| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XXXIV |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Sunday, 19 August 2007 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. XXXIV
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia,
Down in the dark of the Cumberland Mine, There's blood on the coal, And the miners lie, In roads that never saw sun or sky, Roads that never saw sun or sky In the town of Springhill you don't sleep easy, Often the earth will tremble and roll, When the earth is restless miners die, Bone and blood is the price of coal, Bone and blood is the price of coal. In the town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, Late in the year of '58, The day still comes and the sun still shines, But it's dark as the grave in the Cumberland mine, Dark as the grave in the Cumberland Mine. Listen for the shouts of the black face miners, Listen through the rubble for the rescue teams, Three hundred tonnes of coal and slag, Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam, Hope imprisoned in a three foot seam. Twelve days past and some were rescued, Leaving the dead to lie alone, Through all their live they dug a grave, Two miles of earth is a marking stone, Two miles of earth is a marking stone. -- Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seger The Ballad of Springhill  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Dreaming of men, lungs and faces full of coal dust, listening for the sound of the drill, and standing outside the mine, waiting for word of my husband, my father, and my son.
More people have died this week in the Crandal Canyon Mine Disaster of '07 than have ever died from Three Mile Island, nine more in fact and counting. Yet we still mine coal because it is someone else is dying, not anyone we know or would want to know.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ outside in the sun and watching
Swamp Fox Road
(part 1) Sunlight through the high haze, the kind that loses baseballs
On their way to the outfield two hours after twelve, The warm air hides a hint of rain lurking well off the horizon;
I sit on a dull wooden bench, wrought iron legs painted black,
Feeling the sun and breeze caress my bare arms While I watch the afternoon commute down Van Dorn. A metro train rumbles by overhead
Across the other side of the parking lot, Soldiers in cami’s, male and female, target the car doors
Before heading home; whatever is important at five o’clock Will still be important come tomorrow. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 Swamp Fox Road
(part 2)
Rattle of the metro up high above me,
Rumble of the trucks on the street,
Jets from Reagan slipping out for the weekend While construction workers build the city. Moist wind rising before the storm
That will surely come by evening, A slowly lazy finish to a dreary week Clocking enough hours to fill my paycheck. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ If I could think of anything insightful,
It would be here. __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ ego tripping
If I Were Young
If I were young, where and when,
Princes would compete for my favor, And into my bed, long after midnight, Women would come to do me pleasure,
Honoring the poet for her silken lines
With gold, frankincense, and sex, Draping my body with their close attention
In exchange for a taste of my sweet tongue. I have died a thousand times
Waiting for those late night footsteps, Only to realize there is no one who cares
If a poet still sings at Mitilini. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ anniversary
Freddie's at 6
Blue female thighs and legs
Thrusting horizontal from purple walls, A dozen Barbie Dolls in formation
Lined up on a mantle shelf, The lifeguard station shares the karaoke stage
Beneath the sparkle of revolving mirror balls, Along the tables and flamingo lit wooden bar,
Women pair with women, men with men, While the beer and margueritas, Nacho chips and beach fries Are served by a wait staff Even queerer than the patrons. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^  Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock composed mostly of carbon and hydrocarbons. It is the most abundant fossil fuel produced in the United States.
Coal is a nonrenewable energy source because it takes millions of years to create. The energy in coal comes from the energy stored by plants that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, when the earth was partly covered with swampy forests. For millions of years, a layer of dead plants at the bottom of the swamps was covered by layers of water and dirt, trapping the energy of the dead plants. The heat and pressure from the top layers helped the plant remains turn into what we today call coal.
Underground mining, sometimes called deep mining, is used when the coal is buried several hundred feet below the surface. Some underground mines are 1,000 feet deep. To remove coal in these underground mines, miners ride elevators down deep mine shafts where they run machines that dig out the coal. (U. S. DOE)
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ The year 1998 was the safest year in modern mining history,
with a total of 80 coal and metal and nonmetal mining fatalities. -- U.S. Department of Labor Inside The Mines
Sully's Bucket I've a thing or two to tell ya pard that I think you ought to know,
About that rusty bucket Sully carries down below. You're not the first one, stranger, who laughed at Sully's pail. You're the only one who's laughing now, the rest have heard the tale. When we were young and handsome, had some ten years in the game,
Old Sull he had a partner, and Jim Riley was his name.... The four of us together, we were working side by side. That's how come I chanced to be there on the night Jim Riley died. Well the blasting had been easy, it was running out like sand.
An we were mucking out the ore; those days we mucked by hand. And we were nearly finished, and I hadn't heard a sound. But something must have happened, "Cause Jim Riley yelled "bad ground." When we headed for the timberin', Sully must of took a spill
‘Cause when we looked back in there he was pinned beneath his drill. The ceiling it was groanin' now, all set to drop its lid. And Sully pinned beneath his drill was sobbin' like a kid. Now there's men can watch their partners die, not throw their lives away.
But Riley wasn't one of them, he wasn't built that way. As soon's he seen what happened, "Hey, hold on there Sull," he cried. And before he had the words out, he'd thrown the drill aside. Well, they headed ‘round the ore car, Riley wearing a big grin.
Guess he never knew what happened when the hanging wall came in. Sully reached the timberin', his face as white as chalk. And Riley, four yards back of him, caught fifteen ton of rock. That day Sully's pail was buried, he ate from Riley's pail in tears.
