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#SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre

Dave Ashley

@daveashleypoet.bsky.social

Bit of a toughy

@thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social‬
#promptcombo #madrigal #SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre

October 23, 2025 at 1:43 PM Everybody can reply

2 reposts 15 likes

Jen Thorne

@jenthorne.bsky.social

Thank you to @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for this prompt, which I think took me almost as long to write out as my poem itself, but also gave me the opportunity to tell people about my favourite friend 🖤

#SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre

#PromptCombo #poetry #blueskypoets

October 20, 2025 at 11:43 PM Everybody can reply

4 reposts 14 likes

Stefano Carini

@cieloceano.bsky.social

For @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
With thanks

#promptcombo #SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre
#poetry
#mysticverse

We are shaped by the storms we walk through — and by those who stay in the rain beside us.

From “The Storm”, by Pierre August Cot, 1880.

October 20, 2025 at 10:05 PM Everybody can reply

1 reposts 9 likes

Francis H Powell writer and poet

@fhpowellwriter.bsky.social

@dragonslayerma.bsky.social
#promptcombo. #promptcombo #SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre

October 20, 2025 at 9:26 AM Everybody can reply

2 reposts 9 likes

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom

@janpsolivagant.bsky.social

🙏 @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social #promptcombo #sotellmewhoyourfriendsareandI’lltellyouwhoyouare
Sorry, it's long, but it's the only one that fits. 😆

#poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#ComingOfAge #memory #80s #90s #GenX #Yugoslavia #poetrycommunity #Zagreb #PeterUstinov

Leslie Caron in Zagreb, 1989

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, 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
Bulwark of Christendom.

One morning, black-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:
Ali Bog će joj oprostiti!
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

That evening, we visit my friend’s
Bosom Buddy:

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 friend interprets.
In the background: snatches of Lili on TV -
Enchantingly mawkish fifties Hollywood
Chick flick. 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 their 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. 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 Bosom Buddy - the
Girl with the bobbed, black curls.

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

Penfriend 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 Bosom Buddy,
Friendship – theirs, ours.

One of them is alive,
Thriving.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

NOTES

Hrvatska, Croatia

Bratstvo, jedinstvo i suživot, (Croat./Bos.) Brotherhood, Unity, and Coexistence

Ali Bog će joj oprostiti! (Croat./Bos.) “But God/Allah will forgive her!“

Nož! Tko? (Croat./Bos.) “Knife! Who?”

Usput, ja sam Bošnjakinja. (Croat./Bos.) “By the way, I’m Bosnian.”

Balije, derogatory term for Bosnians

Ustaše, Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization, formed a puppet regime in Croatia under the Axis powers during WWII. Here used as a derogatory term for Croats.

Stari Most, literally “Old Bridge” - the iconic, 16th-cent. Ottoman bridge spanning the Neretva in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

October 20, 2025 at 7:29 AM Everybody can reply

3 reposts 14 likes

Julian (Hool)

@hool415.bsky.social

Hullo @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social #promptcombo #sotellmewhoyourfriendsareandI’lltellyouwhoyouare
What a delightfully quirky theme Paul!

Through The Net Curtains:

There:
My Other Self with Different Day,
it makes Me nervous to think
this shady pair
so near again.
My Other Self loves Different Day,
he and his many previous dates
often glimpsed
intruding in this neighbourhood:
Me,
all correctly settled down
with my homely,
if mousy Time.

My Other Self and Different Day
are not like us,
as when I peep
My Other Self wears out his life
ribald
in such a shocking selfish fashion,
whereas my plain guise
rarely is disheveled,
and Time much quieter too:
taking up corners,
unwinding without consequence,
dumb
as just a ponder.

My Other Self
even with Different Day,
still seems restless though
and whether he drives her, or she leads him,
they seek grass
forever
one shade greener,
but I will not warn her
or ever say
that My Other Self can not settle
and soon will love
a different
Different Day.

October 20, 2025 at 7:00 AM Everybody can reply

3 reposts 21 likes

Paul Brookes

@thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social

Thankyou, @dragonslayerma.bsky.social for last week's excellent #promptcombo. All are welcome to contribute. Use hashtags #promptcombo #SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre

BEFORE "GET LOST" NOBODY TELLS ME

I'll keep it short.
Folk don't reckon right.
Soft in the head.

To share's forbidden.
Grip my hand, lad
for sores
and livelong pain.

Smell this breath,
for rotten air
that'll make you gip.

Others are stench.
Others touch, poison.

Use 'em.
Abuse 'em.

In face swearers
do my head. Spoutin'

"I'm your mate."
"You're me dad."
"I love you."
"You're family."

Abusers. Shop 'em.

Don't come close again, lad.
These boots are fed
on others blood.

Have her
and she'll have thee.

Drop a sprog.8
Dump it outside.
If sharp tooth cold
don't have it,
it'll get on. You.
Bring yourself up.

You soon learn.m
Do nothing for nubdy.8
All for yourself.

Nubdy trusts no one.
Way it is. Keep
yourself to yourself.

Selfish is good.
Now, bugger off.
Else you'll lick
end of me
steel toecap.

October 20, 2025 at 6:15 AM Everybody can reply

8 reposts 2 quotes 28 likes