Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2008 C. E.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Es mi esquina, mi rima, mi vida
-- Ruben Diaz (Ol’ Skool Ru)

 

 

 

This is my corner – StarPoet -- these are my rhymes,
This is my life, these fragile vanishing electrons
That scatter across your high density screen
In sixteen million colors and black and white
To give lie to the distance between us and time.

 

 

Es mi mundo, mi universo, these words I create,
These planets that circle me from death to birth,
This ring of fire that orbits around my existence,
That clamors for my attention, commands me bow
To the of the overtures of my demanding muse.

 

 

I dare not show weakness or failure of will
Or she will abandon me to the empty ruins,
The stale remnants of poetry long forgotten
By modern conceit, condemn me to the silence,
Fearful of the smug, disdainful lashes of the times.

 

 

The moon and Pleiades will long outlive me,
Orion will dominate ages after I return to starstuff

When these fleeting lines are remembered and reread
By some distantly planetted poet, fragment by fragment,
As she attempts to placate her muse’s clamorous ambition.

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Sarah Caldwell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next flight from Centauri B
Will not have me aboard,
I will be too old, or too dead,
To put up with planet customs
On either end of the trip.

 

 

The prices will be too high,
The passengers too boring,
The aliens not worth the time
I will have to lose to stasis
To ever consider going.

 

 

So what if they have decided
To give me some academic award
--I don’t need no stinking honors--
I need time, more time to write
Everything down before I die.

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are faces
I think I remember,
Strolling around on bodies
That are way too young.

 

 

There are voices
From my childhood,
Parents and friends,
Who have long been gone.

 

 

When I see them walking
Among the corridors
Or standing on street corners,
I have to pause and stop;

 

 

As all these memories
Crash on the shoreline,
Washing over me
In sweet disharmony.

 

 

I hold these thoughts,
All too real to pretend,
Until some silent moment
Parts time’s steady hand

 

 

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Adrienne Gusoff

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Governor Spitzer is out but a  family-values Republican, Sen. David Vitter, has ridden out the scandal over his calls to the D.C. Madam's operation. Larry Craig, following his bathroom bust, is still a U.S. senator.

 

 

How many public officials do you think have gotten into trouble on this score? There was Bill Clinton and his Monica problem. The governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey, named his male lover state homeland security director.  Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick texted steamy messages to his chief of staff and denied the affair under oath.  San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom hooked up with his campaign manager's wife while the woman was working in his city hall office.  Bob Wise, the West Virginia governor, admitted having an affair with a woman in his state development office.  Paul Patton, the Kentucky governor, had an affair with a woman who sued him because state authorities later cracked down on her nursing home.

 

 

Politics, apparently, makes many bedfellows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Helen Nielsen

 

 

 

 

 

 

artful demonstration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soft you: a word or two,
I would not kill my soul
To be as rich as gates
Or prove it, becoming president
To entreat my dead father.
I am not yet cold under water,
But once silent, I will be all words;
Immortality eludes me, even as I write
The kind of things that would happen
Given time enough and love,
I escape disproof.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Isadora Duncan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I am a witch
-- I haven’t applied
But perhaps I possess
The appropriate skill set
To make the BQ list –
Who would know?

 

 

There are no
Subject Matter Experts,
Only new age chanters
Eschewing empirical evidence
In favor of candles, incense,
And flowery rhetoric.

 

 

Much like the poet
Chasing her muse.

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Florence King

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would be finally buried
Beneath a stone monolith on Mars
Erected by aging grandchildren
On the plain outside the city
Where no Martian has ever trod but us.

 

 

I would like to be remembered
On some planet around a star,
Light years from earth and our ancestors,
Where children gather to be told ancient tales
Of life before we made the heavens ours.

 

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
March 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Sandra Bernhard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four decades ago this year,
Martin and Bobby were shot,
Ending the Sixties
With a rather big bang
And electing Richard Nixon.

 

 

If no Nixon, no Carter,
If no Carter, no Reagan,
No Bush, no Clinton, no W,
A house of cards
Balanced on a bullet.

 

 

The trigger moves imperceptibly,
The rifle shifts,
The hand steadies,
The trigger moves slowly back
Until time stops once more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

life never ending

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… Roman matrons used to say to their sons:
 ‘Come back with your shield, or on it.’
Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome.

 

-- Robert Heinlein
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.

 

Aroused and angry,
I thought to beat the alarum, and urge relentless war;
But soon my fingers fail’d me, my face droop’d, and I resign’d myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead.

 

 

 

An army band begins to play,
America The Beautiful, Stars and Stripes,
And some vaguely patriotic melodies
As we wait along the corridor walls
For this month’s warrior heroes.

 

They arrive wounded, body and soul,
On crutches, in their wheel chairs,
Displaying their ragged battle ribbons
On their scarred, still youthful faces
And sudden puckered endings of their limbs.

 

A surrounding train of honor guard and family
--  Uncertain spouses, excited children waving
At the applauding crowd, brave mothers
And knowing fathers  -- trails after them,
Grounding themselves in their new realities.

 

Outside this gray building on the city streets,
Across the Potomac up and down Pennsylvania,
Combat uniforms and neatly pressed Class A’s
Camouflage the steel and plastic warrior limbs
Where flesh once grew on brave legs and arms.

 

Here, safely among their sisters and brothers,
They do not hide their wounded, struggling bodies
Or pretend our long war is without personal cost:
We stand along their tearful passage, our costume
Of indifferent peace discarded and thrown off.

 

The slow parade is a shallow grave that leaves us
No sanctuary or satisfying asylum to pretend,

The smell of the blood stains our many hands:
How good they looked when, newly starched,
We marched them off to fight George’s war.

 

Strong men and women, clothed in battle dress,
Ordered by President and The People to advance
(Sinewy limbed launching forth bearing weapons)
-- Hurrying, crashing: a sad distracted year --
Return now to receive our mixed blessings.

 

Tears like brave accoutrements fly, eye and eye,
The dense brigade, well-gristled bodies, presses on,
Memory flashing in the sun, replacing vanished limbs
With promises, and gratitude, and small shiny medals,
Scarlet and blue and white snowy white.

 

 

 

 

 

On, on I go!—(open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand, tear not the bandage away;)
The neck of the cavalry-man, with the bullet through and through, I examine;
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard;
(Come, sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly.)

 

From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his pillow the soldier bends, with curv’d neck, and side-falling head;
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, (he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.)

 

I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep;
But a day or two more—for see, the frame all wasted already, and sinking,
And the yellow-blue countenance see.

 

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail.

 

I am faithful, I do not give out;
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand—(yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- Katherine Hepburn
(to her chauffeur when surrounded by fans)