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Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom (@janpsolivagant) · DIRTY

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant

Creator of Solivagant Wisdom Author & Coach #poetry #photography Member of the #PromptCombo Team #introvert #neurodivergent #GenX #DepthPsychology #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity 🚫DM - unless I know/invite you

763 Folgt1.026 Follower7.379 Posts

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Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 16d

A splendid #PromptCombo theme, @emteepoetry.bsky.social! Have a great week! #Poem about #Arachnid #Perseverance #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters, 2025/2024 #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #Symbolism #DarkPoetry #BW #nature

Anchorite and Arachnid

Dark, clammy and cramped,
My world abuts
Moss-fringed, head-heighted heavens.

From my cell’s cardinal points,
Four spiders work away at their webs
Night after night,
Day upon day.

Cunning crafters, they crave no respite.
Their bodies - oiled, grimed, and Engorged -
Warp silk line upon silk line,
Weft sticky spiral after sticky spiral, in
Unyielding rounds of
Self-same prayer threaded
Night after night,
Day upon day, in an
Unslacking orgy of monotony.

Their four webs merge into a
Nexus of gossamer monstrosity.
Their four turgid bottoms romp in the
Dank stench of dust-choked obscurity.

Dew-beaded filaments
Titillate my brow,
Gum up my lashes:
Ashen-white strands -
So light, so soft – like
Fine spittle spun from
Marrow.

With bestial fervour,
Four fat spiders
Cavort, carouse as
One.

Inspired by Пауки (“Spiders”, 1903),
Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945),
Russian Symbolist

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters, 2024

Highly contrasted monochrome image of a large spider's web in early autumn.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 20d

#AmpersandAfterDark #poetryreading #PoemsAloud @coastalpoet.bsky.social #poetry, ©Jan Peters, 2025 Text at start of thread 👆 #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #Symbolism #Dreams #DepthPsychology

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 20d

Thank you @madp03t.bsky.social #AmpersandAfterDark No. 46 #poetry / #photography, ©Jan Peters, 2025/2008 #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #Symbolism #BW #Dreams #DepthPsychology

Dream Conceit

My Dream Self
Compasses lodestar in
Abyssal gasps of
Desert vista.

My Dream Self
Traipses as
Corsac, jerboa,
Saiga, steppenwolf in
Unsifted, pristine wastes.

My Dream Self
Evades the travailing
Caravan cortege;
Spurns the
Drudge of droves.

My Dream Self
Scorns the
Settled servitude to
Custom, caste;
Rankles at
Sedimented
Soul manacles.

Meeting
Kurgan, tumulus,
Rutted gouts of
Ziggurat,

My Dream Self
Stands stone-still,
Addled with brute
Dread.

Twitches ears, flanks.

Lowers its gaze,
Trots away.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Inspired by Моя Mечта
(“My Dream/Vision”, 1895),
Valery Bryusov (1873-1924), Russian Symbolist

©Jan Peters, 2008

Monochrome image of seaweed strewn across Wells Beach in Norfolk at low tide.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 20d

Thank you @yeehawpoems.bsky.social #Cassiopeian #prompt #organize #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters, 2025/2008 #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #nature #BW #fish #ZenGarden #koi

Flocculent

Wool's nano fibres -
Squint and you'll glimpse the dappled
Scales of Samurai

Koi leaping upstream against
Time's current, back to
Eden's hatching pool:

Grandsire of card and
Carp, limpid source of the
Uncreated Mind.

Tasked with this riddle,
Be still! Unbidden, koi will
Line up in unschooled

Tufts - silent promptings that
Clarify the mind's
Thought-tormented waters.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Flocculent: a.) woolly, tufty; b.) possessing a loose, clumping quality

©Jan Peters, 2008

Monochrome image of koi carp lining up in a pond.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Thank you again @coastalpoet.bsky.social #PoemsAloud #newpoem: ©Jan Peters, 2026 - text version #Mermaid & #PatronSaint of #Zennor - possible iteration of #Danae & #Perseus who travel with #Pytheas to #Cornwall #poetrycommunity #poetryreading #PoetsOfBluesky

Zennor Femina

She floats in -
Floats out -
Floats in again with
Tide and time.

Kingly daughter with
God-seeded infant -
Sealed in a wooden chest,
Cast into the Aegean -

Scooped up by a questing
Mariner-astronomer in Marseille,

Dropped off in
Pendour Cove on his
Circuit around Britain.

Breton princess -
Accused of adultery,
Barrelled into the
Narrow Sea while pregnant,

Birthing a future bishop on the
Waves with angelic
Midwife in tow -
She washes up in

Pendour Cove,
From where

She
Lends name and
Saintly patronage to
Zennor Parish.

Later tales in which
She leads parish singer
Mathey Trewella
Astray -

Hewn from that ornate
Bench-end nereid in her
Namesake church.

Venerated by
Local fisherfolk:

All spirit
All flesh -
Mermaid of Zennor.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Thank you again @coastalpoet.bsky.social #PoemsAloud #newpoem: ©Jan Peters, 2026 - text in comments #Mermaid & #PatronSaint of #Zennor - possible iteration of #Danae & #Perseus who travel with #Pytheas to #Cornwall #poetrycommunity #poetryreading #PoetsOfBluesky

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Four Haiku

I
Coy birch tilts leeward:
Twenty-seven summers hence,
Swell of life becalmed.

II
Summer plum lies grooved:
Earth orbits a burgeoning
Star in its death throes.

