Category Archives: history

November 4, 2022 · 4:14 pm

The Fighter – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Bjorn is hosting Meeting the Bar with an invitation to write a Bref Double. Bjorn offers some fine detail so follow the link below. A Bref Double is a French quatorzain so it can fool you into thinking it might be a sonnet but it isn’t, due to the variable and various rhyme schemes. It consists of three quatrains and a couplet, fourteen lines in total. There is no meter, but the lines should be the same length. Generally a short narrative though some use lyrical form.

Photo: morzaszum at pixabay.com

“You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.” Golda Meir

The Fighter

He was almost discarded,
smaller than a shoebox,
ladies size well under,
her wishes complied.

Never disregarded,
a young man stolid,
grown as an athlete,
his father took pride.

His life wasn't horrid,
defied modern medicine,
marathons of foot fleet,
but also man of thunder.

Ever shy and guarded,
a miracle of wonder.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️ 


Note: as the story goes, the doctors felt that my father might not survive post birth, he was very premature and it was suggested that he be "let go." He went on to run marathons and took up amateur boxing, winning awards in both. He was a fighter in every sense of the word.

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March 22, 2022 · 3:00 pm

The Rag – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse De is hosting the Quadrille (44 words) with an invitation to write about paper.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Papered Poems

Photo: an archive shot of the now defunct Daily News located at Geordie Boy, Medium, this one from three years before I started as a newspaper boy.

“The media. It sounds like a convention of spiritualists.” Tom Stoppard

The Rag

Pay-p-urrr!
echoed loudly my call to ply 
the Daily, a jaundiced  rag,
a paper inked with salacious 
tones and local misery,
Jemimah's horse, of course,
baby names and some sordid
political scandal, I had it all at
$15.00 a week plus tips.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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March 10, 2022 · 2:48 pm

Making Light – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: huffpost.com West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early 11 November 1989 as they watch people trying to demolish a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and West Berlin, near the Potsdamer Square.

“The wall that protects you also imprisons you.” Susan Jeffers

Making Light

Can you remember when the wall fell?
Were you even alive in that very moment,
the ending of a long drawn out facade,
walls always fall after the pride of a nation.

Were you even alive in that very moment
when the world held its breath waiting,
walls always fall after the pride of a nation,
more than just rubble it is the people.

When the world held its breath waiting
in hope of a creative existential shift,
more than just rubble it is the people
making light from oppressive darkness.

In hope of a creative existential shift,
the ending of a long drawn out facade,
making light from oppressive darkness,
can you remember when the wall fell?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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January 29, 2022 · 11:10 pm

Can We? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: The remains of a railway worker’s house at Yellowdine.

“Sometimes the things you remember are more real than the things you see.” Arthur Golden

Can We?

I thought I remembered this place,
but my feelings were clouded and I
couldn't  recover what it was that 
I had expected of this moment, 
all vested in cherished memories now 
unrealised in the faces of strangers,
and changes everywhere interfering 
in my attempts to find connections,
and I asked myself once again,
can we ever go back?


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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January 29, 2022 · 12:00 am

Time Box – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” T.S. Eliot

Time Box

I don't know why I chose that box,
perhaps it quietly called me to an
opening as a siren calls to ships,
I slit the tape and pulled the flaps 
apart, so beginning an archeology,
unearthing and sifting the dry bones 
of meaning, curating the feelings of 
connection, wondering why parts
of a life were so important, might their
preservation be a holding of immortality,
a hope of transcendence; as I leafed 
yellowed pages and held incongruent 
objects I was flooded with a sense 
that all experiences come to an end,
and boxes of memoria are simply 
eulogies of grief for the passage
remembered.


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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January 15, 2022 · 11:00 pm

In Rows We Laughed – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Karl Marx

In Rows We Laughed

In rows we laughed about cromagnon man,
we mocked conquistador's self-righteous,
salvific crusade, we deplored the blindness
of modernity scratched in white across two
wars, we were sickened by greedy monarchs
crushing cultures, aghast at nationalism and
every moral injury belonging to leader and flag,
in rows we laughed taking each other for granted, 
bullying, stealing each other's things, lying, 
misogynising, fighting, shrinking, hiding,
in rows we laughed, without reflecting.



