Pink and Purple Flowers

Pink and Purple Flowers

Mother's Day is here again;
the ads on TV make me ache.
I will not lift a receiver

or click a mouse to order
the purple-pink bouquet
you would have loved; the

colors sting me; a smear of purple
bluebells swaying under sycamores;
how you spoke of "Boo Bell Woods"

near your Garston childhood home;
always those "baby-talk" phrases,
and more so toward the end

as you regressed; still--
I would take you back,
even sad as you were then

still so delighted
to be taken out, treated
by your only son.

Christopher T. George





"Boo Bells" for Lulie.
Happy Mother's Day, Mum!
Wish you were still here.

Baltimore County and Harford County During the War of 1812

On this strip of land located in Dundalk, Maryland, something significant happened in the history of our nation, when citizen soldiers stood up to the might of the British Army and prevented Baltimore being burned and so helped to ensure that "Our Flag Is Still There."



An Introduction to Baltimore County During the War of 1812 Saturday, April 30 2 p.m.
(North Point State Park)

Two authorities on Baltimore's role during the War of 1812, author and historian Christopher George as well as independent historian Robert Reyes, will address that topic during a one hour program in preparation for Baltimore County's bicentennial celebration of that war in 2012. George, author of Teror on the Chesapeake: The War of 1812 on the Bay, and co-editor of the Journal of the War of 1812, has spoken widely regarding the topic while Reyes has researched the role of North Point and its inhabitants during the war. Together, their program will certainly prove to be a memorable kick-off to the region's bicentennial celebrations.

- Free Park Entrance and Free Event Entrance to all attendees -
Address and directions available from the North Point State Park website:
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/central/northpoint.asp


This will be one of a series of talks I will be giving over the War of 1812 Bicentennial. Next weekend, May 7-8, I will be at the 199th anniversary re-enactment of the Burning of Havre de Grace. I am also serving as the historian for the city of Havre de Grace bicentennial. We have a blog for the project where I will be posting regularly. Go to http://hdg1812.wordpress.com/

More Clerihews

In an earlier blog posting, I wrote about "How to Write Clerihews" -- follow the link through the title to go to that previous blog post. Briefly, clerihews are short poems that follow a few short rules:

1 - They are four lines long.
2 - They rhyme aa, bb.
3 - The first line contains a name.
4 - They are usually humorous.

Thanks to Oudeis at the Yo Liverpool forum
for posting those rules.

Here are a few more clerihews of my own:

It's time for the wedding of William and Kate:
like any couple, they prepare to meet their fate.
He's Diana's son, a prince, and she's a commoner
and now Wills and the world will honor her.



When, Icarus flew too close to the sun,
Daedalus cried, "Don't do it, son, you'll be undone!"
The kid is as mythical as Castor and Pollux,
but trust poor Icarus to make a bollocks.

Airheads rewarded
for ignorant cavorting:
each of them a glutton.
Punch the ignore button.

Television's "Real Housewives" are feeling blue
and now I'll gossip about them in this Clerihew:
if only they didn't all have PMS
their bloomin' lives wouldn't be such a mess!

There lived a poet called Frances Cornford.*
Her husband was named "Francis Cornford."
We really must learn to differentiate the two:
spelling one with "e" and the other with "i" will do.

* See "To a fat lady seen from the train" by Frances Cornford at http://triolets.org/t6

To use and abuse is what all tyrants know,
from Hitler and Stalin to Saddam and Nero:
the more things change, the more they're the same
--- for shame! for shame! for shame!

The more Khadafy's people tell him to go,
the more he says the Libyans love him so.
A strange individual -- totally perverse.
I fear this will end badly. Order a hearse.

As the world ponders curtailing Khadafy with a no-fly zone,
that is, chucking international justice a bone,
do we sense the wily dictator might yet survive
tweak the world's nose, give us more of his jive?

The Libyan leader might be off his head;
all the same, he's clever as a fox, it's said.
However, that's not what is worrying me today.
No! How d'you spell his darn name -- with a Q, G, or K????!!!

St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland
Paddy had moxie--he used it like a brand
And though he chased away the vipers
he left the little people and the pipers!

The passing of an age: Liz Taylor -- gone!
For six decades, her star so clearly shone!
Not merely an actress, an activist too,
an example to emulate for me and you.

Too many times we blame ourself
for ideas that ought to have been left on the shelf.
We are all capable of making a mistake,
we can all tread on a rake.

They inevitably end up blaming the murder on poor Jeeves
-- but the gun or knife might have been Madge or Steve's.
Why should the butler swing for bumping off the victim
when capturing the true killer should be the dictum!

