The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol VII, No. XXXIII
waking in her arms
morning slippin in
gentle wind curling
around our toes
i would not move
until you do
would not breathe
but that you breathe
blood pulses
my heart to yours
one beat
now 'til evening
and your arms again
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2006 C.E.
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Working my way through my backlog. Some new poems, some I wrote months before. Spent the last week celebrating my daughter's birthday and my own ancient birthday.
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this week's beginning ... it's about time...
Antiquities
The world's well made enough
To withstand this onslaught of machine and ape;
Whether humanity survives is no great concern
To a planet that witnessed the dinosaurs' passing.
Should the rivers rund dry, you say?
-- been there, done that.
The polar caps melt?
It's happened before.
Ice ages?
Which one do you want to talk about?
The planet will be here
Long after this primate infestation
Has evolved itself to extinction:
Our world is anchored in deepest time.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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written long ago and yesterday ...
The Ritualization of Fear
Strip
X-Ray
Here's a container
Go over there.
Blood sample
Breathalyzer
Do you mind
A lie detector?
Lines
Questions
Unprotected files;
Be good
Trust us
Obey the law
And smile.
Accept authority
Zero toleration
Murder, rape,
News at eleven.
Terrorists
Tourists
Brown skinned people
With foreign lips.
Be aware
Don't stare
Take down names
With facial hair.
No trial
-- Don't need it.
No judge
-- Too liberal.
No jury
-- Only trouble.
No sentence
-- You're in jail.
Trust us
Trust us
Trust us
We're here to help you.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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change of pace
Travel Tips
Sleeping at a friend's,
Girlfriend at my side,
How much noise is too much
When too much love is not enough?
Should I moan or lie there
Biting my lower lip;
Should I scream and wake them,
My friends sleeping just downstairs?
Shall I remain a virgin
While I lie beside my love,
Or shal I fuck her brains out
And risk disturbing the whole house?
These are questions one must consider
When visiting friends and family,
Should one pretent to be platonic friends
Or admit that one is randy?
I haven't a clue what one should do:
Listening to her breath is no answer,
Lying awake counting hours and minutes
Makes for baggy eyes and little pleasure.
So, if I had to make a choice (and I did),
I would chose love over sleepless nights;
And if your hosts raise objections,
Just tell them it was the T.V. set.
You are too much of a lady
For them to think otherwise.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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Singing Volcanoes
Mount Etna, Italy, showing cinder cone.
Predicting eruptions will become easier now scientists are using technology to translate the patterns in a volcano's behaviour into sound waves. The EU funded "Enabling Grids for E-sciencE" (EGEE) and the "E-Infrastructure shared between Europe and Latin America" (EELA) projects, which are already investigating volcano sonification at Mount Etna, Sicily, are using the GÉANT2 and ALICE-RedCLARA networks to further extend this important study to include Ecuador's Tungurahua volcano.
The research project, which brings together experts from Europe and Latin America, digitally collects geophysical information on seismic movements before using data sonification to transform them into audible sound waves, which can then be 'scored' as melodies. The resulting 'music' is then analysed for patterns of behaviour and used to identify similarities in eruption dynamics and so predict future activity.
To listen to the melody created by Mount Etna visit:
To listen to the melody from Tungurahua visit:
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following the news again
Allegedly Mahmoudiya
The Rape of Abeer Qassim
Abeer Qassim al-Janabi
Was outside with her father
When the soldiers arrived,
Four together, in search of a victim,
Wanting to rape and kill Iraqi.
A fifth, who knew ahead,
Remained silent until questioned:
Nothing he’d ever read
Told him what to do
When his buddies mentioned to him
About planning rape and murder
-- an obvious failure of his schooling,
Not to mention church and his parents,
And the Army,
Who should have said something
About reporting psycho killers
-- All in all, it was not the kid’s fault
He hadn’t a clue.
The leader, such as he was,
Made it past both recruiter and top sergeant
Without either of them noticing
His fully installed disordered personality,
A problem with aggression, you see,
This overpowering urge of his
To kill someone.
They were playing cards,
Shooting whiskey with energy drink chasers,
Driving golf balls out into the sand
When our leader announced,
Persistently, as it were,
That he – and they – the four of them,
Had some urgent business with some Iraqi,
And, if he could, he would like
To get his rocks off before the killings.
So they arrived at her house,
Grabbed the girl and her father,
Dragging them inside with her mother,
And her five year old younger sister;
The older girl, quickly separated,
Watches her family taken to the bedroom
Where the psychotic army of one
Does what he came for,
Kills himself some Iraqi,
Riddling the parents with bullets,
First the mother, then the father,
Then blowing off the back
Of the little girl’s skull,
Making god and country proud
Of everything he could be.
The others (the three)
Strip the girl Abeer,
All of fourteen, a virgin still,
Pushing her to the floor,
Lifting her dress roughly,
Tearing off her underwear:
As she struggles to escape,
One by one they rape her,
Forcing her legs to spread,
Violating her body and their oaths,
To leaving their drunken lust inside her.
