Perfectly circular, powerful Hurricane Celia spaned hundreds of miles over the Pacific Ocean in this image from June 24, 2010. Rough-textured clouds surround the storm?s distinct eye. Farther from the center of the storm, spiral arms appear thinner and smoother. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, on NASA?s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of Hurricane Celia at 1:55 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on June 24, 2010. Just five minutes later, the U.S. National Hurricane Center classified Celia as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 135 miles per hour. Image Credit: NASA...
Gone gone gone. June has up and gone. Come Saturday next is the Fourth and The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united STATES OF AMERICA in Congress, July 4, 1776..
A cool humid breeze
Lowers the temperature only slightly,
Refreshes a body still tired from work,
Gives the poet difficulty
As she tries to describe it;
Still, all and all,
We are better
For this indescript bit of wind
As is our muggy afternoon
Which would otherwise
Have us cursing the gods.
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2009 CE
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
for my father
In the Shadow of the Hump
My father returned from the Second Great War,
A signal officer in China who flew over The Hump in a C-47,
Only to slip back into civilian life and decades of boredom
Interspersed with two children and a wife still moutning
The third one who died while he was away along the Yang't'ze.
Trading the Himalayas for the Sierra, he lived
The remainder of his years in the Central Valley of California,
Smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and beer,
Not unlike the others of his generation
Who saw things overseas and did things in the war
They spent the rest of their lives trying to forget.
My father never went overseas again
And seldom even left the confines of the Pacific Coast,
Spending the years before his death
Contemplating the comfort of fermented grapes
And wondering whatever happened to the smiling young wife
He left behind in Sacramento after the whole world went crazy.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
unfortunately, from the local news. the current count as I type this is nine dead.
Pigtails and Tricycles
Bible school teachers,, nurses, moms,
Decorated generals and fighter pilots,
Heaped up in the twist of mangled wreckage,
Side by side on Morgue Tables now lying;
Wives, husbands, sons and daughters,
Wrong place, wrong time, we're gone:
A dozen children left parent and motherless,
Pigtails and tricycles, swingsets and monkeydbars.
Cooked some breakfast, surfed the web,
Perhaps even some light cleaning, then they all
Turned the corner, heading for the metro
WIth a wave and half-noticed, repetive gesture;
And ordinary afternoon for half-bored commuters
Focusing on their paperbacks and crackberries.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
somewhat lighter, but only somewhat
Get Over It
Spring rain, again, again, and again,
Gray skies that are never going to clear up,
Blue skies that forever have gone away;
If I had wanted to build an ark,
I would have payed someone to do so
(Although, in truth, I would prefer
A smaller, more nimble ship).
This constant drench of tornado and flood watch
Quickly grows irksome and quite boring;
If you're ever going to drown me or blow my house down,
Just get it over with or I am leaving now.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
better than an hour of therapy ... and considerably cheaper
The Alibi
It's not me, it's you
-- OK, OK, so I'm lying,
It really is about you,
It's always been about you,
Your slow stupid brain,
Your even stupider ideas
And that pouting idiot mouth
Always running on and on and on
About the most insipid,
Uninteresting vapid subjects
That always star only you
And only you and only you.
So it is you, after all,
It's always been you.
Feel better now?
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
the never, hardly ever trust a man network
A Lifetime Apart
If I were to believe
What I see in Lifetime movies,
I would shoot any man
Who tries to get close to me;
The odds seem pretty good
That nine out of ten
Want only to rape me
And the other one will first
Take all my money
And then begin his assault
-- Except, of course, for the good man
Who sweeps me off my feet
After we spend the first half of the film
Arguing and runnng off from each other.
This seems to be the way
Of all true Lifetime marriages
But I'll hold of any final judgement
Until I see next Saturday's schedule film:
The good looking guy
Is an independently wealthy astrophysist
On sabbatical from Livermore Labs
In California.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
in the news
Ofttimes
Offtimes I'm little more than a Mona Lisa,
An enigmatic smile that hints at something
Other than can be seen on my carefully
Constructed canvas: a poet for the ages,
Now she's here, now she's not,
A twisting line of words and images
Drawn into her singularity only to be released
In a burst of dark energy that reveals little
About her or her inwardly workings.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.
an endless stream of being
The Road from Cefalù
Odysseus, Caesar, Hannibal, and Ziyadat Allah,
Belisarius, de Hauteville, and Dwight David Eisenhower,
Washington, Jefferson, Ayonwantah, and Tatanka Yotanka:
My Grandfather all, mongrel Mediterranean bitch that I am,
All the way back to the unknown Sicanian who left his art
In the cavern at Addaura beneath the slopes
Of Mount Pellegrino near Palermo.
Their linear inheritor, a jigsawed poet, remembers
And admits them all to her genomic bloodline.
Father, behold your daughter, who honors you
With her poetry, and the endless line of women
Who remain unknown to both poet and history.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
trip map
A Necessary End
My father died unexpectently,
My mother, slowly over a handful of years;
My father's death was shock,
One that still unsettles me;
My mother's, a relief that her sufffering ended,
But one that stills burns angrily
At uncaring gods and the universe.
Given the choice, I would go quickly
-- My children do not need to watch me die --
But I would not do so in a vacuum:
My children do not need to find my cold body
Lying on the floor when they return from visiting
Their relatives and friends.
I owe them more than that.
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
— And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Valentino, my Rudy
Ever Since Mozart
Elvis's ex son-in-law passed away the other day,
Morphine and demerol were among the usual suspects;
Nobody could remember the last time he really sang,
All of his testimony seemed to be court or T. V.
Some say that once he was the fairest in the land,
Another that his talent was squandered and dissipated;
Now he's the most well known recent dead rocker,
More famous than that blonde guy who took his own life;
Than Lennon when was shot coming back from the studio,
More so than Presley leaving the building by way of his toilet;
Bigger than Morrison, Hendrix, or Joplin,
Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Richie Valens,
Marvin Gaye, Sam Cook, Judy Garland,
Billy Holiday, Glen Miller, or Robert Johnson.
da do run run da do run run
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
it's just a poem
Therapeutic
Even people you don't like
Have to die -- they just seem
To take a hell of a lot longer
For some reason,
Especially if they are your ex.
Imagine a mosquito
That lives forever,
Refreshing itself
On a mainline artery
Promptly at 5 o'clock each day,
How long would you let that skeeter
Suck your blood out
Before you began sketching out
Various scenarios
To kill it good and dead
Once and for all, forever more?
— Lisa Jain Thompson (June 2009)
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
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