III
August air unmoved,
Sweat pearling reflexively –
Ape’s emblem of shame.

IV
High summer, damp chill:
John Donne’s Nocturne tempts us with
Its morbid promise.

© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2014

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Thank you @coastalpoet.bsky.social #PoemsAloud Four #Haiku on #Summer - text in the comments ©Jan Peters, 2014 #poetryreading #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #nature

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Thanks to @andyperrincycling.bsky.social host of #vss365 #prompt #tailwind #turn #poem: ©Jan Peters, 2026 #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #Albatross #Vayu #nature #birds #oceans

Albatross Vayu

Bardo binds us in a
Windless high until
Storm frees us into
Wing-flung cloths of
Plumed flesh.

We downwind on
Outward flights into
Creation,
Tacking back into
Blanch-quilled
Homecoming.

We evolve in
Gyrations that spin through
Circuits born of
Ocean lows -
Hightailed south,
Whisked back north on
Antipodal currents.

With no
Headland to shape us,
We sculpt the wind. If

We die, the
Wind dies.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Thanks #emoetry host @mwplovesmusic.bsky.social #Rotten #poem II: ©Jan Peters, 2026 #Bricolage in thought, if not form #Satire #SocialMedia #BrainRot #RosaLuxemburg #Gurus #Grifters #Charlatans #WellnessHack

Rosa Luxemburg Warning
Bricolage

Rosa Luxemburg warned us about the
Vanguard of the Proletariat – its
Top-down stifling of
Critical worker-council thinking.

True Believers branded her stance a
Syphilis-bacillus heresy infecting the
Body politic – and so the

Vanguard won out.

Now
Pretty-boy medics point to a
Trifecta of morning-joe routines that
Silently wreck your health, while

Cap-gowned jock-bods
Scrub up with
Finger-jab exhortations of
“Think again if you’re over fifty.”

Soul-grifter elect with
Lipid-and-prayer fasts to grow back
Stunted telomeres -
Succumbing to sepsis at the
Hands of their trusted
Wellness hack.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 21d

Thanks #emoetry host @mwplovesmusic.bsky.social #Rotten #poem I: ©Jan Peters, 2026 #Bricolage in thought, if not form #Satire #SocialMedia #BrainRot #Covid #Voyager #Cosmos #DeepTime #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky

Cosmic Brain-Rot Bricolage

Infected or not, that
Amorphous entity known as
“Scientists” or “doctors” says our
Brains aged during Covid.

Needless to say,
I was rejuvenated in the
Crucible of that cataclysm:
Poetry galvanized my cerebrum a
Full three years after final lockdown, and
Now I wonder how long I would need to
Travel a whole lightyear before my
DNA gets shredded by
Cosmic rays.

Voyager 1 is shutting down, but its
True purpose is yet to unfurl as it
Silently beelines into the Oort Cloud
Three centuries hence.

Seventy-five millennia pass before
Proxima Centauri finds an
Analogue gold disc emitting
Chilling salutations from
Kurt Waldheim.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· 23d

🙏 to @rfsmith.bsky.social for hosting #PromptCombo #RealPeople #poem: ©Jan Peters, 2025 #London #1960s #FamilyLegend #Autodidact #FrankieHowerd #CampComedy #poetrycommunity

Titter-Bound in Kensington

Taciturn ancestor -
Great-grandsire -
Expires with hardly a stir
Fifty years ago this month.

Many-portalled capsule of
Nested puzzle boxes, he plies the
Discreet, seasoned trade of
Cabinetmaker.

Two distinct early recollections:

Iced silence in a smoke-choked
Company car as his son-in-law
Ferries him to Sunday lunch.
He smirks indulgently, knowingly as
I tell of nocturnal trysts with
Imaginary friends.

Hushed, dark-clad mass in an armchair -
Soft-brimmed fedora rested,
Poised at hand;
Plain suit offset by plain
Campbell-plaid tie – he murmurs, Dismisses with faint wave an
Offer of double cream on his dessert.

Denizened in Pinner, he
Spurns the blandishments of that
Betjeman Metroland suburb.
Pines for London proper;
Gravitates towards West End,
City, Kensington, Chelsea.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Extramural commute to
Lectures at learned societies in
Bloomsbury, Finsbury or Hampstead;
Sought-out talks, shows, tours,
Concerts, recitals at Royal Academies,
Cadogan or Wigmore Halls.

Jobs often take him into town.
He works well into the sixties -
Well into his seventies:
Slow-thaw remission from the
Great Depression, no doubt.

One morning, he calls at a
Terraced townhouse on the
Regency garden square where
Chesterton once thought and wrote.

Frankie Howerd opens the door in his
Negligee.

I’m not going to say it -

Yes, it is a funny place to have a door!

Brows arched, plastered aslant over
Mock-outrage, reproachful peepers;
Finger-jab, skewer-mouthed rebuke:

Titter ye not!

My great-grandparents, Enid & Ernie (or Steve) Margetts, looking enthused at finding themselves on a trip to Great Yarmouth in 1953. Ernie is the subject of this poem.

Camp comic, Frankie Howerd, on "Up Pompeii" in the early 1970s.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jul 13

🙏 @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for this week's #PromptCombo Not sure how to make a #MapPoem out of a #Dimensionless constant, but here goes 🤷‍♂️😁 #newpoem: ©Jan Peters, 2026 #poetrycommunity #WolfgangPauli #QuantumPhysics #Mysticism #Quantenmystik #Death #Riddle

Quantum Riddle

Malignancy
Co-opts his stroma

Terminus:
Red Cross Hospital
Zürich

Room 137

Value:
One over
137

Fine-boned riddle of the
Dimensionless constant

Theory at its most
Vexing:
Solve this and you
Solve everything.

