| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XXXV |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Saturday, 25 August 2007 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. XXXV
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> Outside the sun bares down
Heating the watered air
Until it becomes a gelatin Sucked into the lungs
Like some chemically enhanced Non-dairy milkshake
That assaults each breath
With a dense oxygenless gas
Tasting of the worst excessesd
Of the last millenium We retreat inside
Safe in our technology
From the angry August storms
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2007 C.E.
 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Calendered so far in August:
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ checking in
E
The sweet taste of estrogen
Lingers on my tongue,
Rushes through my veins
To flood my brain with clarity, Washing over synapse,
Calming each connection
As it flows through my body Into my poet's mind and words, Freeing me to go where no one
Since Tiresias has ventured, Where no woman but Sappho has spoke The lines my voice now sings.
Remember me,
As I do her. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ looking out
Snapshot
The lilly petals arch backwards
In preparation for their death fall,
Black spot suggests the Lincoln Rose
Will race the tomatoes for extinction. A month before the autumnal equinox,
Summer fluctuates between fall and sunstroke.
The dog greets all with explosive undergrowth
As he readies himself for frost-proof insulation, Unlike the primates who feed him nightly
And clothe themselves with unnecessary expense. Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Following the Democratic victory last November,
panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so. -- Charles Krauthammer __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ starpoet
The Children No One Sees
(Stars Enough and Time)  Bright kids have no childhood
-- You know who they are -- The ones who are always responsible, Who speak in full, adult sentences
By the time they or six or seven, The ones who ask the questions
That have no answers
-- If there are any answers, They are ones you cannot understand – Or cut uncomfortably into areas
You wish to avoid and certainly not discuss With a person inhabiting the body Of an eight year old child.
Bright kids are islands,
Alone within themselves, Separated from the sea of childhood
By thoughts and needs that go beyond The playground games and alphabet blocks That form the core of pre-school life
And the structured repetition of no child left behind,
Left to find their way between phalanxes
Of impervious adults and educational correctness
That tells them everything has its season And theirs is not now and might never be Unless they shut up and let the grown-ups talk.
Bright kids are the aliens among us,
Evolutionary variations of form and function That stretch the fundamental character of specie, Forcing them develop effective camouflage To avoid the catcalls and physical threats That form the core of childhood existence
For all those who limp, or have a birth defect,
Or have eyes a different color than their classmates
-- the necessity of concealment from uneasy adults Who might seize them for experimentation Or hide them away in special schools
That serve some governmental program necessity Or teachers who might parade them before the voters As this year’s gifted educational product Is learned early as essential to personal survival.
We know who we are
And the adults who once were us, We know who you are, The ones who will be left behind
When everyone is like we are: We wish you no harm, we are on separate sides
Of a species divide through no fault of your own -- It is inevitable that humanity changes As we leave the savannah and set foot on the moon, We will change more when we spread across the stars And earth is a distant memory in place and moment – We are the ineludible future and will succeed,
If only you give us enough time. stars enough and time.
Lisa Jain Thompson
(with debts to A. E. Van Vogt and others) August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ bedroom eyes
The View from Evanston
These breasts she kisses,
These nipples she sucks
Before running her tongue
Down past my navel,
Edging evercloser
As she teases me,
Caresses me,
Carries me off
From conscious volition
Into the bright
Breathless moments
Of my surrender.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Do Lesbians Dream In Pink?
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ the bright laser of reality
Sicilian Princess
When I was five, I was a Sicilian princess,
Who obeyed her parents and her church,
And prayed to god before I slept To make my body whole and make it like The girl whose soul my creator gave me. When I was twelve, I slept in tears,
Wanting to tell my parents who I was
As my mind screamed I’m a girl, I’m a girl,
The daughter you thought you didn’t have,
But I did not, could not, and remained silent. Now, looking back through decades long past,
I can not see what I could have done That would have mattered or changed anything In post war America, pre-Harry Benjamin, For a young girl imprisoned in some boy’s body. Lisa Jain Thompson August 2007__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ the point of the sword
The War as They Saw It
The war as they saw it,
Tail ending a fifteen month tour,
Insurgents, counterinsurgents, An occupying force of a recalcitrant population
With little interest in the long range goals Of American Democracy and Christian empire.
