Best Thomson Poems
Nothing for Something
What filled your footsteps cannot
Fill mine, yes, a wave does not
Break twice, but do you think
I too have not risen when lured
By the hopes of vacant promises; inured
The rage of empty shelves?
“Free beer tomorrow”, the Pols perennial tout,
"We’ll fill your still-empty mugs with stout,
Then charge it to some other sucker’s tab."
Like poachers back to the same pond
Each season for the harvest, your bond
For the count is assumed.
Do you not see their willful blind,
The guns swinging upward to find
Your range?
How many generations will comply
Before just one dares to deny
The users’ their presumption?
That fire raging from the double cross
Can cleave the element from the dross
And emancipate your art.
Copyright Paul M Thomson 2020
Long live the USA, my native land, the birthplace
of my granddaughter, Shelby Renae.
Let's teach our grandchildren how to be kind.
To be thoughtful is a talent well-defined.
Don't wait until the Fourth, start today.
So many dynamos here keep up a steady pace
Let's say, "Thank You, USA!"
We disregard people, they feel left behind.
"Ingratitude is treason to mankind."
Say, "Thank You, USA," ev'ry day.
This Fourth honor your fellow citizens just because...
you can, Thank folks for their time,
was "Forty Hour Week", Alabama's catchy phase.
Overlooking people is an offense, a thoughtless crime.
A smile gives credit and helps to crush malaise.
Busy cheering every step, where'er your networks cross
happy is the heart that eyes the climb.
Some hearts, running on empty, are laboring in a daze.
Let's fuel them, they are drained-out pumps we can prime;
Make this holiday worth the effort; celebrate with praise.
line 9: quote by James Thomson, Scottish poet, 1700-1748
http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/James+Thomson/1/index.html
line 13: song title, http://www.lyricsdepot.com/alabama/40-hour-week.html
Promised Land: A Psalm of Faith
There is a kind of strength comes to a wanting land
(Where six inches of unfavored soil must withstand
A chance for rain), when rooted in the Word
That brings hope through faith.
---And a roadside sign proclaims, "Jesus is Lord"
Expand and retreat, germinate and scatter
Rhythms of nature play out no matter
How the seemingly perpetual estates of man defy.
---And an ancient Ojibwa cried, "Sometimes I go about in pity
For myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky"
I knew of a man broken by this land
Who remains unbreakable in his stand
That he and the grange are one.
When asked why he stays on in this now dead sea,
—-Says only,"This is God's country and I am his son"
Copyright Paul Thomson 2013.
in the midst of a lush meadow
there stands an impressive sight
a slip of a girl on a giant white horse
poised on the verge of flight
poetic in their beauty
they begin to move
and they appear as one
from head to back to hoove
you can see the giant beast
respond to invisible cues
as he begins to accelerate
to a place just out of view
you begin to sense the urgency
as the pair picks up speed
and you watch the desperation
as she pushes the giant steed
faster, just a lil faster
and it will be all right
all the sorrow of reality
is lost in the midst of flight
just a little harder
we're almost at the end
and the beast gives her everything
on him she can depend
the vision on that meadow
is enough to make a soul ache
watching a free spirit
and her horse make their escape
gradually they slow
his coat glistening in the sun
she leans in and hugs him
and thanks him for the run
looking into his deep brown eyes
she whispers her gratitude
stroking his white mane
they begin to walk on cue
slowly they walk the meadow
as desperation evaporates
leaving bewitched bystanders
in awe at the look upon her face
the frantic pace lost
by the run upon her beast
sorrow left in their dust
upon his back she finds her peace
they stop again and she strokes him
with all her aching heart
and knows he's her freedom
protecting her from the start
he nuzzles her soft cheek
as if he understands
and wants her to know
he's home beneath those hands
swiftly as she mounts him
agile and with grace
they begin to walk the meadow
looks of peace upon their faces
as they reach the meadows edge
they begin to fade from sight
the girl on her magnificent white steed
disappearing in the night
written by: Lori Thomson
contest: Rain, The Story
Prologue
Abandoned and in disrepair the mansion
Is dark now; a story behind every stanchion.
An unwitting monument to a way of life,
Since foreclosed through bloody civil strife.
Antebellum
The hush of summer evenings cued the trilling
(Fiddled on hind legs accompanied by warty pouches)
Chorus; pierced only by the discordant creaking
Of unseen stairs rising to the house slave's quarters
Portending the disquiet of antebellum martyrs.
Wittiness trees attest in angles and chains
To the master's grid and shade the lanes
For the surrey whose wheels rutted the gateway
(Become artifacts) en route to soirées of gaiety.
The prairie land, violated by steel and condescension
To the roots of its towering grasses and purple gentian,
Forced to nourish seeds of an alien flora for hempen
Riches, patiently awaits its day of redemption.
