to Port of Spain Though, admittedly wouldn’t be so bad A holiday in the Caribbean Kate snaps back to reality In just the nick of time to see…
Walking back along the ledges from a fruitless fishing expedition fruitless but for the pleasure of sunshine on tons of lazy swelling clear Atlantic water shifting glassy at my feet – I encountered an otter.
Seeing me first it fled across my path and slipped into the sea I searched the swells for it and when our eyes met – it dived again. We played this game several times until I turned the tables – dropping to my knees I crawled crouched low over the serpent stone snake fashion for ten yards until carefully lifting my head I saw the otter now searching for me!
We could have played all day but the knobbly fossils of solitary corral were hard on my knees and so we parted with a final interspecies gamers salute!
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Lisa or Li in Poetics, invites us to write a poem about an intimate moment. This encounter with the “other”, a sea-otter, on the West coast of Ireland where I lived for ten years, took place on ledges of “serpent stone” fossil solitary corals, solitary corals that with horizontally across the plane of the rocks…
What if we approached the authoritarians who have asserted themselves around the world – with compassion?
Perhaps Putin suffers from Napolean Complex – the plight of small men and yearning for the late, great days when he fought metaphorical rats in dark corners with the KGB Was he stunted by the starvation that took his brother, is that why he cannot have enough of everything? He is the Strong Man, bare-chested on horseback projecting his lost glory days onto his country and trying to obliterate a country that was there when Muscovy was just a swamp – is that what it will take to make him feel better?
Has Trump really found a friend who understands his needs facilitated his election – twice or is Putin playing him for a patsy to suit his own purposes? Did being born with a silver spoon in his mouth – paid $20,000 a year by his father, a millionaire by age eight set impossible expectations that made a seedbed for hubris and underhand shortcuts in the attempt to make the grade? In bed with a somewhat Mafia connected Cohn – another avuncular mentor who gave him a love of litigation was Trump needing more of a father’s love than he could possibly find in reality – is that why he turned to reality TV and ultimately to presidency?
Post colonially India seemed like a beacon of spiritual inclusion, diversity and equality with its mixture of religions living side by side for the most part, peacefully but Modi promoted Nationalism but only for Hindus, Moslems don’t belong – old hatreds once more resurrected in the service of party political power and concomitant self-aggrandisement. Was it being born into a background of Other Backward Class as his neighbourhood was classified or serving tea to haughty strangers on the station platform with his father that made Modi aspire to climb so high? What shame did he bear for denying his marriage to become a pracharak in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a leg-up the social ladder for which celibacy was a requirement? How many people have to die in religious pogroms to wash away the scars of humble origin?
And in another place riven with religious but not racial differences, one Semitic people try to delete another – to take their place by God given right, they claim led by a man terrified to lose it all, the power, the respect on account of personal corruption – the prison that awaits him if he lets go for a moment of the extreme nationalist narrative that keeps his country behind him even though they slide ever downwards in the eyes of the world
I don’t know about Orban or President Xi, but what are the chances that these other strong men have a weakness within that drives their story? We can react with anger, horror disbelief, to the authoritarian network that has overtaken the global village of recent decades even with all its village quarrels and sometimes worse it was better than this divisive hate filled place we now find ourselves thrust into – but where will it get us? What if we all wrote to the strong men and spoke to their hearts with understanding of their personal pasts their fears and disappointments? Would a million letters each be enough to salve them with a democracy of love?
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, sanaarizvi in OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice which can also be read out on the OLN live meeting on Saturday…
This poem attempts to look at current events from a slightly different angle…
You told me your schoolfriends called you little frog because of your slightly bulging eyes, amiga hermana and like an amphibian, you emerged from the river into a new land without meeting those who would have called you “Wet back” and sent you whence you came which is why to me, querido, you are Amfibio for you brought me the gift of insights of one who has travelled between borders you are Alebrije – your travel has given you wings wings that brought you and your fantastic colours into my life, querida.