The
Beyond grants him a
Preview:

God
Scribbles manic-paced
Equations on a blackboard.

Patient in Room 137 -
Twitching
Mumbling -
Gasps and
Barks:

Ganz falsch!*

Then
Vanishes into a
Dimensionless constant.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

*German: “Totally wrong”

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jul 10

🙏 @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #PoemsAbout #PowerCut 1987 Great Storm #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters, 2025/2024 #80s #ClimateChange #Shakespeare #GenX #EastAnglia #Chernobyl #BW

The Tempest

Halfway between
Chernobyl and my first
Exercise of suffrage:
Sizewell B, just fourteen miles away,
Prompts loud, lapidary Green to
Spore in the deep, dark midnight of
Tory Blue.

October evening,
Sixth-form outing:
Contemporary Shakespeare,
Theatre Royal.

Tempest:
Inner turmoil, ambition, treachery -
Otherworldly disruption of the
Natural order.

We return home at midnight
To soft rain. The air is still,
Sultry for an autumn night,
As if the season
Has sapped its own strength;
As if the season
Has hollowed itself out from the inside.

4am
Pitch and yaw of a
House far out at sea.
Walls vibrate.
Unearthly howls:
Souls in agony
Circumambulating,
Seeking succour,
Scratching at double-glazed sills.

Whipcrack-flash of
Power lines striking the ground.

Daylight whisks in,
Softening the storm to a
Mere gale.
I peer out the window:

Copper-topped and bristled
Head of the Troubled One,
To whom I give wide berth,
Slices prow-like through the
Choppy headwind.

We venture out.
Cars, phone boxes,
Post boxes,
Annexes
Crushed under
Toppled cedar,
Sycamore,
Oak.

Spire adorning the town’s
Private school -
Cracked,
Crooked,
Doomed to collapse.

Neighbour’s wall
Lurches, dissolves, nearly
Smothers my sister.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Countryside:
Birnam Wood battalions,
Squadrons, platoons
Decapitated, decimated -

Macheted – or
Mangled.
Shredded by
Volley upon volley of
Round shot.

Tunstall Forest -
Annihilated.

Power returns
Intermittently, but the
Windscreen-wiper motors on the
Family car conk out.

Driving home in rain,
Patches of Ipswich,
Woodbridge,
A12 with the
Lights still out.

Pair of Mum’s old tights
Attached to the wipers,
Now hand-operated by
Driver and front-seat passenger.

Wisecracks ripple through the car.
Wisecracks ripple through the
Brightening air -
Toppling a laconic
Candle.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters, 2024

Monochrome image of uprooted tree next to a boardwalk in the Harz National Park in Germany

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jul 7

#PromptCombo #Bestiary How #Cormorants inspired #ParadiseLost & may have tricked #Tiresias 😁 #newpoem / #photography: ©Jan Peters, 2026 #poetrycommunity #birds #mythology #JohnMilton #Hera #Athena #prophecy

Bald Raven Hoodwink

Each bird knows and
Returns to its spot on the
Gunwale.

They cough up their
Catch with no more
Impetus than a good
Feed in the aftermath.

Dutch merchants
Import them from China for
Sport in England and France.

Bald-raven greed
Aligns with monarchic
Perquisite as kings watch them
Fish on ponds at Fontainebleau or
Hunt-dive from bankside skiffs at
Westminster.

Jacobean Master of the
Royal Cormorants
Hoodwinks these birds,
Takes them –
Blindfolded – from their
Park enclosure down to the
Thames near Millbank.

Nocturnal hoots and
Guttural purrs shadow the
Sighted dreams of one
Nested among Huguenots.

Later, as
Blind bard, he thinks upon these
Oil-dark birds as
Fallen Angels alighting on
Edenic branches, devising
Death to those that live.

Rippling in
Snakeskin-plumed robes, they
Coil-plait head and neck,
Hoodwinking that
Shepherd-nymph scion who
Sees them couple as serpents and
Strikes them with his staff.

Displeased,
Hera turns him into
Whore and matronly
Hierophant.

Impudent -
Blinded by Hera,
Blinded by Athena – he, she

Models sightless
Prophecy for one who
Mulls Puritan collapse in
Petty France.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

NOTE: Ancient Greek - φαλακρός (phalakros) "bald" and κόραξ (korax) "raven", hence Phalacrocorax, the scientific name for this particular genus of cormorant.

©Jan Peters, 2026

Cormorant couple on frosted ground at the edge of a reeded pond in February.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jul 5

Many thanks to @jenthorne.bsky.social for her excellent 1st #PromptCombo last week. This week's theme is #Bestiary: beasts real & imagined Use hashtags & tag @janpsolivagant.bsky.social to take part. Ends Friday noon #poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #PoetsOfBluesky

Lepus

Speed, fright and eyes
Pelt-bundled at birth out of
Earth-shoal cavities -

Gloam-shifted as inkblot
Entities -
We lope and feed under
Disquieted skies.

Ears gold or snow-tipped at
Moonglow and sun-ember,
We are the all-seeing hare
Unseen. They say we

Change sex at will:
Bucks spar on March tufts;
Does hook-jab at ill-timed,
Unwelcome advances. In

Low-curved sable and
Russet shadows, we
Crouch as loam-bound
Moulds.

