Newsflash:
Saturday, 03 February 2007 20:00
Last Updated on Saturday, 03 February 2007 12:16
The
Starpoet
Newsletter
Vol. VIII, No. VI
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If there were a reason
For fate's leisurely pace
That finally brought us together
The gods aren't talking
Their motives are indecipherable
To those whose destiny
Is constrained
By flesh and blood
For fate's leisurely pace
That finally brought us together
The gods aren't talking
Their motives are indecipherable
To those whose destiny
Is constrained
By flesh and blood
Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2007 C. E.
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superbowl sunday in America: the war will grow silent for a day
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high fashion
Thoroughbreds
Teenage thoroughbreds,
Doll-like heads atop reed thin bodies,
Hipless, cleavage free,
With the long, slender legs of a racehorse;
They are dangerously gaunt,
Perhaps even anorexic,
Wearing four-inch heels and tight fitting pants,
And looking nothing like their photoshopped photos
Where they are all smoky eyes and pouting lips.
Doll-like heads atop reed thin bodies,
Hipless, cleavage free,
With the long, slender legs of a racehorse;
They are dangerously gaunt,
Perhaps even anorexic,
Wearing four-inch heels and tight fitting pants,
And looking nothing like their photoshopped photos
Where they are all smoky eyes and pouting lips.
They giggle, wide-eyed, as they try to please,
A chance to cloak themselves
In high-tech fabrics and baroque glamour,
A pronounced drape of airy sophistication.
A chance to cloak themselves
In high-tech fabrics and baroque glamour,
A pronounced drape of airy sophistication.
They walk, elegant and sexy,
-- Pause, reflect, go back --
Deliberate, without a catch me swing,
Projecting abject terror
They won’t be chosen.
-- Pause, reflect, go back --
Deliberate, without a catch me swing,
Projecting abject terror
They won’t be chosen.
Twenty five feet,
Stopping in front of photographers,
Girls in their gangly adolescent
Turned into ciphers
As the ideal of beauty
For women past thirty.
Stopping in front of photographers,
Girls in their gangly adolescent
Turned into ciphers
As the ideal of beauty
For women past thirty.
Size 6 to size 2 and shrinking,
Exchanging ballerina carriages
For emotionless stickpin golems,
Sixteen going on twelve,
Rustling through their chaotic environment,
Without objection.
Exchanging ballerina carriages
For emotionless stickpin golems,
Sixteen going on twelve,
Rustling through their chaotic environment,
Without objection.
The clothes hang from collar and shoulder bones,
-- Super-skinny clothes on super-skinny girls --
Race is little more than a paint chip,
Their body image, the silhouette of the season.
-- Super-skinny clothes on super-skinny girls --
Race is little more than a paint chip,
Their body image, the silhouette of the season.
With military precision, the models pass,
white, Asian, black, whatever,
All five foot ten, all 33-23-34,
Looking nothing so much
As needing a few more cans of Ensure.
white, Asian, black, whatever,
All five foot ten, all 33-23-34,
Looking nothing so much
As needing a few more cans of Ensure.
An elegant face and short, dark hair,
Black leggings matched to a cardigan’s stripe,
Hipbones protruding beneath her woolly top;
Pale blonde narrow gray jeans, high leather boots,
Thin hair hanging lank around her face:
The right of the designer to make aesthetic choices,
The gulf between the actual and the ideal
We pay so dearly for.
Black leggings matched to a cardigan’s stripe,
Hipbones protruding beneath her woolly top;
Pale blonde narrow gray jeans, high leather boots,
Thin hair hanging lank around her face:
The right of the designer to make aesthetic choices,
The gulf between the actual and the ideal
We pay so dearly for.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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virtue and dispair
A Chance To Be Hopeful
We'll grasp at anything
That appears to be hopeful:
Our presumption is that American power,
American perseverance and intervention
Can, by itself and alone, change the world
And the course of human nature, human greed,
Converting all the unhistoried tribes of earth
To our native language of democracy,
Baptizing them with our terrible sword
In the name of Life, Liberty,
And the pursuit of Capitalism.
When we fail, and we do fail,
Our presumption is that American power,
American perseverance and intervention
Can, by itself and alone, change the world
And the course of human nature, human greed,
Converting all the unhistoried tribes of earth
To our native language of democracy,
Baptizing them with our terrible sword
In the name of Life, Liberty,
And the pursuit of Capitalism.
