Sift It, See It, Swig It, Say It, Salted...

'I see…I think.'

'Heavens, Pooh, it's quite straightforward. Top security for our Wood in just five words, Tigger says.'

'Just go through it again, Piglet.'

'Anything you see that looks amiss, you just say the magic…oh, you know, like when you repeat a spell over and over.'

'Decanter.'

'Decanter, exactly.'

'See It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Bravo, Pooh. You've hit the Nile at the flood.'

'Suppose you weren't ready.'

'Weren't ready?'

'I mean, there you are, having a leisurely cup of tea, you look out the window, you sense that something's wrong--'

'Oh, well, then it would have to be Sip It, Sense It, See It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Or if it was a really leisurely cuppa, I suppose it would have to be Sip It, Swish it, Sense It, See It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Pooh, you really don't have to overthink--'

'And if the urgency of the situation overwhelmed you all at once, it would have to be Sip It, Swish It, Sense It, See It, Swig It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Actually, I think we can just stick with Tigger's five words, Pooh--'

'Or you might be in the middle of preparing a cake when you spot whatever's up--'

'Pooh--'

'I mean, still with your trusty cuppa--'

'All Tigger said--'

'Sift It, Sip It, Sense It, See It, Swig It, Say It, Sorted.'

'I wish I'd never--'

'Not to mention Christmas variations.'

'So don't, Pooh--'

'Old Santa Claus, he's a busy man, you know, shooting hither and yon up there in the filament, some of the presents are bound to fall to earth while he's urging on Plaster and Blister and Dimsum and all. So if one falls at your feet, what can you do but drag out the old toboggan and help him?'

'Tell you what, Pooh, leave it to the rest of us to--'

'See It, Sleigh It, Sorted. Nice ring, that.'

'Pooh, let's be silent, eh? Let's practise minefieldness.'

'So there you are, leisurely cuppa, cake on the go, present falls past your window, out with the toboggan, present delivered, back home, whimsical afterthought of adding some savoury to the mix--'

'I wonder if the Foreign Legion is still recruiting--'

'Sip it, Sift It, Swish It, Sense It, See It, Swig It, Sleigh It, Salted, Sorted.'

'Pooh, for the love of--'

'And as for old George squaring up to the Dragon, with tea to drink and a cake to bake and a toboggan to fettle and a pressie to reroute and a bit of savouriness to chuck in--'

'Mum! Mum!'

'Port Winston Mulberry'

This is the title poem from my 2009 collection (England: Littlejohn and Bray).
 I post it here in commemoration and heartfelt thanks. If it weren't for that astonishing push, we wouldn't be as we are, here and now.

'Port Winston Mulberry'
(Considered by Evan Statler, sometime private, Canadian Armed Forces)

('Mulberry’ was the name given to artificially constructed harbours towed over to the Normandy coast to facilitate the D-Day landings, 6th June, 1944. Two were constructed. Remnants of one, nicknamed ‘Port Winston’, are still visible at Arromanches, itself codenamed ‘Gold Beach’, where British forces came ashore. Further east, around Courseulles, was ‘Juno Beach’, on which the Canadians landed at 7.55 am, in the last phase of the offensive.)

Look at Winston. Exploded sausages
floating in soup. That’s what Lauren’s youngest said,
and he should know--at ten,
commander of all knowledge
in this torn and herded world.
Then he took off, to where his mom
was seeing to a double-scoop pistachio,
leaving me on this beach,
postnuclear with its teethed ledges, sucking holes.
Back then it was just a moonscape,
but those were smaller times.

I should be at Courseulles,
where the guys hit the ground.
But this is as far east as I can push;
so I stand and let the breeze
haul me back the voices:
Cal D’Entremont setting up a jive
just before the tailgate flew,
screaming ‘Saskatoooooon’
and haring down ahead of me.
Hours on he was half-off a stretch of sack,
jolting through an archway:
a fazed lemur losing it on a branch,
no tail left to ring salvation in iron.

Rod McKercher stared at the sands in disgust,
thinking of another ring,
his Prince Edward Island beaches:
“Call that surf?”--and he was gone,
walking a straight line through the business,
strafing just so many gnats
crowding his rifle butt.
Top of the beach, I fouled a line,
thought I’d be shaking hands with The Man
in a foot of scummy hereafter;
McKercher dragged me up like I was
a pretty marker on the tenth green:
“You West Coast guys,” he cried
and motioned me to swing into his shadow,
to enter the books and the footage
in water-clawing step.
He dropped. I was blasting alone
till I wrenched my left foot
and had nothing but a hobble
and a dead man to scare Adolf
back down the road to Caen.

