StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XIII, No. XIV

Making contact with the data,
Observing if it correctly reflects nature,
Sculpting the available information
Into a seemingly conversational poem
That touches the deep hidden core
That exists below the skin we present
To the world:

This is the description of a working poet
From antiquity to some time past tomorrow,
To strip away the glorious words and
Long explanatory phrases we use to
Hide ourselves from our parents and spouses,
Friends and lovers, children and others,
To model our humanity as a unified whole
Rather than a series of discrete
Data points and individual islands,
To breathe life into these simple lines,
Describing the flickering candlelight
Rather than the composition of the wax
Or the temperature of the flame.

The art of poetry depends
On deciding what to ignore,
A poem is an approximation
Of what seems to be experience,
Using words that equate approximately
To the meanings we have given them;

No more, no less, no great whoop
Or metaphysical digression,
We are what we are,
You get what you get,
A handful of words,
Verbs, nouns, and adjectives,
Set carefully upon the page
In exact approximation.

Beneath the condominiums
And the ritual vent pipes,
The bones of a Jewish family
-- Jesus, Son of Joseph,
Mirian Mara, called Magdalene,
And Judah, Son of Jesus --
Dating to the First Century
Were discovered in a Jerusalem tomb.
Who shall lift us up
If Jonah is inside the whale?

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2012)

Here come the end,
Here come the end,
Gather your ammunition
And pick up your guns,
Clean them thru and thru,
Here come the end once again.

Pack up your food,
Your wives and your daughters,
Make ready the emergency generator,
Check on the fuel tank,
Your meds and your bandages,
Here come the end once again.

No jobs, no money,
No freedom or liberty,
Lock all the doors and stand ready.
The republic is doomed,
The end is drawn near,
Here come the government once again.

The government is your friend,
The president's your sire,
The house, your aunts and your uncles,
The Senate's your father,
The court, pope and minister,
Here come the government once again.

Current physics cocoons us
Inside the spacetime light barrier,
Straps us to our system
Bound by heaven's breadth
And our own abbreviated lifespan.

A non-zero cosmological constant
Pushes spacetime to expand,
Drawing the galaxies along with it,
Separating us from the remaining universe
Lying permanently just out of vision.

Dark night, wet grass,
Fire engines and ambulances
Joining police on the interstate;
The air closes in, thick with moisture,
Up at the corner car headlights
Enter onto the block, pass a
Pedestrian moving between storms,,
Then disappear around the bend
And Cedar decides we've been
Outside long enough, finishing his
Business before leading us in.

I have been to Mars,
Wandered in the caverns beneath Olympus,
Melted the polar frost
When I needed to fill my thirst,
Made love to the rocket jockey
In the cabin of his shuttle as we
Slowly descended on the Marsport towers,
Then fucked him again after breakfast
In his room at the Canal Hilton:
Space travel is best done with friends
But a pilot will often do should you
Find yourself alive with hormones rising.

If We

If we consider the distance
From here to all infinity,
Even if we were to travel
At twice lightspeed,
We would never reach the edge:

The vastness we find ourselves
Expands quite vastly,
And time can only do so much
No matter how fast our desire
Might take us.

It's depressing to meet our limits,
Even those that are rather infinite;
But limited we are by spacetime
And the physics of it all.