StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XVII

Into the daffodil fog, my darling,
Echoed with waking birdcall,
The slickwalk night hangs damply,
Shrouding a drowsy morning
Very much in need of coffee.

To work, to home; to home, to work,
The commute grows darker by the moment;
Dreary eyed passengers, alert friendly driver,
Rolling inexplicably towards sunrise
Through the mist.

When I was a young girl,
A virgin almost,
The Beach Boys and Four Seasons
Had chased all the girl singers
Out of every rock and roll band,
Replacing them with boy falsettos,
Echoed and double-tracked,
Who very nice sang soprano
Without any worry of a monthly visitor
Or the lack of same.

They may have had a point,
However much boys club and feeble,
Because when the music opened up
And the girls took command,
Grace fucked the lead guitarist
As well as the rhythm,
Eventually coming around to the drummer
And maybe the other lead singer;
Stevie Nicks did the same
And Janis appears to have fucked everyone
Who ever said a kind word to her.

When I was a young girl,
Still a virgin almost,
The pill, that pill,
Was barely available,
Rubbers were kept
Behind the counter
(If you are of a certain age
Ask your parents what a rubber
Might be, or your grandparents
If you still visit them)
And HIV and AIDS were only
A disease found in monkeys
-- But pregnancy was very real
And abortion quit illegal,
Even if you knew a doctor
Who might be willing.

When I was a young girl
And not quite a virgin.

She lies beside me in bed each night,
Dreaming of all those men who have died
-- Bullets in the head, fragments from an explosion.
Airplanes and choppers that have fallen decades past,
And those still recent.

They accompany her through the years,
Passengers on a silent battlestar
Winding its way from the green quads of Kent State
To the American victory at Khe Sanh,
From the unhistoried heroes lost in the cold
To the B-52 raids over the sands of Baghdad,
And now, the border mountains between the -Stans.

In the unlit recesses of the aging night,
Where her sleep intersects with deep memories,
They die still, bleed out in her arms,
Scream out as the enemy removes fingers and toes,
Feet are broken, brothers killed,
Missles, grenades, shells and gunpowder,
A knife in the gut, a blade across the throat,
The gurgle of blood flushing a fleeting life
Back to earth, sand and jungle.

The ones she could have saved if only
She had been faster, smarter, stronger,
If she had not been caged, tortured,
And taken so long to escape,
If she had only not taken revenge on the enemy,
Gone straight back to the states and her family,
Who would have lived, who would have died
If she had been making the decision,
If she had been in charge
And not that jackass back in Saigon
Swarming the troops around the city for his protection
Instead leading them in pursuit of victory,
If she could have just been there.

So many indecisions, half-hearted directives
From congress and the president covering their butts
While American lives are wasted,
So many whiz kids, their generation's best and brightest,
With academic explanations and facile analysis
And evaluation without any experience or knowledge
Of the troops on the ground, the young men and women
Who die hoping there must be some reason for this madness
They find themselves, some pseudo-political philosophy
Or real politik objective that makes their deaths worthwhile
Even if victory is not achieved.

Their voices rattle around the darkness above our bed,
Clamoring to be remembered, demanding recognition
That she can only give in those moments
When nightmare pushes it way to consciousness
And she, half asleep, cries out in pain
For all the wandering souls who must go unnamed:
I weep beside her.

Spring, the weeds ahead of the flowers,
The squirrels caught up in their nests raising babies,
The lone butterfly fluttering after the scent
Of violets and poet's eyes, the flies still trapped
Wherever flies winter, bees nowhere to be seen.

Come night, the cats will be caterwaulling
To the background chants of crickets
And the high chitter of the hungry bats
Out shopping for their evening meals.
Spring, before the long heat of summer,
Rakes over our carefully seeded plans.

Angelina and I share half a heritage
-- Iroquois and English --
That explains where our high cheekbones
Come from, but what of our rather full,
Our overly healthy, our quite unskinny,
Our luciously fat, sexy lips?
What evolutionary hand or eye  
Produced that fearful symmetry?

I don't want to go through
What I must go through,
I've buried enough already;
And yet, as I would not die,
I would yet weep.

The body takes longer to unlimber
As the unacountable decades slip away;
My youthful promise, shall we say, is past,
The future filled with loudly crackling joints
And minor muscle insults that take weeks to heel.
The lonely, smartalecky child has become
An aging voyeur through joyless sybartic world,
A connoissseur of scientific discovery
In a world based on personal revelation
And self-ordained prophets pedalling
Revolutionary change as variable as the weather.
Powers decay, light leeches color
From even the most discerning imagination,
Replacing youth's bright hues with the dull gray
Of compromise and attition; everything goes,
Everything fades, the poet struggles
To reornament the persistence of her vision.

Discover the exquisite Land of Smiles
Conjure up spicy delicacies, majestic elephants,
Golden Buddhas and colourful hilltribe villages,
Witness traditional hilltribe life in a H'mong village,
Support the rehabilitation of the endangered Asian elephant,
Step back in time to the ancient kingdom of Sukhothai,
Capture the adventure, the essence of timeless Thailand.

Peruse Bangkok's temples and palaces,
Join a cooking school in Chiang Mai 
And wander around the ancient ruins,
Discover Thailand's golden age, 
Baby elephants in Chiang Mai,
Experience H'mong hilltribe culture,
See the beautiful Kwai
And enjoy a cruise on the Chao Phraya,
Have sex reassignment surgery
In the mission hospital at Phuket,
Watch the tsunami wash in over the village.

Bangkok's ancient heart bursts with life,
Visit her Emerald Buddha beneath the Grand Palace;
Learn to cook at Chiang Mai then bike ride
To the ruined city of Wiang Kum Kam
And the Temple of Wat Chedi Luang
Where you will chat with friendly monks and shop;
Climb up the sacred Doi Suthep mountain,
Have massage and a tradition khan toke dinner
As you are entertained by authentic tribal dancers.

Travel to where forest and rice field meet,
Admire the embroider aprons, colorful sashes
And silver jewellery worn by H'mong women,
Gain insight by watching their display
Of song and dance, complete with barbecue dinner;
Laugh at the cute baby elephants in Sukhothai
Surrounded by monuments and lotus flowers in full bloom,
Visit the conservation center, take a ride on an adult,
Be dismayed at the ladyboys out on the street.

Be sure to visit the Hellfire Pass Memorial,
Built to honour Allied POWs and Asian conscripts
Who died constructing the Thai-Burma Death Railway,
Take an authentic saamlaw ride to the Jeath War Museum
And walk across the infamous Death Railway Bridge;
Gather along the Chao Phraya River to watch the post-ops
Struggle through airport security as they board
The airplanes that will take them back home to America,
Have your nails done by a genuine Thai girl.

Somewhere inside of me,
The seeds of my passing are taking root,
Some genetic flaw or weakening stress fracture,
A deep welled cancer or undiscovered virus
That I will catch from an overseas traveller
Who introduces himself to me
At a fundraising barbeque orer chicken wings.
So it goes, on and on until it doesn't
And no one knows when their doesn't starts.