Tag Archives: Tom Vaughan

Tom Vaughan, ‘One of Us’

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A starter British passport,
now with a French one too,
I can vote in both and put down roots
in either, and stroll through

eGates and customs checks
head high, as one of us,
legitimately pukkah, blessed
by birth/life/luck, and thus 

with paperwork in order
should copper or gendarme
ask me who on earth I am:
I smile and keep my calm

and my right to an annual break
upon a sunlit beach
where seas digesting some who yearned
my paradise to reach

lap peacefully as though
the summer days could last
as far into the future as
they failed to in the past . . .

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “The older I get, the more I ask myself the question: ‘Where would we be without our (double) standards?’.”

‘One of Us’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Illustration: RHL and ChatGPT

Tom Vaughan: ‘Is This It?’

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Well if it is, and this is it
then what will be will be
and time will toil and time will tell
if there’s a guarantee

that at the least and at the last
the daily here and now
which now and here are thick as thieves
will be transformed, somehow

and either way, here’s my advice –
lie back and think of all
the ups which came between the downs
before your curtain call.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “There was no particular trigger for this poem, apart from my fitful attempts to be Stoical about the state – and weirdness – of the world. But just at the moment the anger occasioned by the former keeps breaking through.”

‘Is This It?’ was published in the current Lighten Up Online.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “man-relaxing-in-the-grass_8954-480×359” by Public Domain Photos is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The Two-State Dissolution: Yankevich, Kenny, Helweg-Larsen, Foster, Vaughan, Jackson, Bales, Burch

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Leo Yankevich: ‘The Terrorist’

Only six, she stands before a tank,
looking at its armour, while inside
soldiers heed orders from a higher rank.
There isn’t any place for her to hide,
no door to head for, no abandoned car
to slide beneath. Pure terror rules her land.
When finally crushed, she rises past the star
of David, with a stone clutched in her hand.

Janet Kenny: ‘Didn’t They Know?’
(In memory of a lost poem by Robert Mezey)

Didn’t they know that when they swarmed
and slashed and slaughtered what they saw
as an oppressor’s nest, the rage
that they aroused would turn and pour
with molten heat back on their house?

Their captive children now must pay,
small targets in a concrete cage.
No treaty, pact, no peace no truce.
Didn’t they know? Didn’t they know?

No map to show another way.
Olive farmers pay for crimes
of other nations, other times.
No mercy here, no one is just.
Two agonies, two brains concussed.

Nothing to see here. False alarm.
Police not needed to disarm
two weeping peoples each aware
that no solution slumbers there.
Hearth and cradle now makes clear
an ancient poem brought them here.

Where is the psalm that both can share?
Where is the psalm that both can share?

Robin Helweg-Larsen: ‘Both Sides Justify Their Terrorism’

When pleas for justice are of no avail,
when governments praise death and theft,
and courts say you’re in error;
when the UN is blocked to fail,
the only recourse left
is terror.

When no one cares that Yahweh willed
that Jews alone should have this land
(and God’s never in error)
and prior residents must be killed,
yet they won’t leave, they force your hand:
to terror.

Gail Foster: ‘On The Occasion of Benjamin Netanyahu Quoting Dylan Thomas’

Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight
How many children have you killed today
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

Your anger and your ego burning bright
Are razing all that’s standing in your way
Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight

How many have you sent into the light
Before they even had the time to pray
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

How many have you saved or sent in spite
Up to the sky in ashen clouds of grey
Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight

In clouds as those who in the fog and night
Were put in trains and disappeared away
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

You speak as if your soul was white as white
Yet deep inside you darkness holds its sway
Don’t tell me that you fight a righteous fight
I’ll give you rage. I’ll give you rage alright

Tom Vaughan: ‘The Land’

Let’s pretend that the war
could be over, and peace
reigned even if only
this evening. O please

pick up your anger
and soak it with mine
in six large barrels
of miracle wine

and then let us dance
like lovers, as though
this land’s many meanings
didn’t all signal no

and we could make ploughshares
out of our swords
and translate the past
into one shared world

and even if dawn
will scatter the night
and send us both stumbling
into the light

where smooth olives glisten
in the warm sun
like belts of bright bullets
ripe for a gun.

