StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XIII, No. XXI

Of this I'm certain,
There is an asteroid out there
With my name on it
That will wipe me from
The surface of Planet Earth;
Maybe not today,
Maybe not tomorrow,
But some day within this century
I will be gone,
My ashes still visible
Across the internet
Even as time swallows
My ink stained my soul.

Cedar is restless,
Caught up in the changing weather,
Lost in some ancient monsoon
Of canine post-stroke memory;
Staring into the continuum,
He stands frozen in silent thought,
Hoping for a visual or a subtle scent
To draw him into the present
For another week or day.

Perhaps he is thinking of herding sheep,
Winning championships, working in brace
With Vixen running beside him tending the flock,
Sharon in the distance, watching, guiding,
Memories of agile young bodies with intact full packages,
Effortlessly outsmarting both sheep and competitor
As he bends a stubborn world to his steadfast will,
Protecting us both from misstep and foul player.

Joan Rivers on the set patrolling fashion,
Providing one line soundtracks
To a gray drizzled sky.
Outside of a televised red carpet,
Where would you wear something like that?

Squirrel on the fence,
Staring in the window,
Concluding I'm not about
To offer him food,
Runs on.

Why do the weekends go on raining,
Why won't the sun show its face,
Don't they know I am stuck inside
With a dog who'd very much like to pee?

Who, What, When, and Why,
The structure underlying poetry,
Implied, suggested, metaphorically constructed,
Unnoticed when written properly ,
The difference between greatness and obscurity.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (May 2012)

Welcome to the jungle,
The world of competitive poetry
And the false humility of poets
Pretending to disown immortality.

I would be a tinkling brass
If I told you I did not worry
What my readers might think
Or who they might be
A thousand years from now.

I write because I must,
Proclaim my bloodline from Sappho to Heinlein
And puzzle best how to portray all this,
What makes us human in the Third Millennium.

The drugs that calm the cough
Stir the brain quite oddly,
Sometimes a great notion,
Others silence and lethargy
Or a metaphorical rabbit hole
That only my muse is sure of.
I am confident of my talent
So I go where the ride may take me,
Puzzling out the obscure corners
Where the light might shine more dimly.
I go where I am bound,
Come hell or chill floodwater
Or NyQuil, Benadryl, or codeine.

In '66 we ventured forth
To work, to college and to war,
Taking our memories of Christian Brothers,
An education second to none.

Five decades since, we've died and buried,
Engraved our names on memorial walls,
Married ourselves, had children and raised them,
Argued with the Church, left and confessed,
Realized we were gay and argued again,
Then thrown out of mass, basilica, and cathedral
Because we would not lie to God or ourselves,
Corrected our sex to be who God made us
And argued still more with Pope and Curia.

But the education holds,
Even if the hierarchy no longer wants us;
Christ knows, we are catholic,
More so than the Church that condemns us;
I remain by nature an agnostic catholic,
My knee unbending before passing popes,
More the same than different from the 17 year old
Who graduated back in '66:
All life is precious, including mine.

Almost brilliant, a lovely epithet that means
That I have, once again, failed to exceed expectations;
I should have done this, I should have done that,
You just don't understand what I attempted;
Can't I please be more normal, more like everyone else,
Why am I always so different?
If I knew, I swear I would tell you, but until then
I guess I'll remain, respectfully, almost brilliant
Despite your expectations of who I should be.

The Kid Arrives

The Kid first batted in the City of Angels,
Up from Syracuse the night before,
Nineteen like Mays and Mantle,
Al Kaline and a handful more.
He has everything a player could want,
Including grounding out to the pitcher
In his first at bat -- Cooperstown
Will have to wait another inning.