| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XXIII |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Saturday, 02 June 2007 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. XXIII
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> On Saturday
While you grew ready to race You let me sleep And prepared a light breakfast For me to eat After you kissed me goodbye And I finally awoke I thought of you all morning
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2007 C. E.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ early morning, forty years after the Beatles taught us how to play
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ the thirteenth generation so to speak
Golly, Mr. Wizard
Who let The Tourists in,
Barking loudly at each other
In the subway cars,
Huddling in a litter pile
At the top of escalators, Their bodies and legs intertwined
Every which way
While their heads twist three sixty
As they try to comprehend
This brave new world
They find themselves?
Hasn't anyone been on
Public transportation before? This can't be the first city They've all ever seen
-- Surely they've read a picture book
Or two, maybe three, Or watched a Woody Allen movie,
Or caught an episode of CSI.
What the hell would they do
In New York City If a few monuments and museums Are enough to throw them Off their feed?
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ the real world intrudes
The Pentagon Wildlife
Cockroaches on the floor
As big as my thumb,
Thought we got rid of them
When the September plane hit.
The pigeons are gone,
They have good sense
Than hang around
Where things go boom. The evergreen of old magnolias
Is no longer stained off-white With the droppings of sleeping greckles
Who huddled in their branches overnight.
But the cockroaches have returned
So apparently all is well,
It won't be all that much longer
Until missiles are re-aimed right above us.
For life goes on at the Pentagon
As terrorists find shinynew targets For the public to focus their cameras And upload to My Space and YouTube.
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Unequal outcomes do not imply unequal opportunities.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ ancient philosophies
Doing Aurelius
Life is bloody bright colours,
Death, at best,
Some sepia gray scale
Overfilled with fading contrast.
Even the stars will grow cold with time,
Why should your death dismay you
If you burn white hot
While you are here?
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Middle America
New Franken, Wis. (AP) --
A Catholic priest has removed his church's organist and choir director from her duties saying her sale of sex toys was not "consistent with Church teachings."
Linette Servais, 50, played the organ and sung with the choir for 35 years. Much of her work as choir director and organist was done without pay. When her parish priest asked to meet with her, she thought it was to say thank you. Instead, she was told to quit her sales job with company known as Pure Romance or she would lose her position in the church.
Pure Romance in Loveland, Ohio, is a $60 million per year business that sells spa products and sex toys at homes parties attended by women. It has 15,000 consultants like Servais.
She said her decision was not hard: She began working with Pure Romance after a brain tumor and treatment left her sexually dysfunctional. The job allows her to help other women who have similar problems.
"After I got over the initial shock, I prayed over this a long time," she said. "I feel that Pure Romance is my ministry."
The Rev. Dean Dombroski said he couldn't discuss the situation because it involves personnel. But in a letter to his rural congregation, he wrote: "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings. Because parish leaders are expected to model the teaching of our faith ... she could stay on as the choir director/organist or she could continue to be a consultant but she could not do both."
Many choir members quit in support, she said, and some have gathered at her home on occasional Thursdays to sing hymns.
"Father Dean made it sound so sinful," she said. "There is so much more to this business than toys."
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ time past and time to come Sand Storm
Blackened patch,
Memory catches,
Rushing back to Asian jungles
And the broken bodies Of fallen comrades.
Time dissolves,
Emotion rages,
Pieces of shrapnel
Twist to the surface,
Scraping at the heart.
Phantoms light the sky,
Bullets burn deep into the flesh,
Friends and enemies,
Blown to pieces side by side, Shadow this bright day
And those to come
Filled with the ghosts
Of the newly arriving
Drawn straight
From the bloody heat Of the Sandbox.
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ The Wisdom of George W. Bush
We understand the fright that can come
when you're worried about a rocket landing on top of your home. —Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ running in circles
The American Race
33 Engines,
Three abreast,
Heading into the corner
At 200 miles per hour.
American tradition,
Beer, death, and destruction,
A Memorial celebration
Since time immemorial Or at least since the invention Of the internal combustion engine. A handful of warm-ups,
Green flag falls,
Cars explode headlong
Into luck's checkered cast.
Dust and heat,
Rubber and gasoline,
Balanced on the skills
Of man and woman and machine.
The crowd cheers
As drivers go round,
Round and round
Until they're crowned
With sweet victory Or twisted metal laurels.
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ a few weeks past
The Spring Garden
Working the garden,
Scraping away the winter death
From the young green shoots Struggling to be free
From the damp cold earth:
The sun not high enough
To warm the shaded ground
Where a late frost still rules.
The Virginia Creeper
Has already plotted its invasion,
Sending advance scouts
To infiltrate the garden.
I destroy each early runner:
Some with strangulation,
Ripping them root by root
From their new spring promise;
Others, a scorched earth policy,
Spraying like Chemical Ali
To kill both parents and children. At best, I will fight them to a draw.
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Hairless
To lie sweaty in the warm summer night,
Stuck flesh to flesh with your lover,
Is one of the rewards for being human
And sharing a Bonobo's sex drive.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ in the news from Stratford on Avon
A Sliver Broke
In '79 did Katherine Hamlett
Into the Avon slip
As water she drew
From its muddy banks
While Will filed the story
Into his brain
Until he killed fine Ophelia Picking crow-flowers in Denmark.
Such are the tools
Of the poet writers,
Redrawing on memory
For their fictions.
Lisa Jain Thompson
June 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ PEACE
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ |
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