Hic sunt dracones

In issue #139 of your weekly dose of fresh poetry we ponder lessons from history

Image created by feeding the poem to the Stable Diffusion V2.1 AI image generation model on Night Café studio

Dracones?
Do you mean dragons? Those
fire-breathing, everything-eating
monsters? Out there? Better
be careful.

Even though there are only two known examples of the exact use of the phrase “hic sunt dracones” (here be dragons) in historical cartography, the phrase has acquired a reputation of enormous proportions. The phrase stands for the dangers of the unknown. Its reputation tells us it was scribbled on the edges of maps, there where the known world would transform into the unknown world. Terra incognita. That what was not yet explored. And because we did not know, we had to be careful there, for there could very well be dragons.

I find myself using the term now quite regularly. As I am exploring the wonderful world of art on blockchains, I am using Twitter more (again). In the 15 years I have been on the platform, it was never as chaotic and filled with unknowns as it is now. And thus, I warn. Because when you combine Elon Twitter with the Wild West that is Web3 (the world of blockchains and decentralization), well, you are in Terra Incognita. And you should be warned. This time, there is not the possibility of dragons. There is the certainty of dragons. So, whatever you do: be careful with the links you click, be careful with the messages you reply to, the contacts you trust. In a world of decentralization there is self-custody. And where there is self-custody, there is your own responsibility to be careful.

Hic sunt dracones. Remember that. And you will be fine.

Three ways to support this Inbox Poetry Magazine:

Poetics in life

Celebrations are all about rituals, and roaming free markets (where regular people are for a limited amount of time allowed to sell their stuff) is a typical ritual for celebrating Dutch Kingsday - and before Queensday. You can find anything, from people selling their old clothes to silly games raising money for charity, kids selling self-made bracelets and artists selling their art. That’s what caught our attention. A street artist, Sjors Kouthoofd, selling art and making portraits. We got ourselves one, because we like street art. Sjors, AKA Maedist, is part of the The Hague Streetart group, who create wonderful projects. The video above is of one of the project they were involved in.

In April I am writing and minting a poem each day for #CryPoWriMo.
They can all be collected.

Poetry elsewhere

Poetry can help you escape. It can help you to be grounded and voyage to a dream world all at once. Reading the poetry of Rae Snyder does that to me. Dreamy outdoor scenes bring an oasis of calm. Read the poem Flicker to experience that. Thank you

James Maynard

for bringing this to my attention.

Flicker

Out of war can come beautiful art. Art that reminds us of the pain the war causes. Art that is defiant. Art that is powerful. Art that is poetry. Arash Sahra is an artist that creates art like this and this piece, Life is a battlefield, is just one example of it. Go read (and collect) it.

Now, if you would be honest, what would the world look like to you? Explore that, and read an exciting announcement, in this post by the Poetry Trapper Keeper team. And if they say they will be the first poetry millionaires, well, if I’m being honest, I would not be surprised.

if I'm being honest