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CAUGHT IN THE NET 139 -  POETRY  BY
RICHARD THOMAS

Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit - www.poetrykit.org
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Submissions for this series of Featured poets is open, please see instruction in afterword at the foot of this mail.
 

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It cracks its thickening claws

upon the towering rock,

it matts its brambly fur

in the heavy grey of rain.

 

                 from; Charms by Richard Thomas

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CONTENTS

1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
 

 

  

Latching

Zygote Poem

She Craved Tinned Pineapple Chunks

@ # & Wx3

Tu Rooms, Pt. Wonn

How Moarning Came

Charms

Milk Tooth

Tu Rooms, Pt. Tu

A Diet Coke Goes a Long Way

 

3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY:  Richard Thomas

 

Richard Thomas is a poet from Plymouth, UK, with a First Class Honours at BA level in English and Creative Writing from Plymouth University, and work appearing in journals internationally including Orbis, Fire, Weyfarers, Neon Highway, Bottle Rockets and Notes from the Gean amongst many others. Richard was shortlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2011 and his first full collection of poems ‘The Strangest Thankyou’ was published by Cultured Llama in 2012. Previously Editor of the poetry e-zine Symmetry Pebbles, Richard is now the Creative Writing Editor for Tribe. He’s currently seeking publication for his second collection ‘Zygote Poems’ which traces the journey and mindset of new fatherhood with effects of mental health issues, from which the following poems are taken from.

 

www.richardchristopherthomas.wordpress.com

www.tribemagazine.org

 

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2 - POETRY 

 

 

 

Latching

 

It's all coming down in

flowers, like an Eastern

death dance, and where is it

 

that it goes to, more yours

than mine at that stage and

more of your kind than it

 

is of mine, what with it

having been bathed, watered,

fed in your plush pink and

 

soft shroud of ovaries/

stomach/mind/memory?

Where does it all go to,

 

begging and squirming to

be saved, shouting for 'Mamma'

as it's sucked into the

 

bloody, frothing, squeezing

vacuum of no-Lyfe and

is as much dismembered

 

past as it never was

present? And it's all

coming down like flowers

 

in a death dance for the

poor unpopulated -

where does it all run to

 

like that? Why is my heart

fogged like codeine and my

thoughts like gladioli,

 

white, protruding outward?

 

 

Zygote Poem

 

At Twehn-tee Wonn & Twehn-tee Ate   

it’s poppy seed making itself at home,  

and then it’s apple seed fashioning   

intestines – brain – lungs – heart – liver,

it’s sweet pea running the juices around,

sweet pea expanding to blueberry,

neurological surface grows,

raspberry comes, a seasoning berry,

limbs in frantic wading and waving,

and then it’s all ears wide open,

the green olive makes audible the pulse,

prune or date or fig in its placement

stirs mechanisms up to whirling,

lime is the turning point of man from sea,

toes and fingers unwebbed and parted,

plum swelling to globular peach,

all systems are flowing animation,

and the emerging tools to eat and speak,

the lemon is keen to peel,

kidney, spleen and liver unravelling,

spinning then from citrus to citrus,

all legs from the navel orange,

how avocado comes and it’s all top,

the budding of lashes, brows and hair,

 

onion hardens the skeleton,

hoarding fat for the long journey ahead,

when the sweet potato is sweetening

movement’s felt flicking the palm,

bold is the mango like a blobbed full moon,

paints skin with vermix caseosa,

as banana elongates

gender is confirmed and fully formed,

pomegranate filled with tasting seeds,

buds realising potential,

papaya is hazy, the sleeping fruit,

it goes dozing for Forhtean hours,

the rounded whole of the grapefruit

is all ears for throbbing and voices,

the cantaloupe getting cramped now

and nipples and face to emerge,

cauliflower is a lovely flower,

its pulling the compass from North to South,

up and down in its lettuce state,

the peepholes mounding into position,

it’s rooted as a rutabaga,

working the bustle of the brain,

and development of the aubergine

fitting its armour for the outside,

 