And he's carried that same bucket now for almost twenty years. So you can laugh at Sully, because he's mean and drinks a lot. But don't laugh at Sully's bucket, it's the only friend he's got. Anon
Tommy Knockers ‘Av you ‘eard of the Tommy Knockers
In the deep dark mines of the West, Which the Cornish miners ‘ear, An' ‘tis no laughin' jest. For I am a Cornish miner, An' I'll tell you of it today. The knock-knock-knock of a tiny pick As we work in the rocks an' clay. We go down in the skips with our buckets,
With ‘earts which nothing fazes. Each with a candle to light the way Through the tunnels, winzes an' raises. And the stale air smells of powder, An' the mine is full of sound. But ‘tis only the noise of the Tommy Knockers Which makes our ‘earts rebound. Pick, pick, pick,
‘As someone be'ind us knocked. Pick, pick, pick – No, ‘tis souls of dead miners locked. For they're locked in the earthen wall, Those that found death down there. And ‘tis the knock-knock-knock of their pick W'ich makes on end stand our ‘air. An' we leave the ‘haunted place,
For we won't work w'ere they be. An' we'ere ever we ‘ear them knockin' We sure will always flee. For it means w'o ever ‘ears it Will be the next in line. For the pick-pick of the Tommy Knockers Is the last an' awful sign. Anon
The Auchengeich Disaster. The seams are thick in Auchengeich, The coal below is black and glistenin'. But the cost o' coal is far ower dear, For human lives there is nae reckonin'. For coal is black and coal is red,
And coal is rich beyond a treasure. It's black wi' wark and red wi' blood, Its richness noo in lives we measure. Far better that we'd never wrought,
A thousand years o' wark and grievin'. The coal is black like the mournin' shroud, The women left behind their weavin'. Anon
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Meanwhile Back Home
WAUKESHA. Wis. (AP) -- A 42-year-old woman who describes herself as a Wiccan faces charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after neighbors complained she was disturbing them with chants around a bonfire she had built 10 feet from her home.
Capt. Mike Babe said Brenna K. Barney of Waukesha told police they were infringing on her religious beliefs since she was performing a ritual under the new moon.
Neighbors called police shortly after midnight Tuesday and, after an officer arrived, he heard the woman yelling in the backyard and found her wearing headphones, a T-shirt and underwear, the captain said. Barney at one point poured lighter fluid on the fire, in which she was burning rubber car mats and a cooler.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ last weekend
Flood Waters
Outside of Starbucks, down by the waterfront,
Across from the Torpedo Factory And the rescue parrots,
Sheila works the tables near the biker’s cycles,
Bumming cigarettes and conversation And the occasional caramel latte, Along Old Town streets more often covered With river water than colonial cobblestone. Inside the door, the baristas relentless toil
Below the small rooms where Washington slept And Franklin and Jefferson sipped Madeira, Moving the line of caffeine deprived tourists,
While the local neighborhood, dogs in hand, Sits out on the sidewalk, watching the skelter Walk shop to shop for souvenir tee shirts While the macaws on their perches squawk loudly To the accompaniment of the motorcycles’ rumble. Sheila exchanges intelligent conversation for cigarettes,
Memories of pre-mod Virginia echoing off the building: The woman who bedded her in youth, The men who came and went, out and into her life, The I. T. job at IBM, where she was a first, An estrogen based life form on a programmer planet,
Playing even with the computer boys and winning her share
Of their madden, chromosomal driven games. There is gap between now and then,
A suggestion of alcohol in the background,
Family troubles that are unmentioned except in hints As her brain focuses as the conversation at hand, Rises in articulation until the ancient wanderer departs
To be replaced by a younger, more aggressive mind
That fits better around a revolutionary’s candle lit table Than on the streets outside a millennium coffee house.
The sun has long set, the wind blows in off the river,
Before we realize the night is no longer young, The parrots are quiet, the latte line less long,
Even the Indians and Harleys have slipped noisily away, And neither of us wants to go back home and leave This conversation that could go on forever, Comparing notes about the Sixties, exchanging stories
Of the revolution that succumbed to avarice and drugs, And all the years between that end up on this street, Reluctant to surrender this moment to the darkness.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ sorting through memories
All Roads Lead to the Center
Skip and I,
Both products of a Catholic education
Now working our way through the state college system, Found ourselves at Lori’s house
Late one summer’s night,
Smoking weed and drinking unfiltered gunpowder tea
(Or maybe it was popcorn – the weed was very mellow). When Lori suggested
We all go to San Francisco (90 miles away),
Skip looked at me, I, at Skip, Brown eyed Sicilian woman to his ebony skin,
-- It will be well after one a.m. when we arrive -- But no one cared, So we – Skip, Lori, and me – and this younger guy
Who was crashing for the night, Get into a car and take off for the bay … Travis,
Vallejo,
Oakland and The City
… Arriving in the Fillmore a little before two,
Stalling the car out in an intersection Where we smile and wave to the people on the street Before we hurry on to an all night diner
For coffee, sweet rolls, and some fries,
At which point, The Kid, whose name I barely know,
Announces he is underage
And a hundred unpermissioned miles from home.
I look at Skip, we both look at Lori
Who shrugs and smiles,
Suggesting we might want to go back to Sacramento. As we finish our after hours banquet,
A city policeman makes a connection
With a dealer at the counter, Then exits, one after the other,
Outside to exchange the money and the stuff. Past the junkie, past the cop,
Past the guy doing Miss Betty Davis On the corner across from our car, Then home, home, racing sunrise, The Kid and Lori sleeping in the back seat, My head resting on Skip’s shoulder,
My eyes noting his growing interest.
Drop off the Kid, Drop off Lori,
Watch the sun color the early morning, Stop at Denny’s for a full stomach breakfast, And since we can’t get no later
(We are long past being on time), Over to Skip’s to make love in his bedroom Before we wake our parents, his mother and mine, To explain where we’ve been that took us all night.
I would not trade those moments,
When we contested the sun coming up the delta Over Interstate 80, Skip and I,
Or the hours we spent in each others arms
For all the years that separate us
From that warm August night with Lori. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me
written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you -- Bob Dylan
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ PEACE
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