Carolyn Thomas
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carolynthomas.bsky.social
Carolyn Thomas
@carolynthomas.bsky.social
450 followers 390 following 2.4K posts
Welsh poet and writer in exile on Tyneside. Poems in Anthropocene, Dreich, The Ekphrastic Review, Impossible Archetype, These Pages Sing and elsewhere including Broken Spine’s Coffeehouse podcast. Stories in Gwasg Honno anthologies
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Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
fiftywords.bsky.social
As my beloved Constantinople is often called the city of the worlds desire, here’s another for #PoemsAbout #Desire @thebrokenspine.co.uk
City of the World's Desire A glint not water, not quite promise, just flickers at the hinge of continents. Streets refuse their names. A dome lifts like an unanswered question. Wind tastes of salt and a rumour of gold. You think you've arrived, but every corner slips sideways, a palimpsest of footsteps you cannot follow. Desire here is architecture: arches leaning into absence, a wall held up by all it remembers. Voices braid themselves through alleys of unspent longing. Nothing begins; everything echoes. And the strait, that restless throat, keeps whispering departures, as if the city were the dream before you dream it. You walk until the light turns colourless, until even the horizon falters, and still, in the half-thought between breaths, the city tilts its face toward you, unclaimed, unclaimable, wanting to be wanted.
November 15, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
Four today’s #PoemsAbout , #Desire that pulses through the subconscious—looking for cracks to gush out…

@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#Oulens #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poetry
Please check the reply on this post for the Alt text… since it’s not allowing me to save it here
November 15, 2025 at 5:41 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
rburrows.bsky.social
More snails I’m afraid! #PoemsAbout #Desire @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Happy Friday!
#parasite #poetry
November 14, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
dnwritespoetry.bsky.social
Good morning my fellow #PoemsAbout #Desire poets!
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
Another exciting prompt! I am excited to read and experience everyone's artistic prowess!
November 14, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
For #poemsabout #desire @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Three faces of desire:
Allow Me to see the skull in your passion the teeth in your desire to caress the bones of your delight the sinews of your breath to delve the niches of longing the cleft of floods My Freezing Desire for you clichés my words. We shiver as we touch. Each caress brings striations of ice over skin, blood bubbles to the surface. Our cold air stretches our lungs makes it hard to breathe. My body is alabaster, yours marble. Sex is a fridge turned up highest. Someday we must defrost. We Must Damage Each to feel anything for one another. I take this razor and cut your cheek until it bleeds. You reply with a needles stab in my leg. The blood drips as we continue our intimate conversation. Clearly this is most intense love and desire.
November 14, 2025 at 7:39 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
anna-orridge.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Desire
(This is a concrete poem in the shape of a tapering mushroom) Fungal Venus is born not from a white shell, but a tender mushroom cap. Waxen taut, she descends stalactite-like, as a stem. Love's absent, then very there. Fruiting body, impertinent in its abrupt emergence. Final knot of a tender weaving of mycelial threads, beneath desire's warm soil.
November 14, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
andywilliamson.com
A wee contribution to this week's #poemsabout #desire. Short, simple, an old poem re-written, nice to revisit it. Thanks everyone for the wonderful sharing, particularly thinking of @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
You I ache for you we cannot be together without this ocean in between I desire you the landscape of your body mapping softness to my touch your head resting on my shoulder
November 14, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
rotherwrites.bsky.social
Hello everyone for this week's @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout.

Two Remembrance ceremonies and a Remembrance Day poetry group have knocked the harshness out of me. #Desire has taken me back to writing the intangible.

We're on autopilot; keep posting, liking, commenting and reposting. 🔥
Persuasion It’s more a conviction, season’s feather-finger touch, than jolt, a subtle landslide shift, say coastal shingle drift, seeing from other placed eyes a distinct attention shift, a hint, a shoulder touch, word or inflection, that stirs and latches into movement, as of a lock or escapement, releasing energy in a click or glide, a move you recognise only later, the movement having already taken you, your pulse much more animated more definite in hue and feel. Call it desire; I call it persuasion. © Glenn Barker November 2025
November 14, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #poemsabout #desire @thebrokenspine.co.uk @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
An old one, from far away student days. Hope you are on the mend Alan. Thanks all.
The Going Back Room Afterwards lying on my bed alone, I hear ceiling steps above, then metallic pulses from a tap: the heartbeat of a chugging pipe restored, and deafening still you facing me, having left the certainty of your chair to lock and check again the door before that your voice murmuring something soft and small, a footnote unheard, uneeded, just cluttering it all further back again getting close, my fingers brushing milky flesh within that seasoned kink of wayward buttons further still to 3:00 when sunlight hemmed those suffering curtains, you, here in my room, the building heat, so stultifying to even earlier, an age away, when content to just observe you as a voyeur: head bowed over desk, novel and notes, spread or propped, and at 2:00 when you arrived and only an oscillating fan vicariously could reach for you and wandering backwards ever more all the way to the day, that walk in the park, when I suggested we could study together, not daring to see your face as I spoke, by either hiding among those clouds, the ones so teased, caught like wool on wire, or down below stuck within the many fossils of muddy studs on show.
November 14, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
anntigone.bsky.social
We took what was not ours
from another's table—
devouring it whole,
so that no one could
reclaim it...

