Poet of the Fortnight #17: Thomas (Mar 26 - Apr 9, 2018)

Thomas has been randomly selected as our 17th Poet of the Fortnight (PotF)! Thomas is 26-year-old man living in Massachusetts, USA, who joined PnQ all the way back in 2008. He left us in the summer of 2017, but returned a few months later -- that inevitable PnQ pull, am I right? Since rejoining in the winter of 2017, Thomas has submitted 6 poems, each one vivid and packed full of imagery. Read and let your senses come alive.

Please welcome Thomas to his own special thread, and be sure to read his latest poem posted just below -- it's intoxicating:

----
delicates

Time and time again I have
washed, dried, folded the sweatshirts
that you borrowed while we were
together and still they smell like

an open meadow in late spring
floral and calm, like campfire and
burnt marshmallow, melted chocolate,
a beehive filled with honey lipgloss,

and I wonder if I should be
investing in a new laundry detergent
or just begin accepting that what is
left of you will never quite be gone.
----

Thomas, please fill out this public survey when you find time. You can pass any question/prompt in this thread, just write "Pass." I will ask 10 questions total throughout the next 2 weeks, and members of the community are encouraged to participate by asking questions of their own. Here's the survey:

Real name:
Meaning behind your PnQ name:
Birth place:
Languages spoken:
When you discovered PnQ and why you joined:
Favorite poet(s):
Book you are currently reading:
Song you last listened to:
Inspirations for writing:
5 truths about yourself:

Thank you, Jane, for the lovely introduction.

Real name: Thomas Buckley

Meaning behind your PnQ name: At the moment, and for awhile, it’s just been my real name. When I joined P&Q way back, my name was xdarkeyesoldierx which really has no meaning behind it, but I also used as my AIM screen name. I just thought it sounded cool.

Birth place: Massachusetts, about 15 mins south of Boston and have lived here my whole life.

Languages spoken: English, minimal Spanish but learning (my girlfriend is Colombian, so I’d like to be able to speak somewhat well with her family)

When you discovered PnQ and why you joined: 2008 and I joined as an outlet for my writing. At the time I was a junior in high school, just starting to take an interest in writing, and P&Q presented a community to share my work with.

Favorite poet(s): Edgar Allan Poe, EE Cummings, Derek Walcott, Billy Collins, Anne Sexton; Slam Poets: Rudy Francisco, Sierra Demulder

Book you are currently reading: Good to Great by Jim Collins and The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Song you last listened to: Take You Down by Fox Stevenson

Inspirations for writing: I find a lot of inspiration in just the world surrounding, nature specifically. Since my writing tends to fall in with a more imagistic style, I’m very in tune with the colors and rich description available in nature.
Additionally, I find much of my inspiration in human relationships. Not my own personal relationships, as I don’t like writing about myself, but those I see around me among friends and family.

5 truths about yourself:
1. I have a great desire to travel, in the past two years taking the opportunity to visit Iceland and Ireland, and I am always looking for new places to go.
2. I attended a choir school from 5th-8th grade and still today greatly enjoy singing in a public setting. Karaoke nights have become a common occurrence for me.
3. I am a habitual non-finisher; I can’t even begin to count the number of poems I’ve started only to throw them out half-written or leave them behind never to be completed. Same goes for short stories.
4. I am a very big sports fan- hockey, baseball, and football (American football, to be precise) specifically. I also enjoy playing golf when I can.
5. Prior to my current job working at a telephone company, I worked in retail at Michael’s and as a mall security guard. I’m not really putting my creative writing degree to great use.

Hi, Thomas!

What were some of your favorite things/places you saw while traveling?

Do you enjoy singing certain songs/genres more than others?

Thomas,
Curious about finishing things (I had the same experience for over thirty years). At the point you stop writing a poem or short story, what is (are) the reason(s)?
Do you lose sight of the original intent? Do you get interrupted and just don’t back? Do you lose interest? Or does the direction get buggy? Or ....?

So neat that you enjoy singing and do karaoke nights, I've never had the guts lol.
What is your favorite song to sing for those nights?

Also, big shout out to Rudy Francisco too. Love his poems. Would you ever consider writing a slam poem or performing it?