Done in the bedroom, their leader returns,
Carrying an AK-47
-- They’re all dead, I’ve just killed them;
The drops his gun,
Spreads her legs,
Raping Abeer once more,
Shooting her through the head,
Single shot beneath her eye.
One of three pours kerosene,
Covering body and face;
Someone lights match and girl,
Sets her face and body on fire,
And watches her flesh
Turn brown and crisp.
Then they leave,
Their mission finished,
Back to the checkpoint,
To grill some chicken wings for themselves.
Hours later,
Forty fingers licked and clean,
They turn to see Iraqi soldiers reporting
To the mightiest Army in all the world,
That they’ve found a family shot so very dead,
-- Qassim, Fikhriya, and little Hadeel,
Father, mother, and their five year old daughter --
And the body of a girl still smoldering
On her funeral pyre.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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I can see his lips moving.
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Sermon on the Mount
To rail against a religion
That wants to destroy you
Is neither bigotry noir discrimination:
The first order of business is self survival.
I cannot protect my family,
I cannot defend my country,
I cannot make the world more gentle
If I am dead,
If I am in prison,
If my body has been blown away
By some rabid religious zealot.
Fundamental Islamic radicals,
Reactionary Christian conservatives,
I see no difference:
Their goal is to usurp my life and Constitution
And superimpose their religious rules of governance.
We are in a war
For the freedom of the human race
From which we either emerge
Our liberty intact
Or under the thumb of mullahs, popes,
And all manner of self-appointed preacher men.
We are on the verge of the new dark ages,
Ignorance and religious intolerance
Dominate our social intercourse,
The long war saps our will:
If we succumb, the world will sink
Further into the depths,
Led by fanatics and madmen
Certain of their metaphysical infallibility.
As we congratulate ourselves
On our heroic effort,
The world is aflame
With true belief and destruction.
Blessed are those who seek
Knowledge for knowledge’s sake,
For they will save the world from humanity.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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Snippet from Weingarten
"First, the news broke that supermodel Christie Brinkley's marriage had blown up over her husbands affair with a teenager. Minutes later I got a call from my friend Gina Barreca. Gina, an expert of feminist theory, seemed a little upset.
"GINA: This is every middle-aged woman's fear. If Christie Brinkley at 52 can't hold onto a husband, the rest of us can just hang it up. No married woman can ever feel safe again.
"GENE: But ..."
"GINA: ... Everytime we try to convince ourselves that the human male cannot possibly be as shallow as we fear he is, something like this happens. When this guy met this girl, she was 17. When he bedded her, she was 18. I strongly suspect this was not a relationship based on mutual intellectual simulation. When an interviewer asked her what she said when Christie's husband first propositioned her, her answer was, and I am quoting directly from the transcript: "I was like, 'Uh, I dunno."
That's what you guys want?"
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summer or two
High Pressure
Gulls lurch south,
Avoiding the madness of the coming storm;
Their cries unsettle the sparrows
Hunkered down in the trees.
Rumble in the distance
Rolling across the horizon,
Startling the clouds to loosen,
Darkening the barreng ground.
Border Collie paces nervously,
Unable to control events,
Stares forlornly through the window,
Wishing the thunder would quiet.
I calm him best I can,
Pretending the world is mine to command.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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fact of life
Hiroshima
I have no guilt about Hiroshima,
If it's them versus us, I chose them:
A practical solution, a pragmatic answer
-- I would rather face the wrath of history
Than the faces of my dead friends.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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at the end of the day
Queer As Folk
Queer as Folk has ended,
The actors can go back
To acting straight.
I will still be queer
From here to eternity
Without the benefit of residuals.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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old west stuff
J.B.
Bill Hickok,
High atop Boot Hill,
Left his life unfinished
But his legend intact,
Forever connected
With Calamity Jane Cannary,
A poker game
With his back to the window,
And dimestore westerns
Filled with gunplay.
Given the infrequencey of bathing
In the black hills of the Dakotas,
The body of Bill's work
Undoubtedly smells worse
Than the sanitized myths and tall tales.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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if this seems all too familiar to you, I feel your pain.
Fugue
My right eye is disfocused
From the vagaries of migraine,
The I that is me
Floats somewhere outside of time;
Concentration requires concentration
As mind shifts between the pain,
My body fights through lethargy
That shackles me in place.
I am here and not here,
Leaving, left, and arrived;
The meds flow slowly into my bloodstream
As the hours struggle by.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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Sunday finale
Waiting for Sharon
Sunday afternoon,
Sixty minutes from the Super Bowl,
An hour after orgasm
With my girlfriend asleep upstairs.
My stomach says it's time for supper,
Our Border Collie thinks so too;
I won't make a move 'til Sharon wakes up
And I learn what she plans to do.
I could cook -- I'm Sicilian --
But I'm not all that health conscious;
Carb counts are vague, I don't minimize cholesterol,
Weight loss is not high on my agenda:
So the dog and I sit here,
Waiting for Sharon to come down.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2006
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PEACE
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© Lisa Jain Thompson 2006
Further distribution of this newsletter in its entirety is authorized.
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