When we fail, and we do fail,
We hide our defeat behind our presidents,
Laying our humiliation on those we elected
And afterwards let run unchecked,
Avoiding at all cost the possibility
That the failure may be our own.
Laying our humiliation on those we elected
And afterwards let run unchecked,
Avoiding at all cost the possibility
That the failure may be our own.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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I believe there is a Platonic ideal of beauty,
and artists are given a fleeting vision of that beauty.
The rest is a process of remembering.
You try to catch the beauty you've seen,
and it is a torture,
because you can never quite do it.
and artists are given a fleeting vision of that beauty.
The rest is a process of remembering.
You try to catch the beauty you've seen,
and it is a torture,
because you can never quite do it.
-- Gian Carlo Menotti
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the coolness of queer
Click on This
I was watching the video on Logo
-- Queer high numbered digital --
-- Queer high numbered digital --
And realized I was never so hip
As the gay boys posing on my T.V.
As the gay boys posing on my T.V.
Never was, never will be,
But their loss, not mine,
I will be here long after they're gone.
But their loss, not mine,
I will be here long after they're gone.
Trying too hard to be queer
Is like proving you aren't a racist,
The more you try, the more you sound
Like some middle class poseur
Who confuses talking street
With being ethnic.
Is like proving you aren't a racist,
The more you try, the more you sound
Like some middle class poseur
Who confuses talking street
With being ethnic.
Either you is,
Or you is not,
And most of us
Ain't never will be.
Or you is not,
And most of us
Ain't never will be.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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the ritual of offering ribbons
Ribbons
Place a ribbon on your car,
Send somebody else's son to war,
Cut your taxes, buy a home,
It doesn't matter any more.
Send somebody else's son to war,
Cut your taxes, buy a home,
It doesn't matter any more.
Hang a flag from your front door,
Pin another on your clothes,
Place a cross around your neck,
Place a cross around your neck,
It just don't matter any more.
Let's have another drink,
Let's have a round of coke,
We are the one and lonely,
Let's get high and fuck them all.
Let's have a round of coke,
We are the one and lonely,
Let's get high and fuck them all.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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Beware of general managers,
beware of boards of directors.
They are ruining the arts.
They all want us to thank them for everything.
I want them to thank the artists.
See that woman over there?
Her print dress would not exist
if there had never been a Raoul Dufy.
And any time you hum the 'Toreador Song,'
you should thank Georges Bizet.
beware of boards of directors.
They are ruining the arts.
They all want us to thank them for everything.
I want them to thank the artists.
See that woman over there?
Her print dress would not exist
if there had never been a Raoul Dufy.
And any time you hum the 'Toreador Song,'
you should thank Georges Bizet.
-- Gian Carlo Menotti
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Climate Change
Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published this week.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.
The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs".
Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming. "It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.
-- excerpted from The Guardian
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where scripture and science fiction meet
Time Vane
If a creature could move through time,
Like we through height, width, and length,
What powers would he appear to have
To those of us anchored in just there?
Like we through height, width, and length,
What powers would he appear to have
To those of us anchored in just there?
What if he appeared in some ancient past,
As science and man struggled to begin,
How like a god his parlor tricks appear
As he shifted between now and not here.
As science and man struggled to begin,
How like a god his parlor tricks appear
As he shifted between now and not here.
All our earthly gods,
Conceived by our meager senses,
Would dim before his shifting present,
As he jaunted here and there
Through time;
Sweet time would not stumble
In only one direction
For a godlike being quite unchained
From our singulary dreary pace.
Conceived by our meager senses,
Would dim before his shifting present,
As he jaunted here and there
Through time;
Sweet time would not stumble
In only one direction
For a godlike being quite unchained
From our singulary dreary pace.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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The Varieties of Culturalism
Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday February 1, 2007
Thursday February 1, 2007
Behind these hopelessly vague terms such as "multiculturalism" (boo-word for the right) and "Islamophobia" (boo-word for the left) is a deeply worrying reality, which these conservative reports, like others from thinktanks of the left, do an important job of probing. That reality is one of far-reaching alienation among younger British Muslims. In an NOP poll last year, less than half the British Muslims interviewed identified Britain as "my country". An international poll by Pew showed that younger British Muslims overwhelmingly put their religious identity before their national one, unlike French Muslims. A Populus poll commissioned for the well-researched and thought-provoking Policy Exchange report shows a majority of British Muslims saying they have more in common with Muslims in other countries than they do with non-Muslims in Britain.