Vagrants or poachers,
Mistaking us for rock-clods,
Step too close.

We spring at their feet in an
Ambush of clawed herbage:

Instant captured in that
Romanesque apse-frieze where
We bind the miscreant or
Prime them for execution -
Tugging in tandem at their ousted
Numbles.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

12th-century apse frieze depicting menacing, oversized hares capturing & tying up a hunter/poacher, and/or disembowelling him. Dog (sheep?) in the bottom right corner looks nonplussed.

Imperial Cathedral, Königslutter am Elm, Germany

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jun 29

Have a great 1st week hosting & thanks @jenthorne.bsky.social #PromptCombo #Monument #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2022 #LostPlaces #Communism #80s #UsefulIdiots #DDR #EastGermany #Ukraine #USSR #Holodomor

Cathedral
2022 – 1985 – 1932

I
Borne like that Biblical anti-hero through Behemoth’s
Canyon lumina, I explore the desiccated hull of Utopia. On an
Early evening in April, the shell of the Grand Hall glows –
Tremulous, unearthly – but not with prayers.

Graffiti - like stigmata – a garbled, posthumous intimation of
Lust and wrath, hushed and quashed –
Thoughts entertained in secreto – by
Youngsters, forty years ago, at their Jugendweihe:
Coming-of-age confirmation of their
Future role as cannon, institute, and factory-fodder;
Class snitches and lickspittles
Shortlisted as potential informants and operatives. Or, of the

Clenched curses of an ancient apparatchik in the treatment room,
Saltwater-flushed to quicken sluggish bowels,
Sibilant in his disdain for the
Moony foreign peaceniks from
Berkeley, Islington, Liverpool and the Left Bank,
Fêted and rhapsodized that afternoon in the Grand Hall.

II
Sandalistas, as they’re known in Nicaragua, recalled at lunch
Gagging on lymph-node Bratwurst - stunned fingertips
Flicking reflexively from conductive, cheap-alloy
Spoons dipped in hot tea; or
Bitching about the flimsy, brittle toilet-seat lid that
Snapped under foot while
They towelled themselves that morning.

Karl Marks, they quip, like amused parents, as they weigh up the
Featherlight Toytown notes and coins in their palms.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Later that evening at the disco, they deposit large
Goethe-faced denominations in the solidarity kitty for
Daniel Ortega, eliciting

Gold-capped, grimaced grins of contempt and rebuke from
Minor functionaries and spa-resort workers.

III
These Sandalistas remind the apparatchik of that
International Man of Letters on his
State visit to Moscow, fifty-odd years before:
Unworldly Fabian, beard of Marx or Old Testament patriarch,
Abounding in bon mots about Wilde and Whistler,
Plied with caviar, pelmeni, Georgian wine, cigars and
Armenian brandy.

While the nations starved under
Forced collectivization -
Holodomor.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022

Graffiti-strewn ruin of the main function room of the East German spa resort, FDGB Fritz Heckert

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022

Graffiti-strewn ruin of one of the cavernous corridors in the East German spa resort, FDGB Fritz Heckert

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jun 22

Thank you @emteepoetry.bsky.social & enjoy hosting your 1st #PromptCombo #Beach 😊 #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2021 #Norfolk #Doggerland #Coast #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #Hunstanton #Chalk #Apocalypse

Layer-Cake Cliffs

Apocalypse as riddle and paradox:
Softened, subdued – yet all the more
Lurid and luminous for that.
West-prospecting
East Coast resort where
Chalk - rising as monumental outcrop in the
West near Lyme Regis -
Sets here in the
East as layer-cake blazon and herald of
Doggerland’s drowned demesne.

Escarpments white-thronging
Weald or Wessex hundreds in pincer patterns -
Daring to outshine even the
Sun at its noonday zenith - are
Humbled and sieved here into sandy, flinty
Talcum-powder toppings of
Grass-laden topsoil that furnish
Roman-villa bathhouses and
Apothecaries with
Lavender and allium.

Albion, Elfydd, visible Upper World,
Pushed up, compressed, flattened by the
Gingerbread-rising,
Lower-cretaceous Underworld,
Readied for dissolution into that
Marine Otherworld whose
Spectral relics, espied as
Sandbanks on the horizon, now lie
Prone and pin-cushioned by
Pious, cross-boughed windfarms,

Awaiting the Revelation, which

Arrived here in 1847.

© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2021

Layer-Cake Cliffs overlooking The Wash in Hunstanton, Norfolk

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jun 16

🙏 @rfsmith.bsky.social #PromptCombo Stories that #Defined #Bloomsday Part II #poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026 #poetrycommunity #JamesJoyce #Ulysses #Circe #Dedalus #writingcommunity Et voila, @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social

Introibo

Ashplant upright, he
Intones Introibo ad Altare Dei,
Entering the
Paschal mystery enacted in
Tridentine Masses.

Ashplant supine upon the
Pianola, he
Intones empty-open fifths:
Remotest point from the
Tonic before return,
Outermost point of
Departure from the base -
Nadir-pinnacle of the
Sun’s annual journey.

Mary weeps beneath the
Mandrake rootstock of Golgotha.

Birth-death hours
Meet in the Great Mother who
Immolates her Divine Child for the
Good of creation.

Mother alert with care and pity,
Festooned with skulls – the
Once-beautiful May Goulding
Believes her son’s soul is lost;

She chills him with her
Damp-ash breath - with
Love’s bitter mystery
Trickled in green rills from
Death-rattled lips.

