Starpoet by Lisa Jain Thompson
Newsflash:

Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VIII, No. XLIX

Saturday, 01 December 2007 19:00 Last Updated on Saturday, 08 December 2007 18:22
 
The
Starpoet 
Newsletter 
Vol. VIII, No. XLIX
 
 
 
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The sun escapes beyond the Aegean
Taking hours from the days
We spend together
The nights, my love,
Are something else entirely
 
Lisa Jain Thompson C. 2007 C. E.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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downhill to year's end
 
 
 
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treeing the family
 
 
 
We Ourselves, Ourselves Alone
 
 
I am in love with a woman
Who carries the blood of Maud Gonne,
The heart of the Rising
And the lover of Bill Yeats.
 
 
Five foot ten by age 14,
Tall women must run in the family,
-- But then again, we're all the same
In the bed with our lover then and now --
As does a talent for singular insurrection.
 
 
Some families produce actors,
Others, pop singers,
The Ghoinns bear the world
Sweet freedom and liberty
Where ever the rebellion leads them.
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
 
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^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
any meeting anywhere
 
 
 
Data Flux
 
 
Fluorescent glare, green buff walls,
Faded projection and American Flag;
Young eager majors, bright and scrubbed,
Still certain the future is just a spiral away.
 
Metadata about metadata, enterprise this and that:
The war is still fought at the point of a bayonet
With the blood of young shoulders in the kill zone.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
 
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In order to make an apple pie from scratch,
You must first create the universe.
 
-- Carl Sagan
 
 
 
 
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as the world turns
 
 
 
Free At Last
 
 
 
My breasts swell to a rhythm all their own,
Growing irritated with a bra
That was perfectly fine last week
But now has become
An instrument of torture
That I strip from my body
Once I am safely back home
-- But not before I kick
The heels from my feet
And my toes sink gratefully
Into the soft plush carpet.
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
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eagle feathers
 
 
Desert Song
 
 
I'm driving past a corner
In Winslow Arizona,
Such a fine sight to see,
I'm a girl, my lord,
In a flatbed ford,
Slowing down so the guys
Can look at me.
 
 
Take it easy,
Why should the boys
Have all the fun?
 
 
Do you really think
That the girls don't know
Who really is in control
At the intersection?
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
 
-- Carl Sagan
 
 
 
 
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^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
Remember with sorrow the night of June 21, 1977, when Elvis Presley, the King, opening a show in Rapid City, S.D., got lost in the spoken word section of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
 
Elvis is six weeks from death, heavy-faced and desolate in his white sunburst jumpsuit. A choir croons behind him, repeating the song's melodic motif, bearing him aloft on soft pulses of seraphic cheese even as his eyes close and his sweat runs like tears: "You forgot the words, they'd been changed, you fool. ... Honey? Who'm I talkin' to?"
 
Elvis is in deep, deep trouble, dying on his feet. Fumbled jokes, an abortive sense of interior monologue—the colossal solitude of the man seems to thicken the air around him. "And now the stage is bare, and I'm standing there, without any hair. ... Huh, huh. ... Ah, the heck with it."
 
As if from a mile away, the audience titters.
 
 
 
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on and on and on
 
 
Thinking of Elvis
 
 
 
We die,
We know how we die,
If we are not taken violently,
We die alone in dying houses,
Marking months and days
Until our last sheet.
 
 
Too soon, too soon,
The time is always wrong,
The place, incovenient,
And there are things we must do
Before we can agree.
 
 
Yet we all do grieving die,
If only to ease the pain,
Inevitably, one by one,
We're sucked into the
Raw flame of existence.
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
 
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film critic
 
 
Chick Noire
 
 
 
I'm tired of watching stories
With struggling young men
Who make it to the top
Only with the help of
Some supportive young woman
Who gives up everything
For the love of her man.
 
 
Where are the movies
With struggling young women
Whose boyfriends and husbands
Give up their careers
For the love of their woman?
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
 
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^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
 
-- Carl Sagan
 
 
 
 
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In a breakthrough study, Albert Mehrabian, UCLA professor emeritus of psychology, discovered that:
 
  • 7 percent of any message comes from the words we use;
  • 38 percent comes from our voice;
  • 55 percent comes from our body language.
 
 
 
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manger hunting
 
 
 
In The Shadow of Obi-Wan
 
 
 
Mary she bore Jesus,
As the holly does the berry:
Giving her empty womb
To a father's passing blessing.
 
 
What child is this to an ungodded poet
Who speaks a tongue born 700 years before:
Some lonely semite got himself tree-hung
For upsetting the people in power.
 
 
I have no magic light saber,
No mystic seer visions,
If the gods wish to speak through me,
My pen is all I offer.
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
I have this thing about light
 
 
 
Centuries Later
 
 
 
It is not easy to be the last person
To look into someone's eyes,
To gently close their eyelids,
Shutting out their final light. 
 
 
An hour ago, they walked into the room,
Even ten minutes past, they breathed,
Now, as the sirens cry and doppler,
There is no proof they were here
Except for this cooling, vacant body
Whose eyes no longer see.
 
 
When I am dead,
Will I ever know I was alive?
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
 
 
 
 
 
Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin
of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.
 
-- Carl Sagan
 
 
 
 
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calendar request
 
 
 
 
To Sail Beyond December
 
 
 
 
Candle burning on one December,
Chestnut, Vanilla, and Clove,
Temperature dropping faster than the sunlight,
Border collie at my feet asleep.
 
 
We tumble headfirst into solstice darkness,
Hoping to come out the other side alive,
The earth could care less as she completes another circuit,
Winter to spring to summer to fall.
 
 
No magic, no gods, only Sir Isaac,
Orbital mechanics 'round a small yellow sun,
A planet pair, one blue, one lifeless,
Dancing, arm in arm, through the warm solar wind
Until the candlewick burns no more.
 
 
 
Lisa Jain Thompson
December 2007
 
 
 
 
__/\/\/\/\__
^^\/\/\/\/^^
  
  
 
 
 
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.
 
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