Surviving Fragments

By Marc Thomas

For more than fifty years, Marc Thomas has written occasional fragments that he calls poetry.

During the pandemic, he began to write again, beginning with a review of his earlier work. This debut collection highlights the favorites he has kept and reworked. Some date back to 1967, while a few are recent.

The

• Language: English
• Publisher: SwanHorse Press
• Release date: Feb 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781949512120

Marc Thomas

Marc Thomas was born in Saltash, England in 1957. However, he counts himself as Welsh, especially on match days.  He grew up in British boarding schools, wrote short stories as a form of escape and now imagines himself as president of a South American republic. His first book, Ten To Seven, was self-published in 2007 and he’s not afraid to admit that it was a vanity project, which his English teacher would have marked down as needing some improvement. Now that he’s settled in Argentina, his writing has taken on a more conspiratorial form, with the publication of The Last British President, a novel inspired by various Argentine presidents and the British invasions of the River Plate in 1807. He has been a keen ocean sailor all his life, but now he enjoys riding his motorcycle around Argentina, building expensive gaming computers, writing for computer technical blogs and observing life in the fascinating city of Buenos Aires.

Book preview

Surviving Fragments

Marc Thomas

SwanHorse Press

Copyright © 2024 Marc Thomas

SURVIVING FRAGMENTS

Copyright © 2024 by Marc Thomas

All rights reserved

A SwanHorse Press Book

Cover image: Trashy Chair by Liquidlibrary on FreeImages.com,

https://www.freeimages.com/photo/crumpled-paper-on-chair-1672054

Book design: Lisa Leppek

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

For additional information, press inquiries, bulk or educational purchases, and other resources, please contact Monte Ceceri Publishers.

Thomas, Marc, 1946– author

Surviving fragments / Marc Thomas

ISBN: 978-1-949512-10-6 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-949512-12-0 (eBook)

1. Poetry. I. Title

Monte Ceceri Publishers

P.O. Box 60623

Savannah, GA 31420

www.montececeri.com

For Margo

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prefatory Note

The Fragments

Ah, Lunch

Alley on Garbage Day

A Small Transcendence

Books

Cat

Catch

Caught

Coffee

Complaints

Currents

Dark Man

Dell — 1978

Distant Relation

Dog Tales

Dogpile

Evening Event: After-Dinner Mysticism

Fancy Apes

Fat

Garrote

God Less

Haiku

How It Is

Intrusion in a Formal Garden

Knowledge

Laundromat: Fragmentation

Letter Replying to a Friend

Loss

Meditating in a Kitchen

Monday Visit to the Medical School

My Living Will

Natural, Organic, Whole

On the Insufficiency of Language

On the Modern Denial of Null Messages

One Theory of Salvation

Party with a Bad Band

Pastoral Visit

Perhaps Not a Poem

Reason

Reconstruction

Return from a Northern Sojourn

Reunion

Some Poems, Broken in Five Lines

Speak

Theory into Practice: Framed 9×10

This Individual

Waiting

Waking Dreams

Walking Railroad Track Revelation

Water in a Sieve

What Will Become of Me?

When Crows Follow Me

Winding Up: Spiral Notebook Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Monte Ceceri Publishers

Prefatory Note

Herein, with little craft or discipline,

is an Assortment —

from Juvenilia

to Elder Crankiness,

with Occasional Epiphanies.

No writing class

No workshop

No writers’ group projects.

Here are bits and pieces

Accumulated

Moved from place to place

(some bits almost thirty times)

but

Not Revised for Consistency

and

finally

Typed, Cleaned Up, Reformatted,

Revisited and Reedited,

and

Presented for Your Entertainment.

Be thankful that

You remain ignorant

of the remnants

now discarded

as childish, foolish, confused,

or simply repulsive.

Having failed to track

when and where

the pieces

were written originally

(or derivatively, as it were)

and

Having long served as a Librarian,

the Surviving Fragments

are here presented

in

Alphabetical Order.

The Fragments

Ah, Lunch

When alone

Is made slowly,

Contentedly, with automatic motion

And no schedule.

Usually soup, bread, with

Milk or beer to drink

And poetry to browse.

Today,

Chicken with mushrooms, schmalzig,

While visiting old Russia

And listening, half-attentive,

To twanging peasant music.

Sometimes,

I dip each bit of bread

And nibble it, cautiously, to keep

The drippings from my beard,

Off my book, while

Street fires scorch New York.

Right now,

Holding my book on my lap,

I break my bread

Into small squares

And drop them in.

I spoon

Soaked fatty gravy bread,

And think my body