Time for the South to Lose the Civil War

Robert E. Lee: A True "Knight" of the South?

As some of you might suspect, as a historian of the War of 1812, I am not pleased that the hoopla over the 150-year anniversary of the Civil War is going to steal the thunder from my favorite war, a war that is much overlooked and misunderstood but nonetheless important in making the United States what it is today.

In today's Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen has an interesting article attacking the myth of Robert E. Lee and questioning why a man who defended slavery is so admired these many years after the Civil War (see the link through the title above). It's an important article and goes to nub of much of the guff and legend of the Civil War and the idea of the nobility of the Southern warrior, whether it be the rebellion's commanding general or the ordinary Johnny Reb in his nutbrown uniform.

There's a lot of hypocrisy in the enduring celebration of the South, the side that lost. And it always amazes me that many of my War of 1812 colleagues, who celebrate the writing of "The Star Spangled Banner" and the fact that "our flag is still there" are the same individuals who line up in parade every cold January at the double equestrian statue of Generals Lee and Jackson in Baltimore's Wyman Park under the Rebel "Stars and Bars." It seems to me they can't have it both ways -- to want to honor the fact that the United States was saved from foreign domination and to celebrate a bloody rebellion against this nation at the same time.

Donald Trump for U.S. President in 2012? Will "The Donald" Trump Obama?

Donald Trump -- underestimate him at our peril

He has latched on to what most people think is a bogus issue -- the allegation that U.S. President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii but in Kenya, the incumbent president's father's country, which would make him ineligible to be president -- but business tycoon Donald Trump is getting a lot of attention just because of who he is.

Some Republicans and liberals alike are tending to view Trump as a mock candidate just trying to get attention for his reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice. I would not underestimate him. How about a Donald Trump - Michele Bachmann ticket for 2012? Don't discount it. Now that will certainly get out the left wing vote won't it? At present, it is understood that Trump plans to make an announcement about his intentions in regard to the presidency on the May 22 season finale of Celebrity Apprentice. See link through the title above.

What other Republican candidate can you think of that has such an outsize image and reputation as a figure in this nation? Mitt Romney, Mike Huckerbee, Sarah Palin, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich? Each of these people appears to be a pygmy compared to Trump. While "The Donald" might have some questions about his business practices, with a number of his companies having been allowed to become bankrupt, something on which opponents are bound to attack him, he nonetheless overall has a reputation and an image of solidity. In an era when there is not much to cling to, will American voters go for a Rock of Gibraltar-type of leader rather than a leader they are unsure about or distrust?

If Trump runs for President in 2012, he just might win, partly because Obama has lost a lot of credibility with the left wing of his party and with the independents that put him over the top in 2008. Don't forget that now when he runs, he will be a known quantity and will not be the unknown, shock candidate that he was when he ran before. Conceivably he has lost too much credibility. Clearly he needs to reinvent himself to be the force he was in 2008.

"Change We Can Believe In" might have proved to have been a fairly empty promise on the part of Obama in 2008 except for people who saw the potential he offered, but what can he do to fend off a high visibility, strong Republican challenger? Donald Trump has already shown that he can latch onto an issue that gets him attention. What if he is serious and really does run in 2012? Who would you put your money on?

April Showers in Washington, D.C.

Japanese Cherry Blossoms, Tidal Basin, Washington, D.C.


April Showers in Washington, D.C.

Cold showers pepper my office window;
raindrops slant across glass. Below,
12th Street's silver as pedestrians labor

with umbrellas; headlighted cabs sail
past, windshield wipers awash. I woke
to thundercrashes; yesterday's balmly,

summery sun's swilled away, and I fret
for the fragile Japanese cherry trees round
the Tidal Basin: Kwanzan, Usuzumi,
Yoshino, Akebono, Takesimensis. . .

Christopher T. George

The names at the end of the poem are the different varieties of cherry trees that grow round the Tidal Basin. The original cherry trees were a gift from the people of Japan to the people of the United States in 1912.

See the link through the title above for a National Park Service site giving more information on D.C.'s cherry blossoms and their history.

Unfortunately, the cherry blossoms did suffer some damage in yesterday's rainstorm and some near Union Station seem a bit worse for wear and not as glorious as they looked on Monday which as expressed in the poem was a summer-like day.