acorn squash now toughening

with hiccups skipping on the pubic bone,

a cucumber’s plenty enough strength

to clasp a finger or breadstick,

a pineapple is brightening the source,

ensuring touch, smell, taste and sound work,

jicama to durian fruit,

the body clock starts its occupation,

it’s further skeletally solid;

a butternut squash appearing,

a more willing recipient to song,

a coconut listens close,

honeydew melon is seeping sticky,

the wisening lungs secrete surfactant,

and winter melon weirdly warmer,

the ings of suck, breath, blink and grip,

a pumpkin floats as youthful as sunshine

with all of its inch of softest hair,

the vital life of the watermelon

puts the womb to gymnasium of limbs,

at Forh-tee the jackfruit comes ripened,

adjusted to space and climate,

squeezing muscle and tensing the bone,

making its tracks into the wild.

 

 

 

She Craved Tinned Pineapple Chunks

 

Not only

Tesco Express,

I went everywhere,

all over

the wet land

of Mutley Plain -

scouring,

shuffling,

peeping.

I strode

wide pavements,

I was Chief

Explorer,

I was Roald

Amundsen

of the vital

pregnant

quest.

And though

I didn’t

fully

understand it,

I did it for love

and so their bellies

were full

and warm.

  

 

@ # & Wx3

 

Would you like it in HTML?

I would like it streamlined,

                                                   concentrated,

                                                                                          focussed,

all these new things

are code enough.

Pictures, I’ll have

                                   pictures,

                                                                   pictures

and diagrams,

a male mind is visual after all,

or so they keep telling me.

This modern age is lofty

in trying to understand the human form

in a series of Weakly emails –

Do you want this baby in HTML

                                                           or plain text?

 

                                                                             (Does the umbilical cord wrap itself

                                                                                         around Times New Roman?)

 

 

 

Tu Rooms, Pt. Wonn

 

It was to have Tu rooms somewhere fairly central

but with a brilliance of trees and daisy caves for picnics,

 

for when she comes and is wanting various jams and curds

and longs to lie in the sun blinking and pooping.

 

Tu rooms would have been the ideal hold until we found somewhere for schooling,

and we wanted a lime tree in the courtyard like a vase of malachite and peridot,

 

beneath that a permanent wise man for our own personal wonderings,

all of which we could see through a prism-glassed window

 

paned with immortality-vision and into-the-sunset future starlight.

For the Fyve Hundrud mark there must have been something surely reminiscent

 

of all of those things, if not exact, or a Wonn bed basement flat would do it,

with constant next-door scaffolding and handfuls of noisy neighbours –

 

the babe would sleep in with us and I’d put up rose-paisleyed bunting,

cotton-bloated elephants, Tu trunks pointing symmetrical,

 

and her Fthree birdy pictures so that in effect what she did have

was her very own room within her Mother and Father’s room,

 

and that would tie us over until we found the Wonn

           proper family home.

 

 

How Moarning Came

 

She bleeped and wrestled with the Nyte,

avoiding red bulbs and gas,

I leant my lobe to the disinfected rubber,

each of her heartbeats (hers and hers)

were sent through the floor like Morse code,

 

as I laid like coil curled,

and my pressed cheek throbbing recipient.

Waving around catheters, the Midwife twooed,

twittered like an owl, twooed and twooed,

waving her cannula all about and twooed,

 

she shuffled around me and I saw the Mother helpless,

(but how valiant and audacious!).

It’s coming now, I can see the head.

With hairs gummed sure to her strained brow,

glossy with the strength of a Milliunn pure,

 

and a heave and a breath, Sehcunds later,

Moarning made to slow-emit its light

in a Nyne Twhen-tee Fyve splayed-sun flood,

harping the room with gold string song,

and so she came, our babe bathed softly in blood.

 

 

Charms

 

Set free the emporic beast,

set burden to the burden:

it pokes its gaudy throat,

ever mute, for some foul jibe.

 

Take these charms, my love,

take these charms, my love.

 

It cracks its thickening claws

upon the towering rock,

it matts its brambly fur

in the heavy grey of rain.

 

Take these charms, my love,

Take these charms, my love.

 

Is it not your good counsel

to lick its paw-beat wounds?