Lastly, you mentioned working at Michael's (oh the joy of retail). Worst experience with a customer or strangest situation you had to deal with?

Thomas, first off I truly enjoy reading your poems. Very romantic and visuals are beautiful.
Do you have any pets? If so, what kind do you have? Is there any crazy thing you do that no one else does? What's one thing you would like to accomplish in this lifetime?

Hi there, Liz! Thank you for your questions.

In both Ireland and Iceland, I was really drawn in by how beautiful the landscape is, each with distant mountains, rolling farmland, a lot of real wide open space which there just isn't a lot of where I live. Since going, I have actually been dying to get back to Iceland because there are so many things I would still love to do there, maybe even just renting a car and driving the countryside for a week. I did a Game of Thrones film locations tour in both places and being able to see the settings for some of my favorite scenes from the show was really exciting. I'm very much into planning out my trips ahead of time so for both of them I had fully booked itineraries for day tours, at least one city tour in each place, and then with any free time just exploring the area near where I'm staying. My favorite place I went in Iceland was the black sand beach in Vik because it was such a unique place, with black sand beaches not being very common around the world. In Ireland, I really enjoyed our trip to the Cliffs of Moher.

I'm fairly open to singing any genre, as long as I know a song well enough. I mostly sing country music, though, more specifically artists like Thomas Rhett, Billy Currington, and Luke Bryan. More recently I've been trying to expand beyond country, re-listening to a lot of 90's pop and soft rock and practicing with bands like the Counting Crows, Matchbox Twenty.
My favorite songs to sing at the moment are probably Too Much To Ask by Niall Horan and Marry Me by Thomas Rhett.
Edit: To note, my company has every person, when being promoted or hired on, to present a fun fact about themselves. So when my second promotion came up two years ago, I stated that I attended a choir school and did a lot of singing. Our CEO is all for having people perform at our weekly company meetings so he asked if I would sing the next Monday. For that, I sang Leave the Night On by Sam Hunt in front of the then-1,500 employees of our company. Nerve-wracking, but I thought it went off well.

Hello there, Larry!

I can think of a whole plethora of reasons why I've abandoned pieces, many of them you named- losing sight of what I was aiming to write, losing interest in a piece, daily interruptions drawing my attention away. I'd say my most common issue is getting a single line or two stuck in my head and I either will never write the words down and eventually forget them, or I will write them down and realize I have nowhere to go from there and end up just throwing them away.
About 99% of my poems start out on paper- more specifically, in any open time during work, I will toss a few lines down on a post-it note or in a small notebook and about 75% of those get tossed in the garbage when I decide that I just don't like the writing, don't care for the path the piece is taking, or when I just don't feel it's up to par with where I want my writing to be. I like to think I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to my writing, but there is definitely a self-imposed standard that will often kill a piece, even if I think it's strong, because I'll eventually tell myself that it simply isn't strong enough. I think much of that stems from having my degree in Creative Writing, and that if I hadn't majored in the study in college, I'd be much more forgiving in assessing my own pieces.

Hello there, MaryAnne! Thank you for the questions.

I had never really done karaoke until the past year or so, and only decided to on a whim while out with some friends while visiting them at law school. We were going out to the bars and they mentioned a place that had karaoke and with that in my mind, I pushed to go there. Three of us broke off from the group and had a blast, singing duets together, doing a song as a trio, and since then I've just really enjoyed the fun I have performing at karaoke. The beer helps stem any nerves.
My friend Kayne and I will often duet on the same song each time - Save Tonight by Eagle-Eye Cherry - and my personal solo song is Drops of Jupiter by Train. It's just a song that I've sung for a long time, even using it as my audition song for American Idol, so it holds a special place for me.

I'm glad you asked this. I actually have written several slam poems and used to perform regularly at a slam poetry event held every Wednesday in the city. I eventually stopped having the time to go, but it was a wonderful community of poets, new people performing every week, and they would have special guest poets every so often and it was cool to meet some of the bigger names in the slam poetry scene. On my original account, actually, I did have a slam poem posted on here, but that's now lost to my old computer dying, sadly. I haven't written any slam poetry in a few years, though, writing and performing most of it during college at open mic nights, having now steered my writing towards a very consistent, structured free-verse style with a narrow scope of topic. Rudy is fantastic though! And I've had the pleasure of meeting Sierra Demulder, Taylor Mali, and I even got to open for Jason Carney during college. I consider him a mentor of sorts, still messaging with him fairly frequently about writing.

