Inspired by a thought (‘magic blood’) from the Change My Mind Substack here.
* Repurposed from Chris’s poem ‘The Phoenix Tree Writes’
Final Solution – 10th June 2025
Month: June 2025
I am born of the magic blood
A Grain Of Salt – 9th June 2025
The first bee arriving at the blooming banks
The pebble alone does not a mountain make
A lonely planet in the universe ranks
As a speck of sand washed up along the break
Inconsequential as our atoms may be
Our egos still require us to stake a claim
An eternal life in written history
The stars that saw our fire will forget the flame
Inspired by Cicero
Meanwhile, Elsewhere – 8th June 2025
Down in amongst the broken, dirty chaos
Restless rats are awaiting our return
Get me away, get thee away – gedouddaheah!
We’ve all got some loving to learn
Up among the trees and idyllic charms
Of sprawling lawns, quiet, clean and pure
Elsewhere, everything else is happening
We should’ve been there for sure
We gotta leave so that we can come back
To quiet ourselves amongst the noise
Knowing that everything will be waiting there
Ready to share its joys
Another poem inspired by the first part of this post at Spinning Visions blog. I’d forgotten that I’d read it before!
The Sheds – 7th June 2025
Those old wooden planks forming structures
stood behind my 400-year-old home;
still, they stood through each test of time
long after I had left this place to roam;
From the house and its slippery paths,
mossed and icy obstacles in winter;
stood those dilapidated monuments,
though each season would split and splinter;
To the left, “the office”, where Grandad
collected his postcards of the wild Yukon;
locked up tight his precious memories
that I would sometimes curiously snoop on;
Around the back, the gardening shed,
musty and full of rusting tools;
next to that, the beer shed
where empty crates were used as stools;
I still recall the stray cat delivering
us a parade of kitten after kitten,
so we kept and named her ‘Mother’
as we all became tragically smitten;
Sadly, she didn’t stand the test of time
and with her next litter, cruelly, died;
nothing left except a couple of photos
tucked into an album and simply kept aside;
Still more sheds stood next to the fence,
one full of coal, another with wood;
once a week, I collected both
for the fire; a role I understood;
But there were two more I don’t recall,
their purpose a mystery to my childish eyes;
perhaps full of junk or even empty;
so much for the test of time and how it flies.
All this is true.
Shared with the W3 prompt #162:
a. Your poem must include deliberate repetition of a word, phrase, or sentence structure at least three times throughout the piece.
b. Your poem must incorporate the word “still” at least twice.
This poem is way longer than I would like and became more of a rhyming reminisce for myself rather than an ideal piece of artistic poetry.
Automatic – 6th June 2025
From this automatic existence;
there is no mere coincidence, Everybody carries a piece
of the puzzle of release
from this automatic existence.
Fight with all resistance,
In risk there is reward;
an antidote to being bored
from this automatic existence.
Escape through persistence;
To be average is a sin
and not a place to dwell in.
(apathy)
(destiny)
(unity)
(liberation)
(defiance)
(opportunity)
(tenacity)
(excellence)
Don’t be boring!
Your Loss – 5th June 2025
I’m sorry for your loss
Your baby lost her head
Jumping over the fences
Wild wolves with fire sticks
I’m sorry for your loss
The heart grinds to a halt
A peppercorn too thick
Down-tools the result
I’m sorry for your loss
A story told to satisfaction
Repeated through the ages
A Chinese whisper in the dark
I’m sorry for your loss
Why did you lose your head?
Take up spears to arms
And thrust through the fences
I’m sorry for your loss
The stories rewritten and revised
Wild wolves are the angels
And heads left on spikes
Somewhat a response to a comment on Christmas in Gaza
Habibi Was – 4th June 2025
Frustrated at every turn,
Invisible lines not to be crossed,
Random security searches,
Only finding all liberties lost;
Or checkpoints to clock in,
To be grateful for a shekel or two,
A home is not a home,
When one’s life becomes taboo;
Constant eyes are trained,
Machine guns held at the ready,
Deliberate provocations,
Ensure all balance remains unsteady;
So Habibi threw a stone,
A piece of protest found underfoot,
A frustrated release,
That was so ineloquently put;
It bounced off the tank,
Where no one was hurt by this token,
For this, he got a bullet in the head,
And another family heartbroken.
The title is a play on the Bob Marley song ‘Johnny Was’
The Chosen Ones – 3rd June 2025
We’ll educate the natives by musket and disease,
A hand on the Bible, our Lord manifests destiny,
So empowered by his word to do as we may please,
By blanket and buffalo, erase from sea to sea.
Subjugate with murder on our ancestors’ claims,
A pilgrimage of plunder when holding all the aces,
Building castles from the bones of their remains,
We’re the chosen ones among the many races.
With our fingers crossed as our promises made,
Based on the righteousness of words we twisted,
The victims of our genocides forever displayed,
Warning that our bloodlust may never be resisted.
Unbelievers, impure, will succumb to subjugation,
Fire and brimstone await those we deem sinners,
Suffer little children, bend a knee for your nation,
We will write the history, for we are the winners.
Charlie Zero The Poet Music picks & Reviews #22 and my quick thoughts:
The Omnific – Good stuff and new to me. The bass playing is obviously super interesting and though I guess it is a little on-the-nose in places, talent can’t be denied. Gonna check out the rest of their catalogue.
Abstract Household Warfare – After The Omnific this is too experimental to dig right now. Right now, I need rhythm!
ADR – The concept and execution behind this is very good indeed. I checked out his other album THROAT which brought to mind Senyawa and Dokaka. Interesting but not me today.
group A – When a band describes themselves as a Japanese industrial / avant-garde synth duo you never know what you might get. Interesting stuff and would be cool to see in a dark illegal warehouse.
Blarf – Some great fucked up hip-hop (I suppose) and some whacked out noise. It seems that I’m all about the rhythm today and so this one only hits in places.
Weird selection that started off nicely for me and got my attention again at the end.
Seeing Clearly – 2nd June 2025
All the echoes call back to me
Drowning in their history
Their insistent beauty I may not see
Clearly today
The curses that come to visit me
With shocking desolate energy
The daily dying, the sacrifice I see
Clearly today
The grief that roars up at me
Spins a subtle trajectory
Finally, its emptiness I see
Clearly today
Inspired by The Red Hand Files #317
More Than Meets The Eye – 1st June 2025
It was a moment that went unnoticed,
I thought that I was just living;
inside, thoughts were being processed,
imagining that I could be forgiving;
Time became a great pretender,
to forget was an impossible aim;
teaching me that this offender
tried their best to hide their shame;
I tumbled on in a desperate air,
into the future, I was falling;
ideas left me in a difficult care,
insistent on a decisive calling;
So it was that I became
stuck along with my liberation;
someone new, yet still the same,
struggling towards my transformation.
A Trolaan shared with dVerse on the theme of crisis.
Trolaan, created by Valerie Peterson Brown, is a poem consisting of 4 quatrains. Each quatrain begins with the same letter. The rhyme scheme is abab for each quatrain.
Starting with the second stanza, you use the second letter of the first line of the first stanza to write, each line beginning with that letter.
In the third stanza, you will use the second letter on the first line of the second stanza and write, each line beginning with that letter.
In the fourth stanza, you will use the second letter on the first line of the third stanza and write, each line beginning with that letter.
1994ever 