Starpoet by Lisa Jain Thompson
Newsflash:

Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. V

Saturday, 27 January 2007 20:00 Last Updated on Saturday, 27 January 2007 20:28
The
 Starpoet  
Newsletter  
Vol. VIII, No. V 
 
 
 __/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
<><><><><>
 
 
 
 another fine day
in winter's midst
sun warms the air
blows the ice away
you are upstairs
working zeroes and ones
i am below
working words and rhythms
cedar watches the opendoor
keeping potential intruders
a full bark distant
programing the future
life and love
all is good
at least until
the next snow falls
to cover the world
in unforgiving coldness
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2007 C.E.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
listening to "Wincing the Night Away" by the Shins and the Killers' "Sam's Town" as I pull this togther: poems, writings, odds and ends.  Spent the last night at a benefit, sang some karoake -- got props for singing of all things -- talked to friends.   I need a thirty or 40 hour day to do all that needs to be done.
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
let's start with current American culture
 
 
Welcome to Hollywood
 
 
I can't imagine
Having such a narrow focus,
That making or not making
American Idol
Would be the key pivotal point
Of the Rest  Of  My  Life.
 
I have flown, I have crashed,
I have flown again
Over uncharted lands
Beneath celestial magic so bright
That the Sun itself dims,
And still the Star rises
To greet both the earth and me
Each morning.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
still current
 
 
Faggots
 
 
Faggots are the niggers of the straight world,
Cast to the bottom of the locker room
By wave upon wave of young men and boys
Deeply worried that they aren't straight,
Joined by the silent homosexuals so afraid
That someone might discover the gay keys
To their self-imposed closets.
Nothing is so threatening as a queer on the street
Offering alternatives to a straight guy's life.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
When they give you things, ask yourself why.
When you're grateful to them for providing
the things you should have anyway,
ask yourself why.
- Lady in Blue
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
Wikiworld
Paul Di Filippo
 
 
 
... Anyway, this little islet would serve me well, I figured, as both home and base for my job-assuming I could erect a good solid comfortable structure here. realizing that such a task was beyond my own capabilities, I called in my wikis. The Dark Galactics. The PEP Boyz. The Chindogurus. Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons. The Bishojos. The Glamazons. The Provincetown Pickers. And several more. All of them owed me simoleons for the usual-goods received, or time and expertise invested-and now they'd be eager to balance the accounts.
 
 
The day construction was scheduled to start, I anchored the Gogo Goggins on the western side of my island, facing the mainland. The June air was warm on my bare arms, and freighted with delicious salt scents. Gulls swooped low over my boat, expecting the usual handouts. The sun was a golden English muffin in the sky. (Maybe I should have had some breakfast, but I had been too excited to prepare any that morning.) Visibility was great. I could see drowned church spires and dead cell-phone towers closer to the shore. Through this slalom a small fleet of variegated ships sailed, converging on my island ...
 
 
Continued at
 
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
the forever war
 
 
Uncurious George
 
 
Too late     Too late
But the president does not repent,
He believes what he believes
No matter what is said
Or what is real:
Each body means
More bodies must be sent
To protect the president
From losing the war
Or needing to examine
Why he did what he did.
 
His war to lose,
Our war to win,
For our brothers and sisters
But not his lovely daughters.
 
His war to lose
As commander in chief,
Our lives to sacrifice
So he might sleep.
 
Too late    Too late
The world's well fucked,
All's right in the White House,
Just ask clueless George.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
Yul and all the rest of us
 
 
The Wind
 
 
When the seven ride into the Mexican village,
Their plan is to train the villagers, then leave,
Expecting the local nationals
To defend themselves against the banditos.
 
Soon they realize they will have to remain
Until the last of the bandits is dead --
The strong arms are many,
The seven relatively few,
And the villagers still villagers,
No matter how well trained.
 
Half and more, the seven die,
The village survives:
Their word is good.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
The only part of the conduct of anyone
for which he is amenable to society
is that which concerns others.
In the part which merely concerns himself,
his independence is, of right, absolute.
-- John Stuart Mill
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
short excursion
 
 
Celebration
 
 
This is how we live:
Celebrating births,
Celebrating weddings,
Gathering for festivals and holidays;
Joining together,
Hanging on to what we have,
Holding on to each other
When one of us dies;
Sharing our memories
As we struggle to find meaning
In the cycles of life;
And then, we slip away,
Some quietly, some screaming,
Some fighting until the end
As we fall head first
Into the unknowable ever.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007 
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
 Off The Main Sequence
 
 
 
In the late 60s and the 70s, I was in the wrong body with no way out.
 
In the late 60s and the 70s, I was a feminist with no way in.  
 
Transsexuality was anything but common place, especially in Sacramento.  The feminists were busy putting off walls between themselves and anyone who outwardly looked male. 
 
Everyone was separating into their own little conclaves.  The leftist radicals were at the table close to the Black Panther table which was across the cafeteria from the jocks. The feminists were in their corner, the queers no where openly visible (although they wandered among my friends).  Students were rioting, police were rioting, the National Guard at Kent was out of control.  
 
The bishop was after our ass for trying to drag the church into at least the 19th Century. (I played guitar and ran folk masses at the Newman Center.  What can I say?  I was an agnostic who still had hope she could make the church more rational and I got off on performing.)
 
I had first cousins and friends in the various police forces; classmates who died in Viet Nam; classmates who came back from the war missing arms and legs, bearing scars on their faces and souls; classmates who came back alive to tell me to stay out; the draft was devouring us all, consuming our thoughts and plans. 
 
