Shared with dVerse MTB: The Roundel
*’The USA has met its enemy and it is the USA’ was taken from a Substack article I was reading but forgot to note the link.
Every Dog – 16th November 2025
Tag: dVerse
The USA has met its enemy
Container Drivers (Version) – 14th November 2025
Let’s heighten tensions with China
We’ve got to keep them down
Grey caps and grey trousers
Sweatshops will keep them down
We are containers, we are the drivers
Sideways perception
Allied ascension
Maintained low wages
Increased production
Therefore profit margins
We are the containers, and the drivers
The rhetoric was for two days
Maintained headlines for two days
Militarised, cold and grey
And sold so many papers
We are containers, we are the drivers
This is not our town
Alienation came from the ground
Hard work did not keep them down
Hard work bought them the town
With their containers and their drivers
J. Ma’s a distant relation
Of 1 billion full-time workers
So they all said ‘no thanks’
In commune and closed ranks
With their containers and their drivers
A wound self-inflicted
Partnerships invalidated
FOIP – branded strategy
Diplomatic engagements ended
With AI containers and robot drivers
Shared with dVerse Poetics – Pivot referencing the USA’s Pivot To Asia. For some reason, I had the Fall’s ‘Container Drivers’ stuck in my head and so the poem can be sung along in time with that (if you wish!)
Nachiketa’s Dream – 10th November 2025
The boy,
too curious,
gets sent from the room.
Confused,
he wanders the wheat fields,
letting the sun in.
Lulled to sleep
with his thoughts,
many questions
float along the river.
He is walking
towards his grandfather.
“On reading, ‘you’ no longer exist
The cock crows
Energy transformed holds no fear
of the temporary canvas
The art of ‘you’ imprinted
on the fabric of reality
Belonging to consciousness
inseparable
Recognise there’s no escape
Seeing through the mirage
finding ‘you’ have always been free….”
Inspired after coming across this post by Shubham Upman
28th Jan 2026 – shared with dVerse Poetics – dream interpretation
Carving – 6th November 2025
the shaper of my own world
from imagination
both triumphs and failures arise
reflections in quiet glass
the storm and calm
of my hands
eyes are open
viewing the rain
from here, inside
the thought
that changed the scene
all upside down
from the devil’s intention
light split
through the prisms
of truth
i see
if the building breaks
i’ll start with new bricks
the carving is the conversation
Shared with dVerse Poetics – craft and how we shape our own realities
Word Doctor – 5th November 2025
The witch doctor whirls his words
Making you believe
A handful of herbs and happiness
You’ll receive
You must be really sick for this
Make believe
Open minds and open palms
Are easy to deceive
A pocketful of green is surely
Making you believe
Watch the video for a real whirl.
Inspired by both the words and video, and shared with dVerse Quadrille #235 – whirl
Mise en Abyme – 2nd November 2025
*The old librarian still searches for
himself among the shelves. Glasses half-cocked,
hanging on to his nose, rubbing eyes, sore
from a thousand years of dust, sunlight blocked,
but his thirst for knowledge cannot be stopped.
Owlish and wizened with yellowy skin,
slowly but surely, the light will seep in
and he’ll remain his days meditating
on the fact he’s just about to begin
the journey for which he has been waiting.
Shared with dVerse: dizain.
*I had noted down this first sentence from Björn’s poem ‘The Past at Present’ last month, thinking that I would use this idea for something new. Having then forgotten about it until today, I ended up using it word for word to launch this particular write.
Lovely Ice – 22nd October 2025
She holds divine diamonds
Piercing dark portals on innocent smiles
A skipped beat, held breath
Reading cards waiting in the deck
Kaleidoscope memories tumbling at the twists
Love forever, or just a second
Effervesce and overflow
Strike me dead! Enchanted in that delicious gaze.
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #234
Some Surrender – 19th October 2025
The both of me are struggling inside
One wants to just enjoy the ride
A hedonist with parties to attend
A firestorm with fuel to spend
Better to burn out than fade away?
So, tonight is the time to play
…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…
The both of me, struggling to get out
The anxious side, processing doubt
Every word needs to be remembered
So that some time must be surrendered
If all this savouring gets rephrased
Will it be somehow falsely praised?
Did it really happen as we say?
The feeling is that it must be done today…
…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…
The both of me are struggling to win
A desperate balance being fought within
This happiness must be documented
Not pass by forgotten and lamented
So tonight I’ll simply sigh and say
That if it cannot be done today
…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…
Shared with W3 #181 – a bop poem. This poem was inspired by this week’s dVerse prompt, using a line from a Günter Grass poem as a refrain. I saw this line, “…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…” used in the poem ‘Tomorrow’ and along with the word ‘bop’, this reminded me (again!) of the dilemma Jack Kerouac would face when having fun with his friends but wanting to rush home to write it down before it got forgotten to the mists of time. I see that I have written this poem before, too! Perhaps this is part two?
In the first stanza, I reference Firestorm, a DC comic character that at one time was two different people inside one body, often struggling with decisions. This came to mind as I had been reading it last night.
Ice Age – 18th October 2025
Shared with dVerse MTB quatern and utilising the phrase ‘what happens when the river stops‘ taken from Günter Grass’s ‘What I write about’.
What happens when the river stops
flowing towards its final form,
to meet dissolution, consumed
in a roiling ghost of gestalt?
Gathering stagnation – is that
what happens when the river stops?
Dammed many times along the way,
it aches to carve a deeper chart;
Breath seeping into the soft soils,
probing for any solve to see
what happens. When the river stops,
frozen skin, a trick of the light,
conceals the hand of destiny
on swirling tides of history.
I find I do not want to know
what happens when the river stops.
Ride Of The Dullahan – 16th October 2025
Shared with dVerse Poetics – headless horseman. I learned a little about Irish folklore while writing this.
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