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The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol VII, No. XXIX
Heat
No other word
For the anger
Of the July sun
I would walk stark naked
Beneath its bright fire
If you ask
For my heart
Already
Burns
For no other
You consume me
Mind and body
The suns meager rays
Have no chance
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2006
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<><><><><>
O.k., this is still the old system. We’re working out the bugs from the new one (though I suspect we won’t catch them all). You may have noticed that Starpoet itself is down (at least for anything more than a “we’re here” page. I promise Starpoet will reload soon and may even make some logical structure when you next see it.
But for now, war is preoccupying us.
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War broke: and now the Winter of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
--Wilfred Owen
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various blogs
Lebanon
Likewise be all manner of beasts, when they be brought into
the field and cried havoke, then every man to take his part.
-- Grose's History of the English Army, c. 1525
Tripoli has been shelled,
My family is leaving for the mountains.
I need to call
And makes sure they are gone.
The lighthouse in Beirut is destroyed,
Jounieh and Aamchit have been hit,
How many rebellions ferment
In the huddled masses of the city?
Rumors of massacres and artillery barrages
Float over the villages like warning leaflets,
Burrowing into the mind and passing glances.
The roads are cut off, the seaports closed,
The airport is cratered with the memory of explosions:
If the highway is still open, my family is safe;
If not, I am lost and no longer care
Which side is less wrong than the other.
Alone to fend for ourselves, all we have is rhetoric;
The Arabs will not help us,
The Security Council takes sides,
Lebanon is hostage to the agenda of others,
A pawn to history and ancient hatreds,
A battlefield for jihad and apocalypse.
My country is wounded and we are helpless,
Our friends watch the blood of my people
Soak into the innocent earth,
Our allies turn their backs,
So intent on real politik they cheer armed warfare
Like all of this was a match at the world cup.
I cannot find my family, fuck you all,
Your gods, your missiles, your strategic objectives
-- The world has gone mad and we are lost.
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
-- Marc Antony
Julius Caesar by W. Shakespeare, c. 1601
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2006
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Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
-- Marc Antony
Julius Caesar by W. Shakespeare, c. 1601
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this just in
Fiat Lux
Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures,
Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent
in "sacred mushrooms" can induce mystical/spiritual experiences
descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported
for centuries.
So God, the Heavens, and Everything
Are just a species of magic mushroom
That stimulates
The serotonin receptors in our brain.
I was hoping for something more
Than just a really, really good trip.
Mount Olympus always seemed a grand place,
And the story of the spiritual leader
Who saves his people
Always works well whether he’s Jesus or Muad D’ib.
Now, it would seem,
God is hardwired in the wetware,
Our neurons construct, if properly seduced,
Mystic visions of Eternity at peace with the Universe,
A natural revelation of man’s place
In the great vastness of spacetime
That makes us all warm and fuzzy inside.
We have seen God and He is Us:
Would we deny what our eyes have seen
And our mortal hand has touched?
That the reality is something other
Than what we may have wished
Does not make life any less mysterious.
Or the Cosmos less magnificent than it was
The first moment we looked upon the stars
And asked why we were here.
We just need to find a better story now.
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2006
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the war to end all wars
I saw his Round Mouth's Crimson
I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.
Wilfred Owen
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Keeping America Safe
The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released this week and described first in the New York Times, spotlighted problems with the department's database of sites deemed to be of national or local importance. Among the sites listed:
Ø the Amish Country Popcorn Factory (in Berne, Ind.),
Ø the Groundhog Zoo (in Punxsutawney, Pa.),
Ø Sweetwater Flea Market (in Sweetwater, Tenn.) and
Ø Old MacDonald's Petting Zoo (in Woodville, Ala.).
Among the anomalies cited: Washington state lists more national monuments and icons
(65) than Washington, D.C. (37); New Mexico claims the lion's share of the information
Technology sector (553 assets), with Virginia coming in second (68); Indiana boasts more
assets (8,591) than any other state, including New York (5,687).
Among the questions raised: Why are mortuaries, water parks and jails included in the
inventory?
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craftwork
Aura
There is a poem
Lurking ‘round inside me,
But it won’t tell me its name
Or give a hint
What must be said.
