Biography

Richard Thomas is a poet from Totnes, Devon who likes to make surreal observations of everyday things. Richard has had poems previously printed in anthologies, magazines and websites and is shortlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2011; He has also appeared both as a poet and a musician at the prestigious Port Eliot Festival 2009 and 2010. Richard is currently working on his first collection amongst various other poetic projects, aswell as studying in English Literature and Language, and editing the newly found Symmetry Pebbles – an online poetry journal for the edgy and the risktaking. You can keep up to date with Richard at www.myspace.com/richardchristopherthomas and his poetry journal exists at www.symmetrypebbles.com

'Richard Thomas is that rare beast, an artist who’s creating something worthwhile and, dare I say it – beautiful, from the poetry-music crossover. Accompanied by washes of guitar that perfectly complement the ebb and flow of his economic imagery, Richard has the ability to reel you in where others simply leave you floundering. Isn’t it great when there’s a bit of thinking behind the noise?' - Russel, Apples and Snakes

Samples

Dig

Should I dig some more of the earth today?
What shattered lighthouse bulb and what riches
Should my shovel clank amongst the decay?
The brittle bones laid about in ditches
Make each treasure I find more exciting
Comparing it with the cracked skull I shook
In my cupped hands after Monday's digging,
Or Tuesday's find of a fisherman's hook.
There's got to be an array of wonder
Scattered below amongst the stinking dead,
If I just root underneath a shoulder
Of a farmer's loved one who'd never wed.

I may find beauty and could sell my land,
Move to the sea with five rings on each hand.


Road

Your road, sad road, smoke road:
Road that shoots through carcass-rot,
And either side red soil heaved up,
Crumbling, sun dried by everything.
Your road that narrows like a slug end:
No favourite width road. Dandelion,

Deflowering, sleepy in fumes. Dandelion,
Suicidal on the side of city road
Which paves its noisy way to end
In the calm of the ocean in great road-rot.
Road through farming goodness in everything
Like sweet root vegetables heaved up

By muddy men who prefer heaved up
Natural taste to road-dead dandelion.
Your road feels it is all and everything;
No wild bear in a rainbow can stop road
In fear of becoming poor wildlife-rot
Left in the rubble for the flies. An end

To your road is only the ocean. An end
Isn't seeing cypresses heaved up
And left in a pile of decrepit wood to rot
Like the poor merciful dandelion -
That's no feat as your wicked road
Is capable of destroying everything.

Road that swerves: a serpent around everything,
And doesn't conceive to a passive end,
Nor gives in to footpath beauty. Road:
Unforgiving black streaked tarmac up
And over rocky bridges kills the dandelion,
Carrying the exhaust that makes dandelion-rot.

Dipping road that makes squished-rot
Of the minute bugs that give their everything
In an attempt to cross in triumph – dandelion
Falls withered warning them of their end.
Your road that grabs all and rips all up,
Mapping the route of a deadly road.

Road, you are by no means everything,
You too will come to an end and rot
Like the dandelion as the ocean chews you up.


Life as a Poem

Sometimes writing poetry is hard;
I go to grab it but it's gone -
gone from my mind, slung its pompous self out the window.

Sometimes obtaining the contents of my own mind is hard too;
I go to grab myself but I've gone -
I think perhaps I've gone out the window with the poetry.

My poems and my mind often rebel;
Once I caught them making out in the bathroom;
Another time they kept me up all night with their constant squabbling;
And as sure as sometimes my words deny the page,
My heart denies my mind also and so forth.

This is not to say that there is never an easy poem,
Realise that.

Yes, many a day have I woken up to look out of my window
And see the golden autumn leaves as Nature's seasonal currency;
Many old and gnawed bristles of toothbrushes have I seen as clutters of fish bones;
Many a moment have I snapped up from my desk in some great burst
To think: cotton hands! ocean stew! mad nuzzling eagle stealth!

Yes, those images come in occasional flashes to embrace the page;
No, more so: love the page, screw the page in its pale, linear ass.
Well, if only my mind was as easy as those moments then;
Just think, I'd understand myself more than you'd understand me,
Or you'd understand me more than I'd understand myself,
I don't know, either way it's similar.

So, I guess the conclusion I am trying to draw
Is that what my life is now
Is forever searching for those sweet images and mad word combinations,
Constantly looking for my life to become that eternally easy poem.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.