Green Beer and One Red Scouser

Shirt available from Who Are Ya Designs at www.whoareyadesigns.com/

Last evening, St. Patrick's Day, this Scouser was at the Lucky Bar on Connecticut Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., to see Liverpool FC lose on aggregate 1-0 to Braga of Portugal in the Europa League -- the match at Anfield ended 0-0 and LFC didn't show gumption and adventure enough to win. Our inspirational midfield attacking captain, Steven Gerrard, the dynamo that makes the team run is sidelined for a month recovering from groin surgery. Our record-setting signing, big new centre forward Andy Carroll got his first start in a Liverpool shirt but you could tell that the team has not accustomed itself to playing with him. Our other new signing, the brilliant Uruguayan Luis Suarez, who had a hand in all three goals in our preceding game was ineligible because he had played in the Europe League this season for his last club, Ajax of Amsterdam. So the team was foundering and hardly had a decent shot on goal all night.

Still it was a night out. The bar was full of kids in green shirts and spangly green paraphernalia drinking green beer. Not me -- some cool Guinesses chased down by some shots of Jameson whisky~! Had my usual fish and chips there that I enjoy. We few soccer fans were far outnumbered by the green revelers whooping and hollering to basketball "March Madness" on most of the screens. Liverpool better do better on Sunday against Sunderland and get a decent position in the league -- at least sixth would be a mite better than the seventh position we achieved last year in another poor season. Better results coming next year hopefully by which time new signings Andy Carroll and Luis Suarez should be banging the goals in, big man, little man, aided by Stevie Gerrard and Raul Meireles.

Better times remembered: Pics from the match against Chelsea that we won 1-0 with a goal from Meireles (video through link above). A lot more of the same, please, Raul!



Jamie Carragher -- fine tackle on Fernando Torres, Jamie!!!!!


Raul Meireles after scoring the match-winning goal.



Chelsea's coach Carlo Ancelloti -- beaten foe



Yours Truly and, below, some pics of "Julia's Empanadas" next to the Lucky Bar on Connecticut Ave, NW. I must remember to pick up some next time I am at the bar for a Liverpool match.

Chris's February Tumble

Hello all

Sorry to be so long away from blogging. Perhaps you will excuse me if I tell you that it was partly because I broke my left ankle on leaving our Lincoln Apartments building at 6:00 AM on February 1 and falling on black ice down the front brick steps! Following are a few pics and several poems that I hope will make up for my absence. Among the snowfalls and other winter weather in January and February, we had one 5-inch snowfall that broke the branches of a white dogwood in front of the apartment building. Still, the winter weather in Baltimore has not been as severe as elsewhere in the U.S. midwest and northeast so we can count ourselves lucky -- all breaks and sprains, etc., notwithstanding!

Crutch

1.

Oh, crutch, you make me pay. How much
I lean on you! Perhaps next time, we'll go Dutch?

Oh, bishop's crozier, shepherd's crook,
how fashionable you make me look!

I raise you -- my dividing rod --
you part the crowds, O gift from God.

2.

I feel elegant
as Quasimodo,

but maybe better
than I ought to.

3.

Now my leg's in this damn cast,
the world of sudden seems vast.

I struggle everywhere by crutch;
even simple becomes too much.

Hobbling around is no hoot;
I crave to give the world a boot.

Not acrobatic Cirque-du-Soleil.
Far more sadly basic. Oy Vey!

4.

I pronounce my injury: ma blessure!
Announce it to everyone as if it's a blessing.

I whisper, "Fractured distal fibula -- left peg."
Folk, take pity on me and my throbbing leg.

But, unhappy, put-upon world, how you too ache!
I offer these impoverished thoughts for mankind's sake.

Christopher T. George







Chris after ice fall, Feb 2011. . . and the wounded dogwood!











Baltimore snow Jan 2011





Donna's purple flamingoes in the snow

Winter Breaks

I negotiate our brick front
steps on my crutch, notice
the blond ragged stubs
of the white dogwood, snapped

by the weight of January's
heavy snow, clear proof
that I am not the only
victim of winter, here where
I slid and crumpled down

the black-iced steps, splitting
my distal fibula like a twig.
Oh, dogwood, oh, soul-mate,
I'll miss your bridal blossoms
we lost in that thundersnow!

Christopher T. George

Getting Dopplered

My shin gored by the bull of winter,
left leg still blown up twice its size
where I fractured my distal fibula,
I go for a doppler to rule out DVT.

The gell freezing cold as the day I fell,
she says, "Usually we have it warm."
Great to hear! From my groin to my toes,
she thrusts the doppler probe

close to the family jewels.
"Ee-ooh!" I cry.
"I know!" she says.
"No! You don't!"

