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CAUGHT IN THE NET 139 - POETRY BY
RICHARD THOMAS
Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit -
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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
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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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