| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VII, No. L |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Sunday, 10 December 2006 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VII, No. L
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> Bright
Cold
Dark Night Skies
That wake
To Chilly Winds
Each Morning
As Solstice sneaks in
Once more
Lisa Jain Thompson C. 2006
 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ The week has been taken up by doctor's appointments.
everything is fine, it just takes time to confirm a person's
finery. but this might be a little short this time, it all
depends.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ I did see Casino Royale this weekend.
Doing Double Oh
If I were so inclined,
The new James Bond,
Blond, blue-eyed, and muscled,
Could comfort me
If he so wished.
The inclination, of course,
Would be horizontal
With a fifty percent chance
Of scattered bullets by morning,
But on the quiet nights
(So to speak)
The only gun would be his
And any blood on the sheets
Would be mine alone.
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ anticipation
Holiday Imagination
Let's have a lovely goose for Christmas,
Let's greet the new year with cheer, If we invite our friends and all our exes,
A splendid time would be guaranteed for sure. Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ I have a great deal of work, what with the housekeeping, the children, the teaching and the laboratory, and I don't know how I shall manage it all. -- Dr. Marie Curie __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Cultural Acclimation in Britain
"Very good intentions got the better of us. We wanted to be hospitable to new groups. We wanted, rightly, to extend a welcome and did so by offering public money to entrench their cultural presence.
"Money was too often freely awarded to groups that were tightly bonded around religious, racial or ethnic identities.
"In the future, we will assess bids from groups of any ethnicity or any religious denomination, also against a test, where appropriate, of promoting community cohesion and integration."
-- Tony Blair
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ biblical documentation
The Blueprint
Male and Female,
With a handful of in-between, So he created us;
Boys and girls,
Women and men; In imperfect bodies
Guarding minds Striving towards perfection, So we evolved;
Now we find our brains engaged
In a bloody gender war
That would replace our animal reality With academic theory and hubris, Pretending we are more than we are
And less than we can be, That clothes the world
With diploma'd finery, That obscures what nature birthed In our genetic heritage. We cannot forget
Who we are,
Where we've been,
And how far we've come
Less we parish from this good earth,
Replaced by some fine creature
Who better understands Nature's plan.
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ cultural documentation
Queerly Put
Some of us hunt and kill,
Just as humans do;
Some of us crave fear and pain,
Just as humans do.
We are out of the forest
And of it, A creature of savanna and the sea,
Just as humans are,
Just as you are.
Look around,
What do you see? We are there,
Passing for human
Among the shadows.
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ For me, the great irony of our time
is that even as Bush is denouncing Darwin, condemning stem-cell research as blasphemy, and encouraging what he calls 'faith-based initiatives,' his administration is hoping against hope that something resembling a rational, secular, post-Enlightenment republic will emerge in Iraq. It's a towering irony.
-- James Morrow __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ There are several thousand readers of this newsletter now and growing. Although I am conscious of the number of readers, I try not to think about you much.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ citizenship
In Brief
Call to duty
Boots on the ground Where political decisions Meet battlefield reality Where ink and paper Determine whose bones and blood
Lay across which rocky ground Where a signature and a bullet
Can both equally kill And an ill thought policy Fill another row in Arlington Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.
... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
-- Isaac Asimov
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ poet's mix
Becoming Human
Ameridian-Sicilian,
That covers three or four races And a shitpotfull of ethinic groupings, Throw in Euro-United Kingdom,
Including Irish Moors, And you can take
Your gentile stratifications And shove them up Your over educated ass. I am American,
No more or less,
A resident of Planet Earth,
A voting member of the human race;
Anthing below Homo Sapiens Is simply academic foolishness And cultural arrogance. Fuck them.
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Reporting from the Front
We really just don't give much of a damn, simple decision-making equations prove that we are a rather thoughtless species, reacting only to the most primitive of market forces while remaining hell-bent on serving our most immediate needs and screw the planet and screw the long view and screw what kind of burned-up oil-depleted storm-ridden water-deprived world your kids will be facing in a mere 25 years, just save me a few bucks on a tank of Saudi gas and let's call it an environment.
Just how stupidly self-destructive are we? How much longer can we possibly survive before we simply consume and waste and blow ourselves to smithereens? After all, the experts tell us that every culture prior to ours -- that is, all those that eventually turned into gluttonous warmongering insanely wasteful empires -- they all imploded. Every single one. Wiped themselves out, burned themselves up, abused their resources to death. Put it this way: If history is any lesson at all, we are just incredibly, deliciously doomed.
Common sense, intuition and true spiritual awareness are often merely the meek bitchslaves to aggressive marketing campaigns and soulless politicians and an instant gratification culture that values the immediate money shot far more than it does long-term slow-burn extended orgasm. Deep, soulful caring is often just below "replace smoke alarm battery" in terms of priority.
War and disease and ignorance and prescription meds are plentiful as candy and millions still believe the entire universe was created in a week by some angry bearded spiteful grandfather who hates gays and isn't all that fond of women or sex or Hindus either, and if you just shut off your brain and close your legs and despise the right kind of people, you will get to hang out with him for all eternity.
The human race progresses in fits and starts and heaves and spits. While many of us like to envision some sort of big epiphanic transcendental whoop that will wake everyone up in a flash and a gulp and an orgiastic squirt, in fact, change comes in lurching sidelong waves, in oddly torqued perspective shifts, two steps forward one and step back and three steps sideways and eventually praise Jesus hi Allah thank Buddha, we get there. Maybe. If we're lucky.
And really, given our wicked fun-loving deeply conscious stupidly bipolar natures, that's probably the best we can do.
-- Mark Morford
SF Gate __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ towards a new America
Rebel
Here is not merely a nation
but a teeming Nation of nations. - Walt Whitman A rebel
Of questionable loyalties
And well educated In French and other obscurities, Whose ebony flesh hath murdered, For state and family, Enemies of his people
Who would kill all of him If he not them, Down to his last gene And molecule, Has slipped the bonds
Of place and nation, To embraced our children As he would his body’s And join the mulatto multitude That graces our shores, Becoming one with the great melt That forges our future, Admits the human bonds That connect us one to another, And diminishes all gods But mother democracy And the messy liberty To pursue our mutual happiness, One generation to the next, Until the sun no longer shines Our rivers no longer flow, And the good earth swallows us In the great maw of the universe. Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2006 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ If you live in rock and roll, as I do,
you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn't repel them. -- Camille Paglia
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Send your letters and postcards to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it © Lisa Jain Thompson 2006
Further distribution of this newsletter in its entirety is authorized. |
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