Christopher T. George

Poetry in Baltimore reading, Friday, Jan 21, 2011, 7-9 PM

Happy Holly Days

Happy holly days
hippie holy days
happy Doc Hollidays
happy dolly days
snippy doily days
snappy darling days
snappish dervish daze
sippy snappy dirges
sappy hoppy urges
happy holiday mergers



Union Station Christmas Wreath

I stand beneath this
golden Christmas wreath

to take this photograph
with my picture phone.

Now, I'm not the only one
to see it... I am not alone.

Christopher T. George



Of Time and Tidings

It's Christmas week and I am driving to a local diner
to meet an old friend; Friday's snow skulks in the gutter.

Donna's CD "Best of Christmas Cocktails" plays smoothly,
Dean Martin slurring, "Winter Wunnerland." I imagine Dino

with martini clutched in hand, and I think, "Was it then
that we began to lose Christmas -- the holiday mutating

into the sell-out that it has become -- all honesty bartered
for commercial profits?" I order bacon and eggs; Dan, retired,

walking with a cane, orders omelette with scrapple on the side
-- such a proletarian meat! We've known each other forty years,

half a lifetime; we spend time talking about all the people we've known:
aye, so many passed on, but we survive. Later, driving to the bank,

I'm singing variations on "God rest ye merry gentlemen ... God pest
ye manic mental men.... Rod invest ye gentle merrymen... God rest."

Christopher T. George

How to Write Clerihews

Lewis and Clark

Lewis and Clark were quite a pair;
together, they journeyed everywhere.
They explored to the Pacific in tandem.
Yet, at the end, their deaths were random.

Christopher T. George

Per Wikipedia:

"A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the rhymes, often contrived, are structured AABB. One of his best known is this (1905):

"Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men
He said, "If anyone calls,
Say I'm designing Saint Paul's."

Here are some more clerihews that I have written recently:

Laurel and Hardy

"This is another fine mess!!!" Ollie'd say to Stan.
In each flick, we moviegoers expected it, man, oh man!
Eternal victims of life's pranks:
Stan, the clueless Brit, and Ollie, the bumbling plump Yank.



Elvis sang "I'm All Shook Up!"
swiveled his pelvis, didn't look up--
That was then. . . this now: it's all
Elvis sighted in every shopping mall.

The next one is not biographical but seems to fit here, given the season:

Soon, before we know, it will be another Blue Christmas!
Believe me, if you miss it, you won't miss much!
Nowadays, it's so tawdry, so indecently commercialized!
So -- hold your gifts, your offerings, whatever size!

And a couple more clerihews for good luck:

As a working poet, I always remember the example of Sir John Betjeman:
when they complained, "That's no poem!" Sir John said, "You betcha, man!"
He might have written near doggerel,
but he didn't pen it to earn his doctoral.

Siegfried and Roy

Ja, you knew better than to play with tigers
but those big cats paid your wages;
always disaster threatened
-- the sharp teeth beckoned.

Burns and Allen

You could always trust Gracie Allen
to play the dimwit, without failin' --
a lovable, clueless broad
that George and the whole world adored!

The Passion of the Ripper by Nicholas Nicastro

Here’s a novel about Jack the Ripper which right away shows its literary aspirations. The first section of the novel, which pitches the reader immediately into the poor districts of London of the day where the Ripper murders occurred, is titled, “The Morlocks.” Astute readers will recognize that title as a nod to H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine---and in fact Wells himself appears as a character in this novel.

Immediately below that allusive title is an appropriate quote from Shelley: “Hell is a city much like London, a populous and smoky city.” And the opening line of the novel may remind many of T. S. Eliot’s opening to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” when Mr. Nicastro opens with: “The guts of London are laid out as if on a surgeon’s table.”

From there on in, the novel is all Nick Nicastro as the London of 1888 is well evoked by the novelist, the author of five previous historical novels on various topics. The writer tells us that his aim in writing The Passion of the Ripper was to create “a different kind of Ripper story: not a whodunit, but a naturalistic exploration of the man, his city, and his times. It tells this well-known story from the inside out, from the points of view of the killer, the cops, and his final victim. It is the result of extensive research on the subject, but the aim is a kind of truth beneath and beyond the facts.”

It is not too forthcoming to reveal that the Ripper of the story is identified pretty early on in the novel when the scene shifts from London to Poland and we get a glimpse of the early life of an assistant surgeon named Severin Klosowski, who would later emigrate to London to work as a barber (being unable to qualify for licensure as a medical man), taking the name George Chapman. While in his native Poland, the suspect is portrayed as a man with strange sexual proclivities in the presence of an icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa—whose bloody-cheeked image is featured on the cover of Nicastro’s novel.

