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Iambic heptameter: Simon MacCulloch, ‘Jasmina’

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Jasmina is the doorway, Jasmina is the key;
Jasmina walks the path beside the pearl-infested sea.
The angels peer bewildered from the god-infested sky;
Jasmina is the only how that doesn’t need a why.

I see her in the morning in her robe of melting frost;
She visits me at noontime when the meaning has been lost.
At evening she invades the nooks the spiders thought their own
Till night demands a moon; she stoops, and hurls it like a stone.

I used to think her complicated, now I know she’s not
(A how that doesn’t need a why has little use for what).
I used to think she’d care for me, if only for a while;
I used to think a lot of things before I saw her smile.

I never hear her speaking though I think she has a song
Which many claim to know although they always get it wrong.
She feels like furry gossamer and tastes like perfumed smoke;
I often hear her laughter but I never learn the joke.

Jasmina is a destiny, Jasmina is a doom;
Jasmina is a woman but with stars within her womb.
The demons peer demented from their hope-infested hell
And beg her for a story, but she hasn’t one to tell.

*****

Simon MacCulloch writes: “Jasmina is a slightly offbeat take on the great western goddess motif (Aphrodite, the Virgin Mary etc). It is not based on anyone I know.”

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of print and online publications, including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Spectral Realms, Black Petals and others. Jasmina was originally published in Blue Unicorn.

Photo: “mask” by new 1lluminati is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Blank verse: Gail White, ‘Eve Discusses Adam’s First Wife’

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You tell me Lilith has become a fiend,
a vampire, a screech-owl, one who preys
on children (I‘ve had three and she has none),
sentenced for disobedience to run wild,
hideous now, howling for all she lost.
You tell me I was taken from your side
that I might always find a refuge there,
a warm and nestling creature like the cat,
safe from the free but haunted world of dark.
And I’ve adjusted splendidly, I think.
My apple fritters are the best you’ll eat,
go where you will.  I keep domestic life
tidy and clean.  I never stir abroad
for fear of Lilith’s shriek and bat-like wings.
Yet when our first son killed our second son,
I – the good mother and obedient wife –
had one quick moment’s envy of her life.

*****

Gail White writes: “You won’t find the story of Lilith in Genesis, but in later Jewish commentary.  She was created simultaneously with Adam – God made them out of mud – and she used this joint creation to claim equality with him.  The world was not ready for Lilith as First Feminist.  She was banished, and Eve was created within Eden and presumed to be more docile.  I tried to give her a little flash of independent thought.”

First published in Blue Unicorn.  

Gail White lives in the Louisiana bayou country with her husband and cats.  Her latest chapbook, Paper Cuts, is available on Amazon, along with her books Asperity Street and Catechism.  She appears in a number of anthologies, including two Pocket Poetry chapbooks and Nasty Women Poets.  She enjoys being a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine.  Her dream is to live in Oxfordshire, but failing that, almost any place in Western Europe would do.

Photo: “Adam and Eve (and Lilith, the serpent) (Notre Dame, Paris, France)” by runintherain is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

A.E. Stallings, ‘Anosmia’

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Without it, what is lemon, what is mint? –
Coffee and chocolate, caffeinated brown.
Ghosted by a sense that takes no hint,
I feel let down.

It’s hardly tragedy that I can’t tell
The milk’s gone off, eggs rotten. It’s no joke
With other things though – no internal bell
That signals smoke

(The toast burned or the house on fire). Sweet
I have, and bitter, I have sour and salt,
But without smell, no flavour is complete.
There’s no … gestalt.

It’s something I’d predict of old, old age,
This weaning from the welter of the world
The better, perhaps, to leave it. I’m no sage,
I’d rather the impearled

Jasmine flowers – fragrance of the stars –
Light up the brain’s grey matter, and the hurt
Of memory, the human musk of ours
In an unwashed shirt.

‘To have a nose for’– isn’t it a skill,
A wry intelligence, a kind of knack?
What thought trails do I lose, untraceable,
What wisdom lack?