God’s blackened, withered
Arm clutches his
Breast with malignant,
Red-eyed pincers.

Ashplant raised, he
Cries non serviam;

Ashplant swung,
He smashes a
Whorehouse chandelier.

Time’s livid
Gas jet expires.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Partly inspired by the “Circe” episode in
James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jun 16

Thanks @rfsmith.bsky.social for hosting this week's #PromptCombo. Stories that #Defined #Bloomsday #poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026 #poetrycommunity #JamesJoyce #Ulysses #Circe #writingcommunity

Virag Emmanuel

Virag
Nocturne-sojourns in the
Bilge-swill pigsty of his
Half-forgotten
Shame and fantasy.

His
Potato-pocketed
Moly lifted -

Virag
Beholds the bordello
Queen who, brandishing
Cigar and billowing in breeches,
Christens him
Dung-devourer in
Virago baritones.

Virag
Now gilt-piglet,
Scurries under the sofa –
Peeking out from the
Nadir of her degradation.

Nymph above the
Conjugal bed scolds him for
Lusting after her, then

Disintegrates;

Bello turns back into
Bella -

Inner-world eons
Pass in an instant.

Virag – in his
Gerasene demoniac -
Seeks release for
Unclean ghosts who

Enter a great herd of
Swine feeding by the
Sea of Galilee.

Circe turns
Swine back into men -
Now younger,
Now stronger.

Virag begets Bloom.

Virag - whose
Name shall be
Emmanuel -
Suffers execution.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Inspired by the “Circe” episode of
James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jun 8

Many Thanks @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for this week's #PromptCombo #NothingMakesSenseNowadays #poem / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2024 #CW #Suicide #AntiSemitism #Jaccuse #Magdeburg #Stolperstein #poetry

Magdeburg Stolperstein
Dedicated to the memory of
Sophie Masting (née Reiß), 1894-1934

I
Some liken suicide to
Awakening from the
Nightmare of being cast
Arbitrarily into existence:
Accident of birth, culture,
Zeitgeist, circumstance
Redeemed by an unassailable
Title to one’s own life and person.

Sophie Masting flieht in den Freitod:
Choiceless choice disingenuously
Couched in “death freely chosen.”

Her first, last time in the
Cathedral. From afar, sexton glimpses
Her distressed expression, goes to help.
She disappears into the North Tower
Stairwell.

She fears her body, chained to
Ancient instinct, will recoil at the flight.
Fears the unbearable ease of release.
Fears her body, falling “thirty-two
Feet per second, per second,” will not be
Enough to knock her out.

Saint Catherine, Cathedral Patroness -
Protectress of housewife, shoemaker -
Divests Sophie’s kind of Her
Beneficence. Masting shoe shops, Magdeburg institutions: now
Boycotted, besieged by brownshirt mobs. Kauft nicht beim Juden! Moves Sanctioned, no doubt, by hand-wringing,
Upstanding citizenry.

II
Saint Catherine’s statue:
Emblematic of other accidents of birth,
Rendered sympathetically, highlighting
Intelligence and benevolence.

Saint Maurice, Cathedral Patron:
Mighty knight-martyr, arrayed in Chainmail – groundbreaking
Depiction of an African in European art.

From the same thirteenth century,
Ten Virgins - fine-featured Wise Five,
Forlorn Foolish Five -
Adorn the transept’s Paradise Gate.

Entering from the north into the
Transept’s Ernestine Chapel, a
Grotesque Judensau greets you.

Caricature bodying forth false claims that Jews suckle as piglets do on sows’ teats: Inhuman propaganda meant to stoke Revulsion, disdain against a people Deemed in league with the Devil.

Pogroms, deportations follow two
Centuries hence. Magdeburg maintains Its Judenfrei status for the next
Three hundred years.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

III
Nowadays, the Patristic lesson on the
Five Foolish Virgins is long
Forgotten.

Nowadays, the
Well-intentioned Foolish Five
Neglect to test whether their actions
Reflect a proper discernment of
Divine Grace.

Nowadays, the
Road to Hell is torchlit by the
Virtues of these Five Foolish Ones.

With
Dissonance abutting derangement,
Progressive-regressive Weltverbesserer
Delight at the spectacle of latter-day
Pogroms played out in real time over GoPro, quadbike and hang glider: the
Ancient Hatred made palatable –
Delectable even – to legions of
Triggered vegans.

With
Zombie snarl-hiss of
Slander spored and spun out of the
Doctors’ Plot, they worry the
Carcass of a long-interred imperial Autocracy, greedily sucking on thumbs Steeped in the putrid brain of its long-Spurned ideology.

Their
Rancorous ignorance
Drunk as black milk from the
Sow’s
Cold,
Hard,
Hind
Tit.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

NOTES:
1. Flieht in den Freitod -
lit. “flees into free death“, i.e. suicide.
2. Kauft nicht beim Juden -
“Don’t buy from the Jew“
3. Judenfrei – “Jew free“
4. Weltverbesserer – “do-gooders“, “idealists“

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024

Monochrome image of memorial stone to Sophie Masting

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024

Image of 13th-cent. statues, "Wise & Foolish Virgins", at either side of the Paradise Gate of Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· Jun 3

#PromptCombo #MaidenVoyage #poetry #poetrycommunity "Part II"/Sequel - long, but I'm telling you a story #Yugoslavia #Zagreb #Jugoslavija #Tito #Croatia #Bosnia #80s #90s #GenX Of interest maybe to @jenthorne.bsky.social @emteepoetry.bsky.social

Leslie Caron in Zagreb, 1989

Visiting the Confidante,
We are greeted by a bubbling beck of
Kindness, soft-cheeked smiles, giggles, Modishly bobbed, black curls – and
No English or German.