What Divina Providencia brought you to my door querida? What spirit guided your path, melded our destinies? You asked for work as a live-in ama de casa to support your family back in Mexico and you fulfilled a need I didn’t even know I had and our relationship became hardly that of employer and employed
Then came the Orange Chupacabrón the devil who demands all the attention consumes all the oxygen and sucks all the blood – this trickster wants to send your kind back to Mexico and elsewhere as if you are una cifra insignificante he would make you an apachurrado a hat run over by a truck but he did not reckon with me
At first you shrugged “ Ni modo…” but I was encabronada well and trulypissed-off but also I had Susto – fear down to my very soul fear for me, for you, for your family, for my country I would not see you become Un pobre infeliz and so We sealed off the entrance to the cellar concealed a new entrance behind the mirror made a safe refuge for you and others told the shop where you used to shop for us not without irony, that you had been swept up and disappeared by the orange one’s minions and I arranged for a Mexican run shop with simpática, to deliver discretely enough food for whomsoever we hid…
Now we have an underground railway – not to escape victims of the orange one but to hold them until safe houses can be found – we did not need the magic of shamans to defeat the Chupacabrón we did not need to pick poisonous Toloache or summon the Cenzontle to do battle on our behalf because, after all we are hermanas bajo la piel
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Dora in Poetics, invites us to write a poem using one or more of the poetically interpreted Spanish words in a poem by Sandra Cisneros…
Sandra Cisneros (b. 1954), in Chicago, the only daughter in a family of six brothers. In her stories and poems, she deals with the formation of Chicana identity, exploring the challenges of being caught between Mexican and Anglo-American cultures, facing the misogynist attitudes present in both these cultures, and the constant migration of her family between Mexico and the United States, “always straddling two countries but not belonging to either culture.” In “I Have No Word in English For,” Cisneros lists twenty-five Spanish words dictionary-like but non-alphabetically, yet seemingly objectively. You soon discover that each definition appropriates a keenly personal shade of meaning.
Apachurrado. Hat run over by a truck. Heart run over by unrequited love. Estrenar. To show off what’s new gloriously. Engentada. People-overdose malaise. A estas alturas. Superb vista with age. Encabronada/o. A volatile, combustible rage. Susto. Fear that spooks the soul away. Ni modo. Wise acceptance of what fate doles. Aguante. Miraculous Mexican power to endure conquest, tragedy, politicos. Ánimo. A joyous zap of fire. Divina Providencia. Destiny with choices and spiritual interventions. Nagual. Animal twin assigned at birth. Amfibio. Person with the gift of global perspective due to living between borders. Alebrije. Amfibio with wings from geographical travel. Ombligo. Buried umbilical. Center of the universe. Toloache. Love concoction made with moonflower and menstrual blood. Tocaya/o. Name double. Automatic friend. Amiga hermana. Heart sister closer than kin. Un pobre infeliz. The walking wounded maimed by land mines of life. Un inocente. Mind askew since birth; blameless. Chupacabrón/a. Energy vampire disguised in human form. Cenzontle. Tranquillity transmitter in bird or human form. Friolenta/o. Tropical blood. Vulnerable to chills. Chípil. Melancholia due to an unborn sibling en route. Desamor. Heart bleeding like xoconostle fruit. Xoconostle. Must I explain everything for you?
I have used some of Cisneros’ words, sometimes with her poetic meaning and sometimes their literal meanings, given below.
Apachurrado – squashed, down Encabronada – pissed off (slang) angry Susto – fright Ni modo – “that’s life”, “oh well”, or “what can you do” Divina Providencia – divine providence Amfibio – amphibian Alebrije – a type of Mexican folk art sculpture, typically a brightly colored, fantastical creature made from paper-mâché or wood Toloache – literally – the plant with nodding head – Datura, a highly poisonous flower Amiga hermana – friend sister Un pobre infeliz – a poor unfortunate Chupacabrón – a legendary creature, or cryptid, in the folklore of parts of the Americas. The name comes from the animal’s purported vampirism. Cenzontle – the mockingbird, a bird known for its ability to mimic the songs of other birds
I also used some other Spanish phrases
Querida – Dear (one) hermanas bajo la piel – Sisters under the skin ama de casa – housekeeper una cifra insignificant – an insignificant person simpática – sympathetichermanas bajo la piel – Sisters under the skin simpática – sympathetic
I have no skills for flight, or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself unaided, but I have flown in man-made machines, looped the loop in a Tiger Moth, watched men practise dropping food-sacks from inside a low flying Hercules. I have circled and landed in a glider and watched kite-boarders risk life and limb lifting off from Elounda Bay where once Imperial Airways flying boats landed on their way to India. Recently I saw a replica of the Wright brothers first flyer, one which is occasionally towed up to fly, briefly, perilously and from that to the climate polluting jets that crisscross our skies with contrails, from which I have had my share of gazing with wonder at the Earth below whilst transported unimaginably far, I have most certainly flown even though I have no skills for flight…
America I would still like to visit you perhaps even more urgently – the rough beast slouched towards Bethlehem now born – a second coming the world thought impossible now come to pass mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
How long before those Great Lakes are poisoned by polluters set free to do their dirty work and national parks still safe from the graffiti of the poor but not from the mineral mining gutting of once again empowered rich cost corner-cutting pipelines fracture and spill their black gold on sacred reservations and beyond.