George Chapman is not a mainstream candidate for the unknown murderer of 1888 that we know today as Jack the Ripper. The infamous serial killer either gave himself the name or else possibly he received it--for better or worst and for all time--from an enterprising London journalist desiring to “hype” up the stories by writing the “Ripper letters” written to the authorities in which the writer claimed to be the bloody murderer.

Chapman was ultimately arrested for the poisoning murder of several common-law wives and was hanged in 1903. Although the main detective on the 1888 case, Scotland Yard’s famed Chief Inspector Frederick George Abberline, by 1903 retired, supposedly said to his former subordinate, Inspector George Godley, “You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last!”, most experts on the Ripper case point out the large gulf in nature between the types of crimes attributed to Chapman and those of the Ripper: Chapman’s disposal of his “wives” secretive and duplicitous and the Ripper crimes bloody murders and mutilations done on the public streets of the East End of London; the Chapman crimes done to women the murderer knew and lived with, and the Ripper crimes done to street prostitutes that the killer probably did not know beforehand.

Nick Nicastro expertly captures the passion of the moment of the murders and the psychology of the man who committed them. Whether the barber Polish barber was Jack the Ripper or not, the novel makes for an enthralling and informative read. The book is available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.


* Here's what Lord Dundreary thinks of George Chapman's candidacy as Jack the Ripper. . . .



That's actor Edward Askew Sothern in the role of Lord Dundreary in "Our American Cousin," the play the Lincolns went to see on the fateful night of April 14, 1865 at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C., when President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Sothern is wearing the "Dundreary whiskers" he made famous.

The above review (without the Dundreary afterword I might add!) is a taste of what is on offer in the Fall issue of Loch Raven Review just released. I join my fellow editors Jim Doss and Dan Cuddy in unveiling the issue. Check it out at http://www.lochravenreview.net/2010Fall/

Loch Raven Review Fall 2010 contains:

Poetry by Eric Basso, Carol Bindel, Shirley J. Brewer, Joe Conard, Tobi Cogswell, Stan Galloway, Peter D. Goodwin, Lois Marie Harrod, Carl Kavadlo, May Kuroiwa, Michael Monroe, Joseph Murphy, Alan C. Reese, Susan Louise Sgroi, and Philip Wexler

Fiction by Paul Beckman, Carl Kavadlo, Elisavietta Ritchie, and Anna Sykora.

Review by Dan Cuddy of White Asparagus by D.R. Belz, and reviews by Christopher T. George of The Slow Creek and Other Stories by F. de Sales Meyers; The Passion of the Ripper by Nicholas Nicastro; Memoir of a Dog by Frank Prem with illustrations by Leanne Murphy; Palette of Life by Virginia Bates; Street Magic by Grant D. McLeman; and Manorborn: The Water Issue edited by Margaret S. Mullins.

For writers interesting in submitting to Loch Raven Review, the deadline for the Spring issue, which posts in March, is February 28th. (Reading period February 15th - March 15th).

Lennon Triptych

Well I didn't make it into the slam final of the Liverpool Lennon Performance Poetry Contest upcoming in Liverpool a week on Saturday. Finalists in both the performance and paper poet categories have just been announced. In any case, here now is the full three-part poem. The winners in both the performance and paper poet categories will be announced by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, at the Liverpool Lennon Poetry Slam Final. This is to be held on Saturday, 6th November at The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts founded by Sir Paul McCartney. Further details available though the Beatles Story website through the title above.


.
.
.
Lennon Tryptich
.

I. O, Johnny-O

O, where have you gone, Johnny-O!
Where have you gone, O, Lennon-O!

You left us too soon, so long ago
-- although we saw you, back then,

in the clubs of Liverpool: the Cavern,
at the Mardi Gras, at the Jacaranda,

or else supping with your mates in Ye Cracke
or The Grapes. Aye, lad, we grooved

hearing you, O Johnny lad, as you stood
with your legs-apart stance,

thrumming your old '58 Rickenbacker geeee-tar,
raunchily singing for us, mugging

for the birds.... oh, what a flirt!
Oh, aye, we know what took you away:

Sex, drugs....... and, yeah yeah yeah,
Rock and roll! Segs, dregs, and drool.

"The Smoke" drew you from us -- a date
with fame. The world yearned for you,

you and your mates. And you and Paul had a ditty
or two or three to write, anthems for the universe,

for better and for worse. O, such dead-on lyrics!
Said so much -- dead good, yeah, as any poet's verse,

the sound of your generation... and who will
deny that you two Scousers often said it best?