#poemsabout #desire
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
November 14, 2025 at 7:20 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
melissampoulton.bsky.social
This is my #PoemsAbout poem about #Desire. I had a really bad day on Tuesday. I desired alcohol to get me through the hurt. I know it works. If we met, then I wouldn't be 18 weeks alcohol free today.

@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#poetry #poetrycommunity #hardweek #nottoday
November 14, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
davidbirch.bsky.social
A quick #haiku in response to today's #PoemsAbout response #Desire from @thebrokenspine.co.uk. Very best wishes to @alanparrywriter.co.uk. Looking forward to reading and responding to other responses #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets
November 14, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Desire @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2007

#poetrycommunity #Symbolism #ImageAndVerse #ClassicMono #Abstract #shadow
Penumbra Penumbra - Limbered with Aplomb of Ages Unborn. Jacob’s Ladder - Amid a litter of Vapid suburbs - Glimpsed, Countenanced from Forgotten Lookouts. Throughfares, Appetency-spoored, Throng with progeny; Jangle idly with Clamour of galère, Ill-willed coterie. Feral squall of Rout-scrum Multitudes in the Midst of Abounding Wonder. Now - Each Second courts Cataclysm. Now - Each Lust-itch Lifts the Lid on the Abysmal. Ineffable Horror of Glib Lucidity - Held, Noted in a Holloway of Blackened Houses. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 After Я провижу гордые тени (“I foresee proud shadows”, 1899), by Valery Bryusov (1873-1924), Russian Symbolist ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2007 Monochrome image of the shadow of a crane head cast upon the iconic facade of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
janedougherty47.bsky.social
For the #PoemsAbout #Desire prompt from @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
November 14, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
paulwritespoems.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #Desire this is a piece called ‘A Snake Sheds Its Skin In Eden’.

Will catch up later with others work.

@thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
A Snake Sheds Its Skin In Eden I watch the saliva-slick river of devilbright pomegranate juice snake down the canyons of her face. Forbidden fruit. Her flesh, plucked from the harp of my rib— naked, as my maker is brutal. Soft. Cold. Prickled. Unforbidden fruit, mine to savour. Are you staring too? Are you staring too? Are you? I can’t hear you over lust in your breath and gritchurn of teeth. Admire the pinnacle of creation. I hold the power of the divine, your new God. A snake writhes. Ecdysis in motion. Beasts, ever-changing— succumb to temptation, gorge yourself.
November 14, 2025 at 7:13 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
sueimnw.bsky.social
For this week's #PoemsAbout #Desire with thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk and all those participating.
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
throwawayreg.bsky.social
morning Friday
from a very wet Sheffield
here’s my little “throwaway” poem
for #PoemsAbout #Desire and
a big thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poems #poetry
#poetsonBlueSky
have a great weekend everyone everywhere & take care 🚶🏽‍➡️🚮🙋‍♂️
November 14, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
emteepoetry.bsky.social
I can honestly say this is the only poem I've written of this nature, not quite sure what I was on at the time. It was early in the Covid pandemic, if that had a bearing?

Back to read more posts later.

For #PoemsAbout #Desire
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
#poetry
#poetsonBlueSky
November 14, 2025 at 11:38 AM
carolynthomas.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout - I know I’m groggy at the moment but this, on today’s milk, really? It’s certainly #BreakingtheMould 🙈 Can’t manage a poem today and will try to catch up with everyone soon. Best I can manage is a bit of dark visual humour
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 17, 2025 at 8:49 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
helenlaycock.bsky.social
Such clever use of ‘Tense’, Carolyn!

The reflection recalls a beautiful moment, yet acknowledges (with regret) contrast… and even in the retelling still holds onto that self-deprecation. The experience runs deep.

The final word, ‘imperfect’, seems to underline it even more.
October 13, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
sueimnw.bsky.social
A(nother) #Lifttothesky today for the wonderful Carolyn Thomas @carolynthomas.bsky.social for her beautiful poetry and her incredible support for me and all those in the poetry community. With love and thanks 💙
October 13, 2025 at 7:53 AM
carolynthomas.bsky.social
My #LifttotheSky today goes to Anna Orridge @anna-orridge.bsky.social who writes powerful poetry, makes a great contribution to the #poetrycommunity
and, through her posts, ensures our attention is drawn to things that cry out for action
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 13, 2025 at 2:35 AM
carolynthomas.bsky.social
A #LifttotheSky for this powerful new collection by the splendid Merril D Smith @merrildsmith.bsky.social
#poetrycommunity
Characteristically beautiful and evocative writing, honest and deeply moving, it also includes many of her wonderful photographs @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 13, 2025 at 2:23 AM
carolynthomas.bsky.social
A #LifttotheSky for this amazing collection of sonnets by the brilliant Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social who contributes so much to the #poetrycommunity. Published in 2022, but new to me, it explores myth and legend with grace and wit
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
October 13, 2025 at 2:13 AM
Reposted by Carolyn Thomas
carolynthomas.bsky.social
Eloquent in its economy and clever use of acrostic 😊
October 12, 2025 at 9:52 PM