To appease his base your President has pulled your role as policeman to the world citing the cost but alongside military might your soft power saved lives now already doomed as vaccinations, retrovirals and simply food are withdrawn allies against oppression abandoned in favour of the oppressors and that is without the chaos of world markets disarrayed the world order disrupted by a thoughtless human hand grenade.
We British cannot talk – we also had a Prime Minister unelected, full of hubris, who made leader by her party with no electoral mandate fancied herself a disruptor and lasted less time than a lettuce but whose damage lives on
– small fry compared to POTUS whose power, mandated, he claims has already hurt the whole world in ways no magic reset can reverse and in truth, his mandate was less than half of “We the people…” his vandals slashing government to smash the laws that hold them back from moving money – poor to rich once more…
The “Land of Opportunity” that favoured my grandfather’s brother and many another immigrant now demonises the souls who would make their way too to share the possibilities of a bright future for their families even as the undocumented labour that oils the wheels of the American economy, – fentanyl and the war on drugs a fig leaf to the injustice of forced repatriation of those already embedded in America their dreams and families shattered by the spurious scourge of anti-immigrant sentiment pitting the poor against the poorer still.
So America I would still like to visit you but I am not sure you would let me in with my opinions here on record – sewn into the worldwide web where creepy billionaires now rule the roost and spread the lies that fooled America’s poor into electing their nemesis by inflaming the emotion of their abandoned sensibilities with false promises wrapped up in fake news – how long before you see the truth and can Americans, as they have before revolt against the white minority who would install Gilead the billionaires bent on plunder the bigoted descendants of the slave-owning South.
And if you, the people of America find your voice and strength again quell the krisis reassert the values that had America support the world order the rule of law, the equality of man then perhaps I will yet get to visit America…
This poem was written for the dVerse Poets Pub call for submission for a soon-to-be-published real world anthology of poems to be entitled, provisionally, Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. It is also a sequel to a poem I wrote in my writing group back in 2023 “America (I Would Like to Visit You)” which in turn was a response to “America (Superstorm)” by Kathleen Graber. I read the previous poem at the dVerse OLN in July 2023 and I am sharing it for the current OLN #383 which is being hosted by Grace . Since 2023, President Trump has been re-elected for a second term…
Georgia O’Keeffe, Three Women (1918), watercolour and graphite on paper, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, gift of Gerald & Kathleen Peters
Widows’ weeds is what we wear Stiflingly hot in midday air Houses usurped by eldest sons Post-husbands, post-menopause, we Convene daily, really to see That we still live, it’s hardly fun But beneath each blackened shell Bright colours of our glory days Belie this ghastly latter phase We dream of Heaven, live in Hell Gossip our only consolation The fauve follies of the young Who’s deserving, who should be hung Judgment brings but scant elation…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics, invites us to write an ekphrastic poem inspired by a selection of paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe…
Melissa also gave us a selection of art terms to incorporate into our poem and I chose just one fauve, the French word for “wild animal” that gave it’s name to the Fauvists who painted in very bright colours…
This year my A to Z theme was to construct a memoir heading each post with a photograph of something significant from my life and tacling the memoir thematically rather than chronologically. You can find the complete list of links to the 26 posts at the end of the post.
Each time I have participated in the A to Z since my first outing in 2020, my posts have grown longer and more layered, for example, last year, I was tackling Commodities which I was afraid might be a little dry as a subject, so I decided to add a poem in an alphabetically matching poetry form. This year I was afraid that my Memoir, would not be sufficiently rivetting in itself and so I decided to lead each post with a photo of a significant object for the topic of the day. I included 10 pictures that were “Knolling” style and of course, nobody likes to be overfaced by swathes of text, and as there were several topics on some posts, that meant a lot of pictures to break it up – 169 in all! Since even my phone camera takes large pictures, each one had to be opened in Photoshop and tweaked and resized – a rod for my own back. At the time of the Theme Reveal, I only had five or six posts finished and on April 1st I had two weeks worth “in the can” but by the final weekend, I managed to complete the last 3 posts so technically, no “pantsing” it!
