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Best Poems Written by Paul Thomson

Below are the all-time best Paul Thomson poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Nothing For Something

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

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On the Eve of Euthanasia

A little dog is a gift from God
Meant only through life to trod
As a companion to solace our mortal
Frailties through love unconditional.

But loyalty exposes its fatal flaw
When devotion's bonds exceed human law
And penalty is death for an unfailing friend
Whose only sin was a duty to defend.

Hers was love of a kind not easily shared
Yet, fate cast her with one as unprepared
As I to provide the healing balm -
And failing - it is she must meet the calm.

My crying brings her to kiss away the tears
I shed on thought of her end. I live with fears
she consoles as if to forgive
What I must do and can never outlive.

On the eve of euthanasia  2011

PS We found a new home before this was necessary.

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Rise Over Run

There once was a mathematician named Swope
Who said,” In calculus, while I’m deriving, I hope
To find an function so perfect
No tangent could touch it
Lest I fall on a slippery slope"

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Promised Land

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.

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Antebellum Elegy

Prologue
 
Abandoned and in disrepair the mansion 
Is dark now; a story behind every stanchion.
It is 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.

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Fractured

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

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Eternal Light

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

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The Seed and the Soul

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

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Tough Times

"Judge I just don't get it pleaded Pete,
Owner of Heavenly Escorts Elite,
  Given the economy's plight
  And with no relief in sight,
We’re just trying to make ends meet"

Copyright Paul Thomson 2009

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Lifeline

Blood no longer flows
Through the stented arteries 
Pacemaker discharging