I was neither left nor right nor middle of the road.  I just wanted the war to stop and my friends to stop being hurt.  I had no idea whether, if called, I would serve or not. I don't think any of us did -- we were not rich, our parents had served in World War II and Korea, and we were raised to serve our country, one way or the other, answer the call, whether it be the Army, the Peace Corps, teaching inner city students, fighting racism, or helping Caesar Chavez unite the Braceros into a union with force.  We were the cream of the crop, the future of the nation, and we were lost in a whirl of time and music and drugs and the scent of middle class cultural revolution against the repression of the post-war 50s.
 
I was a poet, very conscious of being Sicilian (grandpa would have it no other way), helping my Uncle Joe spread rumors about his clothing store and the Mafia in what passed for a black ghetto in Sacramento.
 
I was a poet, busy avoiding the gay men hitting on me at bars and school, finding my way between the pot and the acid and the Israeli and the Arab who had both fought in the Six Day War and were now part of the rotating all day pinochle game in our corner of the cafeteria.
 
Haight was in the air and I walked the line between the long haired druggies and the middle class college city kids, part of neither and part of both, passing from one to the other and back again.  We all marched, thousands strong, black, white, panthers, jocks, rich, poor, and middle class the morning after Martin died, down to the State Capitol to hear Willie Brown and others.  When we went pass the car lots, all the car hoods were up protecting the windshields. The Police and FBI were at each corner as we passed, taking our pictures, comparing notes.  As we would pass they would scurry to another corner to take even more photos.  We waved to them as we walked pass.
 
A few months later, I was working for Bobby, watching him on television that night he was shot and my world shattered into Chicago and Nixon and everything that followed.
 
The war raged on, time blurred, and my personal needs seemed not as important as the needs of the world around me.
 
Nobody has the story right yet.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson © 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
It is critical that we understand that this new form of terrorism carries another more subtle, perhaps equally pernicious, risk. Because it might encourage a fear-driven and inappropriate response. By that I mean it can tempt us to abandon our values. I think it important to understand that this is one of its primary purposes.
 
London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'.
 
The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement.
 
We wouldn't get far in promoting a civilising culture of respect for rights amongst and between citizens if we set about undermining fair trials in the simple pursuit of greater numbers of inevitably less safe convictions. On the contrary, it is obvious that the process of winning convictions ought to be in keeping with a consensual rule of law and not detached from it. Otherwise we sacrifice fundamental values critical to the maintenance of the rule of law - upon which everything else depends.
 
--Sir Ken Macdonald 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
keeping count
 
(I realize that the metaphorical metaphysical implications as they apply to the great questions of life, the universe, and everything are not immediately obvious in this poem)
 
 
Auteur
 
 
White boys, black boys, Puerto Ricans, Italians,
Hispanics straight from Columbia,
Doe eyed girls from somewhere India,
Black girls, white girls, Vietnamese and Thai girls,
Soft voiced chicas from deep southern U.S.A.,
Quiet Asian boy from behind the physics lab.
 
A rich girl, a poor girl, a fool and a crazy,
But as for a lawyer, I don't think I've had any.
 
I am  I am  I am  I am
So be it
A poet can't afford to be lazy.
 
Do me  Do me  Do me  Do me
And get the fuck in line
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
It's not--ultimately--about atheism vs theism,
polytheism vs monotheism, goddesses vs gods,
or even God-as-She vs God-as-He.
It's about testosterone.
 
Whenever or wherever men are in unchecked charge,
women (and children) fare badly.
 
In religion
--as in family and tribe, nations and state--
men are often in unchecked charge.
Therefore.
 
 
 
 
John Dominic Crossan
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
tired and weary
 
 
There are Moments
 
 
There are moments
When I would prefer
Not to be a poet,
Days when I wish
My emotions were hidden
Well below the surface
Like so many of the others.
It must be nice
To live a singular life
Without feeling
Any of the marks
On our human flesh,
But if the world were silent,
That would be be true death
And I would end it.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
Odd Facts and Confusion
 
 
 
More than 60 percent of U.S. women
between the ages of 15 and 44
use some sort of contraception.
 
 
The rest are celibates, lesbians, infertile women,
pregnant women or those trying to become pregnant,
and women born transsexual.
 
 
 
Overall, about 40 percent of men
reported using a condom the last time they had sex.
But among women, only 22 percent
said their male partner had used a condom in their last sexual encounter.
 
 
Your guess is as good as mine, but I suspect someone is lying.
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
life with a border collie
 
 
The Yard Behind The Yard
 
 
Rumble of the diesel
Moving down the switch track,
Crack of the boxcars
Humping one into the other,
Shaking the bed,
Startling the humans
While the border collie
Sleeps resolutely on the floor.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
January 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
The Poet is not expected to test and verify her own products.
If The Poet is testing and verifying her sub-poet allusions,
that verification and testing shall be performed
by independent recipients of the StarPoet Newsletter. 
The Poet expects to resolve any issue
relating to poetical conflict of interest
prior to publication of the StarPoet Newsletter. 
Otherwise, The Poet will conflict herself out of the competition.
 
 
New releases of the StarPoet Newsletter
must maintain previously provided artistry,
while providing enhanced intellectual content
or rhetorical acuity,
or both.
 
 
Value will be determined by the recipients on a case-by-case basis. 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
 
PEACE
 
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1995-2007. Further distribution of this newsletter in its entirety is authorized. Email your letters and postcards or visit her contact page at the Starpoet website.
 
 
  
Comments (0)Add Comment
feedSubscribe to this comment's feed
min/maxShow/hide comments

Write comment
feedShow/hide comment form

security code
Write the displayed characters


busy
< Prev   Next >

Letters - Newsletters

This website and all works herein copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2011.