We converse -
My worldly friend interprets.
In the background:
Snatches of Lili on TV - enchantingly Mawkish fifties Hollywood
Chick flick with
Leslie Caron as suicidal ingénue.
Homeless, heartbroken,
Unwittingly confessing to the carnival Puppeteer – a wounded, embittered
Veteran – through his four puppets:
Brash, Sly, Prima Donna, and
Craven Giant.

I’m puzzled as to why I should recall this.
Perhaps the answer lies with the
Six Feet Under episodes I watch
Years later:

TV as sounding board for the
Subconscious,
Echoing inner conflicts, grief, anxiety – Now a foreshadowing, now an
Ironic counterpoint.

Our conversation shifts to Bosnia.
My friend talks of relatives, cousins
Stockpiling weapons, with or without
Official connivance, since the end of
World War Two.

I respond with a Peter Ustinov anecdote.
My friend interprets:
Tito hosts a state banquet, with his

Old comrade-in-arms,
Džemal Bijedić, in tow.

Now Prime Minister, the burly
Bosnian Muslim, seated beside the US Ambassador, regales her with tales of Partisan exploits in the Dinaric Alps -
Rips apart the main course with his bare Hands, speaks with his mouth full.

Tito, seated opposite, glares, hisses:
Bijedić!

Bijedić, wiping greasy fingers on his Lapels, continues to
Slurp, slobber, smack his lips.
Bijedić! Nož!*

Bijedić grabs the cheese knife:
Tko?~

Girl with the bobbed, black curls
Roars with laughter, then coolly:

Usput, ja sam Bošnjakinja.*~

Oh God, have I put my foot in it?

She chuckles warmly, shakes her curls.

Our gaze shifts to a key scene in the
Denouement of Lili, in which
Leslie Caron takes her leave of the Puppets.
They tremble, on the verge of tears.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Angry, bitter puppeteer can’t tell
Her how he feels.

Teenagers on the cusp of womanhood,
They sigh and coo.

We take our leave of the Confidante.

She enfolds me in a warm hug, squeezes
My arm.

Worldly friend and I drift apart.
I move through Berlin, Turkey,
Poland, the Middle East, end up at University in North London.

1992
Conflict within a conflict.
Croat-Muslim War erupts in Bosnia.
Slurs traded between Balije and Ustaše.
Croats blow up Stari Most.

In Donji Ahmići, civilians fleeing across
Fields are picked off by sharpshooters.
Agony of flames for those left at home.

I often wonder what became of those Girls: the
Worldly One, the Confidante,
Friendship – theirs, ours.

One of them is alive,
Thriving.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

*Knife
~Who?
*~ “By the way, I’m Bosnian.”

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 31

Hi folks! This week's #PromptCombo is #MaidenVoyage Formative travel experiences - those that left an indelible mark, transformed your understanding of the world etc. Hashtags👆& tag @janpsolivagant.bsky.social to take part Ends Thursday noon! #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #PoetsOfBluesky

Zagreb Elegy

We bond over
Letters:
Shared passion for
Language, literature - the
Life of the Mind;
Shared cache of quotes from
Python, Blackadder, ‘Allo ‘Allo.

The Girl from Zagreb -
Polyglot, worldly beyond her
Eighteen years, working-class -
Eclipsing with ease the churchy,
Would-be Oxbridge crop of a
Suffolk sixth form.

Her neat, feminine hand,
My barely legible scrawl:
Aghast at Tiananmen Square,
Elated at the Fall of the
Berlin Wall.

Maiden Voyage, December 1989:
Sleeper via Milan to stay with her
In Hrvatska*, Yugoslavia.
Melee of Laibach, Gastarbeiter**,
Hyperinflation,
Hand-milled coffee and MTV.

Goli Otok, Adriatic Alcatraz,
Abandoned that very year.
Bratstvo, jedinstvo i suživot~ -
Dried husks crumbling into tinder.

My friend’s university ID:
Latin and Croatian arrayed in
Solemn columns -
Zagreb folding back into the
Bulwark of Christendom.

One morning, dark-clad,
Sombre, she absents herself.

High-school comrade,
Bosnian Muslim girl, has
Taken her own life. Later,
My friend, dejected, recalls the
Mother’s blank-eyed, flint-faced
Parting words:
Možda će joj Bog oprostiti -
Maybe
God will forgive her.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

*Croatia
** Foreign or migrant workers (German)
~ Brotherhood, Unity, and Coexistence

1980s advert for JAT Yugoslav Airlines in Croatian

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 29

🙏 @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #EarnTheRight Adolescent communication issues - possible #neurodivergence #poetry: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026 #EastAnglia #80s #MentalHealth #Suffolk #Framlingham

Word Salad

I
Language as
Superpower – and
Nemesis in my
Formative years.
Gifted with words, the
Fitness of words
Trips me up.

My
Vocab is
Rich and
Sophisticated – but
Sore matters
Hamper
Speaking and
Writing clearly.

Words come
Adrift of their
Consensual, conventional
Moorings. Then by
Seventeen, they
Warp and decay into
Absurd, turgid
Drivel.

Write like this at
University, and
You’ll be out to
Lunch by the end of the
First Term!

Or:

Maybe it’s a
Heart and not a
Head thing, Jan.