Lauren’s youngest appears
with a chocmint, single scoop,
which he aims at my mouth.
The gang want to turn inland;
the tapestry at Bayeux sounds cool.
I toss the keys to whoever can catch them,
request they report back at six:
“That’s 1800,” I tell the blond fire
on the youngest’s head, and rake it.

I’ve seen all the tapestries foolery can weave.
I’ve seen them pinned down on the linen,
two dimensions the only available space
for death: D’Entremont derelict on a stretcher,
McKercher jitterbugging into dust,
soaking on the sand that curled his lip.

The Espace disappears--and here’s a guy peddling flowers,
wheedling about my sweetheart in African French.
Why not? As he steps away, I pull the wrapping flat,
flower by flower, and pitch them at the Mulberry.

And they land and float
and rock and go under,
all the sweethearts who got serious
and drove an endless howl
through yawning June,
with its petals and its moons.

(Infantrymen going ashore from the H.M.C.S. Prince Henry. June 6th, 1944. Image: PO Dennis Sullivan / Canadian Department of National Defense / Library and Archives Canada / PA-132790.\r\n. There were more than 18,700 Canadian casualties and over 5,000 Canadian soldiers died.)

'Clear the Lorry!'

'Well, Piglet…'

'Well, Pooh…'

'Looks like proper chaos in their country.'

'I'd say so, Pooh.  Tigger reckons they're now in unchartered accountants.'

'Heavens! What does that mean?'

'They'll just have to get themselves chartered.'

'Ah, career change.  Well, they were obviously rubbish at being MPs.'

'And Old Bill was defeated three times.'

'Back to traffic duties for him, then.  So what will happen next week?'

'Well, Laura Carlsberg--'

'--Probably the blondest political editor in the world--'

'--says they'll be opting like it's gone out of business.'

'Just ahead of their country, then.  So how does that work?'

'Ah, now, the biggest Bercow--'

'The what?'

'His real name's John Speaker but he's the biggest Bercow in the House.'

'Stiff competition for that.'

'Oh, he just blinds them with precedent and neckwear.  Anyway, Ms Carlsberg says that he'll

arrange for a pantechnicon to be reversed up to My Lady's Lower Chamber.'

'I don't think I wish to--'

'I don't wish to tell you. '

'And then?'

'Ah, then, the biggest Bercow gets the list of the different optics ready and yells "Clear the Lorry!" and the doors open and they all scurry out.'

'Who do?'

'The indicative voles.  And then he yells out an optic and they all run and hide.  Then someone finds where the largest number are hiding.  Then they all come out again and he yells the next optic and they run and hide again.'

'Till the optics are empty.'

'Completely.  And whatever the largest number of hiders…or hideaways…I don't know the right--'

'Heidelbergs?''

'That's it…whatever the largest number of heidelbergs is at the end, that's the optic they choose.'

'What a lot of optics.'

'A vital part of Westminster life, Ms Carlsberg says.'

'No wonder they don't get anything done.'

'And apart from all that, someone might move a motion at any minute.'

'On live television?  Disgraceful.'

Happy Merry Tram 'n' Ferry

'Well, Piglet.'
'Well, Pooh.'
'Merry merry.'
'Happy jolly.'
'Tom and Jerry.'
'Buddy Holly.'
'Jolly happy.'
'Outsize nappy.'
'Roaring fire,'
'Danny Dyer.'
'Happy merry.'
'Tram 'n' ferry.'
'Sleighbells ringing.'
'Bob 'n' Binging.'
'Sprouts 'n' mash.'
'High Street crash.'
'Rudolph's nose.'
'Boots to close.'
'New Year Joy.'
'Myrna Loy.'
'Bette Davis.'
'Dot 'n' Mavis.'
'Here's to you.'
'To you too too.'
'With a hashtag?'
'Plus a gift-bag.'
'All good cheer to every body.'
'Eeeeeet's Kreeeestmas! -'
'Ah - Walsall Noddy.'

Happy Merry Tram 'n' Ferry

'Well, Piglet.'
'Well, Pooh.'
'Merry merry.'
'Happy jolly.'
'Tom and Jerry.'
'Buddy Holly.'
'Jolly happy.'
'Outsize nappy.'
'Roaring fire,'
'Danny Dyer.'
'Happy merry.'
'Tram 'n' ferry.'
'Sleighbells ringing.'
'Bob 'n' Binging.'
'Sprouts 'n' mash.'
'High Street crash.'
'Rudolph's nose.'
'Boots to close.'
'New Year Joy.'
'Myrna Loy.'
'Bette Davis.'
'Dot 'n' Mavis.'
'Here's to you.'
'To you too too.'
'With a hashtag?'
'Plus a gift-bag.'
'All good cheer to every body.'
'Eeeeeet's Kreeeestmas! -'
'Ah - Walsall Noddy.'