Haha, I don't know that I would ever go back to working retail now in my life, but I would at least say it taught me a lot and I definitely feel like it's something everyone should experience at least once. I had several interesting experiences at Michael's. One of the more memorable moments was when a girl came up to me in the wedding section once, and tried asking me out for her male friend who was hiding an aisle over (I was flattered, but had a girlfriend at the time). I thought the setting was quite fitting though.
I had a woman buy one of every single flower we had in stock, which, rather than being able to scan in a single flower and entering quantity, required me to scan every single flower one-by-one. It ended up being some ludicrous amount of money and something like 100+ flowers. It then, as I'm finishing scanning, turns out she forgot her credit card at home (a 5-minute drive away) and had to leave to go retrieve it. I had to keep my register closed until she returned because I was not cancelling and re-scanning all of those flowers.
I'd say the worst customer experience was a woman who would not stop yelling at me claiming the store falsely advertised a frame as being on sale. She refused to accept that she was reading a sale sign for a different set of frames, even after I offered to show her which frames were actually on sale, and after screaming for about 5 minutes, she finally tossed the frame down in front of me and stormed out. The customer behind her in line stepped up and says, "I promise I won't be as much of a b**ch as she was" which made me laugh and feel better about having put up with the first woman.

Hi, Brenda! Thank you for the compliment, I appreciate it! I'm always glad to hear when people get enjoyment from my writing.

I do not have any pets at this current time. I have had two dogs in my lifetime, both of them White German Shepherds. Odin passed away a few months ago, sadly, and Thor we had for most of my childhood and he passed away in 2014 at the age of 13; My parents are looking into potentially fostering dogs in the near future. We are very likely taking in a lab/dalmatian mix named Cherry next week which I'm excited about.

I don't know if there is any one thing I do that no one else does, but my co-workers constantly find some of the things I do to be very strange (I prefer to think of them as unique, but entirely normal). I do have a tendency to know a whole lot about nothing important. For example, I can fairly regularly rattle off random facts about literature, movies, sports, and have a real knack for quoting TV and movies, even the most obscure lines from popular film (I cannot count the number of times I've run through sections of the Shawshank Redemption verbatim for fun). It may be why I was so at ease in theater productions, because I never had any issue remembering my lines.

My ultimate goal in life would be to have at least one book published whether that be a novel, a collection of short stories, or a book of poetry. As a means of accomplishing that, I'm hoping to save up enough money within the next several years to be able to take three years off from working entirely in order to dedicate my time fully to writing. I think being able to fully invest my time in a project would make it more likely I'd finish it.

Thomas, I loved your answers! I used to have German Shepherds myself years ago. Mine were named Hans and Czar. I love your pups names, awesome strong names for such wonderful dogs. I'm excited about your parents upcoming foster dog. It's an interesting mix.
So you are one of those people that have those fascinating tid bits of random info in your head? You must slay it at trivia! It's always fun to work with someone like you. You never know what you are going to say.
That is an awesome goal to have! I hope you carve out the time to make this happen. You are a gifted writer and I feel your book would shoot up the charts.
I would love to visit Ireland and Iceland. They are so pretty! To see the spots they film GOT would be amazing!
Keep your dreams and your goals, you will accomplish them all.

If you had to live with only ONE of your senses, which would it be and why?

Are you creative in any other way than poetry?

Brenda,

Thank you so much for your compliments, I greatly appreciate them. And I have no intentions of letting my dreams die out without giving every last effort to make them true.

And for all my life, really, I’ve just known things- often pointless facts, highly unneeded in most settings, but entertaining nonetheless. This especially goes for sports; so yes, at sports trivia, I clean up well haha.

Liz, I actually had to think pretty long about this because it really comes down to two: vision and hearing.

