dVerse Poets Pub

Kintsugi World

humanist55

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…

Blues and Twos

humanist55

Driving home along City Road
an ambulance dashes by
with” blues and twos”
screaming its way towards the hospital
– do we all wonder whether
its cargo is of death or life
another human being on the way out
or a baby on the brink of being born?
Does anybody learn indifference
to this question of “for whom the bell tolls?”
The blue lights illuminate the faces and bare arms
of the sex workers leaning against
the old warehouse building – soon to be apartments
and if they were looking for their veins
right now, they wouldn’t find them
but that will come later…
One girl lurches across the pavement
as a familiar car pulls up
and as she departs, another slips
into pole position, eyes peeled…
A few hours earlier, or come tomorrow
this street junction will belong
to office workers or shopgirls
some in the sanctity of hair concealing hijab
with no knowledge of their having
traversed the red light district
of another temporal place.
The patient in the ambulance
will hopefully be settled in a bed
recovering, or perhaps a bed
beside a cot with mother and baby
also recovering, and adjusting
to the new place, respectively.
At home I make two suppers
to meet our different needs
– one soft and forgiving on dentures
that no longer fit well and tastebuds
stripped of efficacy by smoking
secondly the most creative that
cooking for one can get
and I remember cooking for different
tastes in our early reconstructed family
– one diabetic, one vegetarian
two for meat and two veg, and the two of us
then just wanting something interesting to eat…
Now only Christmas dinner brings
the whole family together and still
there are different varied requirements
to further complicate that logistical nightmare
but catering to all is the measure of care…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, lillian in Live, OpenLinkNight, invites us to post a poem of our choice and hopefully read it at the live session.
This poem references a time when I lived in the centre of Bradford, and unwittingly (since I viewed it in the daytime) lived in an apartment adjacent to the heart of the red light district, also a busy route to the Bradford Royal Infirmary and rarely, I still traverse this road on my way home, to my present address…

Loving Natures

humanist55

I
Olive skin
Dark brown honey trap eyes
Black hair wiry as desert weed

II
No beauty
Prickly as cactus
Dangerous as opioid poison

III
Sky blue eyes
Generous with loving
But with an invisible minefield

But yours was
The soil in which I grew
Patiently uncovering each mine


© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Garden in Crete © Andrew Wilson, 2020

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, invites us to write a poem in the Parallelogram de Crystalline form which consists of –
• 12 lines in total (each Capitalised but without punctuation)
• 4 verses
• 3 lines per verse
• syllable count per verse 3,6,9
• unrhymed

And for the theme of the poem: the beauty of a (real or imaginary) lover as compared with and described in images of nature.

First Bedroom

humanist55

Our first bedroom
was a work of art
where I bought my
profession and my painting to bear
like a Bower Bird building a nest to
attract and cement
a relationship with a mate.
I always preferred to make
my own Valentine cards
Christmas and birthday offerings
and even the gifts if possible
and that room was my gift to you
– on the ceiling a giant Chinese
prawn painted paper parasol
which I surprised you with
on a date in London and as
we walked, giddy along Oxford Street
we gathered a crowd of people
seeking shelter from the torrential rain
the painted prawns in their element
stopped from swimming off only by varnish.

The wall at the head of the bed
swam with myriad shoals of
tiny fishes gleaming like Neon Tetras
where I over sprayed the stencil
with spatters of silver
and the other wall moved subtly
from undersea azure to
misty morning blue
where an undergrowth of
real plants pressed and stencilled
emerged from the mist
at the foot of the wall
a perpetual daybreak to
greet us each morning.

I will not say that
all our intimacies took
place in that love nest
for in those days, any room
would do for us before
the clouds settled down on us
dampening ardour except for
brilliant sunbeams occasionally
breaking through
that bedroom was always but
our happy place
beneath the prawns
amongst the fishes
and flowering weeds
of late summer.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Dora in Poetics invetes us to “write a poem that conjures a view (whether from our travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment“

The Quietest Krisis

humanist55

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…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

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.”

Tears of Remembrance

humanist55

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

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

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.

Otter Games Are Available

humanist55

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!

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

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…

Querida

humanist55

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

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

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.

I Have No Word in English For
By Sandra Cisneros (The New Yorker print edition, September 16, 2024)

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

Flight

humanist55

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…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery, invites us to write apiece of prose using no more than 144 words, including a quote from Ada Limón‘s “The Magnificent Frigatebird,”. The italicised lines at the beginning of the piece are the given quote…

America (Krisis: at the Crossroads)

humanist55

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…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

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…