Poetry: Selections from Gwil James Thomas

Picture of a Night in a Spanish Village

You are the distant wolf howl, 

carried across those 

dusty streets, 

the splintered bones 

of agricultural workers, 

who’d fought back – 

their bodies buried 

before their dreams, 

the faded pink 

spray paint 

on that crumbling 

and inhabitable house, 

which translates to –

‘long live the kids of ‘83’

and the young hearts 

of the teenagers 

behind the taverna 

swapping spit 

and smoking marijuana 

beneath a pale moon 

and with my heart 

pounding and fearful –

I am the one

you’d thought 

would never

return.

Hiraeth

It’s a stranger’s face, 

a piece of music, an aroma, 

or just the way that the sun 

feels against your skin 

on that given day 

and a memory gets jogged 

of some place in time, 

of a life lived and now gone, 

of the lives that might have 

been with others and 

of the dead and disappeared 

and you find yourself lost 

in a nostalgia and longing 

that suddenly grip your soul like 

an anaconda giving out free hugs 

at a bunny’s birthday party –

until it feels so real that you 

could almost exchange 

realities and then at its apex 

you wake from the dream,

as your boss prods you 

to remind you that you’re on 

company time and the feeling 

bittersweetly scurries off 

into the shadows of your mind –

waiting to unexpectedly 

reappear again somewhere else 

miles down the road.

Over in New Jersey

My poems cross The Atlantic, 

to a poet friend in New Jersey  –

their pages turned and splashed 

with beer foam at the bar, 

soon finding themselves 

being read during a lunch break 

in a psychiatric ward –

where they couldn’t feel 

more at home 

and then spill out of their chapbook

later on at the poet’s desk,

where the late night’s silence 

cuts like a carving knife 

against your tongue, 

as you slowly lick up and down 

the blade –

but it’s a silence that can offer 

redemption and growth 

and if the night is right, 

the birth of some fresh poems too –

something my poems know 

all too well, as they get comfy 

on the bookshelf,

staring at the poet at his desk,

ready for some pure fucking magic.

Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician. He lives in his hometown of Bristol, England but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. He has twice been nominated for Best of The Net and once for The Pushcart Prize. His ninth chapbook of poetry, Gold Chains Around our Necks, Hellhounds at our Heels will be published by Holy & Intoxicated Publications in 2022.