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@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #NoFuture

#poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2022

Worth another outing, I guess

#LostPlaces #GhostTown #Monochrome #UrbanDecay #Architecture #ImageAndVerse

Zeitz

Parasitic twin coughed up by Detroit,
Pygmy royal seat in Mitteleuropa bodies forth the
Nerves, fascia, viscera of Hel – doomed child of the Trickster Knave -
Half comely maiden, half corpse mouldering, who
Presides over the underworld that bears her name.

But no monstrous symmetry to be found here as in the
Pulchritude-to-putrefied ratio proffered by
Mythology; rather, isolated nodes of
Health and vitality – Schloss and Old Town Square – in an
Organism otherwise riddled with necrosis.

Thirty thousand souls. Dead? Lost?
Sequestered in crevices and lesions of the
Scabrous facades? Or cowering unseen in the
Shadows, fearful that the vernal splendour of this
Saturday afternoon in April will obliterate them?

Processional artery linking Schloss and Old Town,
Choked with exhaust fumes, Rahnestrasse airs its
Moth-eaten medley ranging from Baroque to Art Nouveau:
Abandoned society beauties out of some Gothic romance, still dressed in their
Mouldering finery as they languish into vexed, bewitched dotage.

Disgorged time capsule from that moment four decades ago when a
Doddering regime paraded its moribund state in
Appalling scenes of neglect, whole cities lurching into decrepitude,
Swathed in corrosive fogs of blue and yellow smoke.

No death mask fixing us with its waxen stare, rather

Fragments of rare isotopes
Decaying over half-lives as yet
Undetermined.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022

Monochrome image of decrepit former shopfront. Peeling paint reveals layers of historical sign painting.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022

Monochrome image of decrepit facade of multi-storey 19th-century townhouse.

November 28, 2025 at 6:14 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social #PromptCombo
Out of season & they nest under #eaves, rather than #OnRoofs, but fits, I guess. 😁

#poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#swifts #swallows #NaturePoem #BirdPoem #poetrycommunity #bskypoetry

Swifts, Swallows

Swifts, swallows: ghostly
Doubles meeting at Whitsun -
Sky god’s full-throated

Season echoing the
Abyss. Forebear tongues and
Sagas revelled in

Whirlpools and swallies,
Devoured by the sweeping,
Churning presences

Glimpsed in sky and sea.

Swifts, swallows: ghostly doubles,
Aerial nomads,

Custodians of
Ancient songlines etched with a
Thumbtack of neurons.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

November 24, 2025 at 8:56 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #DogTags

#newpoem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#WarTrauma #FamilyTrauma #ancestry #WBYeats #20Century #snafu #fubar #aviation #prosepoem #vegemite #RoaldDahl

$Collateral Relative ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 “No Parachutes!”, Decree the Brass Hats, mindful that pilots all too readily bail out of those Newfangled pyre-caskets, ash-framed and taut with doped linen fabric. In frostbite, sun-scorched high heavens, he sits astride a Dolphin - Mired and bloodied from dogfights with pods of Fokkers above Flanders. Lateral ancestor, collateral relative – Great War Flying Ace with DFC before twenty – his hometown rag credits him with eight kills. Life prospects capped at days, weeks, minutes - He swoons at settling down with Gladys in a cottage near the Solent. Son – Second War Flying Ace with DFC before twenty - Like Robert Gregory, meeting his fate aged thirty-seven, Somewhere among the clouds above Lincolnshire, forty years hence. Navigator on Canberra jet bomber bound for Malta, his Arm broken on exit fails to pull the ripcord. Back in 1919, with Croix de Guerre pinned to his chest by King Albert, Lateral ancestor maladapts to the loss of friends and comrades who Fireball out of the sky before they can even enter combat. Mystery of skull fractured at 1923 mess party. Drunken brawl? Chair, bottle, paperweight smashed over his head? Monumental concussion, contusion tipping him, not into creativity like Roald Dahl, but into Intelligence; into unmapped deserts west of Basra; into three years with the Bedouin; into Searing heat and sandstorms; into flies, revolting food and foul water; Into OBE, Wing Commander and Air Commodore; into Chief Intelligence Officer; into Monumental fuckup in Far East Command. Now Brass Hat, he Transfers his nephew, my grandfather, from Eastcote to the Dutch East Indies. Freshly-minted mathematician, aviation nut, clever young chap, my Grandfather becomes NCO tasked with constructing radar stations on Java. Vital equipment gets relocated to the Middle East. They improvise with aircraft crates and tapped Civilian telephone networks - …$ $They warn the Brass Hats, who wave all this “newfangled nonsense” aside. As the island is overrun, they give an hour’s notice of the enemy’s approach – all To no avail. Uncle Brass Hat Delivers his nephew - collateral relative - into Japanese captivity: Mosquitos, meagre food, foul water, monsoon rains; Beriberi, cots on beaches or in runway ditches awash with dysentery shit; Forced labour, beatings, killings. Seven months of fortnightly malaria bouts Mark him out as a “goner”, but my grandfather pulls through. Crammed onto two wooden diesel coasters, they are strafed, pounded by Wham! Bam! Thank you, Ma’am! Liberator bombers in the Macassar Strait. Terrified captors give them leave to scrawl POW across bridge and hatches in Paint composed of tapioca flour and water. Liberation. Original cohort whittled away, cut down to a mere fraction. Vegemite habits acquired while Recuperating in Perth Fail to stay the Brimming tides - Fury, Resentment, Mistrust, Optical neuropathy, Arterial stenosis - that Claim him before he turns eighty. I catch him at it once or twice: Curses muttered to himself in Japanese while he Deadheads the roses. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 *DFC, Distinguished Flying Cross$

