dVerse Poets Pub - How would you know...

Dreamlands

August 7, 2024August 7, 2024humanist55

I used to spend my dreams
     the ones you wake remembering
being pursued relentlessly
by an unknown enemy
like Buchan’s hero in The 39 Steps
and in The Hero’s Journey
just when you think you’re in the clear
     the antagonist is once more there

More often, recently
I find myself lost
     in a big city I should know
flavour of London perhaps
but away from shiny landmarks
yet central – not suburbs
busily, chaotically urban
I search for the familiar
     always nearing – never succeeding

Occasionally, I am rehashing
past jobs – of which I’ve had many
seeking an elusive
key to success
and waking then, I feel
dreams might indeed
be the arena in which
our unconscious attempts
to sort the business of the day

Rarely, too, I find myself
in a dwelling I used nearly to know
the character of rooms
I used to share with friends
and yet they’re not quite right
     somehow…
a building sprawling
through the dream without end
and I wake with only the feeling of
a place once known…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetics, invites us to write about Dreams…

Jam-jars

August 6, 2024August 6, 2024humanist55

I confess – I collect jars…
jam-jars for sure
but others too
sweets, gherkins, pills

My partner imagines
I seriously culled the jam-jars
and truly I tossed a few
since diabetes and jam-making
don’t mix

But mainly I re-hid them
where she wouldn’t look…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, whimsygizmo in Quadrille, aka De Jackson, urges us to write a Quadrille – a poem in just 14 words containing the word jar…

Memento Mori

August 1, 2024August 1, 2024humanist55

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…

To Ride a Horse…

July 24, 2024July 24, 2024humanist55

What does it mean to have
a meaningful relationship
with an animal
cats disdain us
except for feeding time
and when they seek
a comfortable lap
whilst dogs follow faithfully
and would sit on our grave
till we returned
but is there a deeper bond
than that between
the horse and rider

The Lone Ranger
the Republican wet dream
of a man free from government
rode Silver magnificently
across the plains
trusting him with his life
where a single gopher hole
could bring death
the anonymous Indians
bareback on anonymous mounts
were grudgingly allowed
their almost mystical mastery
of horseflesh but were
the enemy regardless

Must a horse be broken in
or is whispering
a kinder way to instil
a lifelong relationship
in a horse larger and stronger
than the man or woman
who they will permit to ride them
even into the din of battle
or the fracas of a hostile mob

I never rode a horse
the nearest being
a donkey ride up the steeps
of Santorini and I suffered
all the way to think
of my weight on this
patient, sturdy worker
but for a few moments
I had a glimpse
of what it might mean
to have a real relationship
with an animal…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, dorahak in Poetics, invites us to write about horses…

Summer…

July 23, 2024July 23, 2024humanist55

Summer is a movable feast
a season to be sure
whose timing varies depending
in which hemisphere
Northern or Southern you’re living
and as for length allotted
– every day at the Equator
or several months in the Arctic
how is the Summer at yours?

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, WhimsyGizmo aka De Jackson, challenges us to dance a Quadrille including the word “Summer” – a poem in just 44 words…

My Superpower

July 19, 2024July 19, 2024humanist55

My superpower is solipsism
I think
I can’t be sure
but too much around me
is just as I would have it be
the supermarket always has
the brand of orange and mango juice
I have come to like above all others
and on the rare occasion
they might have run out
I am persuaded
– by myself
that I created this opportunity
to try something different –
a new flavour of juice
perhaps a smoothie
or I will try some new
health drink that I have
conjured into being
for the sake of novelty
and to maintain the idea
of progress, for others
if not for me.

But maintenance!
Nobody knows the burden I carry
keeping the world spinning
trade flowing – barring the
odd bottleneck in the Suez Canal
after all insurance companies
need to be relieved of their funds
and payout now and again.
This is all day-to-day stuff
I can do that in my sleep
indeed I have to do that
else my night-time
would be a blind spot
on the orbit of the earth.

But lately I have felt guilt
seems I may have taken
my eye off the ball
let things slip…
I know there have always been
hungry people in the world
and that I cannot avoid that
but global warming like the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?
What was I thinking?

Or is it possible that other
Solipsist’s exist in conflict with me
are we fighting for control
pulling strings from behind the curtain
blindly unaware of the others
due the blinkered nature of our “gift”…
If only I knew that to be true
how much stress would be lifted
the knowledge that I had done enough
that I did not loose all the ills
upon the world, that there is
more than hope left in the box.

