| Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XXXIX |
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| News - Newsletters | |
| Written by Lisa Jain Thompson | |
| Sunday, 23 September 2007 | |
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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. XXXIX
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ <><><><><> Early this morning
While we slept interwound The rain slipped past us
Waking only the dog To briefly stir us with his concern This afternoon
As the clouds slowly part The warm heat caresses our bodies Lying naked beneath The ever constant sun Lisa Jain Thompson C. 2007 B.C.E.
 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ The autumn equinox: we slide inexorably towards winter even as summer hangs ragged handed.
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ But first, the news:
The Age of Infamy
Britney and OJ
Sitting in a tree, T R O U
B L E.
Lawyers to the left of them,
Paparazzi to the right, Video cameras everywhere Not a drop of news in sight. New millennium
Same as the old millennium:
We won't get fooled again, Yeah, right.
Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ the death of a friend triggers memories
The Crying Game
I buried my grandmother,
I buried my father, Then my grandfather
And finally my mother,
Until now only I, And my brother, survive, Along with our spouses and scattering children, The eighth generation born in America
-- not counting our Iroquois ancestry -- The cycle will continue for generations more,
As long as the sun shines, The rivers flow, And the earth moves around our star.
Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Sex does matter.
It matters in ways we did not expect.
Undoubtedly, it also matters
In ways we have not yet begun to suspect. -- Mary Lou Pardue
Institute of Medicine Committee
On Understand the Biology of Sex Differences __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ actual, authortorial starpoet
ta-da!
Bahuvrihi
Bahuvrihi, n., a nominal compound whose core semantic value
is subsumed by an an elliptical not specified by any of its parts (from Sanskrit). Far drives the thundering jet
-- Rhysling Has anyone told Kepler and Galileo
We're leaving on the starship tomorrow morning,
Bound for Ephesus, fourth planet of Apasa, A dozen light years from where we breakfast? Tell them we lift, with or without them,
The starship rises an hour past dawn,
The good ship Hawking will leap the heavens,
Slipping between the cracks rippling through spacetime Not touching down until the colonnaded marble
Of Ephesus Interstellar stretches out to greet us, A single traveller among the thousands Dropping planetbound on all our many worlds.
Across great gulfs of time, we will swallow space,
Tracking the fissure line between there and now,
Until the void itself abandons its barren hold And we shift the moment that hides between the stars.
One planet, two planets, a thousand and more,
Our primeval toe-hold on the shoreline of the abyss, A million upon million of stars unexplored,
An endless complexity of uncertain welcome. We sail across a sea of unlimited depth
On waves of light and quantum indeterminacy, A photonic ambivalency in the transluminal fabric
Until ship and crew emerge at rainbow's end. Coda
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth; Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies And the cool, green hills of Earth. -- Rhysling Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2007  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Venus and Sirius below Orion, Jostling each other for supremacy, Two brilliant poets fighting for center stage Before some young new star outshines them. LJT
September 2007
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ For months I've been hearing from The Pundits That Be about how masculine
Fred Thompson [Republican candidate for president] supposedly is. Chris Matthews has plumbed this topic in some detail:
"Does [Fred Thompson] have sex appeal? . . . Gene, do you think there's a sex appeal for this guy,
this sort of mature, older man, you know? . . . Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man's shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of -- a little bit of cigar smoke? You know, whatever. " But the idea that Thompson is some kind of swoon-inducing example
of mature masculinity strikes me as a classic example of how straight men are completely unable to assess each other's visual appeal. Straight women, on the other hand, are very acute judges of masculine appeal
(even if we still date schlubs for other reasons), and there's been a quiet rebellion brewing among the female political columnists against the idea that Thompson looks like anything other than how he actually looks, which is like a rather run-down older man. -- Garance Franke-Ruta __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ another demonstration at the Pentagon
all the while my son is thinking of re-upping with the Marines. Sonnet for The Pointy End of Things
Out here on the pointy end of things,
Where academic rhetoric meets Colt and Magnum
And I.E.Ds replace professional hornors,
The streets are stained with blood, arms, and legs
And the voices of the dead go unheard.
The shouts of angry demonstrators,
Horrified that someone would die for them, Echo down the E Ring, block the Metro Entrance, As if the soldiers would choose To rock and roll with explosive charges.
In the world where body meets sword and cannon,
And your brothers may not make it back to dinner,
Emotions are secondary to law and honor:
Home is your buddies standing with you in the line of fire. Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ Don't tase me bro!
overheard at a speech given by John Kerry
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ Meanwhile Back In Britain
Almost half of children in some parts of Britain think that not having a mobile phone means a child is poor, according to a poll commissioned by Dare to Care, a new volunteering campaign aimed at tackling child poverty. Not being able to afford to go on a school trip is the next most telling indicator of poverty for 44% of children across Britain, and a similar proportion think that not having the correct school uniform makes you poor.