November 21, 2025 at 8:49 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 @dragonslayerma.bsky.social as #PromptCombo host
#Ychromosome #Aaron as #NorthStar

#newpoem / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#poetry #CassElliot #Kleos #Nostos #BorisPasternak #Spock #StarTrek #Shekhinah #LeonardCohen

Amok Time

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. As

David
Among the Ba’athists,
He hoodwinks Damascene
Achish of Gath. Deeply
Ingrained in Syria’s elite,
Shortlisted for Deputy
Defence Minister, his
Cover is blown when they
Triangulate his transmitter. As

Deborah, she
Judges Laurel Canyon with an
Open door; creates
Counterculture crucible with her
Graffiti Wall. Emerges from
Creeque Alley Mugwumps
Concussed, gains three notes in her
Vocal range. At twenty-five,
Boldly decides to raise her daughter -
Sired by a baritone bluesman -
Alone. As

Dean of the
Marburg School, his
Teachings move a moony
Russian youth to abandon
Musical composition; to
Value pure concepts over
Intuition.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Rejected in love, the
Youth mopes around Marburg, where
Particles, cobblestones regard
Him with sullen scorn. His
Instinct bids the
Youth take one step at a time,
Back to Russia where, among
Futurists, he answers his
Calling in verse. As

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. He has plastic cups.
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
Dwells 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

November 17, 2025 at 9:21 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 @artbyseranya.bsky.social #RetroArtPrompt #Light #ImageAndVerse

#poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2008 & 2015

#Minotaur #AncientGreece #BlueSkyArtShow #Bright #poetrycommunity #Architecture #monochrome

μύω (múō, “to shut, close”) +‎ ὤψ (ṓps, “eye”), i.e. “Squinting”

The
Skilled squinting of
Greek sages: Diogenes once
Dismissed a king for

Troubling his noonday
Bedazzlement. Like Whited
Sepulchres scolding the

Hoi Polloi for the
Eye gunk that dapples clear-
Sightedness, while blind to the
Eclipse that defines

Reason’s purview, they are
Dracula before his
Own mirror image.

Spooling Ariadne’s thread,
Maze-bound, they are unaware that
Minotaur - gaunt

Pariah - now pines for the
Gristly scarecrow flesh of
Platonic frame.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2008

Light effect from window in hallway of Le Corbusier mansion in Paris

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2015

Monochrome image of part of Roman-Latin epitaph with blurred relief of Minotaur in the background

November 15, 2025 at 11:59 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#BlueSkyArtShow #Bright #Scape #autumn #November

#photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#mountain #hike #landscape #EastCoastKin #PhotographersOfBlueSky #Harz #Wildemann

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Mountain hiking trail between Bad Grund and Wildemann in the Upper Harz Mountains, Germany

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Mountain meadow outside Wildemann, Upper Harz, Germany

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Limestone quarry outside Bad Grund, Upper Harz, Germany

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Der wilde Mann von Wildemann

November 15, 2025 at 10:07 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#Scape #FridayFeeling #Autumn to #Winter

#photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#nature #landscape #waterscape #EastCoastKin #PhotographersOfBlueSky #Harz #mountains #Goslar

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Granetalsperre reservoir

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Mountain meadow

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Pond & reed beds at foot of hill

November 14, 2025 at 6:45 PM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#PoemsAbout #Desire @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2007

#poetrycommunity #Symbolism #ImageAndVerse #ClassicMono #Abstract #shadow

Penumbra

Penumbra -
Limbered with
Aplomb of
Ages
Unborn.

Jacob’s Ladder -
Amid a litter of
Vapid suburbs -
Glimpsed,
Countenanced from
Forgotten
Lookouts.

Throughfares,
Appetency-spoored,
Throng with progeny;
Jangle idly with
Clamour of galère,
Ill-willed coterie.

Feral squall of
Rout-scrum
Multitudes in the
Midst of
Abounding
Wonder.

Now -
Each
Second courts
Cataclysm.

Now -
Each
Lust-itch
Lifts the
Lid on the
Abysmal.

Ineffable
Horror of
Glib
Lucidity -

Held,
Noted in a
Holloway of
Blackened
Houses.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

After Я провижу гордые тени
(“I foresee proud shadows”, 1899), by
Valery Bryusov (1873-1924), Russian Symbolist

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2007

Monochrome image of the shadow of a crane head cast upon the iconic facade of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.