And there is my dilemma
am I even the solipsist I imagine myself to be
could I not choose to cease believing
lay down the burden
step out of my solipsistic bubble
and just be a regular guy
somewhere in the crowd…

Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɪpsɪzəm/ ^ⓘ SOLL-ip-siz-əm; from Latin solus ‘alone’, and ipse ‘self’)^[1] is the philosophical idea that only one’s mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. (Wikipedia)

I am posting this for Open Link Night over at the dVerse Poets Pub, where Sanaa – sanaarizvi, is the host. I wrote this in my writing group where we try to stick to the convention of referring to “the Narrator” when commenting on work thus allowing for the fact that the piece may be fictional and not (necessarily) autobiographical. In this case, I would be horrified if anyone thought this was me and not a whimsical thought experiment on what it would be like if Solipsim were a reality – my reality…

Dancing a Whirling Dervish

July 17, 2024July 17, 2024humanist55

Here and there
life clusters
amidst the random
Brownian motion of
atoms and molecules
drawing them
into an order
all it’s own
combating entropy
for their allotted lifespan
they dance defiance
like whirling dervishes
celebrating passionately
their moments in the light
poignant in the knowledge
that entropy
will win in the end
their parts
deliquescing
into the dark
lucky if they
leave a tiny trail
to mark their passage…

Over at the Poets Pub, Melissa Lemay in Poetics invites us to riff on the paintings of Alma Thomas – I chose: Scarlet Sage Dancing a Whirling Dervish (1976), acrylic on canvas, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York

False Dawn to Sunrise…

July 12, 2024July 12, 2024humanist55

At five, I wake with the false dawn
the call of nature at three
an hour of chasing Morpheus
two hours of fitful sleep
haunted by the illusion of wakefulness
the battle is lost to the new day
and I rise before backache sets in
who needs more than six hours sleep anyway

Seen from space
the line between night and day
looks sharp enough
but on the ground
the scattered rays of the coming sun
diffuse through the atmosphere
gradually dissolving the dark
and banishing ancient and childhood fears

Finally the buildings opposite
lose their grey and acquire a yellow tinge
that brightens to ruddy Welsh gold
as the sun peeps over the horizon
and for a moment, filtered by atmosphere
we can behold the true god
whose gravity rules the solar system
sustaining life through the burning up of its body

Children may sleep through
the transition from night to day
but as we age, the need for sleep diminished
the penumbra of consciousness and light attune
and though we may lie next to another
we awaken alone in the liminal space
that exists between false dawn and sunrise
before we rise – another day to face…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, challenges us to write about Dawn writing in the poetry style of the A L’Arora, a form created by Laura Lamarca:

4 stanzas (or more)
8-lines per stanza (can split with line break after 6)
only lines 6 & 8 are to rhyme as x,x,x,x,x,a,x,a; x,x,x,x,x,b,x,b etc
no syllable count per line

Poetry Subject: Lamarca’s A L’Arora derives from “Aurora” – Italian for “dawn”

Bread and Apples

July 10, 2024July 11, 2024humanist55

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Poetics was interviewing Sarah Connor a long-time member of the Pub. I never had the privilege of writing to one of Sarah’s prompts but it is clear from the interview and from the fragments of Sarah’s poems chosen by Kim, that it would indeed have been a privilege and so I hope to honour her with this poem…
The italicised lines are from Sarah Connor’s poems “Apple” and “ ‘No mail – no post’“

There is a wholesomeness to apples
I used to say I could live
on bread and apples alone
but diabetes now rules
my diet – fruit sugar is
still sugar nevertheless
and most bread, though staff of life
creates a sugar spike for
which I must later atone.

If weather be kind, apples
fill out from flower-size fruit
the white flesh crisp, fine-grained
though Discovery surprises –
the flesh by red skin stained
the taste a fizz of champagne
I must now sip one by one
no longer scoff by the pound.

Sourdough is the only bread
eaten in moderation
some secret from its magic
starter’s generation
baton passed from batch to batch
less sugar, less spike it’s said
and there is more flavour too
yeast fed on the flour itself.

And as a poet, I hope,
just this blank space – this white page
will be fleshed out with words –
the starter of my poesy
will slowly feed on today’s
thoughts and swell the dough, my loaf
which baked on the page will raise
a wholesome, healthy poem.

You Will Leave a Lacuna…

June 14, 2024June 15, 2024humanist55

…And while thy willing soul transpires

Willing! You think me willing?
And that my soul transpires…
T’were nearer the mark to assert
my body glows with rage

At every pore with instant fires,

Blushes at first
when I your base desires
didst early espy but soon
‘twas anger coloured my face

Now let us sport us while we may

Sport you say
with you the hunter
and no doubt I the prey
but you have made me furious

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

I refer you to my previous stanza
furious not amorous
– we or I at least – are not animals
forever chasing food or mating

Rather at once our time devour

You see you even now confuse
the act of mating
with that of eating
but I will not join you at your table

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

An age at least
would be too long
to tarry in your lascivious presence
in fact I will not waste another hour

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,

My strength will henceforth
be employed in resisting
your siren call
and enjoying sweet silence
when you are gone

And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life

Oh snake I see you now
taking my maidenhood
with rough strife
no thought to later
make me your wife…

Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run…

Enough! Begone you tiresome poet
you can’t try your wiles on a Yorkshire girl,
a girl from Hull – and you should know it
and yet…
when you are gone…
you will leave a lacuna…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

We studied the poet Andrew Marvell at school and I suspect that more than one of us callow youths committed the poem “To His Coy Mistress” to heart in case these lines of seduction might someday prove useful in our own future seduction attempts…
Having just watched Bridgerton, Season 3, I was perhaps channelling the feisty women challenging the rather weaker men in reframing this response to lines from the poem.

Written for Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft over at dVerse Poets Pub, who tonight challenges us to elaborate on a fragment of up to 13 lines from another poem – to “Elaborate Lacunae in the Fragment or Keeping Things Whole“