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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December 8, 2021 · 3:06 pm

More Than Plastic – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about an object of history, personal or otherwise.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Passions Stamped on Lifeless Things

Found on ebay: I disposed of mine not long ago, strange to see another one floating around.

“We keep stuff in order to hang on to what’s important, but it’s an illusion … these objects are not bridges to the past, they’re bridges to memories of the past. But they are not the past.” Helen Fisher

More Than Plastic

As night gathers round me
I seek the lamp which is less 
distinct than the light it sheds,
and long may it be so. 

but I drift back to another time, 
to a more hallowed lamp, a child's 
dream so bright, a Blyton character 
so colourful, as told by my mother's 
stumbling, uncertain voice, ever 
hopeful I'd fall asleep, but it was 
never so.

Noddy was more than plastic,
he was real in my imagination
and with one click he came
alive, drawing me down a vivid 
path of adventure, long may it 
be so.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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December 7, 2021 · 3:03 pm

Honour For The Stolen – Prosery by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Lisa is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to write including the sentence “I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night.” from the poem ‘When we sing of might’ by Kimberly Blaeser.

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Lost – Found/Lost/children

Photo: still shot from the film ‘The Rabbit Proof Fence’ a story of three aboriginal girls forcibly taken from their mothers and placed in a town far away under white control in oder to assimilate them and exploit them. The film is based on the true story as told by author Doris Pilkington who was taken from her mother at three years of age, in her book of the same name. Known as the Stolen Generation, children were forcibly removed over generations between 1884 and 1969.

“In their grief the women asked why their children should be taken form them.” Doris Pilkington ‘The Rabbit Proof Fence’

Honour For The Stolen

The darkness of enlightened men voids my world in a sadness too weighty to even speak. They pretended to save the world as a ruse to colonise and dehumanise those they encountered in every land who they deemed to be sub-human. Your arrogance is too great to measure and your refuge too trite to count. 

You cowards, you hid behind your public schools, your venture capital, your egos and your hypocrisy in claiming the purity of the bleeding Christ, which raises bile in my throat and fire in my gut. You knew full well the moral weight of your actions. I weep for the loss of life in all its experience, and I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night. I cannot bring them back, but I can honour the beauty of their presence and name the meaning of their lives.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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September 21, 2021 · 12:15 pm

Of Things Past – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting the Quadrille (44 words) with an invitation to write about the word linger or any of its forms.

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Linger

Photo: an old Ford truck – part of the history of Kookynie and mining.

“Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.” Benjamin Disraeli 

Of Things Past

The past lurks in the present,
intensifying the sense of wanting
to restore, heal, the original 
intention once the pride of purpose,
now a felt grief, an if only, raising the
question: can we overcome the grief
of things past that linger within us?


Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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September 14, 2021 · 4:57 pm

Just Following Orders – prose by Paul Vincent Cannon

At Dverse Ingrid is hosting Prosery with an invitation to use a line from William Blake’s poem ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ – “If all do their duty, they need not fear harm.”

dVerse Poets – Prosery – Doing Our Duty

Public domain photo of Adolf Eichmann.

“Being evil is only something that only humans are capable of.” Jane Goodall

Just Following Orders

In 1960 an architect appeared in court in down town Jerusalem charged with crimes against humanity. He was the architect of the Holocaust, his defence was banal, he claimed immunity because he was only following orders.

Who never questions motive? Who believes they are perfect and above the law?And who never effects harm on others? But of those who excelled in following orders, no matter how perverted, Adolf Eichmann stands apart as intentionally evil, and more so because of his claim that he was just following orders. And, so, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm? really? Think slavery. Think Eichman, think Vietnam War, Think Derek Chauvin, think so many.

Our actions always affect others, and where there is evil the effect is always negative. Harm comes to those in the orbit of such people. Just listen to Holocaust survivors.

Copyright 2021 ©Paul Vincent Cannon

All Rights Reserved ®

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