Aye, but we were your fans first
-- in the damp and grimy streets

of the 'Pool, within hearing
of the foghorns on the river.

O, Johnny-O, you were a giver and taker!
Listen to that Managua-bound freighter!

O, Lennon-O, you left your mark on us
-- and Liverpool left its mark on you.
.
.
.
II. Julia

I stand over Julia's grave
in Allerton Cemetery, sense
some of what you're about:

an unmarked grave, just like my
great grandmother's in this same
cemetery; faded teddy bear tribute.

The night that the car took Julia
away from you, liquor stinking
on the off-duty cop's breath.

Julia -- knickers on her head
-- adult and child all in one.

Leather-clad rocker's mum gone
but not! -- not! -- not forgotten!

No room for sentiment, except
in your songs -- somehow;

the girls scream anyhow.
.
.
.
III. Here and Yet Not Here

strawberry gooseberry
strawberry gooseberry
strawberry gooseberry

walrus
songs for us
listen to the chorus

strawberry gooseberry
strawberry gooseberry
-- sirens in the night

broken spectacles
flecked with blood

Here and yet not here

rags to stem the blood
rags to stop the bullets

Here and yet not here

The same greased-back hair
the same leather jacket
sweat on the ceiling of the Cavern
rocking in the warren
rocking in the womb

Here and yet not here

Something else inside
something else driving
the gum-chewing ted
slouched against
the smoke-black wall.

Here and yet not here

Not just a snide word
a mouth full of knuckles
circles encircle eyes
crazed squiggled figures
words encircle thoughts
in a Lear-nonsense tongue

Here and yet not here

Inside the black leather
behind the hard eyes later
dreams from one to nine
a dream of guns stuffed with rags
quiet over the fields of war

Here and yet not here

One of four singing love
to the virgin world
yet the orphan the poet
the renegade for peace

Here and yet not here

Christopher T. George

Imagine

John Lennon would have been age 70 today. The above photograph taken by JC Racing on Flickr is a beautiful tribute to the late singer. The photograper calls the photograph "A Shot in the Park." Yes I know, John was not shot in Central Park where this mosaic in his memory is located. John was shot on the night of December 8, 1980 as he arrived back at the nearby Dakota apartment house with his wife Yoko Ono.

Much is happening in John's home city of Liverpool to celebrate what would have been his seventieth birthday, including the unveiling of a peace memorial by his first wife Cynthia Lennon and his son Julian. (More on the monument and the unveiling through the link in the title above).

I have entered the international John Lennon poetry competition, to be judged by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, and am awaiting word whether I might be a finalist. I entered the performance poet category rather than the paper poet competition. There is to be a poetry slam event in Liverpool on Saturday, November 6, at which the three finalists in the performance category are to perform three poems each. The information from Beatles Story said that the finalists in both the paper and performance contests would be informed on Friday. No word but someone who entered the paper poet competition received word that Ms. Duffy has the poems, implying that the response to the competition might be greater than expected and that it is taking time to select the finalists. No news, I suppose, is good news! Stay tuned.

The Lennon poem I have written for the competition is not the same as the following piece but if I am lucky enough to be chosen to perform at the slam event on November 6, I will need to perform three poems, and this is likely to be the second one I would do, part of a Lennon trilogy, as it were.

LENNON

John, as I stood over Julia's grave
in Allerton Cemetery, I understood
a little of what you were about:

an unmarked grave, just like my
great grandmother's in the same
cemetery; faded teddy bear tribute.

The night the car took Julia
away from you, liquor stinking
on the off-duty cop's breath.

Julia -- knickers on her head
-- adult and child all in one.
Leather-clad rocker's mum gone

but not! -- not! -- not forgotten!
No room for sentiment, except
in your songs, somehow;
the girls screamed anyhow.

Christopher T. George



John Lennon by Judith

No results yet (as of October 19) for the Liverpool Lennon Poetry Competition. The Beatles Story site has the following information in its news release section:

"Liverpool Lennon Poetry Competition - Update

"15 Oct 2010

"Due to the high caliber and sheer volume of entries to the Liverpool Lennon ‘paper' poet competition, the announcement of the finalists has been delayed. The entries are being carefully selected by the poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. The finalists will be announced shortly - watch this space!"

Meanwhile information is out on the tickets for the Poetry Slam scheduled to be held at the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts (LIPA) on Mount Street on Saturday, November 6:

Liverpool Lennon Poetry Competition
Date: November 6, 2010
Time: 19:30
Venue: Paul McCartney Auditorium, LIPA
£5 Per Ticket

Lines to an Ex-Girlfriend

The names carved in the campus beeches
expand each year like our love

-- the cringe-worthy words I wrote back then
seem artificial to me now -- what art and artifice.