Jean MacKay Jackson: ‘War’

Some say that war is bright flares and drama,
A glory of fireworks illumining skies.
This is all lies.
War is a child calling out for his mama
And getting no answer.
War is a merchant of hatred and grief:
War is a thief,
War is a cancer.
Some say that war is hell. Perhaps that is so.
Yet hell has a lack
Of innocent bystanders, hell has no
Collateral damage, no accidental black
Body-bags for old women and babies.
Hell has no maybes;
Everything makes sense.
In hell there is no defense:
You belong there. You chose your path.
Hell has a cold, hard justice drained of wrath.
War is the horrified look in the eye
Of a young person dying without knowing why.

Tom Vaughan: ‘Aleppo’

Never again we say, each time
never, never again,
and every time we mean it so
when it happens again

we watch it on our screens, and say
never, never again

we meet and vote and all agree
never, never again.

Marcus Bales: ‘Genocide is Genocide’

Genocide is genocide. There’s no
Legitimacy on the table. None.
Your killing and your maiming only show
What horrors piled on horrors you have done.

The US taught the method to the Germans
The Trail of Tears leads to the Holocaust.
And now Israeli policy determines
They’ll do the same in Gaza. That boundary’s crossed.

Why not, instead, a reconciliation,
Where all the old and evil wounds can be
Accepted by each side without probation?
With zealotry forgiven, all are free.

Until that happens, hate corrupts you all,
With “Ams Yisrael Chai” the new decree —
Unless it turns out that the final call
That wins is “From the river to the sea.”

And that’s the choice: that each side does the worst
That it can do to keep the hatreds growing,
Shouting slogans of revenge, and cursed
To trade atrocities that keep the business going.

The other choice is reconciliation.
Yes, all the old and evil wounds will be
Accepted by each side without probation,
And zealotry forgiven, to be free.

If “Look at what they did to us!” is your
Refrain, then all you’ve done is to condemn
Your children to a world where they’ll endure
Their children’s gloat: “Look what we did to them!”

There’s always someone left to live resenting
The evils your revenges made you do —
And they will spend their hearts and souls inventing
A suitable revenge to take on you.

Be strong enough for reconciliation
Where all the old and evil wounds must be
Accepted by each side without probation.
With zealotry forgiven, all are free.

Michael R. Burch: ‘Epitaph for a Palestinian Child’

I lived as best I could, and then I died.
Be careful where you step: the grave is wide.

*****

Acknowledgements:

Leo Yankevich: ‘The Terrorist’, collected in ‘Tikkun Olam & other poems’, Counter Currents, 2012
Tom Vaughan: ‘The Land’, published on Hull University Middle East Study Centre website, 2022, and in Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s December 2022 Politics Newsletter
Tom Vaughan: ‘Aleppo’, published in Snakeskin 233, October 2016
Michael R. Burch: ‘Epitaph for a Palestinian Child’, first published in Romantics Quarterly, and many places since. Michael R. Burch is the founder and editor-in-chief of The HyperTexts, and its extensive collections of poetry include ones on both the Holocaust and the Nakba.

Photo: “Gaza war Nov2012” by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Tom Vaughan, ‘Safe’

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We hurried back, struggling to comprehend
the scale of devastation and what journey’s end
would mean – wondering indeed whether
we still had a home to go to. Aghast, we scanned
fields the dead had sown and reaped forever

transformed to lakes, then villages where cars
had been tossed aside like toys, and scooped-out bars,
churches, schools, where dark lines marked
the height reached by the water, left as scars.
There’d been no warning signs, no Noah’s ark

though those of us who’d been on higher ground
could now inherit the world the tempest drowned
though too few to repopulate
that morning’s massive, muddy funeral mound,
reminding us what might have been our fate.

The radio was silent, even if the word
on the street was help would come – soon enough we heard
helicopters. But the broken men
who landed only muttered something blurred
about how this was it till God knows when.

A black market opened – which only the rich could afford.
The rest of us survived on what we’d stored
in better days, skimping until
re-learning the ancient ways, we could once more
live off the land with long-forgotten skills.