I've stood me stand.

'I'm sorry, Piglet, it doesn't make sense--'

'--it does, Pooh, if you'd--'

'--and I simply can't join in with any old nonsense at Kanga's carol-service--'

'--Pooh, it's just a shorter way of saying--'

'Victim of incompetence, that's what that cattle-shed was.'

'Pooh, it means that once upon a time, in Royal David's city--'

'I wonder how it got there? Must have played merry hell with its joists.'

'Pooh, it means that there once stood a lowly cattle-shed in Royal--'

'Oh, yes, stood is right, probably all winded and buckled, having been fed misinformation.'

'Look, there's no suggestion that it was ever anywhere else.'

'Once, Piglet. It says, once in Royal David's city. Which is to say, as soon as it got there.'

'Pooh--'

'Probably been given a right royal soft soap, poor old thing. Oh, yes, come along, annual Cattle-Shed convention, meet all your mates from all over, exhibitions galore, new breakthroughs in shed-stance, sign up for our Lowliness Profiling--'

'If you'd just--'

'Lunch provided.'

'Pooh, it means once upon a--'

'David hisself might drop in.'

'Please, Pooh--'

'So it gets all its laths and rafters over there, you know, looking out for a guide with one of those placards,"Meeting Point, Out-of-Town and Overseas Cattle-Sheds, A Warm, Woody Welcome." Nothing. Hangs about, asks a passing wheelbarrow, sorry, mate, never heard of it--'

'Pooh--'

'Though there's a Gazebo-fest on in the next street, you could tag along with them.'

'If you'll just let me--'

'Here, now we're chatting, my sheddy friend, any WD40 on you?'

'It means that once upon--'

'Oh, right, well, how about a dollop of corn-oil?'

'It was always there, Pooh. It never--'

'So what does the poor hoodwinked shed do? What can it do? Stand for a bit. And just the once. Then, quite rightly, it says to itself, you know, flip this for a game of dry-rot, I've stood me stand, it's a long way home, seen one royal David you've seen them all, I'm off.'

'All right, Pooh. All right. Well, how about "Ding-Dong Merrily On High"?.

'What? A song about a pub brawl at eighty thousand feet?'

'Just a thought.'

 

Of which we know whatnot...

'Pooh, I was wondering -'

'Shhh, Piglet.'

'Sorry?'

'Shhh.'

'Why?  What's happening?'

'Let us betake ourselves unto the zone.'

'What zone? Oh, don't tell me someone's slung up an installation right here in -'

'Silence, Piglet.  Silence. Tigger says it's essential to mediate.  You know, let your mind go plonk.'

'Why should we do that?'

'Words, Piglet.  Tigger says that sometimes they can be swords when they should be fraushoes.'

'It's that honey, isn't it?  Moment I saw "Produce of Colombia" I just knew--'

'That whereof of which we know whatnot, thereof let us know not it.'

'So…if you don't know something you shouldn't talk about it?'

'Yes.'

'When's that stopped Tigger?'

'For it is written, Piglet: let your yea be yea and your shush be shush.'

'Biblical, is that?'

'Oh, Piglet, Piglet.  Jimmy Cliff.  1968. Top tune.'

'I think he might have got it from -'

'He sang about the White Cliffs of Dover, you know.  Just like Miss Lynn.'

'I don't think Mr Cliff had quite the same experience of Dover as -'

'Your mind, Piglet, your mind is like unto the sky.'

'What's this "like unto" business?'

'Your thoughts are like clouds, Piglet, having a proper old scud.  Happy thoughts.  Airy thoughts. Then, all of a sudden, sad thoughts.  Not all that very nice thoughts.'

'No, Pooh, that's minefieldness.'

'Not mediation?'

'You mediate between things.'

'Ah.  Like the devil and the old brown cow?'

'Deep blue sea, Pooh.'

'Oh, code now, is it?  Well, purple sparrow to you.'

'No, it's a saying that -'

'Sorry, Piglet, I'm in the zone.  Ow…ow…'

'Oum, Pooh.'

'Ow…cow….'

Not Maudlin

'Piglet?'