Well-meaning teacher
Seeks to
Warn me with
Tales of a pupil from the
Previous decade.

II
He barely leaves his
Village, except to
Attend secondary school.

Sprung from
Farmworker hovels on the
North Suffolk plateau that only
Get indoor plumbing after
Anglia switches to colour,

He grows up without
Television.

Mother has high hopes for him:

He hint never bin to Fram* before, but
He hev bin to Peasenhall.

Sheet-white livid,
Riveted to his seat, he sees
Banquo’s ghost when the
Head of English reads out
Macbeth in class.

He is
Promising, but for an
Odd, stubborn habit:

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 25

Thanks @dragonslayerma.bsky.social for this great #PromptCombo #Prayer 🙏 #newpoem / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026/2023 #poetrycommunity #hesychia #quiet #silence #contemplation #meditation #scienceandpoetry

Hesychia

Stillness as
Surplus – not absence,
Never wanting to be
Riven;

Stillness as
Scope within
Thought and sound;

Stillness as
Source beyond
Thought and sound;

Stillness waxed from
Limbic-lizard roots in the
Brain-self;

Stillness sprung and
Ripened from founts of
Laugh, howl, moan, sob,
Curse and climax:

Dwelling with
Dive reflex in the
Subcortical sump -

Rising to lighter air through
Columns bubbled up from
Puckered lips.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Hesychia (Greek) –
“Stillness”, “Quiet”, “Rest” or “Silence”

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2023

Image of small rowing boat moored at the river's edge with the setting sun reflected on the water.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 18

🙏 @daveashleypoet.bsky.social #PoetsOfDoom #Sea #blankverse #poetry & #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 @jenthorne.bsky.social @sonnetsmith.bsky.social @phylogeneticsteve.bsky.social #Waves #IndoEuropean #Etymology #poetrycommunity

Waves

Vague waves,
Washed in the same wellspring as
Vogue, wagon and way.
Indo-European core
Collapsing particles of

Perception into
Surges that rise from the sun-glazed
Pontic-Caspian Steppe:
Proto-tongue cleaving sound from the
Constricting mouth of

Thingness.
Ceaseless-motion patterns that arise,
Peak, decay and dissolve.
Kurgans in the
Yamnaya heartland swelling into

Booms that billow abroad -
Breaching Caucasus,
Hindu Kush, Horse Latitude,
Tian Shan, Zagros and Ararat;
Shoals on Hittite plateaus that

Surf-scour Hellespont;
Liquid light that laps the
Shore-blessed -
Foaming, frothing into breathy, sibilant
Llŷr and Lleu, half-speech and sage.

In Ultima Thule,
Offspring waves, sea-god spouses,
Send out Norse daughters,
Nine sea-road kennings –
“Comber”, “Bloody-Hair” and
“Limpid-Lifting” among them to Raid Frankish hearths.
Agreeing not to sack Paris, they
Settle down in the land of
Camembert and Calvados.

And yet, their whitecapped
Heart-speech eddies up the
Seine to very Paname,
Haunting the cinematic
Dreamscapes of Nouvelle Vague, or

Rippling, as the
Shock of the New, through the pages of Vogue – Inviting us, like
Selkies, to become
Waves again.

Our particles diffused in slumber -
Breath’s ebb and flow, ebb and flow
Plotting night’s progress -
We ride the crests of dreams and
Slide down into deep-sleep troughs:

Ripples, eddies, waves that
Arise, peak, decay and
Dissolve, back into the
Still, boundless waters of
Being.

©Jan Peters, 2025

NOTES
Kurgan: type of tumulus constructed over a grave, often characterized by containing a single human body along with grave vessels, weapons, and horses. Originating in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, 3rd millennium BCE
Yamnaya: late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers, dating to 3300-2600 BCE
Llŷr and Lleu: Mabinogi, Welsh mythology. Llŷr is primarily known as a god of the sea. Full name Llŷr Llediaith, Llediaith meaning 'half¬ speech' or 'half-language'. Lleu Llaw Gyffes, hero-god known for his skillful hands.
Sea-god spouses: Aegir, a giant, is the personification of the sea itself, known for hosting the gods in his hall and his relationship with the sea goddess Ran. Ran, also a giant, is the wife of Aegir and is associated with the sea's depths and the drowning of sailors.
Paname: French slang term for Paris

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Image of overcast sky and ocean on the Central Portuguese coast.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 18

Have a great week, @rfsmith.bsky.social #PromptCombo #Home 🙏 #2For1 #poems & #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 #BW #poetrycommunity #Spock #StarTrek #Odyssey #LeonardCohen #Judaism #Zen #Kleos #Nostos #LiveLongAndProsper

Amok Time I:
Birkat Kohanim

Raised hand,
Palm forward,
Thumb extended,
Fingers parted between
Ring and Middle.

Live Long and Prosper:
Practiced gesture that
Pits dexterity – manual,
Moral – against the
Innate intensity of
Vulcan-human emotion,
Mastered, corralled for the
Good of the species.

Spock melts down,
Must mate or die – Pon Farr.
Enterprise changes course for
Vulcan Ithaca. Spock,
Stranger to himself at home,
Debuts the Salutation in
Amok Time, second-season
Premiere.

Birkat Kohanim.
Priestly benediction -
Thumbs touching,
Raised hands form
Overlapping window lattices
Scattering the light of
Magic-lantern melds and
Jump-cuts:
Displacement, exile and
Homecoming.

Forces centrifugal,
Centripetal:
Kleos, Nostos
Wanderlust, Nostalgia.