I miss the laundry scent they call ‘unscented’.
Like a depression, it makes it hard to write.
What is is less, less there, half uninvented,
And I, not quite.

But there are days I almost have a whiff:
I slice a lemon open for the crisp
Sun-saturated redolence, and sniff
And stand in the eclipse.

*****

A.E. Stallings writes: “My sense of smell is coming back gradually, but it was completely wiped out for about six months! Unnerving.”

‘Anosmia’ was first published in the London Review of Books.

A.E. Stallings is the current Oxford Professor of Poetry. This Afterlife: Selected Poems was published in 2022. Her forthcoming book is Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon

“Smell” by Dennis Wong is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Ruth S. Baker, ‘Moneykind’

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That kind of money is swishy and flashy.
That kind of money’s a bore, I find;
That kind of money is fishy and splashy.
That kind of money is not my kind.

My kind of money is somewhat quieter.
My kind of money won’t hog the stage.
My kind of money’s a long-term dieter:
My kind of money is slim for its age.

That kind of money is horribly tethering.
That kind of money one’s better without.
My kind of money’s enough for anything.
(Anything more I’ve forgotten about.)  

*****

‘Moneykind’ was originally published in The Asses of Parnassus. Ruth S. Baker writes: “It was triggered really just by catching myself out trying to feel superior to people with that kind of money!  As for bio, I’ve published in a few journals on line, mostly on animals and visual art.”

Photo: “Cooperate game companies have too much money and control of the market” by The People Speak is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Tom Vaughan: ‘Is This It?’

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Well if it is, and this is it
then what will be will be
and time will toil and time will tell
if there’s a guarantee

that at the least and at the last
the daily here and now
which now and here are thick as thieves
will be transformed, somehow

and either way, here’s my advice –
lie back and think of all
the ups which came between the downs
before your curtain call.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “There was no particular trigger for this poem, apart from my fitful attempts to be Stoical about the state – and weirdness – of the world. But just at the moment the anger occasioned by the former keeps breaking through.”

‘Is This It?’ was published in the current Lighten Up Online.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “man-relaxing-in-the-grass_8954-480×359” by Public Domain Photos is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Oliver Butterfield, ‘Self-reflection’

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Y’know — it ain’t a lot of fun
negotiating one-on-one
with the person in the mirror who
is staring blankly back at you
with hollow, soporific eyes —
but you penetrate his deep disguise,
and then it is you realize
that you’re in for loads of gloom and doom
cooped up within this little room
all by your empty, woeful self,
all, all alone, with no one else —
and the guileful guy you’re talking to
isn’t talking back at you —
’cause he knows there’s nothing left to say.
But the sonvabitch won’t go away.

*****

This poem was originally published in Better Than Starbucks. I have been unable to find Oliver Butterfield, I only know he retired and closed his law practice in Kelowna, British Columbia. I’d be interested in seeing more of his poetry.

Photo: “Man in the Mirror” by airguy1988 is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Bruce McGuffin, ‘Tunnels’

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A snowy field — sun sparkles on the ice —
Devoid of life to those who do not know
That underneath a furtive swarm of mice
Live out their lives in tunnels through the snow.
My dog, who finds them out by smell or sound,
Runs snorting through the snow in wriggling glee.
Then back and forth ecstatically he’ll bound
Until some mouse has nowhere left to flee.
For so it goes with mice as well as men,
Those tunnels where we run turn into traps
When forces that are far beyond our ken
Play out their game until our ways collapse.
Do waiting mice envision what impends?
That somewhere up above a canine snout —
Deus ex machina to mice — descends
To pierce the snow and pull those trapped mice out?
Few things in life will make that dog as glad.
The mouse may not rejoice — its life is through.
But whether killing mice is good or bad
Depends completely on your point of view.

