February 1 Musings and Another Upcoming Desert Moon Review Event

Cherry Fool

The power elite busies
itself making the world safe
for hypocrisy.

A frigid wind blows
off the Potomac, chastises
my cheeks after warm January.

Japanese cherry buds open;
pale blossoms garland
gnarled branches.

Christopher T. George

Desert Moon Review publisher Jim Corner and I are pleased to announce an upcoming Western Gathering of Desert Moon Review poets for the weekend of April 8-9, 2006. The weekend will feature a reading to take place at 8:00 pm on the evening of Saturday, April 8 at Bentley's Coffee and Tea House, 1730 Speedway Boulevard, Tucson, Arizona (tel. 1 520 795 0338).

Jim Corner reports that he and his wife Kathy visited Bentley's recently. He stated: "The atmosphere is a fine old fashioned coffee house with seating for 70. The host at Bentley's, Jo, is a lovely smiling lady, and was cordial and informational."

Jim and I are very excited about this upcoming event and we hope for a general get-together of Desert Moon poets and friends over the weekend of April 8-9 similar to the successful east coast Desert Moon Review reading held in Philadelphia in the fall. Feel free to contact Jim at Trailer1trash2@aol.com or myself at chrisdonna@comcast.net for more details or to apply to be put on the program. Follow the link through the title above for more information on the plans for the weekend.



Leviathan

A bottlenose whale beaching in the shallow Thames,
spewing from blowhole off the Victoria Embankment
as London watches the Leviathan within the Leviathan.

Sick, disoriented whale, its gray flanks barging into barges.
O Thames of Jimmy Whistler! Rocketing fire crackers
welcoming in the bright new millennium, the city's Eye,
the butterfly's dance with Mr. Ruskin, O suicidal Thames,
river fog-shrouded, rolling past Big Ben in Monet rose-gold.

Thames, take your dead with you, your mouths of river mud,
at the Traitor's Gate to the Tower, Anne Boleyn's oak block,
as black with blood as the Ripper's streets, O hurting London,
needles in churchyards, meths drunk from brown paper bags.
Disoriented whale, distracted humanity, desperate for a way out.

Christopher T. George






"Nocturne in Black and Gold The Falling Rocket" by James McNeill Whistler









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Cézanne Steps Out

the door of his Les Lauves studio,
a chair balanced at an angle in his left hand,
a derbied liontamer come to whip the world into shape,
Chaplinesque baggy pants bunched over his shoes.

As his left foot challenges the sunlit air,
he assays the stone steps for the photographer
-- a lonely, obstinate geezer in white beard,
the disturber of comfortable landscapes,

six months before the seer of light and shadow
is discovered collapsed in the rain, wheeled
home in a laundry cart to die.

Christopher T. George

See
Cézanne in Provence: Introduction to the National Gallery of Art Exhibition to see the above photograph.