'Yes, Pooh.'

'Is it Kavenarr or Kavenaww?'

'I rather think it's Shrowsbury.'

'Ah.  So not Sconn.'

'Oh no.  Though possibly Soulihull.'

'Or Lemster?'

'On high days and holidays, I should think.'

'But not Maudlin.'

'As in College? Oh, no.'

'I've always wondered what Maudlin College is.'

'A slightly more stoical Heartbreak Hotel, Owl says.'

'Oh, I see.  Piglet?'

'Pooh?'

'How exactly do you pronounce Cholmodeleybelvoirfeatherstonhaugh?'

'Char.'

'Gosh.  Needs an extra-long cheque book, though.'

'Oh, they never carry anything like money, Pooh.'

'Well…extra case for the syllables.'

'Or luggage.'

'So how do they manage?'

'Owl says they just call out,  "You there, zero-hours giggy chappie, haul these, will you?"'

'Gosh.  It's a wonderful world, Piglet.'

'Red roses too.'

Creative Writing at Leicester

Many thanks to Jonathan Taylor for taking a selection of my work for the Creative Writing at Leicester site.  Please follow link.

http://creativewritingatleicester.blogspot.com/2018/09/two-poems-by-michael-w-thomas.html

The Portswick Imp: Collected Stories, 2001-2016.

My collection of short stories is now out.  I hope that you will investigate, enjoy and spread the word about it.  Many thanks, I appreciate it, Michael

 

Michael W. Thomas

The Portswick Imp: Collected Stories, 2001-2016

ISBN 978-1-910322-57-4.

£7.00

Black Pear Press, www.blackpear.net

Available from Black Pear, Waterstones and similar outlets.

‘Past, present and future meet throughout Thomas’s stories, and the meetings are not without consequence.  But there is humour, too, and the chance for the reader to alight in different places at different times.  Sunny San Gimignano.  The Black Country at the lowest season of the year.  An Irish farm circa Sputnik and The Twist.  An England undone by humanity; another England undone by the inexplicable.  A Midlands town seen through Grenadian eyes.  A Welsh landscape in which man becomes shadow, shadow becomes nothing at all.  With a quality that has ensured the publication of Thomas’ writing in titles as diverse as The Antioch Review, Muscadine Lines, Under The Radar, The London Magazine and the TLS,  the stories in The Portswick Imp open up lives in all their ordinary improbability.  Here, so often, is a desperation that refuses to be quiet but also an acceptance – laughing or simply wide-eyed – of a world where, in the words of one character, what is to come can feel like "the first yard of a desert" or, in the words of another, "the proper start."’  Black Pear

 

Early and Late: new publication.

If you would like a copy, please contact me here or on michaelw.thomas@btinternet.com

Many thanks. 

Early and Late. 
Poems by Michael W. Thomas.  Artwork by Ted Eames.
ISBN: 978-0-9929510-3-0
52 pp. Gloss-and-paperboard covers. £5.00
Publication date: May, 2018.

Over four sequences, Early and Late moves through the stages of life as the writer views them: from portraits of peers in primary school (inevitably faded by time) through the bronco-ride of adulthood to the condition of those who face endings of different kinds. (This last isn't necessarily mournful: endings can be a matter of renewed hope.)  The collection contains illustrations by artist and writer Ted Eames which, in different ways, talk with the poems and reveal further slants on their meanings.

Fyoooo-elll...

'Are you absolutely sure, Piglet?'

'That's what Tigger said.'

'Ah…so you're not sure.'

'Eminently plausible, Tigger says.'

'But what on earth is the point?'

'Partly diplomatic and, well, partly lurve.'

'Good grief…how?'

'Well, he's marrying the first one for, you know, the lurve thing…'

'Thang, surely.'

'Sorry pardon.  And he's marrying the other one so that his country won't lose all its teeth if it has to opt for a Hard Biskit.'

'And Tigger didn't mishear the names?'

'No, Pooh.  He assured me that his auditory ambience was geared to the appropriate valences at this point in the stretched envelope.'

'Well, bless my soul.'

'I'm fresh out of robes and water, Pooh.'

'All right, well, leave my soul to its own devices, then.  I just can't believe - '

'You'll just have to, Pooh.  Harry Wails is wedding Meg and Merkel.'

'And when's it happening?'

'Very soon.  The Feast of Wembley.'

'Oh, gosh, I know that one.  Will that Good King Windlassless be there?'

'I think they just thaw him out for a few days in the dark season so he can look out of a window and then pop out for, you know, a bit of trodding with a sheaf of pages blowing after him.'