*****

Bruce McGuffin writes: “When I was a boy winters were longer, colder, and snowier than they are today, and I had a suitably adapted dog: An 80 pound husky of indeterminate parentage. By which I mean a local ski instructor took his Siberian husky to Alaska one winter and she came home pregnant. We named him Frosty. In my defense I was 7 years old. His favorite pastimes were eating, sleeping outdoors in the snow, and hunting. Dogs roamed free in those days, and he brought home squirrels, mice, and more than one skunk. Frosty also bit the older boy next door after he punched me, which made Frosty The Best Dog Ever.
This poem started out as a paean to The Best Dog Ever, but slipped the leash and went off in a different direction, as poems sometimes do. It turns out that some of my favorite poems are the ones that get away.”

‘Tunnels’ was first published in Better Than Starbucks.

Bruce McGuffin grew up in rural Central NY, where children and dogs ran free through the frozen woodlands in winter, and waded in the creek all summer. It was ok if you like that sort of thing. His graduating class voted him Class Intellect, which was not exactly a compliment. Spurred on by lack of economic opportunity in that region, and the desire to know more people who didn’t think reading books was “weird”, he spent too many years in college then moved to the Boston area and worked for 37 years as an engineer in the field of radio communications. It was fun. Now semi-retired, he lives in Antrim NH with his wife Ann and occasional visits from two children who come for the skiing if not the company. His poetry has appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, and other journals.

Photo: “Sniffing the Prey” by Emyan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Richard Fleming, ‘In Grace’

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The present is arcane and strange
and any recollection left
of what has happened in the past
is vague and liable to change.
Of future plans, he is bereft,
for nothing now is hard and fast.

They give him multicoloured pens
and paper, as one might a child.
Familiar voices interweave.
He sees, through a distorting lens,
people who wept, people who smiled,
that, one by one, stood up to leave.

He is content. He lives in grace.
What matter if the moments blur,
if his nocturnal thoughts are grim?
He has escaped himself: his face,
a kind of absence in the mirror,
comforts and somehow pleases him.

*****

Richard Fleming writes: “Getting old is like exploring new territory without a map: nothing prepares you for the subtle changes in body and mind. Is a moment of forgetfulness just that, or an early indication of approching dementia? We cannot know what strange highways a decaying brain takes us down but I like to think that they might lead to a place of contentment, where the burdens of age are laid down and replaced by some measure of contentment. That’s what I’ve tried to capture in this poem.”

Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet (and humorist) currently living in Guernsey, a small island midway between Britain and France. His work has appeared in various magazines, most recently Snakeskin, Bewildering Stories, Lighten Up Online, the Taj Mahal Review and the Potcake Chapbook ‘Lost Love’, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. He has performed at several literary festivals and his latest collection of verse, Stone Witness, features the titular poem commissioned by the BBC for National Poetry Day. He writes in various genres and can be found at www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/

Photo: Richard Fleming post

Claudia Gary, ‘Mountain Fire’

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“Sunday, November the 5th, 1961, was hot and windy in Los Angeles…. As dawn approached on Monday the 6th… Fire Station 92 [received] a teletype from headquarters, noting the day would be considered a ‘high hazard’ day in the Santa Monica mountains….” –Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Society

Who is this with a garden hose
on a gravel roof, watering wind,
ignoring pleas from firemen?
Oh yes, he knows,

but can’t stop. Neighbors’ houses broil
to concrete slabs with chimneys,
melted-down pipes, dead brush and trees,
eroded soil.

Wild Santa Ana wind has tossed
burning wood shingles, leveling
castles, condos. Leave everything
or you’ll be lost.

Later in the newsreel,
a mother steers her family’s car
down Roscomare, and there we are,
too scared to feel.

An offer on the radio
says “Stay for free at Disneyland!”
Mother and daughter drive and plan,
deciding No.

Allowed back, they are lucky: See?
Fire has spared their modest home.
The child’s toy bin contains a poem.
Unscathed — or isn’t she?

*****

(First published in Mezzo Cammin)

Claudia Gary writes: “Thinking of today’s residents of Los Angeles, with firsthand knowledge that even if a home is not lost, fire (and evacuation) can be traumatic.”

