| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XXXII |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Sunday, 05 August 2007 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. XXXII
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> We watched the games last night
High up in the stands Beneath the sun's August heat Our sweat made rivers down our bodies As if we had just finish good monkey sex And were lying beside each other In our bed
Instead of sitting in deep right field Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2007 C. E.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Into august we shall go, merrily, merrily, merrily so,
'Till autumn has gilded the trees with red and gold
And the first sweet scent of winter's deadly cold. -- the poet, morbidly poetical, in the sweaty, august heat
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ snatched from the front pages
The Falling Song
 Aging Bridges
Are falling down,
Falling down,
Falling down,
Aging Bridges
Are falling down Across the U.S.A.
No new taxes,
No matter what,
No matter what,
No matter what,
No new taxes
No matter what,
Even bridges falling. Have your cake
And eat it too,
Eat it too,
Eat it too,
Have your cake
And eat it too,
All fall down. Momma, Momma, Momma,
Help me! The bridge collapsed, The bridge collapsed! Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ early morning
Along the A Ring
I have been walking these corridors so long,
I recognize the rhythm of the blind man's cane
Echoing off the half-empty halls
As he taps his way to his office.
Turn here, turn there, where is the escalator
That will take him to the fourth floor?
We never speak, I would not assume to guide him
On his daily commute from metro to room and back again;
Not that he needs anyone, he does quite well
When no one has rearranged the Pentagon lately.
But he knows my footsteps as I pass by,
Understands that I am there just beyond a cane length,
We're two government employees in the Puzzle Palace,
Wandering in the labyrinth's boundless passages.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ If there was drug available for journalists,
professors or lawyers, they would take it. Why do you think it would be just athletes? When you go to a movie,
you don't want to see how the movie was made, or the special effects are done. The drama plays out and it has a black or white ending. You just want to be entertained and happy or sad your team won. --Charles Yesalis
Professor of health and human development Penn State University
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ watching the game
Homestead Grays at RFK
 At the ballpark,
Twenty-five games until the stadium dies,
The humidity lines the air, Draping diamond and players With the land’s ancient history, The primeval swampy wetlands that were here
Long before L’Enfant laid out his city. Halfway through the game,
The Stars’ right fielder
Stands a hundred fifty feet out, Between the line and second base, Looking so much like a ten year old Stuck in the outfield and hoping No one hits the ball his way As he struggled to maintain his concentration. The Gray’s pitchers call for new balls,
Feeling their way for a dry one, Extending the innings As they fight desperately for control. We watch from the stands,
Drinking water and diet soda That flow off our flesh In less than picturesque waterfalls That rapidly soak our clothes
And blur our vision.
The boys on our side shout loudly,
Proclaiming their special male knowledge Their girlfriends shrink into their seats,
Focusing on the game
Or talking about their children and other boyfriends While their current escorts, perhaps their lovers, Order still another round of cheap beer.
 The game is well played, the good guys win, And the stadium continues its descent Into half-forgotten lore passed generation to generation,
Where Walter Johnson pitches for the Washington Senators
And Frank Howard hits the distant seats, A world where Josh Gibson has no chance to prove once and all Why his plaque should be prominent in the Hall And the voices of distant players, Rushing to finish the inning before sunset, Echo in the twilight, bat and ball resounding Across the darkened field, catching us in the story
That leads from Cy Young and Christy Matheson Through Cobb and Ruth, Mays, Mantle, and McCovey To the kid at third base for the Homestead Grays.  Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Doping is not a modern art. It's just the medicine that's new. As a recent story in National Geographic pointed out, performance enhancement grew with chemistry in the mid-19th century. Athletes choked down sugar cubes dipped in ether, brandy laced with cocaine, nitroglycerine and amphetamines. In that context, the current scourges of steroids and blood boosters are merely a sequential progression. -- Sally Jenkins
Washington Post __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Opening Prayer before the United States Senate
Let us pray. We meditate on the transcendental glory of the deity supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of heaven. May he stimulate an illuminate our minds. Lead us from the unreal to real, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality. May we be protect together, may we be nourished together. May we work together with great vigour. May our study be enlightening.
Chaplain Rajan Zed
The first Hindu to deliver an opening prayer in the United States Senate.
July 12, 2007
Zed is director of public affairs for the Hindu Temple of Northern Nevada. __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Maybe we shouldn't ask athletes to live up to ideals that,
let's face it, are unsupported by the chronically weak performance of human nature. Maybe it's time to decriminalize performance-enhancing drugs, in view of the fact that the first drug cheat was an ancient Greek and runners brought sport-doping into the modern age in 1904 by dosing themselves with strychnine. Our Air Force gives fighter jocks "go-pills"
to get them through long missions, but we don't refuse to call them heroes because they're on speed. So what's this strange amnesia that causes us to seek purity in athletes? Why should they have to meet a higher moral standard than soldiers? Call me naive. -- Sally Jenkins
Washington Post
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ the perils of bureacracy
Discovery
Shark Week,
La di da,
I swim with them everyday,
Disguised as Colonels
And political appointees
And bored civil servants
With senority.