I can feel it teasing me,
Standing just out range,
A tantalizing taste
Of something wanting to break free
And make itself known to me.
But all I have is this feeling,
This aura of poems pending,
-- A scattering of words,
A tittering of rhythms --
To show for my poet pretensions.
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2006
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bowing to commercial pressure
Mirislou
If I were to pretend your swordsmanship
Were something more than unexciting,
My moaning screams would rise with pleasure
Undetectable from counterfeit;
If you were to suppose I were deceiving you,
My tears would convince you otherwise,
My trembling body, my eager lips
Would soften all your objections;
And if I were falling in love with you,
I would surrender good sense to emotion,
Forgiving you all and any shortcomings,
Forgetting what I cannot forgive.
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2006
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WW I
Cramped in that Funnelled Hole
Cramped in that funnelled hole, they watched the dawn
Open a jagged rim around; a yawn
Of death's jaws, which had all but swallowed them
Stuck in the bottom of his throat of phlegm.
They were in one of many mouths of Hell
Not seen of seers in visions, only felt
As teeth of traps; when bones and the dead are smelt
Under the mud where long ago they fell
Mixed with the sour sharp odour of the shell.
Wilfred Owen
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Money Issues
Wages are rising more than twice as fast for highly paid workers in the Washington area as they are for low-paid workers, an analysis of federal data by The Washington Post shows.
That means the spoils of the region's economic expansion are going disproportionately to workers who are already well-paid, widening a gap between rich and poor in a place where it is already wider than in most of the country.
Business people cite shifts in the world economy that give educated workers leverage to negotiate for higher wages but make low-paid workers replaceable -- a disparity that is especially pronounced in a service economy like Washington's.
The region's economy is strong and businesses are expanding, hiring more software engineers, financial analysts, salespeople and other skilled workers, thus bidding up their pay. But companies are simultaneously finding ways to automate clerical tasks, move call centers to cheaper places and handle business online, weakening demand for less-skilled workers.
From 2003 to 2005, the average wage for people in the lowest pay bracket, with salaries around $20,000, rose only 5.4 percent in the Washington region -- not enough to keep up with rising prices. For the jobs that pay around $60,000, salaries rose 12.4 percent, well ahead of the 6.8 percent inflation in that period.
This is a divided labor market," said Jonas Prising, president of Manpower North America, a large staffing firm. "There's no talent shortage for people with low skills or no skills, but you do have a talent shortage for people with specific skills."
When demand for even a few types of low-wage jobs goes soft, wages can be held down in all of them, economists say. That's because a worker qualified to be a retail clerk might just as well become a security guard or receptionist. That means, in effect, that all low-wage workers are competing with one another, a sharp contrast with more specialized jobs.
Mamma, don’t let your babies grow up to be unskilled and uneducated.
-- LJT
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close to home
Transition
I was lost,
Now I’m found,
The lord works in mysterious ways.
Either that,
Or the Intelligent Designer
Ain’t all he’s cracked up to be.
Another alternative is that
He’s a game host wannabe
And all the shit that happens
Is his idea of reality T.V.
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2006
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In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.
-- Li Po
C.750
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the poet triumphant
Spikes of Violence
I oppose the end game scenario,
The god who will reappear
To bring the world and spacetime
To an end.
I fight him and his armies,
My last breath cursing those
Who blindly follow his prophets
To his logical conclusion.
War and rumors are his instrument
To lay bare the good earth,
To establish his heavenly throne
On the ruins of our sweet hills.
He would seize this single planet,
Stopping the universe and a billion others,
To soothe his jealous ego
With famine and our destruction.
f I were the wind, I’d blow no more
On such a wicked, miserable god,
A coward god that strikes stark naked men,
But will not stand to receive a single blow.
Some men die at ebb tide; some at low water;
Some at the full of the flood;
All my life I have sailed against him,
Driving my nails into his coffin.
To my last breath, I oppose his adolescent demands;
From hell’s muse I stab him with my verse;
For the sake of all humanity seeded across all the stars,
I will spit my last words at his righteousness.
I am the root and offspring of our mother earth,
The bright and morning star of mankind;
I will not bow down to any god or being
Who would bring this goodly world to end.
Lisa Jain Thompson
July 2006
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In the swamp, in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
-- Walt Whitman
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PEACE
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