Taste, smell, and touch are all great, but I think those would be the three I could most easily do without. When it comes to sight- I find great enjoyment in being able to physically see the beauty of the world with my own two eyes. It’s really what allows me to have an imagination, being able to see so much and recreating it in mind.
But if I’m being honest, I think if I had to choose one, I would go with hearing. So much of my day-to-day revolves around listening to music, talking with others, listening to nature and the surrounding world. And that, I think I get the most enjoyment out of. For even if I did not have sight, I could imagine my own world through the ability to hear all that is going on around me.

Hi Em!

Beyond poetry, I have also written music and been singing since I was about 10. I don’t write as much music anymore, but I’m still always singing.
I also work on scripts with a few of my college buddies from time to time.
Outside of writing, not that I’m terribly good, I greatly enjoy art, both painting and drawing. I actually quite often spend downtime at work drawing on post-it notes with highlighters. I find it amusing to create these really vivid images on such a small surface area and utilizing as few tools as possible.

What's one moment in time that you'd revisit and why?

It really is tough choosing between sight and hearing. I'd like to think I would rather keep my sight, but then again I think I'd rather keep my hearing. Lol

Bbl for more questions!

I'm here!

I like that song by Fox Stevenson. Do you listen to mostly drum & bass?

How did you meet your Colombian girlfriend? How long have you been together? What can you tell us about her?

Ah, Iceland and Ireland. I dream of going to Iceland and have been to Ireland once for a week. Would love to go back. The Cliffs of Moher = breath-taking…

Do you sing country because it fits your voice the most?
So cool you sang in front of so many people at your company! Wow. I would have a heart attack.

Can we watch your audition for American Idol? I, for one, would love to see/hear it.

Ohhh, white German Shepherds named Odin and Thor. How fitting. They must have been gorgeous dogs. I love shepherds. I love that you/your parents will be fostering dogs. It’s a noble thing to do, and having said that, I just realized I’m complimenting myself because I fostered dogs for the SPCA when I was 22-24 :) It was an amazing experience. Enjoy it. Cherry sounds like a cutie.

You clean up at sports trivia? Man, I’d love you on my trivia team. That is one area I’m severely lacking (besides being okay basketball and horse-racing trivia, hehe).

Onto my questions ---->

Question #1: What do you attribute the biggest successes in your life to? How about your largest failures?
Question #2: Is humanity headed in the right or wrong direction?
Question #3: What is the piece of writing you are most proud of and will you share it with us?

I always like to say the 1920s because I like the idea of being a bootlegger during prohibition, along with that just the whole idea of being an outlaw for the adventure of it.

But if I had to go back to any time, I would probably say about a decade after that, in the 30s, the opportunity to potentially spend time with Hemingway or Picasso or other great artists would be wonderful.

I listen to a fair amount of D&B, as well as a lot of other electronic genres - basic EDM, hardstyle, electro house, deep house, dubstep. My music taste is all over the walls. I am going to Electric Zoo this year, though, and if any D&B artists are playing, I'll likely try to hit them up.

Interestingly enough we met on Tinder. It worked out that about a week after matching, I moved into the city and we decided to meet up. Things just clicked from there. We've been together a little over 2 years at this point and she is wonderful. She loves traveling like myself, so we plan a lot of trips together when we can, even just short weekend getaways. She's a zumba instructor and we recently completed salsa dancing classes together. And she's just extremely supportive and I greatly appreciate that about her.

I tend to sing country just because I know so much of it at this point; I have worked, over time, to adapt my voice to it, which has made it much easier to sing. Being from the northeast, I don't have the natural twang, so it took time to really fit it well with my singing style.
Unfortunately, I didn't make it as far as the television auditions, so there is no video of me on AI, but it was definitely an awesome experience.

I just know sports- I watch a lot, study up, write about them. They fairly well consume a large amount of my non-work time, so it makes sense I know a lot about sports as a general topic, but when it comes to the 4 major American sports (baseball, basketball, hockey, football), I just know so much more in-depth stuff that the ordinary fan wouldn't and that's from the constant studying and reading.

I will return for the true three questions in a moment!