Bigger, stronger, hungrier,
Their skeltons made of rubbery cartilege,
Allowing them to bend
Whichever way the money flows
As they suck all the dollars
From the budget for their own.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Gene Weingarten
Higgledy Piggledy
Hillary Clinton's bust -
Was it a cause for the
Press to divulge?
I am for exposes
Mega-quadrennial!
Now bring on photos of
Joe Biden's bulge.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ for RAH
Centennial
The door dilates,
A hundred years ago and countin,
A man in a space suit enters,
Travels along the summer light
Streaming in from the double stars,
Pauses at a computer
That greets him like a long lost friend
And asks where he'd like to go
-- Someplace with a typewriter
And a couple reams of paper, I've a story to tell --
Then he was gone,
Vanished into the strange land
Where memory, that harsh mistress, Becomes a trickster who betrays us And leaves us lost in our life long search
For that first moment once again. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ It's impossible to draw the line any more between what is an artificial enhancement and what is a natural one. Is there a real difference between voluntary LASIK eye surgery, a small controlled dose of testosterone or EPO, or sleeping in an altitude tent that produces the same effect of EPO only without the needle? -- Sally Jenkins
Washington Post __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Ives
Ragtime Dance #3
I was born by a river in a little tent,
And just like this river, I've been running ever since. It's been a too long, too long-time a-coming, But I know a change is gonna come, Oh, yes, it is. -- Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come
Not all lives are equal,
Not even to the gods
Who smote all those Who refuse to kneel before them,
Not even to religions with a capital R
Who subdivide the one true path
Into Catholics and Baptists, Shi’a and Sunni, Buddhist and Hindus, Animists and Atheists,
Jains, Shamans, and always the Jews;
Certainly not to nations,
Those patriotic tribal superstates,
Who see the world as us and them And a handful of friends for realpolitik: There is always the other,
Expelled to live their lives in Coventry,
Sought out, caught, and condemned to death,
Denied redemption and relegated
To ever damned rings of eternal perdition.
Men and women dichotomize
Into male and female and a few in-between;
Desire quickly breaks down
Into who you love and who you fuck,
With branches and tributaries that all back up When religion and local custom decide
Who among us is more worthy, Who among us is more normal, And those who walk on the wrong side
Of lust, dark fetish, and perversion.
There are no new sins, the gods made us all,
Evolution provides vast and abundant variation, Only the human mind is small, demanding that we fit Into some preconceived correctness that represents
What are parents taught us, some grand-parental tradition
That is mistaken for ancient wisdom and the American Way. Thou art and that should be sufficient justification
For the variation within the species.
Walking outside of tradition, working your own path
Up the mountain apart from the one assigned,
Requires you must be honest: know yourself Before you preach the rest of the world your truth,
Admit what drives you, what rings your bell,
What deep hidden need compels your desire
Without dressing yourself in political agendas And post-modern theological madness.
Within the species, sex, male and female,
Is not always apparent at birth;
Genital configurations are not good indicators For the person inside the brain; A penis is a penis, hormonal driven,
A vagina, a slit that may be unconnected
From the self that resides in synaptical neurons;
The mind is impelled to right itself, To find the body that should be there, To fill the terrible emptiness of being alone In a world of primate pair bonding and desire, And the desperation born of suicide – The surgeon’s knife cures all. If all lives were equal, pope and president would not prattle on
that Jesus speaks only through them, atheists would not decry All religion as the ignorant grumblings of would-be masters , Civil moralists, hiding behind the façade of societal norms, Would not brush off the findings of science and medicine While promoting the singular goodness of their own personal lust. We are one species, from Lucy to Neil Armstrong, All that is within us, is us, neither good nor evil
Except what we might make of it. Poets are sailors, fishers of god and men,
Voyagers of great light distances,
Divers into the darkness within our hearts; We touch upon truths self-evident,
That within us all a common fire burns,
That our humanity binds us unflinchingly as one:
One species, one race, one last great hope
That this elegant primate experiment
Will not perish from this earth. I can't provide for you no easy answers,
Who are you that I should have to lie? You'll know all about it, love, It'll fit you like a glove When the night comes falling from the sky. -- Bob Dylan, When the Night Comes Falling From The Sky
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ The world is burning in the fire of passion
Save it, O Lord, by Thy grace;
Save it the way Thou consider best.
-- Guru Granth Sahib
Sikh scripture
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ PEACE
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