Richard Thomas Featured Poet

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Cézanne and His Critics

Down long Parisian streets,
steeped with sepia
and seeping Seine,
he went,
canvas stacked on back,
hobbling hunchback,
like He of Notre Dame
or Christ with his crucifix.

‘I am the Messiah’ he yelled
and no one believed him,
even gargoyles laughed
from their cloisters
at his paintings
of pottery and naked bathers.
Gaining closer to the gallery
the critics saw his coming,

scorned and pitied –
poor Paul Cézanne
was to walk back home,
the saddest walk of them all,
acrylic weeping in tow,
too much brushstroke for them,
too un-classical.
Ah, but little did they know

that one hundred years on
his hatted card players
with white pipe would have gone
for one hundred and sixty million,
and I can hear Cézanne
rolling in his grave with laughter,
yelling
‘That’ll show the bastards’.

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Richard Thomas is a 25 year old poet living in Plymouth, Devon. Richard has a diploma in Creative Writing and is studying a degree in English Literature and Language. Richard is the editor of poetry e-zine Symmetry Pebbles – www.symmetrypebbles.com with which his editorial selection of a poem won a Poetry Kit Award. His poems and haiku are published/forthcoming in journals and webzines internationally such as Orbis, FIRE, Neon Highway, Weyfarers, The Coffeehouse, Reflections, Notes from the Gean, Presence, Bottle Rockets, The Oddrot, Wild Orphan, Venus in Scorpio, The IMPpress, Neutral Norway and Clinic, aswell as various anthologies. Richard was shortlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2011.

‘The Strangest Thankyou’ is his debut collection of poems published by Cultured Llama. It is available for £8.00 from www.culturedllama.co.uk

www.richardchristopherthomas.co.uk