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Sunday, 22 March 2009 01:00
Last Updated on Saturday, 21 March 2009 23:36
| The StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XII (March 22, 2009 C.E.) |
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| Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2009. Back issues are in the Newsletter Section of the StarPoet website. Visit my contact page and get in touch. |
| Spring! But only if you are a calendar. The weather is still quite confused. In the important news, Battlestar Galactica has ended its five year run. But hope rises anew: a new StarTrek Motion Picture is not all that far away. |
| Summerfall wintersprings Patterns meteorological Teeter on the cusp point This way and that Then back again |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2009 CE |
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Poems, a bit of this and that. A link to a rant against Congressional grandstanding. |
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| The American lament |
| Mercenaries |
| I am a professional mercenary Who goes unpaid for what she does best; A writer of well conceived poetry Who must look elsewhere for her living. Art is not generally a capitalistic endeavor, Poetry even less so than a painting by Picasso Before he became Picasso and famous for being so. A duke would buy my presence in his court, A king would demand I write for him, America only pays for vampires and spectacles While her poets go hungry on her streets, Begging for their morning caffè lattes Alongside the fiddlers and vagrant prophets. If I were to sell my soul for fame and dollars, The gods would surely unline these pages beneath my hand. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| I have Immortal longings in me. -- W.S. |
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| everybody's gone surfin' |
| In Defense of the Artful Body |
| Girls in their summer dresses give men A reason to make it through the winter And provide any number of lesbians With perfect eye candy for their viewing pleasure. The seasonal performance of innocence and sex, Writ large on every streeet in every city in the Americas, Is denied by husbands, by boyfriends, and by feminists But watched by everyone whose heart is still pumping. Romance and imagination, fantasy and making love, We are driven by subconscious attractions We seldom understand but pretend to reject When questioned by our spouse or our confessor. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| no need to be lying about it |
| Brown-Eyed Starlight |
| Even I were to swear to my god, What difference would it make to the Universe? I know when I die by body will decay And my brain slip quickly into silence. The film will run out, the stage will be empty, Choose whatever metaphor you prefer, My words on a page, those electrons on the screen, Will be all that remains of Starpoet. In a hundred yars, no one will certainly know |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| The Geek and the Thumb Drive A Finnish programmer who lost his finger in a motorcycle accident has now replaced it with a prosthetic finger that has a USB drive built in. Jerry Jalava can now peel back his "nail" and reveal a 2GB "finger drive" for storing photos, movies and software. Jalava had his left ring finger amputated last summer after crashing into a deer with his motorbike near the Finnish capital Helsinky. Given his profession as a computer programmer, the doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB "finger drive" and Jalava went for the idea. Jerry Jalava's 2GB USB finger looks like a normal finger, but it's detachable and he leaves it inside his computer's slot while using it. The Finnish programmer plans to "upgrade" his finger in the future with one that has a removable fingertip, an RFID tag and more storage space. |
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| in many ways |
| The Poet's Star |
| I am, after all, a dead chick, A classical poet making verse In a hip-hop world of video and youtube. My roots extend back past rock 'n' roll, and the nineteenth century Civil War poet, Back through the New World to the stages of Elizabeth, Winding past the Word of the Gospel of John To the Graecian island that first bore me life. I am a weaver of words, a teller of stories, A singer whose songs are often lost In the flash and A. D. D. of the modern world. For all intents, it is a grave of my own choosing, One I freely accept as the price the gods demand When they allow me to be the poet I am. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. . . I want to achieve it through not dying. -- Woody Allen |
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| one of my more minor defects |
| Splatterings |
| My nose bleeds, Reminding me of my childhood, The ruined blouses, the embarrassed rushes From my desk to the restroom. How difficult to fit in When you are noticably different, Too smart for the room, Too gimpy from polio, And your blood staining everything As you flee to the safety of the singularity. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| a caution for Sharon |
| The Woman Who Loves You |
| In the middle of wet sneezes (Multiple explosions of flu and cold) I think I would like io make love to you. With all my bodily fluids Dripping out my nose, I find myself wondering If there is enough left down below To make me ready for our lovemaking. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| Death must be an Evil - and the gods must agree; Why else would they choose to live forever? -- Sappho |
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| what I stole from Robinson Jeffers |
| Pacific Dreams |
| The red-orange bridge, Ancient by California standards, Extends across the white-capped gate, Connecting the doomed city To the over priced houses In Sausilito across the bay. I sit on the beach, looking back, Eating fresh sour dough and agéd Monterey Jack, Sipping cheap chianti from the Napa Valley When I feel a slight tremor -- I'm on the safe side of the fault supposedly, Free of yawning crevice and liquified landfill. Further up the coast, Mount Diablo looms, A sacred double pyramid high above the western edge, A geological uplift baring the Jurassic and Cretaceous; Shasta blocks the valley's far northern end, Waiting to join St. Helena with lava, rock, and dark smoke. The Sacramento valley flows into the San Joaquin, An alluvial plain overflowing with tomatoes, corn, and sunflowers That is escorted by the Sierras and the Coastal Range, Only to arrive at Bakersfield where it goes no farther As only a smokey wasteland lies up the grapevine to the south. I dream of the Pacific rolling over the sand, Yosemite Falls and her multiple groves of big trees, Drives along the delta, searching for the ocean's breeze, The lights of Sacramento stretched out brightly below me As I descend Interstate 80 on my way back from Donner Pass. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| memory games |
| Dust from the Sawmill |
| The stone skips across the lake, one, two, three, then sinks; I am there with the other third graders on our annual class picnic In William Land Park. The nuns watch us carefully As we play across the open expanse. The boys are playing kickball on a makeshift diamond, While the girls are running and playing with appropriate decorum. I am along the water's edge, alone And some distance from the eye and reach of the nuns, Checking for frogs and crawdads close enough to shore to catch. I have always been the different one -- something the sisters knew but did not entirely understand -- They let me investigate the creatures of the lake And only called me back when it was time for lunch or to go. In the classroom or the shoreline, I amuse myself, Satiating my curiosity -- bell, book, and candle -- With the sisters' blessings. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| An American on Planet Earth I am not a Republican or a Democrat, a Liberal or a Conservative, a Believer or a Non-Believer, nor am I White, Brown, Black, Red, Yellow, Pink or Green. I am an American, a bipedal primate living on the Northern Continent in the Western Hemisphere of a small blue planet we have named Earth: all other classifications pale before this fact. I am the product of the 230 year old American Revolution and the six to seven million years of primate evolution that separate Homo Sapiens from our closest living relatives the chimpanzees. An American, one among many equals, born with the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness ... Read More at StarPoet. |
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| what I inherited |
| Violet-haired, Pure, Honey-smiling |
| The rocks, the waves, The seagulls beneath the clouds, I stand on the precipice, Contemplating Sappho, A taste of salt in my mouth. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| what is and will be |
| All of Us |
| In the quiet of the Pentagon, The building creaks, Rats scurry, cockroaches gather. In the stillness of the night, Footsteps echo, Marshall whispers, Abrams hides. The foundation stones stand firm, Refuse to surrender, Men and Women, Civilian and Military. History will inevitably credit others, Presidents will come and go. We are the building, the building is us. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
| Where kings and presidents are merely footnotes And all the great wars have faded into myth, I will be remembered after my tomb is dust For the words and verses I leave here. -- LJT c. 2009 CE |
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| Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2009. Back issues are in the Newsletter Section of the StarPoet website. Visit my contact page and get in touch. |
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Starpoetby Lisa Jain Thompson.
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