A “Knolling” picture from Carol, Cars and Cooking
Since adding poetry had worked well last year, I added nine poems this year (C, E, J, L, M, O, P, T & V) too, as well as a few videos, one of me working in 1995 and a number of music videos. All of this seems to have worked and I attracted a number of regular readers to whom I am most grateful for their encouraging comments. In no particular order:- A shoutout to Csenge (Tarkabarka) The Multicolored Diary who was first to comment on day one and also an A to Z committee member and consummate, epic storyteller. Anne M. Bray of Pattern Recognition an old A to Z friend – everything you ever wanted to know about Fluevog Shoes… Tamara of Part-time Working Hockey Mom another old friend since 2020 who this year guides around the cities of Switzerland with her cutomary aplomb! Ronel is another Comittee member and supplied the colourful graphics for the A to Z – you can find her at Ronel the Mythmaker… Deborah A Logophile’s Ludic Musings continued her exploration of unusual and interesting words and hardly missed a post Lisa of Tao Talk, is a friend from my other habitual haunt – dVerse Poets Pub… Donna McNichol was another frequent flyer and her own offerings are at Just call me Froggi Kristin Kleage has been sharing her family history with the A to Z since 2013 at Finding Eliza… Anne E.G. Nydam is a fabulous printmaker at Black and White: Words and Pictures Holly J. of A More Positive Perspective Samantha of Balancing Act Linda Curry of The Curry Apple Orchard
And so, how was the writing itself – what did I learn from doing this year’s A to Z?
Firstly, I quickly realised how much material my life contained so that for almost any given subject, I had to be very selective about which stories I included. After writing about why I didn’t become a fine-artist or an architect, and why I haven’t been very successful as a businessman, I covered my family, my late sister Carol, my Dad, my mother Elsie and shortly after, my sister Helen and particularly in these posts, there was so much more that could have been said. I was trying to stick to those points that had a bearing on me – it was my memoir after all and not theirs – still, there could be a book rather than 26 posts! But as far as it went, I feel like I have made a memoir of sorts and I am not sure I would want to go as far as a book, even if it retained and expanded on the thematic approach rather than the chronological.
Secondly, it would be disingenuous of me to think that I have had an “ordinary” life, I am well aware of the priveleges I was fortunate to be born into, by being born into a “First” World country, to middle-class parents, parents who were both extraodinary in their different ways and who did their very best to offer my sisters and I the best opportunities they could, not least of all a trip round the world and the chance to experience life in a different country at an early age. Were there any flies in the ointment, along the way, of course there were but a life without some adversity would be a life less lived and adversity makes us stronger. Would I do things differently, some I guess, but hindsight is a fine thing…
My daily routine during April, was to start the day by checking that the scheduled post was up, read it through one more time for mistakes before going over to the Official A to Z blog to answer their daily question(s) and leave a link. Because of geography and time zones, there was usually one or two posts ahead of me, with posts from the Americas coming in much later in the day and so I sometimes had the mistaken inmpression that hardly anyone else commented there so I was very touched, when after losing the run of myself and forgetting to follow my routine, I received a comment from Barbie of Crackerberries
Andrew, this is the first time I didn’t see your name above mine on the A-Z page… I had to come see if you were here because that was so odd that you were not there, even when I went back this afternoon. Thanks for sharing the X-Rays and it’s really comical to me that the new hip bone kinda looks like a serrated knife. (ahhh the imagination of writers). Anyways, I’m glad you are here and maybe just didn’t get over to the page yet. Funny how we take people for granted. See ya tomorrow and I bet you will be first with Z post. Cheers, Barbie
It does surprise me how few of the 172 bloggers who signed up, do comment both to respond to the day’s post as well as to see this as their firsl line of promotion. My comment made, I would post a link and a photograph from the post on my Facebook which would bring in a few friends and family. I will put this post on a button at the top of my blog in the hope that future readers will find their way to my story…
Which post did I like writing best, we are asked on the A to Z blog? Frewin, Fossils and Film covered some of my favourite things but it was also fun choosing photographs and poems to showcase for Photography and Poetry – so a toss-up there…
Lastly, it has been gratifying to find that not only was I wrong to wonder if other people would find my story interesting, but it has renewed, once again, my faith in my telling of the story, in my writing. As every one of my A to Zs has been from 2020 to 2025, it has been a marathon and I am glad to have reached the finish line, somewhat exhausted, but I am hoping that, as I am told about giving birth, the memory of the pain of labour disappears (else no woman would do it again) and that at some point in the next year, another idea for A to Z 2026, will pop into my mind, though goodness knows what…
Now that all the writing is done, I am off to catch up on some of my favourite blogs and hopefully find some new ones! You can peruse the whole A to Z list and find some for yourself here.
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