And we never carved our names in the trees,
although I implied we did. All those initials:

hearts peeled like beech bark. I remember
the ache even now, wonder if I was just
one more man who shared your bed.

Christopher T. George

Thoughts about My Mother, Yoria C. George (1920-2010)

The Terrible Shears

"The terrible shears went clack clack clack."
D. J. Enright

Today would have been your 90th birthday, Mum.
Last month, you were slipping away from us
in hospice care, diagnosed with kidney failure.

Such a well-appointed room; outside, a buddleia
swarmed with butterflies. Donna remarked,
you were too far gone to enjoy such luxury.

As with Dad, dying of cancer three decades ago,
I wished I could drag you back from
where you had gone, use the jaws of life

to restore you to what you'd been. But oh no,
the terrible shears, they never stop do they,
the terrible shears going clack clack clack.

Christopher T. George



The Muddy Muddy Mersey

Tomorrow, at midday, I'll
receive Mummy's ashes
in a plain box, eschewing
an extravagant receptacle.

The time's come to collect
her and to take her home,
to the city she knew before
we sailed that ocean-blue.

Aye, come next year, I will
scatter my Mummy's ashes
in the muddy muddy Mersey
-- the Mersey of memory.

Christopher T. George




Chocks Away, Chaps

Thinking of my mother passing at 2:30 AM today,
I keep looking at the happy wedding photographs

from seventy-five years ago: all those uniforms!
Woollen gray of the Royal Air Force: Dad rakish

sergeant in the RAF medical corps, khaki jackets
of my Mum's fellow Auxiliary Territorial Service pals.

My Mum's Joan Crawford-plucked eyebrows;
Dad pulled her into the seclusion of the limo.

Christopher T. George

My father was a sergeant in the Royal Air Force medical corps. He told me a story about being in the French countryside before Dunkirk and seeing German Panzer tanks coming along the lane. He said he dived into a haystack to hide from the enemy.

The above image of my Mom and Dad on their Wedding Day, February 22, 1945, was taken while the war was still ongoing -- it didn't end in Europe until May when the Russians captured Berlin. My Dad wore his RAF uniform but Mum wore a suit though she was in the Auxilliary Territorial Service (ATS) helping to monitor the German planes flying over Britain. Her ATS friends, all in uniform, formed a guard of honor for Mum and Dad when they emerged from St. Anne's Church in Aigburth, Liverpool, after the service.

The fold-out Christmas card shown below was sent by my father to my Uncle Doug, Mum's brother, from northern Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) at Christmas 1945. It shows the occupied zones of Germany, with the Russian section shown by the Soviet soldier dancing with the Russian bear at top right.



We had a nice memorial gathering at the Burgee-Henss-Seitz Funeral Home on Falls Road in Baltimore on Saturday, August 28. Following are some of my remarks at the memorial.

Yoria Christine George (1920–2010)

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."
—Inscription on an old gravestone, courtesy of Lisa J. Cohen

The Naming of Names
By Christopher Thompson George

A number of you might not know the origin of my mother’s unusual first name, “Yoria”.

Here’s the explanation:

My maternal grandfather, George Thompson Matchett, served in the First World War in the Lancashire Fusiliers as part of a British Expeditionary Force sent to Greece in 1916, a sideshow to the Western Front and the Allied forces disaster at Gallipoli in 1915. Grandad was there for nearly three years, mainly helping to guard supply wagons going to the front, where the British were fighting the Turks and the Bulgarians.

Grandad was based in Salonika, present-day Thessaloniki, the capital of the Greek province of Macedonia. The local people called him “Yori”—Greek for “George.” When he returned to England in 1919, he decided that when his daughter was born he would call her “Yoria.”

You also might not be aware that in our family Mum’s nickname was “Lule.” Yoria’s cousin, Frank Norman, whom Mum characterised as “a lovely boy,” could not pronounce “Yoria”—so he called her “Lule.”

I never had the privilege of meeting Frank. He was the only son of my favorite aunt, Auntie Mary, my grandmother’s sister. Frank was killed in June 1943, part of a crew flying a Lancaster bomber on a bombing raid on Germany.

My father, Gordon B. George, also had a nickname within the family. It was “Grod.” He received this nickname because as a little boy, he was unable to spell his name, and he wrote it as “Grodno Groeg.” So, to me, as his son, he became “Daddy Grod.”

I would like to think, if all things are right, that “Lule” and “Grod” are at this moment together again.