The survey, based on interviews with more than 700 children aged from seven to 16, suggests they are acutely conscious of everyday indications that they or their peers do not have enough money. They are also generally more aware of obvious signs of wealth such as a new uniform and school trips, or owning a mobile, than of the more hidden trappings of poverty, such as going to school without breakfast and not having a safe place to play nearby - both cited by just under a quarter of respondents.
"Not being able to afford school trips or the correct uniform leads to uncomfortable questions from their peers and in some cases can lead to bullying."
-- Guardian On Line
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ the gene pool
The Pocohantas Exception
The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian;
the cross between a white man and a negro is a negro;
the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu;
and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew
-- Madison Grant, 1916
Historically, colloquially, I'm not what I seem,
My Anglo-Saxon colonial and Nordic blood-lines,
Those bastions of American Protestant society,
Admix with Sicilian, Catholic by breeding,
A sprinkling of passing Sub-Saharan conquerors
And a a dollop of indigenous Haudenosaunee.
The one drop rule confounds and discomfits me,
This body of mingling ancestry well met,
How many drops until the drops overwhelm
The chaotic confusion of racial superiorities?
One drop, two drops, three drops, who knows
What ancient shadows lurk beneath this earthly flesh?
The worms shall have us all forthwith
Without regard to the perfection of our bloodwork
Or whether we pass some overwrought celestial standard
Of proper genetic purity and social distinction:
All our drops will soon return to ashen earthworks
Our blooded lines, so carefully traced, vanish forevermore.
Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ the current situation
An Illegal Gathering of Workers
In Herndon town, Northern Virginia,
In the dark early days of the new millennium,
The Old Dominion discovered their brown skinned colonists,
Raising tribal memories of the Algonquian and the Iroquois, Long since driven from their titled lands By the Spanish, the English, and westward expansion.
The stench of the Klan lingers on the flyers Passed door to door, hand to hand, mouth to mouth,
By pink skinned, blue eyed, real Americans, True descendents of the immigrants' first wave, The only one that counts or amounts to much, Real citizens, native English speakers, Packers of bibles printed on good Caucasian presses, The patriotic sons and daughters of rebel traitors Who took up arms and made violence against their country, Who tore down the Stars and Stripes only to replace it
With a good ol' flag of confederate southern cotton. Eyes of azure lurk within pale ash fleshed faces,
Thin lipped agitators hurling ancient epithets: Go home, go home you oily wops,
And you can take your olive daughters when we're done with them; You goddam dago's are taking all the jobs, you lazy sonofabitch bastards, Who, just who do you think they are, coming in here like you owned it, Dirtying up our streets with your garlic and your foreign accents,
Next thing you know you'll be wanting treaty money and reparations, What makes you think you can just take our jobs,
Taking our jobs, take our jobs away from us And giving our children, our daughters, our sisters, brown skinned babies
Instead of the colors we intended? And now, we watch you gather, you dare to gather
On our street corners, on the blocks where we have lived, Looking for work, supporting your families,
Scratching their way up with schooling and hard labor,
Ruining your sweaty stinking bodies with hard labor and long hours. Do you think you are better than we are? What are you trying to prove?
Someone ask for their papers, ask for their green card,
Ask for something with a photo i.d. Do something! Anything. ¿No habla English Pancho? ¿No habla English?
Fuck ya. Fuck y'all. Fuck Español and the donkey-assed politicians
Y'all rode in on.
Lisa Jain Thompson
Born of Immigrants and Iroqouis September 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ I slept with a woman on the ship,
and afterwards I was thinking, " Am I gaaaay? Am I straaaaight?" And then I realized: I'm just slutty. Where's my parade? -- Margaret Cho __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^  __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ into the looking glass
Nobody Famous
Back when I was in college,
Rock 'n' Roll was barely an art,
Still looked down on by Sinatra and preachers And not nearly the big business of today. The bands would travel, one town to the other,
Playing venues of several thousand and more,
The stage was close enough, I could throw my panties And have a reasonably good chance of finding my target. The Animals, The Stones, Jim Morrison and The Doors,
They all played the auditorium in Sacramento back when, Donovan, The Airplane, and The Dave Clark Five, I knew everyone and then some then.
I've hung with musicians as long as I remember,
Rock 'n' Roll was just a little more public
Than doing the church organist or coffee shop folk singer
Who might give me pleasure some summer evening. They loved their poet girl, bright and vulnerable,
Quick of word and moaning orgasm,
Who thought nothing better than a lead guitarist Or a drummer on the hood of some old corvette. Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2007 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^ PEACE
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^^\/\/\/\/^^ |
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