StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXXI

1.

Between headaches, between thunderstorms,
The world is calm, the poet prolific,
A regular sherlock of lucid clarity
Cloaked in graceful metaphor and clever word choices;

A keen-eyed natty of original versification
Decorated with shiny starlights and shaky pentameters
Brought to full stop by the artless hammering
Clawing at the gray matter behind my eyes.

2.

Come vicodin, come percocet,
Come desperate delaudid,
When all else fails
Numb the brain to blessed sleep;

Light a candle, make a novena,
Recite the rosary for six months,
Pray to God for full dispensation
That this cup may be taken from me.

3.

The hounds are released,
The pain, fought back,
Words string themselves quickly
Between the dark clouds
Rolling past my eyes;

The poet lives,
An hour, a day,
Rushing before the stormfront
Dogging Sappho's footeps,
Pushing her to the ocean's edge..

I believe in happy endings,
I believe in hard work and perseverance,
I belief in the perfectability of the human soul,
But I do not believe in god.

I believe that life is sacred,
In kindergarten graduations
And summer picnics along the river,
I believe in bootstraps and individual responsibility,
But I don't believe in the pope
Or bet my life on political leaders.

I believe that when we die, we're gone,
In the right to live and the right to die
At the moment of my own choosing;
I believe in the laughter of children
Playing on my front lawn
While I watch from my neighbor's porch;

I believe in all of this and more,
But not the infallibility of the president
Or that things will necessarily be better
If I just give them time.

Up at the corner where the stop signs meet,
The one where the buses turn left or right
Depending on the direction of their coming and going,
They've put flowers at the spot where their daughter died
When her boyfriend, young and drunk, lost control
Early one Fourth of July weekend several years ago.
No one remembers their daughter but friends and family
And those of us who walked by the metal shards and shattered glass
That were there before the county crew came by
And saw the bouquets and teddy bears and the candles that appeared
In the week after celebration on the Fourth.
Eventually the flowers will stop coming, memories will fade,
 And only this poem will remain to remind us
 Of the girl whose name I no longer remember.

Fold on your third card,
 If you're beaten on the table;
 Sometimes lose big intentionally
 So no one can discern a pattern;
 Win slowly, win steadily,
 So no one notices you're ahead;
 Bet heavily when the cards are yours,
 Act surprised when you clean the table.
 Never play your friends for blood,
 Always assume they might be;
 Never leave the room unaware
 Someone might want their money back;
 Kill cleanly without a hint of anger,
 Never leave trace evidence or fingerprints.

A mountain lion is roaming Sacramento,
West of the river,  leaving footprints
In the soft dirt on the Clarksburg trail:
Residents are asked not to make contact
With the cat during her early morning strolls;
Pack up your old ladies, your women and children,
Keep all of your small pets safely indoors,
Count all your livestock, keep your collies on duty,
A healthy, unafraid puma has joined the coyotes
And she's searching for deer for her brood;
She'll shake all your windows and rattle your suburbs,
There's a mountain lion roaming the streets of Sacramento.

Let us forget for the night
The war of the moment
Any blood
That stains these sheets
Should be mine
 
When morning breaks
We'll find time enough
To deal
With your warrior's ego
 
But now
While the moon still shines
I want your prick
And more wine 

Kept apart
Under Sappho's careful eye
I practiced my art
Between flowing bowls of wine
And learned to strip my verse
Of gaudy ornament
That might please the academy
But leave little
Of the poet's soul exposed.
 
I have sung and danced
Before great warriors
Spoken rude suggestions
At home among friends
Stripped my body bare
As I rollicked on the internet
And still I remain
True to Sappho
And the demands of the muse.

 I have mastered the middle class virtue of writing,
 Educated myself in the mystical workings of politics and science;
 I have felt iron nails be driven through my wrists and ankles,
 Almost died several times over and will probably do so again;
 
 Yet most of all, through all of this, I have loved and been well loved,
 Raised children who have grown strong to self-sufficienct adulthood
 And find myself looking forward to the discoveries of my second century,
 Even as my knees complain loudly about the realities of the first.

When I was a young thing
 And never been wed,
 I asked a cute boy
 To take me to bed;
 He rocked me and rolled me
 And turned me up slowly
 Then, oh god,
 He did it again.
 
 He never tired out
 And neither did I,
 We rocked and we rolled
 Till that young rooster crowed
 And then, oh god,
 We did it again,
 Again and again
 And again and again,
 Then oh god,
 We did it again.

Gates all huffy
Like some black lace professor
Put out by being questioned
By the young townie policeman;

Mick cop on the beat,
Refusing to be dismissed like some
Lower class servant
From the wrong side of the tracks.

President of the United States,
Shooting from the hip
Like some Texas cowboy
Picking off an injun,

Choosing sides,
White hat or black,
Without ever checking
With the Marshall or the Law.