Claudia lives near Washington DC and teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, etc., at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) and privately, currently via Zoom. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health/science writer, visual artist, composer of tonal songs and chamber music, and an advisory editor of New Verse Review. Her 2022 article on setting poems to music is online at https://straightlabyrinth.info/conference.html. For more information, see pw.org/content/claudia_gary
@claudiagary

Photo: During the 1961 BelAir-Brentwood fire in Los Angeles, Richard Nixon was among those who tried to save their homes (in Nixon’s case, a rental house) with garden hoses. Finding this photo for this blog post was coincidental; Claudia Gary did not have Nixon in mind when she wrote the poem. – RHL

Weekend read: Odd poem: Winston Churchill, ‘Our Modern Watchwords’

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I
The shadow falls along the shore
The search lights twinkle on the sea
The silence of a mighty fleet
Portends the tumult yet to be.
The tables of the evening meal
Are spread amid the great machines
And thus with pride the question runs
Among the sailors and marines
Breathes there the man who fears to die
For England, Home, & Wai-hai-wai.

II
The Admiral slowly paced the bridge
His mind intent on famous deed
Yet ere the battle joined he thought
Of words that help mankind in need
Words that might make sailors think
Of Hopes beyond all earthly laws
And add to hard and heavy toil
The glamour of a victorious cause.

*****

Around 115 years after it was written, the only known poem written by Winston Churchill as an adult was discovered by Roy Davids, a retired manuscript dealer from Great Haseley in Oxfordshire: ‘Our Modern Watchwords’, which was apparently inspired by Tennyson and Kipling.
Written between 1898 and 1900 when Churchill was a cornet (equivalent to today’s second lieutenant) in the 4th Hussars, the 10-verse poem is a tribute to the Empire. The author peppers the poem with the names of remote outposts defending Britain’s interests around the world, many of which he would have visited as a young officer and even fought at, including Weihaiwei in China, Karochaw in Japan and Sokoto in north-west Nigeria. Written in regular iambic tetrameter but with irregular rhymes, the poem exists in a tradition that stretches back to Homer’s Iliad: the soldier waiting impatiently for the battle to begin. As Churchill writes: ‘The silence of a mighty fleet / Portends the tumult yet to be.’
Davids, who says the poem “is by far the most exciting Churchill discovery I have seen”, admits it is merely “passable”.
Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate, goes further, calling it “heavy-footed”. “I didn’t know he wrote poems, though somehow I’m not surprised: oils, walls, why not poems as well?” said Motion. “This is pretty much what one would expect: reliable, heavy-footed rhythm; stirring, old-fashioned sentiments. Except for the lines ‘The tables of the evening meal/Are spread amid the great machines’, where the shadow of Auden passes over the page, and makes everything briefly more surprising.”
Despite its lack of literary virtues, however, the poem written in blue crayon on two sheets of 4th Hussars-headed notepaper was expected to raise between £12,000 to £15,000 when it went on sale in 2013. Its price reflected its rarity: the only other poem known to be penned by Churchill is the 12-verse ‘The Influenza’, which won a House Prize in a competition at Harrow school in 1890 when he was 15. However ‘Our Modern Watchwords’ failed to sell at the auction as bidding never reached the reserve price.
Churchill was well-known for his love of poetry. He won the Headmaster’s Prize at Harrow for reciting from memory Macaulay’s 589-line poem ‘Horatius at the Bridge‘.
Allan Packwood, director of the Churchill Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge, said the wartime prime minister’s interest in poetry spanned the sophisticated to the more earthy: “In his speech accepting freedom of the city of Edinburgh in 1942, he quoted Robert Burns and ended by quoting the music hall entertainer Sir Harry Lauder, who was in the audience. This was no cheap politician’s trick, Churchill was an admirer of Lauder’s.”
By the way, Churchill was well-known for his oratory and repartee, but he wasn’t always the victor. My favourite story involves Richard Haldane in the 1920s. Churchill prodded Haldane’s ample belly and asked “What’s in there?” Haldane answered: “If it is a boy, I shall call him John. If it is a girl, I shall call her Mary. But if it is only wind, I shall call it Winston.”

Photos: https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/churchill-bulletin/bulletin-056-feb-2013/appreciation-the-young-churchill-poem-hints-at-the-rhetorical-greatness-to-come/