Shockingly, more than one in three of the 16-24 age group in the Populus poll agree with a formulation of sharia law, saying that "Muslim conversion is forbidden and punishable by death". At the extreme, this alienation from the country in which they live was expressed by the July 7 2005 suicide bombers and those arrested while allegedly planning an attack last summer. Perhaps we will find similar biographical elements among some of those arrested in Birmingham yesterday. Around the small hard core of active extremists there is what Shamit Saggar, writing in the latest Political Quarterly, calls a "circle of tacit support" that embraces tens of thousands of young British Muslims. Their alienation is exacerbated by the negative stereotyping of Muslims in the media and experiences of everyday prejudice.
The "multiculturalism" slogan of the right is crude shorthand for the worrying facts of separation. These are the "parallel lives" identified in the 2001 Cantle report, which memorably quoted a British Muslim of Pakistani origin: "When I leave this meeting with you, I will go home and not see another white face until I come back here next week." Ghettoes is the less polite term. This separation, which is cultural and psychological as much as physical, was not originally created by policies of multiculturalism, but what went by the name of multiculturalism in some British cities in the 80s and 90s did reinforce the separation. It privileged group identities, defined by origins or religion, over British or individual ones. It did not bring home to the children of Muslim immigrants any strong sense of shared Britishness. And it sometimes allowed the oppression of women to continue under the cloak of cultural respect.
The "Islamophobia" slogan of the left is crude shorthand for the worrying facts of prejudice and stereotyping, which the right ignores at its peril. There is also overwhelming evidence, acknowledged by the intelligence services as well as by most independent analysts, that both the Iraq war and the failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have contributed to the radicalisation of British Muslim youth.
Then there are elements that don't fit easily into the cliches of either left or right. For example, the Policy Exchange report highlights the way in which young British Muslims react against the hedonistic, promiscuous, binge-drinking, value-lite culture they see among their contemporaries:
"I decided to wear hijab because I didn't like the way that women are portrayed as sex objects" (Female, Muslim, 21, Oxford).
"The bad thing, and I don't know how we can solve this, is that they [the British] don't really know what their values are. So when they are attacked they kind of seem to be making it up...' (Female, Muslim, 22, Leeds).
These are voices worth listening to.
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fairy dust
Third Star
Time moves so slowly,
Human life so quick,
A thousand years is nothing
But beyond my feeble grasp.
A thousand years is nothing
But beyond my feeble grasp.
If it can't be done in a decade,
A hundred years at most,
You might as well talk
About going to the stars
Or young boys who never grow old.
A hundred years at most,
You might as well talk
About going to the stars
Or young boys who never grow old.
Lisa Jain Thompson
Feberuary 2007
Feberuary 2007
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last weekend
Before Excitement Falls
Grey Sunday morning,
Snow flurries in the air,
Coffee ground and dripping,
Bacon in the background.
Bacon in the background.
Talking heads on T.V. sets,
Discussing presidential error,
Discussing presidential error,
Newspaper spread over aging sofa,
Poet half awake in a chair.
A Sunday between football,
Superbowl a week away,
L Word may fill an evening,
L Word may fill an evening,
But boredom, the dragging day.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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When I leave this meeting with you,
I will go home and not see another white face
until I come back here next week.
I will go home and not see another white face
until I come back here next week.
-- a British Muslim of Pakistani origin
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rushing to an unsettled finish
During His Second Coming
When Jesus comes again,
I will take him into my bed
And fuck his brains out;
And fuck his brains out;
He's still man, I still woman,
And I don't expect much of a problem.
And I don't expect much of a problem.
Afterwards, after I have taken him
Into my mouth, sucked and licked him
Back into eager tumesence,
I will tell him who I am,
While he slips himself inside me,
And ask if he has more doubts
About how female I may be.
Into my mouth, sucked and licked him
Back into eager tumesence,
I will tell him who I am,
While he slips himself inside me,
And ask if he has more doubts
About how female I may be.
Lisa Jain Thompson
February 2007
February 2007
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PEACE
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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.
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Starpoetby Lisa Jain Thompson.
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