| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XII |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Thursday, 15 March 2007 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. XII
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> when your fingers
slipped inside me
i thought my world had almost ended such was my quaking
if i could have spoken my moans would echo across the darkness like some titanic stellar nova jet spinning out of control
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2007 C.E.
 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ approaching the reluctant equinox: a dozen and more before March ends
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ watching the world spin
Red is the Rose
Clearing the winter garden
Spring sun dripping into my eyes; Down from their nest The squirrels shake their heads As they pass by; Sparrows chatter loudly,
Insistent at marking their territory; A stray cat wanders along the tree line,
Looking for eary new borns Who might have discovered gravity. The poet sweats,
Hands clothed with soil instead of pen,
Plants a small rose
Where the north wind brought death,
Sets right the cycle
From life's end to beginning still again. Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ decades past
3L Compression
I remember counting the dots
In the acoustic tiles As I lay there on the gurney; They really should
Put t.v.'s on the ceiling
(Wide screen, surround sound,
High Definition)
-- The boredom in the E.R.,
In some ways,
Was worse than the pain
In my back. Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ starpoet
Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!
This brain, this body,
So recently discovered: Upright we were Long before we were human, Our mind's convolution trailing Our prowness with tools, Our fondness for violence, Our eagerness to be the predator Rather than the prey. Out of the Savanna
Of all the modern great apes -- Humans, chimps and bonobos, Orangutans and gorillas -- We are the ones whose recent brains Are punctuated with dizzying change, Whose handful of differences Lead to elaborate complexity, Whose quick neurons Doubled then redoubled The speed of our wit's sharp flakes. Fifty thousand years ago,
The last diaspora found our tongues Walking across the continents; Six thousand years past or so, In our fertile near east valleys, We retimed our brains and began to build Our first great cities upon the land. Still we grow, wiser in our understanding,
Of where we have come -- Hairless humankind -- The footsteps we have left, The species' obituary we assiduously avoided; The brothers who have lived, The sisters who have died, The children who have come and gone As we stumbled through chance and time, And who we are and who we are becoming As we reach out to the stars above us.
Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ All modern great apes
- humans, chimps, orangutans, gorillas and bonobos - engage in at least some aggression as males compete for females. -- David Carrier
professor of biology University of Utah __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ do the math
The Tomb at Talpiot
A plain white box,
A shroud woven from straw, His bones scattered through time, Stolen from the family sepulchre: Jesus, son of Joseph,
Husband of Mariamne, Father of Judah, Prophet, rabbi, Revolutinary leader, Everything but the god He never claimed to be.
Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Given the aggressive behavior of modern humans and apes,
we should not be surprised to find fossil evidence of aggressive behavior in the ancestors of modern humans. This is important because we have a real problem with violence in modern society. Part of the problem is that we don't recognize we are relatively violent animals. Many people argue we are not violent. But we are violent. If we want to prevent future violence we have to understand why we are violent. -- David Carrier professor of biology University of Utah __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ life goes on until it doesn't
On My Bare Breast
I'm bound for the waves,
The ocean calls me;
The stars above my head
Beckon me join them.
With my love, I will go
Across bright starry reaches
To worlds with dying suns
Caught in their late afternoons. With my love, we shall seek
All the pleasures the universe holds
Until our voices grow silent
And our bodies, not gently,
Slip into the last long sleep
Where time forever ends And slowly we are forgotten By those who still can breathe
The sweet air of the green-hilled earth.
We shall not weep,
We shall not cry,
In each other's arms
We shall happily die, And then, whatever follows,
Will be reward enough For once being alive
And in love with my darling.
Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure,
which is American lives. --John McCain
On David Letterman 28 February 2006 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ the world outside my window
The Hum
Blackhawk heading back to base,
Pulsing through the window pane: Terrorist patrol, National Guard practicing,
Someone getting flight pay on the weekend
Or shuttling some general back and forth
To meetings vastly more important than you are:
The noise in the background of everyone's target.
Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ The older we get,
the more we tend to be victims of our own fixed worldviews, unable to see how the younger creatures of our species are at once us and also not us in the slightest. If you see it all through a lens of fear or lack of nimble perspective, suddenly it's all drooling MySpace sexual predators and binge-drinking frat-boy idiots and millions of lost brain-rotted teens snorting ketamine off each other's stolen iPods and then shooting each other in the face after playing 6 million hours of Grand Theft Auto, one giant violent sexed-up gum-snapping body-pierced eating-disorder STD-ready freak show ready to implode at the drop of a hat or the shave of a Britney. -- Mark Morford SF Gate __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ efficiency
God’s MBA
Then God defined particles and waves saying,
“Let there be light!” and there was, Somewhere between 380 and 780 nanometers Or the vicinity of 450-750 terra hertz. God looked at his visible spectrum And saw that it was good. Then He named his colors -- violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red –
So that they would be easier
For humankind to remember them, Adding ultraviolet and infrared To cover those wavelengths Just out of human ken. Finding what he done to be good, God looked at his work saying “What a marvelous thing I have created, But I cannot let this light escape me.” And so God humbled all light to excruciating limits, 299,792,488 meters to be exact, Per second that is, in a vacuum that is, Assuming such a thing could be said to exist. Then seeing the great light that shone upon the earth And realizing what it is he had did God said “Let there be Lean Six Sigma!” and there were And all was right and good on mother earth. Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ There was a time when I understood the term "gay"
as having a meaning above and beyond its homosexual connotations, and that it could be used in a variety of contexts without being homophobic. In many ways I still do. Indeed, there are times when you might catch me using the word "gay" myself. But I'm increasingly aware that there is a massive problem with deploying these words in everyday discourse, and that to do so contributes to a pernicious homophobia, which remains the last tolerated prejudice in western society. The language is part of a dull and lazy homophobia,
in which being gay is equated with weakness and inability. -- Alex Stein In the Guardian __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ PEACE
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