StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXXVI

A young man in the Pentagon,
On his way to get his morning coffee,
Paused when he saw me
And went back to hold the door open
As I returned with mine.

It wasn't a man/woman thing,
Just a handsful/hands empty reality
That common courtesy recognizes
And resolves in favor of the one
Whose hands are full.

That's not to say he wouldn't have
Otherwise opened the door,
I am a woman, he is a gentleman,
And this is the South after all,
Besides I am several decades his elder.

Eighteen men died below this house,
More were injured when North met South
And the future of our country was in doubt.
Now all you see are housing developments
And the occasional scavenger search for souvenirs
Or a Civil War artifact that will sell well on EBay.
The bloody battlefield has all but vanished,
The names of the men have all but disappeared,
No one knows any longer, no cares who lost their lives
Defending this hallowed ground so the union would survive.
Without a Thucydides, a Caesar, or a Homer,
History soon dissipates in the daily firefight,
Memory fragments into monuments and guidebooks,
Brave soldiers into the background for movie screenplays
And poets looking for a hook to bring her poetry to life.
What are a few dozen troops when millions are dying?

I do not want a god
Who is so obsessed with the devil
That he won't take time to hear our story,
There are men enough for that.

If he wishes me to pursue the devil,
I must first start with those at the top
Who would corrupt his words for their own ends
-- But they claim to be on his side, do they not?

Call me Ishmael, if you must,
But I would rather be a free woman on planet earth
Than an impressed slave in any heaven
That mainlines testosterone and patriarchy.

So many people lie entrombed in their churches
Without even a glimmer of humanity.

I need to share this
or either god or the devil
will become angry.

There is a reason for this fire,
a purpose for Sappho's whispers
that wake me in the night
and refuse to stop shouting
until I finish the task at hand.

The gods need someone to do for them
and they've chosen me to explain
the light of these burning frescoes
that decorate my mind.

They give me my brushes,
a pallette of many colors,
and charge me speak
for both the universe
and the mysteries of the heart.

I may not get to heaven,
I may not reside in hell,
there may be only darkness
when finally I give up,

But I will have done
what the gods have given me,
done it well and that's enough.

High yellow so high it's olive,
White so tanned it's brown,
Whose imagination drew these lines
Between apes so obviously the same?

Who is so white to not have a drop,
Who's so black that no Jew or Italian
Ever crept into the woodshed, so pure
That never a massa took advantage?

Believe what you want
But Eartha Kitt was correct,
Underneath the skin we wear
We're nothing but moist pink flesh.

Men stick it in all manner of holes
When nothing else is available;
Most men end up getting married
When the boys dry up,
The knotholes grow old,
And the women stay wet for them.

That is the nature of the beast,
No matter how loud their denials:
Women must be women and wait until
The boys escape their adolescence;
Without us there would be no human race
For our boys to play their games with.

The building still gapes in my memories,
The bodies drifting upward with the smoke
That drifted down the corridors and into my lungs; 
I can see still the flashing emergency vehicles
As they rushed down the interstate and Columbia Pike
Towards the flames and limestone rubble
That I was slowly exiting minutes after I saw
The bright red and yellow fireball and the dark cloud
Of burning jet fuel that followed the explosion
And quickly enveloped the hallways of the Pentagon.
I can recall the faces of those of us who escaped
And the memories of those who did not;  I know
Where we stood when that light flashed through the window
And the concrete and steel rumbled beneath our feet:
I know where we died, 125 of us, for our country,
For our children, and for our Liberty.

The highest billows float far beneath me,
The roughest storms, deep below,
My greatest enemies become the groundworks
For golden ships that sail the stars.

A midsummer moon possesses me,
Charges me to take flight before
The heavens grow sternly dark
And the politics, incommodious.

These scribblings,
This semblance of purpose
That builds great star drives
To challenge both sun and planet,
Soars higher than my birth would suggest
Be proper for a woman of my credential
Save for Sappho's loving embrace
Claiming me as her daughter;
From this ancient poet ova,
Shakspear and Whitman
Have built their starchild.

Without The Depression,
   My father would have finished college
   And gone on to an entirely different life
   From the one that led to me;
Without the dustbowl,
   His family would have remained in Kansas
   And not moved to the great central valley
   That gives life to California.
 
If my mother's father
   Had returned to Palermo as his parents wanted,
   Grandma would have never
   Given birth to my mother in Chicago;
If Grandpa hadn't moved
   In the thirties to Sacramento,
   My mother and my father do not meet
   And I am not here.
  
Without the great war,
   I am older;
Without my older brother dying in infancy,
   I would not a first born be
   And all would be changed and unsimilar.

Five million years of chance and random
   So the poet could sit here
   Making order of her world.

The desert before me,
Filled with cactus and Joshua Trees,
Is home to lizards and rattlers
And stray coyotes
-- No place for a woman
Let alone a poet.
I go where the muse leads me.

I have climbed the high Sierra
That sequesters California,
Wandered the north coast highway
Above Point Reyes,
Travelled the central valley
From Shasta to L. A.,
Lost my heart up in Tahoe,
Found true love along the bay.

And now I hesitate
Before these sands that fall below me,
How shall I capture
This dry stark land, this drifting red world
That is now my home;
What strange gods wait to muse me on Mars?