Question #1: I would say my parents have contributed the most to my success, honestly just based upon their constant support and never trying to dissuade me from my dreams of writing. If they hadn't encouraged me to pursue writing in college, I probably wouldn't even be writing at all today. As a personal attribute, I would say my creativity is what allows me the freedom to be able to write, and in addition, simply enjoy both creating and experiencing art as a whole.
I would say my stubbornness attributes heavily to any failures I experience. I'm very hard-headed and can easily convince myself I am right or that I am doing the right thing and I am often so very wrong. My being stubborn, though, doesn't often allow me to see how wrong I am at the start.

Question #2: That's a difficult question. I will say that recent events in the political realm have certainly swayed me to new ways of thinking, personally, and I am much less overtly opinionated now than I was 4 years ago, while having also realized many of my flawed viewpoints. I like to think that with the greater attention being paid to so many of the socio-economic inequalities by the younger generations that humanity is heading in the right direction. It's difficult to say though. I at least want to believe that it is.

Question #3: I wrote a poem called "Piano" back when I was in high school that I was personally quite proud of; additionally, another piece from high school contrasting human-made art versus the beauty of nature (I don't remember the title off-hand) is probably up there in terms of my proudest writings. Unfortunately, for both pieces, they are lost to time, locked away in an old computer that no one in my family has access to. In line with this, my old laptop died recently, taking with it all of the poetry I had removed off of P&Q prior to deleting my original account, so I really don't have much of my writings from the past decade or so even at my disposal anymore.

Has your girlfriend made you any Colombian dishes? If so, what's your favorite?
Does her family get along well with you? (I ask because I've experienced weird things with my family accepting my husband and i feel like it happens in a lot of mixed relationships)

Do you enjoy cooking?
What are some of your favorite foods?
Least favorite?

Prior to dating her, I had actually never knowingly had any Colombian food. Her mother has made me certain dishes - arepas, buñuelo, empanadas. It's actually gotten me to be much more open with the food I try (not that I'm a picky eater, I just stick to what I know mostly) which has been a nice change. I'd say my favorite is probably the buñuelo and pan de queso (which I just refer to as donuts, due to their similarity) as they make for a fantastic and filling breakfast.
I get along with her family and vice versa; there is a language divide in that her parents and extended family speak Spanish for the majority of the time, but will speak English with me, or she will translate when possible. I think it helps that I've made the effort to relearn at least basic Spanish, so small conversation is easy, and I can understand more of what they are saying and allow them to be more comfortable speaking the language they know best.

I despise cooking and the only real reason why is because I have no skill in the kitchen whatsoever. If I am making anything, it has to have bare minimum of work involved or ingredients included. As an example, I have a 4-ingredient Chipotle Orange Glazed Pork Chop that cooks on the grill, so if I'm forced to cook, that's a go-to. Easy and tastes delicious. At the moment I am actually on a diet (through Nutrisystem) so everything is microwaveable, which is both easy and is aiding me in getting healthier, so it's been a win-win thus far.
My top two favorite foods are pie (which I count separate being a dessert) and waffles. Sort of ridiculous, but I'm just a fan of a really well-made waffle. I also enjoy burgers, steak, a lot of seafood, particularly lobster, salmon, tilapia, and clam chowder. I'm fairly open to any meat- most interesting I've eaten being alligator (which was fantastic).
I really don't handle anything super-spicy well. It's not that I dislike spicy food, I'm just not able to handle the heat. I also really despise most citrus fruits- oranges, tangerines, grapefruit. I don't like any of those. Beyond that, though, if it's edible, I'll probably eat it.

Thomas, you are very well spoken/written. I enjoy reading everything you write. I'm sorry I've been a poor host for your PotF. During it, I was in Austin, Texas for 5 days, which meant I fell behind on school work and work-work. Then, I caught a cold, so I haven't been at the top of my game.

I'm going to bombard you with questions now, but answer them at your own leisure. You don't have to answer all at once:)

Question #4: If you could travel to any fictional world for 1 week and have any 2 fictional characters as your companions, where and who would you choose? The characters can be from different worlds than the world you travel to!
Question #5: If you could morph into any animal at your whim, what animal would it be? What would you do as this animal?
Question #6: If you could have any superpower, what would you choose and why?
Question #7: If you could learn the answer to one question about your future, what would the question be?

Those are all good dishes. I love empanadas. And also hate cooking lol

What is your fondest childhood memory?