Is it not your fair hand

to close its door - pale timber bent?

 

Take these charms, my love,

take these charms, my love.

 

Your castle surely open to it:

to soothe, to dry, to love;

its queer, wretched presence

fully deserving of your charity.

 

Take these charms, my love,

take these charms, my love.

 

 

 

Milk Tooth

 

New sounds

have erupted

from the well of her mouth,

a clink when she drinks from a glass,

a cluck.

 

This tooth,

for shearing and gnawing, and tusks,

though she uses it more

for chewing rice

and spoons.

 

 

Tu Rooms, Pt. Tu

 

It must have Tu rooms and a view overlooking

the swish of the emerald salt, or looking into a maze

 

of rhododendrons  - a kaleidoscope of sugar cats 

rainbow hands – bubble-specked honey blossom –

 

a chrysalis coated in perfect photographs

of tortoise smiles – it must be rent-free, modest

 

but grandly spacious with a cactus garden 

on the terracotta roof, a swimming pool out back

 

filled with stars or diamonds (negotiable),

I’m ready to sign, just show me the dots,

 

or Wonn bedroom will do to tie us over  

until I’m qualified in my poesy, with steady coin-flow, 

 

and I can DIY the living room into Tu rooms

and she will still have her own room,

 

and I’ll put up a string of bright hearts

and Fthree birdy pictures to tweet her into naps,

 

and it’ll be a home away from her usual home

         for the weekends.

 

 

A Diet Coke Goes a Long Way

 

In the spirit of Frank O’Hara’s sweetly candid poem

 

It seems so very incorrect that I should be here alone atop the grassy knoll,

sat like a real bum, real beard to match, here amongst the tulips and the squiggly shih tzus

that run wild like mice about my new boots and I’m having a Diet Coke with myself.

I’m a cold and remote Numburh divided Wonn Hundrud + Fithty milligrammatic ways, I feel - midst growth    

        and passing -

and I know bygones should be bygones, as the useless saying goes on,

and boy, does it go on and on, I am sure I have better things to listen to and I know a few

        good songs,

I heard the saying on the radio when I was a kid, and an older kid said it at a Sea Scout camp

        in the Lake District,

I was really no good at the activities that weekend, particularly the water sports,

but at the time I considered him saying this made him the great Boddhidharma and looked

        to him for knots and got on with it,

but what I’m saying is, aren’t my hands purposed to be warm when they’ve been for the best

        part lined family mittens?-

 

I just feel like the white sky that curls the sea mist to the South of me is telling me otherwise.

I’m a sole ranger now, it’s no wonder that I listen to Morrissey and The Smiths daily,

 

and that I connect with ‘Suedehead’ and ‘How Soon is Now’ and I did the whole quiff thing,

and I have chased up Nico and it’s just not the same and I always return to ‘Hatful of   

        Hollow’,

and I see now how the grass tips tickle the cruel lashing of the February wind,

and the biting air eats the drowning sea and the fishermen are on the end of the crayfish’s line,

because I have that distance, that new and sardonic telescope of eyeing things better balanced,

where love and life and death and love are slightly understood, and a lot more than they used  

        to be;

I’m here amongst the tulips and the squiggly shih tzus, having a Diet Coke with myself,

alone atop the grassy knoll, and I have a biscuit in my pocket, I was purely peckish and  

        thought it could kill time

as I wait for visitation to turn its beautiful Ow-er into view…

she’s almost walking by herself now, her shoes are tiny, and I love her, I love her, I love her,

I wait for her, so the Fthree of us: Father, Daughter and Grandfather, can take a stroll

 

along the winding wave-withered front which was recently bombed by The Great Storm of

        Tu Fouzund & Forhtean,

but has dried up nicely in good clean paving and things still remain for us, a sweet Saturhdae.

 

 

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3 - Afterword

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We are looking for other poets to feature in this series, and are open to submissions.  Please send one poem and a short bio to - info@poetrykit.org

Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net.  Our other magazine s are Transparent Words ands Poetry Kit Magazine, which are webzines on the Poetry Kit site and this can be found at -
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