November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 to @hool415.bsky.social #PromptCombo
#DeepTime take on #workinglove

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2022-24

#poetry #JohnCage #MechtildOfMagdeburg #AsSlowAsPossible #orgelprojekt #MysticMonday #thework

Fatal Day in Halberstadt

1361
Decameron‘s Twelfth Night.
Lollards hitch their prayers, their
Plight to the Morning Star.
Pestis Secunda scourges
Plantagenet England.
Giotto’s Last Judgement
Slumbers in umbrage on the
Cusp of the Quattrocento.

Halberstadt,
Flush, bustling prince-bishopric - its

Cathedral-treasure stash of
Relics looted at the Sack of
Constantinople – hosts the

First of its Kind:
Chromatic keyboard,
Twelve half-tones arranged in
Octaves.

Halberstadt - where, at
St. Burchardi’s Monastery,
Cistercian Sisters
Scale the canonical hours:
Minor -
Terce, Sext, None and Compline;
Major -
Matins, Lauds and Vespers, in
Perpetual rounds of
Work, prayer and Lectio Divina.

A century before,
They nestle in a fecund vessel of
Mystical vision, where
Mechthild of Magdeburg -
Fluid, erotic, vernacular -

Lights the way for Meister Eckhart; where

Mechtilde, Helfta’s Nightingale,
Dispenses Special Grace to Dante as
Matelda.

Six-hundred-and-thirty-nine years
Slip by. Millennium tenor
Deeds St. Burchardi’s to
Zen musical maverick already
Eight years passed:

Bird now uncaged -
Purposeless, intentionless -
Pecking away at membranes -
Temporal, musical – from the
Beyond. The

Six-hundred-and-thirty-nine-year
Lease unfolds As Slow as Possible on an
Organ fashioned for this purpose.

Hiss of compressors, taut notes
Coasting over billowing groans until
2640.

Pauses a week before
9/11: seventeen months of silence, then
Nine movements, each lasting
Seventy-one years.

Chord kept up over seven years, between
Benedict’s flight to Castel Gandolfo and Second Lockdown.

Austere piety,
Avant-garde whimsy -

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Spurning utility, instrumentality -
Partaking in visions that far
Outstrip lifetimes,
Current-day zeitgeist confines.

Contemplative prayer,
Playful contingency -

Tentative forays into Deep Time,
Possible only when one
Listens closely with
Open heart,
Open mind.

Eternity disclosed in
Nugacity, ephemera:
Birds, lilies,
Mustard seeds.

Cloistered life,
Choral work
Whetting one’s
Keenness for the
Core -
Still and small.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024

Highly contrasted monochrome image of a statue by Susan Turcot (2007/8) of mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282)

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022

Poster-sized mural of US avant-garde composer, John Cale (1912-1992)

November 10, 2025 at 7:37 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#ForestFriday #Scape #Nature #Woods #November #Autumn

#photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#PhotographersOfBlueSky #EastCoastKin

November 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#PoemsAbout #LockedDoors @thebrokenspine.co.uk 🙏 to @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social & best wishes to @alanparrywriter.co.uk

#poetry / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2024

#Symbolism #ZinaidaGippius #monochrome #ImageAndVerse #DepthPsychology #bskypoetry #poetrycommunity

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.

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

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024

Highly contrasted black-and-white image of a large cobweb glistening in the morning sun

November 7, 2025 at 6:10 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

Me in the late 1970s at a post-wedding party. Sitting next to me is my great-grandma Peters, who is probably drunk at this stage. 😁

September 16, 2025 at 8:10 PM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

Thank you so much, also for the repost. Those particular images were inspired by the monoliths in "2001: A Space Odyssey." The poem's about Halle-Neustadt, & here's an image of said model city with a portrait of First Secretary, Erich Morecambe in 1975. 😅

Black-and-white image of Erich Morecambe :D set against the backdrop of then newly completed Halle-Neustadt town centre in 1975.

September 5, 2025 at 10:19 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#BlueSkyArtShow #Skyline #Chicago #FrankGehry #Cityscape #EastCoastKin #Stunday

#photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2006

#ClassicMono #Analog #FilmPhotography #ArchitecturalPhotography

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2006

Black-and-white image of Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion with skyscrapers as backdrop, in Chicago IL.

August 24, 2025 at 6:31 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#BlueSkyArtShow #Skyline #EastCoastKin

Tangermünde, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

#photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2021

#Altmark #Elbe #BrickGothic #Hanseatic #Hansestadt #Scape #Sky #Water #Riverscape

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2021

Image of the medieval, Hanseatic city of Tangermünde, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Skyline on the left, canal, dyke in the centre, riparian wetland of the River Elbe on the right.

August 23, 2025 at 7:02 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

#BlueSkyArtShow #Skyline #Chicago #TheLoop #FrankGehry #Cityscape #EastCoastKin

#photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2006

#ClassicMono #Analog #FilmPhotography

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2006

Black-and-white image of the Chicago Loop skyline from the outer shell of the Pritzker Pavilion

August 23, 2025 at 6:45 AM

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

These were taken in March/April 2014 at Holkham Beach & Cley on the North Norfolk Coast in England. I don't think they really capture the odd tones you can sometimes encounter, but everything looks dusty & grainy.