In a Mad World~

 

—Poetry by Lynn White, Blaenau Ffestiniog, 

North Wales, UK

—Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland

by Sir John Tenniel

ALL THAT WAS LEFT

Drink me
the label said.
She drank it all,
then threw the bottle aside,
so all that was left were the words.
Eat me
was iced on the cake.
She ate it all,
every last crumb,
Then she licked off the icing
so nothing was left of the words.


(prev. pub. in Flora Fiction, 2020)

 

 

 

 

CERTAIN AND IMPOSSIBLE EVENTS


Age is surely a certainty,
or so Alice had thought,
after all, birthdays are hardly
impossible events,
arriving each year
on the same day,
as they certainly do.

But the Red Queen assured her
that certainty was unnecessary
when it came to determining age.
You are just as old as you feel
and seeing was believing anyway.

So Alice reconsidered her hypothesis.
The older one gets
the more difficult it is to know
for certain, she thought.
How can one judge the wrinkles
under make-up
or Botox.
It was impossible to be certain.

Really, she decided
as she looked through
her looking glass,
age should become one of the six
impossible things to believe
before breakfast.


(prev. pub. in Brave And Reckless, 2022)

 

 

 

 

A QUESTION OF PLACE

‘Who the fuck is Alice?’
said the March Hare
inhaling hard.
‘She’s rather large’,
said Dormouse
coughing
as the smoke ring engulfed him.
‘I find her quite intimidating, actually,
not the little girl I expected.
Really, I hope Hattie
doesn’t invite her
to the party.
I don’t think she would
quite fit in.’
‘You’ll sleep through it anyway’,
said the White Rabbit consulting his watch.
‘It’s time. We should go.’
The March Hare lit another cigarette.
‘We should all change places
if she’s there’ said Dormouse.
The March Hare blew out more
smoke rings.
‘Who the fuck cares if she fits in or not,
in a mad world no one has a place.
Hatter knows that.
He’ll be asking her questions.
He knows the place of madness.’
‘All in good time’,
said the White Rabbit consulting his watch.
‘He’ll ask her who she is’.
‘There’s no answer to that’ said Dormouse.
‘No one knows who they are’.
March Hare lit a cigarette.
‘If she can’t answer Hatter’s question,
then she has no place.
There’s no answer to that’.
‘In time there’ll be an answer’,
said the White Rabbit.
‘In time we’ll know our place.
In time we’ll know the answer to who we are.
Then times will change again’.


(prev. pub. in Tittynope Zine, 2017)

 

 

 

 

SMILE

It was the purr she heard first,
so loud it was almost a growl.
But a dog up a tree?
No, she knew that would be mad!
So she wasn’t surprised to see a cat
when she looked up
and wasn’t surprised to see it smiling.
She expected it to be happy with so loud a purr.
You must be pleased to see me, she thought,
watching it stretch and sleepily curl.
She felt sleepy too so she curled like the cat.
And together they dreamed smiley dreams
until she heard a crash
as the branches broke
and the cat landed heavily in her lap.
Then she woke
to find
the cat had disappeared.
Only the smile remained.
And that weighed nothing at all.


(prev. pub. in Blognostics, 2019)

 

 

 

Lynn White

 

Today’s LittleNip:

We are waves on the ocean, interacting with and affected by all the other waves that move and die and are washed up on the shore. We are each a breath, a song, a flower. We are time itself. . .

—Marc Hamer, Seed to Dust: A Gardener's Story

____________________

—Medusa, welcoming back Lynn White, writing to us all the way from Wales today with her musings on dear Alice~

For “8 Fun Facts about John Tenniel, Illustrator of Alice in Wonderland”, go to www.domestika.org/en/blog/2954-8-fun-facts-about-john-tenniel-illustrator-of-alice-in-wonderland/.

 

 

 

 Dormouse
—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of
Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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