Bricks of fertile earth fired over an Osage hearth,
By chattel hands, in mortise and tenons, gave birth
To a mansion at the prelude of a moral sea-change
That would divide the nation and break its chains.
Current Era
Their lives deprived of enslaved labor, the once-lived
Voices ebbed a little as each generation removed.
Shrouded in leaves of time they are a mute bequeath
Indelibly recorded upon the stories that lie beneath.
Dreamer boy speak for them now. Sing for bluestem that switched
Against the sky nourishing the thundering herds that provisioned
Native tribes. Rage for those hobbled to sow but never to reap,
Weep for a Nation gone mad and seeds planted too deep.
Reflections after touring an abandoned antebellum mansion.
Copyright Paul M Thomson September 2011.
Hannah Crockroft has cerebral palsy from her birth,
And having CP myself, she’s kind of special to me,
Because CP is not derided anymore, much, as alien,
But is called brain damage, not your own currency.
She was born on the 30th July 1992, West Yorkshire,
In Halifax, and fought two cardiac arrests after birth,
The doctors said she’d never walk, talk, and function,
Or outlive her teens: but you just determine yourself.
She did lots of school sports and made the talent day,
By the BPA at that good old sports and tech university,
Loughborough, where she met Tanni Grey’s husband,
Dr Ian Thomson, who made her into racing authority.
She’s a wheelchair racer in the T34 class of sprints.
Her father, who she’s very close to and is a welder,
Built her first racing chair which was fast and neat:
He takes her out every morn on the Yorkshire felder.
At the Worlds 2011, in Christchurch in New Zealand,
Hannah won gold in both the 100 and the 200 metres,
And then, the Hurricane spry in 2012 London scored,
When she took gold in these two events again - litres!
She took gold at Lyon at the IPC Worlds, two, 2013,
Then in Swansea at the Euros she again took two,
And then 2015 at the Worlds in Doha she won three,
And now at Rio in the Paras she’s homed three due.
She breaks all the records with WRs, ERs and PRs,
Demolishing her personal best most times to achieve,
Ahead by 10 metres, 6, or even 4, she’s my stat hero,
And studies sports and media at university, to sleeve.
Rhoda Monihan
_________
I am extremely sad about the tragic accident which happened today in the cycling road race at Rio on a downhill stretch of the course. Iranian cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, aged 48, died of a cardiac arrest which he suffered in the ambulance after sustaining a brain injury when he crashed. My thoughts and love are with his family and friends. He leaves behind a wife and a son.
From, Hymns of My War
Unpublished collection
“Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thomson,
In this casket is most of your son.
We strongly recommend cremation.
The rest remains missing in action,
With the thanks of a grateful nation.”
Graves registration records them, “Members Missing”;
Limbs now of a foreign flora? Will the Resurrecting
Repatriate them from the Sao Den and Cu Chi trees,
Or the killing fields endlessly cycle their lees?
No, no more mustering to the drums, as names
In limestones will report for their remains -
Until the last of memories unwrites any claim
By they who sent them to mindlessly proclaim,
“Thank you for your service”
Copyright Paul Thomson 2019
Tiny Timmy
Today Tiny Timmy tries to talk. Terry Thomson tells Timmy that talking is too
tough for a two-year-old. Tony Thomson tells Terry not to tell Timmy that. Tammy
Tilson tells Tony, Terry and Tiny Timmy that Tinseltown has two tall towers,
Tinseltown Toy Tower and Tinseltown Trinket Tower. Tammy tells Tony that
there's a Two-Year-Old talking translator there. So Tiny Timmy, Too-Tall Terry,
and Talkative Tony travel to Tinseltown. While traveling, Tony talked to their
Treasurer, Tommy. Tommy told them to talk to Tina. Tina told Tony to travel
tirelessly. Then, during the Thomsons travel, Tina traveled too. At Tinseltown,
Terry taps a tambourine, Tony talks to a toucan, Tina throws a truck, and Timmy
traverses to the trinket tower. Then he finds the two-year-old talking translator. It
translated to this,”Why does this poem have so many T's?”
Ecotone
I did not plant the prairie tickseed that appeared among
The cultivated flowers of my garden and quickly dominated.
It seemed to say, “We live, still!
My house sits in a tension zone, an ecological “no man’s land” where
Tall Grass Prairie and the Cross Timbers, vie for control.
Here the vagaries of weather assure that all who enter are mistreated.
Seasons turn through the Zone as Fall, Winter, Spring,
And the Heat. The moisture-prickling Heat, like a visit from
The in-laws, comes early, stays long and wearies the endurance.
Rainfall is the fickle arbiter of the Zone. It befriends the trees
Almost; the grass too much. Legions of plants, playthings
Of climate, contending over millennia for land suitable to neither.
They were not untended. Cultivation by wild fires, twisting winds, floods
And drought, performed acts of purification and renewal; encroachers purged,
Minerals recycled, seeds scattered, and the arena reset for the endless contest.