(The title above links to a memorial page for my mother on the Burgee-Henss-Seitz Funeral Home Inc. website)

The Blitz in Liverpool

Liverpool Blitz Memorial by Tom Murphy, St. Nicholas's Churchyard, Liverpool

I recently had an exchange on a poetry forum with a fellow poet who thought that the word "Blitz" should only be applied to the German Blitzkrieg aerial attack on Poland in 1939. Tell that to the people of Merseyside who suffered greatly during the German bombing of the port of Liverpool and the shipyards of Birkenhead during 1941. Also hit during the attacks was Liverpool's elegant Gothic St. Luke's Church, which was gutted by an incendiary shell just after midnight on May 6, 1941. The church has never rebuilt but has been left as a memorial to those who died in the Blitz of the Second World War.

An acquaintance of mine on the Yo! Liverpool forum has now started a website on the church. Go to St Luke's "The Bombed-Out Church" at http://www.stlukeliverpool.co.uk/. The church is also covered in an article in the local press today "Former glory of Liverpool's ‘bombed out’ church found after 80 years" by William Leece, Liverpool Daily Post, June 14, 2010 (access the article through the title above).



A recent book on the damage sustained by the area during the Blitz is Merseyside's Secret Blitz Diary--Liverpool at War by Arthur Johnson. This supposed reproduction of a World War II diary kept by a Merseyside journalist might be totally on the up and up, although I am a bit leery given the questionable Maybrick "Jack the Ripper" Diary and the Bridget Hitler diary as well... and the mocked up Hitler Diaries that were exposed as a hoax after they were sold to Der Spiegel. Is Merseyside's Secret Blitz Diary a bit too good to be true?

The book was published in paperback in 2005. The book, reproducing the typed pages from the diary, was brought out with an introduction by the author's son who himself became a journalist but never knew his father -- Arthur Johnson Sr. died of disease while serving in the Royal Navy later in the war. It seems to be unexplained how the Diary, hidden at the time because it would have been forbidden to keep such a diary of local war-related happenings, came to light.

The narrator seems to know too much, right at the time, and there are also "add-ons" adding additional information that might not have been known till years later.

Possibly I am being too suspicious but I do think the document bears some scrutiny. For more on the book go to "Story of Merseyside's secret blitz."

The Day War Broke Out Evening Express

On the newspaper my Grandad
bought one evening in 1939,
the print is rubbed off along the folds
after a duration in successive drawers
in successive dressing tables
but the headline BRITAIN AT WAR
still stands out
like a burst of shrapnel
in a clear sky.

Half the front page is filled
with German troop movements in Poland
and the Prime Minister's announcement
broadcast at 11:15 a.m from Dowing Street:

"I have to tell you now
that no such undertaking has been received...
we will fight brute force, bad faith, and oppression..."

At top left, an announcement in red ink, to say
"Mervyn Russell's Film Fan Fare" is on page 4.

At the bottom of the page,
T. W. Garnett, sole survivor of the first test
match between England and Australia, has turned 81,
and J. L. Coleman has holed what's believed
to be the worlds longest putt from 220 yards.

An 18-year-old playing his first league match
has scored the winning goal
for Liverpool, first in the First Division,
against Chelsea, placed eleventh;
the season is one week old.

Miss Mollie Bowdler has married Walter Roberts
at St. Luke's Church; she wore a crinoline gown
of white lace and carried a bouquet
of red roses and lilies of the valley.

Christopher T. George

Do Not Pass Go

Parabolic curve!
Survive paralytic scare,
pass "Go", go to Jail,
trade Boardwalk for Water Works,
raid the Community Chest.



Blue Goddess

To think that hulking boy
arose from your thighs!
Oh Belladonna Madonna,
image of blue mystique,
intrigue me with your wiles
entertain me all the while,
haunt me like a phantom,
hovering on my horizon,
graveyard spectre,
eternal sceptre,
phallus and womb,
tomb and manger.

Christopher T. George


And your gilt-edged invitation to attend. . . .




I am planning to read poetry but also some songs from my songwriting partner Erik Sitbon's latest CD, Rusty, for more information on which, hit the link through the title above.






Rhododendron Path

Sick of the photographs
of oil-slicked pelicans
from the Gulf oil spill,

the chat about culpability
of corporate executives
and playboy serial killers,

I wish instead just to dream
like Millais' "Bubbles" and wander
the rhododendron path
of a childhood park.

Christopher T. George




Bubbles (1886) by John Everett Millais (1829-1896)



Otterspool Park, Liverpool, by Joe Neary