__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
one day in the newspaper
You Never Walk Alone
(The Women Men Never See)
Wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them
--Hamlet
Walking home from a restaurant,
Someone running close behind,
A plastic bag over your head,
Fighting for your life.
Leaving the Roslyn Metro,
A man comes up behind,
Plastic bag across your face,
You push back and he walks away.
The beginning weeks of March,
Neither early or late,
Hands in the darkness grope you,
Feeling your breasts and thighs.
Walking home when the library closes,
Men's hands reaching out of the night,
All the police do is suggest
Women not walk after dark alone.
Morning over in Prince George's,
A woman getting into a car,
A man with a gun demands money
And assaults her when she has none.
A woman parking her car
In a garage attached to her house,
A man takes here purse and keys
Then vanishes back into the street.
Late at night in her car at the curb,
In a spot not far from her home,
A man with a gun wants money,
Then rapes her near a row of town houses.
Stay alert,
Be aware,
Look out for strangers
And things that go bump in the night;
Beware of any unusual vehicles,
A man may be lurking
Just out of sight
And gaining on you.
Ah, women, women! Come, we have a new friend
But resolution, and the briefest end.
-- Antony and Cleopatra
Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2007
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
the persistance of memory
The Azimuth at Mid-cycle
It is all so confusing
-- I know where I was
When my babies were born;
The first in Chambersburg,
The second in the Poconos,
The third and last, the only boy,
On a cold december morning
In Fairfax County;
I was in the delivery room,
Caught up in contractions
As I learned and relearned
The meaning of effacing.
Now I see three grown adults
Who once I held in my arms,
Who took the milk I offered them
And grew rapidly through high school
Until the girl who once I was
Now finds herself at middle age
Unable to remember
Where all the time has fled.
Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2007
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
-- Seneca
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
something about the navel
Starlight
Were I anything but what I am,
Consumed by our existence,
My poetry would clang noiselessly,
A brass cymbal tumbling through empty space.
I speak with the words of a woman,
Schooled in classical conceits,
But if I do not address
Both world and universe,
I am little more than an educated druid
Caught up in my own conceit.
This is my body,
Overweight and aging;
This is my blood,
These words that stain this cream;
I am the poet of the new covenant,
The mystery of these electrons
Tracing back to ancient Greece.
I have no choice
But speak what I must,
The gods may damn me
If I am not true to our humanity.
Lisa Jain Thompson
May 2007
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
This body is not a home but an inn, and that only briefly.
-- Seneca
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^