Scared
First published in Cajun Mutt Press, March 2021
They scared me as a child,
those scenes of madness in Jane Eyre
with the wild hair and ripped wedding veil.
And for years after I was still afraid
in the wakeful night
even though by then
I’d come to understand her,
to sympathise with her situation
still it scared me,
scarred me even,
the memory of those scenes.
Then there was Psycho.
I was only fifteen
but looked older.
I was my friends ticket
to all the horror movies.
After Psycho, shower cubicles
would have made me uneasy
if they had existed in 1960s Britain.
Fortunately they didn’t so the fear
of knives and blood slashing and splashing
lacked context and was less.
Next came the vampires
occupying my dreams
along with the triffids, the monsters,
the demons and the possessed.
They all stacked up
until
all of a sudden
the magic was gone
and they were just movies,
laughable
almost.
Ubiquity
First published in Lion And Lilac Arts, Issue 13, Spring 2023
I remember the days
before colour.
Days of
sepia
staged
photos
or films
jerky with
black, white
and shades of grey.
Only the canvas bled
out its oily red blood.
Colour is ubiquitous now
but still we bleed the same.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award.