But gone now are blades of Blue Stem and pickets of Post Oak.
Red subsoil overlaid with Bermuda sod is my “Sooner” system;
An inanity to the Zone kept on life support by irrigation and fertilizer.
Bermuda minders are hungry yet grow heavy with time
And plenty. They seek order amid uncertainty, and
Shelter from risk, yet cast their lot in a tension zone.
Their dis-ease stems from attempted breakouts of the Cultivators
Struggling to wrest free of human controls. (They who are said to have
Ears to hear a wildfire in its death throes claim it hisses, “We live, still!”)
They are not alone. Homes of the coastal naïf become
Mere tender for Chaparral fires as those of a floodplain
Are flotsam for the river.
Like mallards returning to the same pond
After each thinning by hunters, the unwitting
Rebuild as the Cultivators whisper, ”We live still”
Copyright Paul Thomson 2017
Fractured
What are we to make of five over three improperly?
Ah, convert to one plus two over three, properly.
Yes, but what now of one plus two over three?
‘Tis a most proper one over three of five you see.
Copyright Paul Thomson 2019
Stars disgorge energy in waves by fissile pulsations
Equally in all directions, but do not call it darkness
Where those come not our way. Darkness is
A matter of perspective.
A rainbow of photons ignites our neural lanterns;
Globes in 3D to navigate the pitch, the default state.
You and I stand in the same primordial darkness
As “In the beginning….” The light is within, and only.
However, the physics of light does not illuminate
The Way, The Truth and The Eternal Light, for it is not
Of the making of stars, but of the One who made
The stars.
Souls, carrying light as once the living carried,
Follow an ancient Course shrouded in a mist of tears,
To be reborn into the Light as it was before the Fall,
Like one emerging from a cave through a waterfall.
Copyright 2022, Paul Thomson
Is the soul to a human
What the seed is to
A dandelion - a vessel
Of the continuum?
Both are readied for winging;
One swept, unknowing, clinging
Upon the vagaries of zephyrs,
One ticketed to sail the ethers.
The seed carries an embryo where’er blown
Prepared by its mother to grow where sown.
The soul by the Father sown, without misconception,
May be redeemed at will from any misdirection.
The seed may rise a weed or wine
As chance may take upon to dine,
If in lawn or vineyard find,
To its fated end resigned.
The soul may be proscribed or saved
As promised by the One who paved
The Way; choose or deny finality
And thereby spend eternity.
Copyright Paul Thomson 2021
Streaming
I cannot chose to enter into the stream
Any more than select my night's dream,
But when swept into its generative storm,
Where earthly imaginings under perform:
Then - only - does the inner eye awaken
to Black Elk's "Sacred Way"
Of seeing, or one can dance in the "still point"
of Eliot's creative sway.
Yet all stirrings emanate from the primal swirl
of quantum motions;
Ever moving, always fleeting, arising here,
then there, as revelations.
Copyright 2016 Paul Thomson
For Jeffers: On seeing Tor House and Hawk Tower
For the first time
The Tor stones have grown wistful
Through time and absence since
Your verses filled the house with
Creative passion; the gate is locked.
A hawk rides on coastal updrafts
Calling to the empty tower
For the man who is no more
But, soul-bound, searches for.
Pain is separation; Birth,
Death, a raindrop, you, me.
Better to be a lichen
Or a puddle.
You were lying by Una when
Your poems found me, a soldier
Amid the sucking cesspools
Of jungle war.
The verses slapped my naïveté;
An instrument of politics
Acting out the Groundhog Day
War Loop for my generation.
Oh yes, Shine Perishing Republic and The Wild God
Of The World still offer their warnings, but to no more
Receptive ears. The grip of the self on humanity has loosened
“Only a little” while the ooze of the festering separations
Still flows from the primal Flaw. And the rattle of the drums
Calls for the sons and daughters of this time.
Jeffers, when your lovers come and call back
The words of your mind without speaking, drumbeats
Fade, the hawk finds her soul mate, and the separations,
For that pacific interlude, begin to cohere.
Copyright Paul M Thomson 2017
“If a tree falls.....?” No, there is no sound
Without an ear to hear.
If light shines on....? No, there is no sight
Without an eye I fear.
Footsteps are not heard upon a stair.
Nothing that can be heard is heard there.
There - is as still as night before dawn,
Like waves with no shore to break upon.
Images do not appear where we peer.
Nothing that can be seen is seen there.
There - is as pitch as anthracite,
Like flint with no steel to strike.
Just as a candle lit upon a spirit boat
We flow through our dark world afloat
Thinking the world bright, but the light
Shines only within, all else is midnight.
There - everywhere - is dark and muted,
The senses are but energy transmuted
By neural lobes, without which life is stark;
An amoeba oozing silently through the dark.
Copyright 2021 Paul Thomson