They have seen the mounting civil unrest,
The political upheaval,
The claims of control on the margins Offset by failure elsewhere, A land filled with bad actors
Who do not fit neatly into presidential boxes: Extremists, terrorists, and militiamen Mixed among criminals and armed tribes
Of questionable loyalties and agendas. Local citizens who testify
That Iraqi police Escort triggermen through checkpoints And help them plant the bomb; Local citizens who if they warn Americans Will have their families killed By the Iraqi Army, the local police,
Or the Shiite militia.
Battalion comanders, even if well meaning,
Have no influence over the obstinate men Who form the Iraqi Army; Battalion commanders who are stuck in
An incoherent chain of command, Leading men who are only loyal to their militias. We arm the Sunnis
In our fight against Al Qaeda, In their fight against Shiite
Militias and dominated government, But the question of their loyalty is unanswered:
Saddam Hussein was Sunni,
A dictator who gave Iraqi women their freedom And abolished the Sharia courts of law. With determined enemies and questionable allies,
The balance of forces remains unclear;
We have the will and the resources To end this ill-conceived stale mate,
We are hamstrung by our beliefs -- We cannot use lethal and brutal force
And leave a path of destruction As we march to the sea, an Army that has taken four years To fail to produce a country at peace As we continue to arm each warring side.
The morass has fueled impatience and confusion,
Providing no semblance of security While we force the Iraqis to correct our mistakes When the President plunged headlong against Saddam; Even now we try to please every party and please none, Even now there is less electricity and sanitation Than before we overthrew the government, Even now the lucky Iraqis
Barricade themselves behind concrete blast walls; Even now our President plans to cut and run
And leave his mess for his successor to resolve, Even now the Iraqis wait for us to leave So they can reclaim their country for themselves. Lisa Jain Thompson
(with input from Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T. Gray, and Jeremy A. Murphy) August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Should pedophile prohibitions apply to Gay Guys
picking up twinks with false ID? __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ fantasia
Multi-Regional
The curve of her flesh
Just below the navel, Where the body flows Over the ovaries,
A suggestion of children:
Somewhere in the past
A man was here Before my tongue was.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ the weather outside
Overcast Anticipation
Thin white overlay
Not quite suppressing
Any blue sky
That lurks above;
A too warm by ten
Breeze from the south
Begins the relentless path Towards a century;
Saturday will be unbreathable
Until the thunderstorms burst And the heavens flood the world With showers.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ If Germane Greer possessed 44Ds
and a face to go to launch a thousand ships, where would feminism be today?
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ the great chain of being
And Now Viet Nam
Liberation became occupation,
Democracy became Unity,
The surge, reconciliation, And now, Viet Nam, The one he avoided. How neat and clean this all is
-- Did Jesus tell the president All about Viet Nam one night in prayer? Did W suddenly remember One of his father’s old war stories?
The best I can figure out
Is that George had a flashback To some university bull session
Over beer and marijuana In a frat house in New Haven. If we leave, does that mean
Putin will crumble like some Soviet empire,
And Iraq will embrace capitalism, and we will gain Thousands of restaurants and hardworking manicurists To replace the aging, post-war Vietnamese?
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ ending on a light note
Dark Roasted Poet
Sitting in a Starbucks,
Drinking caramel macchiato,
While I wait for my wife
To escape for the weekend
And take me back home
To our dog and bedroom.
Just another slow,
Hot summer afternoon,
Watching the air conditioned cars
And the shiny SUVs
Sneak off for the seashore
A couple hours before the rush.
Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ PEACE
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ |
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