'I see.'

'Unless his people talk to Tigger's people.  If they do, it'll fuel speculation.'

'Fyoooo-elll, surely.'

'Sorry pardon.'

Battle of the Bayou

'But why, Piglet?'

'Tigger says that it's the patriotic mood of the hour…'

'Ah…'

'So we must participate.'

'I see.  So…a film about what was happening in The Hundred-Acre Wood during their Second World War.'

'Yes.'

'What was happening?'

'Tigger says it's not about what was happening.  It's about what can be made to happen now that they can say was happening then.'
'So what will be happening now that was or wasn't happening then…then?'

'Ah, well, Tigger's going to use the bridge over the stream for the famous meeting.'

'Famous meeting?'

'When General de Gaulle presented Winston with a Parisian tabby to say, you know, ta for letting the Free French stay.'
'Ah.…I see.  Hence the phrase "Chat to Churchill".'

'Précisément.'

'Sorry?'

'Thing is, Pooh, Tigger has you and me in mind to be part of de Gaulle's entourage, so I'm learning the lingo and I'd advise you to get weaving too.'

'Weavers, were they?'

'Busy bees, Pooh.  Working on back-channel diplomacy.'

'I get a touch of that if the honey's off.  So we'd be in the entourage?'

'Yes.'

'Or as they would say…'
'Er...entourage.'

'Bit of a cheek, pinching our word.'
'Ah, well, Tigger says that it all dates from 1812 when the English took the Bayou Tapestry over to Normanton.'
'Yorkshire?'

'France.  They pinched that as well.  And the Bayou Tapestry will be central to Tigger's film.'

'What is it?'

'History in the eye, Tigger says.'
'In the eye?'

'Bit of an opthalmic issue at one point, apparently.'

'What about all the other points?'

'Oh, now, Pooh, they're what you'd expect in the Bayou Tapestry.'

'Expect?'

'Oh, you know…bluesmen with dobros drawn, disputes about 'Midnight Special' starting in G or C sharp.  All that.'

'Ah.  So…an unrestful time in the Wood for the next while...'
'Gary Oldman's playing a tussock.'

'Last word in versatility, him.'

        

Early and Late: Poems and Images, Michael W. Thomas and Ted Eames.

Early and Late.  Poems by Michael W. Thomas, Artwork by Ted Eames.  Forthcoming from Cairn Time Press, 2018.  (Promotional video)

A Writer's Album December 2017.

With thanks to Barry George, Philadelphia poet, for the photograph of the Japanese temple.
Season's Greetings to Everyone,

Michael

'The man with no umbrella'

The man with no umbrella    

                                         

The man with no umbrella
lives with a raindrop in his ear
it gossips of tides and oceans
how the dogdays
would see it mist out of the waves
how it would find them again
at the dark swing of the weatherglass

its earliest memory

it insists
is of waking to itself
amongst the toils of Eden
binding with the millions
to pour down on Adam and Eve
marry them fast to their guilty clothes
so hard
the sword of the sentinel-angel
rusted like prayer

it crawled it says
in and out of the bitten apple
which tasted of a colour
you wouldn’t wish to dream

over time it has mimicked
a tear on a cheek
and so sealed misunderstanding—
where kindred pairs have parted
hidden in separate footsteps
while the ill-sorted have pushed on

biting their lips  

for this the raindrop is sorry

the man understands but just stares down
he has lived so long
he has nothing of his own to hear

if he thinks at all
it’s of the umbrellas
he’s left among the years
the trains they might still be riding
the music that might still be stuck
among their folds
with the click of last lights
the long gasp of dark
across a concert hall

it was bad admits the raindrop
but not bad bad
just that the dove overshot Noah’s prow
the million drops
had to bulk a last squall
to turn it back

of course
it might have been making
for a land of birds elsewhere
happy to let the ark turn
to a drifting bonescape

in which case says the raindrop
I wouldn’t be here
feeling the smoke of your mind
you wouldn’t be picturing where you are not
as it fills up with umbrellas

the man hears this and doesn’t
he is looking at a long-ago summer afternoon
a Friday with time caught between strikes
four-fifty four-fifty-five
a campus and everyone gone
departure tugging hard at the world
the world digging in like a mule

he stands in an adjacent park
the campus gate he came out of
will stay bang shut
till an autumn he won’t be in
all that quitting smells heavy as musk
as a raindrop rolls off a leaf
another and another
waking him for the first time
to his open throat
thin collar
empty hands