From
Litvak to Lemba,
Salonica to Samarkand,
Storied strands
Entwine, untwine the
Chromosomal caduceus:
Aaron’s Rod.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Amok Time III:
Shin Zazen

Doyen of
Montreal’s coffee-house darlings -
Acid-dropped Hermit of Hydra -
He dwells among Arvanites whose
Forebears flee Ottoman oppression.

Later, ordained Silent One,
He waits hand and foot on the Roshi.

Hearing of his plight,
Chabadniks set out to rescue the
High Priest from Mount Baldy.

They bring whisky.

His Channukah candles guttering,
They mellow to his zazen as
Contemplative tuning fork.

Drunk and humbled, they depart,
Happy that he still holds fast to
Aaron’s Rod.

Middle and Ring parted
Pull us away from our centre,
Into
Kleos, Wanderlust.

Thumbs touching
Pull us back to our centre,
Into
Nostos, Homecoming.

The
Name peeks through the
Latticework of the letter Shin:

Shin of Shaddai -
Almighty, Unknowable;

Shin of Shekhinah -
Her Presence
Dwelling within and without us,
Strangers to ourselves in
Amok Time.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Monochrome image of Kohanim hands on a gravestone in a Jewish cemetery in Germany.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 13

@thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social, your #DoCollageAndBricolagePoem #PromptCombo has inspired another #poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026 😅 #Covid #Brainrot #DeepTime #Cosmos #Voyager #ScienceAndPoetry #poetrycommunity #DeepSpace

Cosmic Brain-Rot Bricolage

Infected or not, that
Amorphous entity known as
“Scientists” or “doctors” says our
Brains aged during Covid.

Needless to say,
I was rejuvenated in the
Crucible of that cataclysm:
Poetry galvanized my cerebrum a
Full three years after final lockdown, and
Now I wonder how long I would need to
Travel a whole lightyear before my
DNA gets shredded by
Cosmic rays.

Voyager 1 is shutting down, yet its
True purpose is unfurling as it
Silently beelines into the Oort Cloud
Three centuries away.

Seventy-five millennia pass before
Proxima Centauri finds an
Analogue gold disc emitting
Chilling salutations from
Kurt Waldheim.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 11

Have a great week, @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social #PromptCombo. My #DoCollageAndBricolagePoem braids social-media snippets into my own #GenX brain dumps on the #zeitgeist #poetry: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026 #Satire #70s #CultureWars #Maoism #GenZ

Outcast at 55

From Get Carter at the start of the decade to Nosferatu at the end, the
Seventies were a cinematic riot of bleakness and cynicism.

Yeah, but that’s precisely why it’s my favourite decade.

Gen-X Outcast? Just stop! Your supplements are making you worse!
Leaky brain is a thing.

Mercury is not what you think. We are not from Earth, and the proof was always there.

Kenny Everett recognised a fellow Mercurian when he met Cleo Rocos for the first time.

“He’s been cancelled, and should’ve really been cancelled back in 1978,”
They declare through clenched teeth and buttocks. Our current zeitgeist needs more
Kenny Everetts, not fewer – their anarchic spirit and zero-fucks-given attitude are sorely Missing these days.

I will concede, though, that these Gen-Z moral crusaders have a point or two, but
Collectively they’re a latter-day Angry of Mayfair: the type of self-righteous,
Pearl-clutching outrage at the Permissive Society exhibited by my maternal grandfather.

The first victims of the Cultural Revolution – they stood up to Mao in 1958, eight years Before it all kicked off.

I refuse to age gracefully.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom@janpsolivagant· May 8

Thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #NamesNotNumbers #poetry: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 Out all day - will catch up #WorkingClassHistory #DHLawrence #Ancestry #poetrycommunity #PoetsOfBluesky

Horace

Mother misses him, though
They never meet.
He departs
Ten years before she
Arrives.

Her absent grandfathers:
One gets a whiff of mustard gas as
Medical orderly in 1917,
Marking him out for
Midwinter infarction some
Thirty years hence.

This one we’re not sure about:
Kidney disease?
Late complications from a
Mining accident?
He dies young at forty-six.

Colliery life plots the
Bloodline, but stops there.
His father is farrier who
Ministers to pit ponies in an
Amber Valley hamlet.

Across the county line, in a
Neighbouring village,
Miner sires a frail prodigy,
Earmarked for erudition,
Notoriety, and an early
Death at forty-four.

Near-contemporaries,
They could be body doubles:
Slim build, fair hair.

1912 or thereabouts, my
Great-grandsire, Horace, then
Twenty-one:
Pictured with fiancée,

Elsie – both
Paragons of
Edwardian propriety.

He is young Lawrence before that
Trademark
Eugenicist-hipster beard appears; before
Eloping that very year with Frieda, his
Former tutor’s wife.

Horace stays true to Elsie, to
Death:
His rich inner life unlived –
Funnelled now, in my
Imagination, through that
Vivid, consumptive frame, that
Fecund, frenzied intellect.

Horace – timekeeper, season’s sentinel,
Carpe Diem’s Etruscan archetype:
Questing escape and renewal in Tuscany, Sardinia, New Mexico, Kangaroo.

Its raw natural beauty stuns him, but
Australia dismays Lawrence with its Egalitarian recklessness, its dearth of Inner meaning.

Horace sires two girls, one of whom
Births a Ten-Pound-Pom daughter,
Drawn to New South Wales by its
Homespun abundance, its
Dearth of airs – of
“Meaning.”

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

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