Sometimes I look back, yet I know the past
has gone for good, that no one can forecast
when the day will come we’ll dare to hope
the storm which killed so many was the last,
and trust again illusion’s horoscope.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: ” ‘Safe‘s working title was Sanctuary, and the poem was inspired – if that’s the word – by the sense that there is none. The form reflects the fact that it was written during one of my regular bouts of reading Larkin. I was lucky enough to visit his office in the library at Hull University in July, with a copy of The Whitsun Weddings in my backpack for the train trip back to London . . . “

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently (as with ‘Safe‘) in Snakeskin.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “Search-and-Rescue Workers Arrive in Ofunato [Image 1 of 23]” by DVIDSHUB is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Weekend read: Tom Vaughan, ‘Rhyme-Crime’

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Does rhyme matter –
    however occasional?

It used to be
    considered vocational

a must for verse’s
    inspirational

impact, even
    educational –

but these days, it’s a
    generational

sign your stuff’s just
    recreational.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “For me, rhyme is not just a technical trick to help make poetry memorable. I think the world rhymes in odd ways. I also believe time rhymes, across the centuries but also in our short individual lives, sometimes in irony, but more often – if we listen hard enough to hear it – to point the way to a deeper level of challenge and reflection.”

Editor: I had been planning a rant on the essence of poetry being all the tricks that make it memorisable word-for-word: rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, etc; and on the fact that the bits of poems an adult remembers are invariably rhymed; and on poetry’s links to dance and song and the prenatal heartbeat. But Tom Vaughan introduces a whole new layer of value of rhyme, obliquely in his poem, incompletely in his comment. There are things to meditate on here.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “Sometimes, I like going back into #poetry and pretending like I am still in college. #johnkeats #bookstagram #annotations #reading #books” by alis.smith is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Tom Vaughan, ‘The Great and the Good’

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Why sing of the lives
of the fortunate few
whose gong-heavy entries
weigh down Who’s Who ?

They’re smug on their summits
and on Footsie Boards,
Permanent Secretaries
or rotund Law Lords;

generals, merchant bankers,
Top Brass at the Beeb,
dons, doctors, bishops. . .
You can spot the breed

by their ability
blind obedience to claim
from drudges and drivers
and shy, single, tame

PAs who sacrifice
lonely weekends
to type bland speeches
for skimpy stipends.

O don’t be deceived
by the Great and the Good –
you’re a rung on their ladder
on their fire, wood,

grain for their harvest,
a wheel on their car,
corpse on their D-Day,
night for their star.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: I’ve long been fascinated by the phrase ‘the Great and the Good’, having reached the conclusion during long years of government service that the great cannot generally also be good, given the demands of the exercise of power. But I am also intrigued by the loyalty such people can inspire, and the longing for leaders that reflects, despite the advice given by my favourite political commentator, Bob Dylan, in Subterranean Homesick Blues – ‘Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parkin’ meters’.”

‘The Great and the Good’ was first published in Snakeskin 265, October 2019.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “MPs and House of Commons officials stand in the House of Lords chamber at the opposite end to the throne, the bar, to listen to the Queen’s Speech” by UK Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Tom Vaughan, ‘On the Twilight Mountains’ (Jeremiah 13:16)

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On the twilight mountains
leopards change their spots
distributing their cast-off coats
to helpworthy have-nots –

lions and lambs and lynx lie down
and tell each other tales
of how at sea the seals now go
for walks with killer whales –

lovers linger hand in hand
promising to be
truthful, faithful, thoughtful, kind,
supportive company –

and peace seems deep and peace seems long
until the morning sun
wakes us from our ancient dream
like a starter gun.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “The poem (published in Snakeskin 316, April 2024) is among several inspired by my current reading of Robert Alter’s magnificent – and magnificently thought-provoking – translation of the Hebrew Bible. However gloomy the concluding stanza, and however accurately that gloom may reflect the violence and slaughter always at the heart of the world, I hope the poem also catches some of the equally permanent and however illusory yearning for things to be otherwise.”

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Illustration: ‘The Peaceable Kingdom’ by Edward Hicks, via Snakeskin

Tom Vaughan, ‘Swot’

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It’s time to hunker down and swot
with coffee as my only friend

and each dawn closer to the end
which in the distance I can spot:

the happiness which lies ahead
when I’ll have passed with flying colours

and on a day unlike all others
will saunter through the streets instead.