Changing these last 3 questions to a separate post to make the blocks of questions seem less intimidating ;)

Question #8: If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?
Question #9: Do you dream when you sleep? Are your dreams in color? Do you have any recurring dreams?
Question #10: If you could spend 3 hours inside the mind of any person, dead or alive, who would you choose? Would it be at a specific time, or just any random 3 hours?

Sorry for not getting back for awhile, just been extremely busy at work and at home. But I can knock these out now.

Thank you for the compliments, I really appreciate them! And you've been a fantastic host- life happens (as can be seen by my delay in answering of late), so I fully understand.

#4: Man, this is a really tough question. I just don't have a strong vested interest in sci-fi or fantasy-related media, nor do I greatly enjoy comic books or superhero-centric films, so that really knocks out a lot of options. A real place, but fictionalized for the film Midnight in Paris, I suppose I'd really enjoy exploring the eras of Parisian history that Gil in the film gets to explore. And in line with that, I think I'd quite like to drink and converse with both Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald throughout the excursion. I rather think I could learn a good deal about writing from them considering their success and skill.
#5: I suppose I'd choose a penguin. They were at one time my favorite animal and I still have a fascination with them. And I can't imagine I'd be all that much more productive as an animal than I am as a human, so probably just enjoy the opportunity to slide around the ice, swim a bit, and delight in all of the fish I can eat.
#6: The ability to finish what I'm writing... I kid, of course (sort of). I've always thought mind reading would be useful, not for the benefit of being able to see people's intimate thoughts, but as a potential deterrent from someone hurting themselves or being able to tell more easily when someone is suffering. It would be nice to have for the utilitarian benefits.
#7: I'd really like to know if I'll ever get a novel published. That of course requires having a completed novel to be published, but I'd just like to know if it'll happen. Perhaps it would inspire me to work harder at it.

I actually have a decent ability to remember a lot of things from my childhood, but I want to say the many trips I was able to take when I was younger because of my mother working in the travel industry. We got to visit Las Vegas thrice, Disney World a few times, New York and Washington D.C. fairly regularly. It really allowed me to see a lot of the U.S. very early in life and just spend a lot of time with family. As I got older, into high school and later, my father has spent a large amount of time working out-of-state for weeks-to-months at a time, so I don't see him as often as I was able to back then. It makes me feel better that we were able to spend just that much more time together when I was younger.

Interestingly, not a fond memory per se, but for some reason one that I remembered most readily and think is probably my earliest memory I have, is losing a hat at Disney World when I was really young. It had flown off of my head when we were on a roller coaster and because it ended up beneath the winding track, I never got it back. I almost wonder if it's part of the reason why I am almost never without a hat on nowadays.

#8: I'd honestly like to be a more patient person. I have a habit of being easily annoyed or angered by some very minor things, and it would be great to just have a higher patience threshold. I think it would make me a much more amenable and happier person.
#9: I want to answer yes to all three of these questions. I am certain that I dream, not memorably, but it has definitely occurred, many of them being in color. I also want to say I've had recurring dreams before, as well, but I wouldn't be able to think of any off the top of my head. As I've gotten older, I'm much less likely to recall if I've dreamed during the night and I can almost never remember a dream once I've awoken.
#10: As I've always been fascinated by his writing, and he is my favorite poet, I'd really have been interested in seeing the world from inside of Edgar Allan Poe's mind for a few hours. For such a dark person, I'd just be curious to see what the gears of his mind were busy stirring about.

"I've always thought mind reading would be useful, not for the benefit of being able to see people's intimate thoughts, but as a potential deterrent from someone hurting themselves or being able to tell more easily when someone is suffering. It would be nice to have for the utilitarian benefits."

You know, I've always been against choosing the superpower "mind reading" because it seems to me an invasion of others' privacy, but the way you have explained this has made me rethink the concept. You've taken a superpower that I've viewed as entitled or selfish and turned it into something good, even altruistic. That's really lovely.

I would like to be a more patient person too. A penguin, now that's an interesting choice. Be careful of leopard seals ;)

Thank you for your time and the energy you put into giving thoughtful answers, Thomas. It's been great getting to know you better, and I hope you continue to be active on the forums because you have a lot to offer us as a member and as a poet.