I won’t be bored, I tell myself:
the world will sparkle, and the hours

will sprinkle down in golden showers.
I won’t need anything – my wealth

will be the knowledge I’ll forget
and which I haven’t learnt as yet.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “Swot was inspired by coming across this sonnet form in a collection of poems – This Afterlife – by AE Stallings. It was – at first – simple imitation of her layout. But then I came to like – and to feel – the tension between the couplet form and the cross-couplet rhyming, as if the poem wasn’t sure it was a sonnet. I like things which pull against one another, and most of all I like doubt.
It was subsequently heartening to learn, in June, that she had been elected as the new Oxford Professor of Poetry, given her combination of massive formal skills and deep classical culture, plus her sharp contemporary voice and relevance. So there’s still hope . . . “

Editor’s note: Some non-Brits may only connect the word “swot” with SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), but Vaughan is using it as the perjorative verb to study hard for an exam or, disapprovingly as a noun, a person who studies hard and avoids other activities. Swot was published in this month’s Snakeskin.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “The Studious One” by Szoki Adams is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Tom Vaughan, ‘To Whom It May Concern’

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Remember waking, starting, stupidly young
the promises, the lies, the world’s forked tongue

Remember how you longed for love, and how
you long for love the same way, even now

you know that there’s no cure for loneliness
not even love, let alone happiness

Remember marriage, children, summer holidays
Remember work, remember all the ways

you chose to be defined which were not you –
if there’s a self definable as ‘true’

Then remember prayer, answered or unanswered
(either way, how to tell?). Remember whispered

doubts. Remember the words and images
which led/misled you on your pilgrimage

Remember how you crossed the desert, cursing
Remember how you crossed the desert, hoping

Remember age and illness, letting go
of everything you’d told yourself you know

Remember forgetting the Lord your God decreed
you must remember him, and teach your seed

the stories storing their identity.
And if you read this, please remember me.

Tom Vaughan writes: “I like it because it came in a rush, like something hammering in my head, and because it reflects not just what seems to me the crucial nature of the link between memory (however selective and indeed creative) and identity, a link I saw brutally put to the test during my mother’s long decline with Alzheimer’s, but what has always fascinated me about Judaism and the wonderful emphasis in the Jewish scriptures and festivals on the need to remember, in order to retain/create a sense not just of individual but also of collective identify.

The rush also meant that substantial trimming was called for: it was originally about twice the length. But I hope the final compressed result pins down more precisely the push and tumble of the writing process.”

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives and works in London.
https://tomvaughan.website

‘To Whom It May Concern’ was first published in Snakeskin 277, October 2020

Photo: “Jewish house with Mezuzah” by La Laetti is marked with CC BY-NC 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Tom Vaughan, ‘Afterwards’

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Afterwards, I’ll shake the hand
of total strangers in the street
as though they were my oldest friend
and as and when that friend I’ll meet

we’ll stroll across Green Park towards
Crown Passage’s Il Vicolo
to dip our bread in olive oil
and drink wine till our faces glow

and talk of this and maybe that
as if we had all day to kill
then we’ll argue who should pay, aware
we’ll agree at last to split the bill

and when we say goodbye, we’ll know
how rare and wonderful it was
to be together, even though
neither will say so. Why? Because

why even hint the day might come
when public or private fresh disaster
prevents we two from sitting there
to share a salad and a pasta?

First published in Snakeskin 276, September 2020.

Tom Vaughan writes: “I have a soft spot for Afterwards because I hope it strikes the balance I often try to achieve between light-heartedness and seriousness. Plus it’s pinned in the real world: a London restaurant I very much like. I had submitted it originally The Spectator, which originally rejected it. George Simmers then accepted it for the September 2020 Snakeskin. Shortly thereafter I noticed a very positive restaurant review of Il Vicolo in The Spectator and, apparently quite independently, their poetry editor came back to me saying that on reflection he wanted to publish it, which he then did in October that year (with a suitable acknowledgement to Snakeskin as its first home). Then I learnt that the much-loved owner of Il Vicolo had died a few months previously – although not of Covid – but that his admirable daughters had decided to continue to run the restaurant. So, somewhere underneath the poem, the note of all-too-actual human mortality.”

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and two poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Familes and Other Fiascoes
Strip Down
Houses and Homes Forever
Travels and Travails.
He currently lives and works in London.
https://tomvaughan.website