StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXXVIII

Along the treeline behind our house
The bats patrol at twilight;
Three, maybe five, wingéd mice
Remove any trace of annoying insect
That might otherwise
Bite, suck, and propagate.
There ain't a skeeter safe for miles
From our airborne troopers
Along Evanston Road.

The poet is just a high gloss grifter,
Albeit one with an ancient pedigree,
An expert con run with erudite precision,
A carefully engineered amalgam
Of Sex, Love, and War
Guaranteed to elicit an emotional response
While the brain deciphers the surface text.

What can I say, guilty as charged,
But you still must catch me at my art
As I take you on this, my magic ship,
Across bright swirling starfields
And dark vortexes filled with spacetime
And ten million twisted rhymes
Tracing back to a world of crystal spires
Erected many ages from now
After the universe begins.

I have a theory
That high heels were designed
To make women happy
That they are lying on their backs.

It seems like the simplest explanation:
What fool would believe that it's all about
Shapely calves and thighs
And a few more inches of height?

Occam's razor should be applied
To something more
Than a woman's legs and underarms;
Perhaps those few inches between men's legs
That they use most often instead of their brains
Would be as good as any a place to start.

Not even a perfect stranger
Knows who I am
Or where this arc will take me;
Even the President of the United States
Is powerless
Should he find the time to ask.

I plunge through the heavens
Out and across deep space,
Too distant to ever see clearly,
Too bright to ever deny.

I am up and bound beyond Tau Ceti,
The last great hope of Planet Earth
In a continuous line
Of hopeless last and greatest;
I am a dark-eyed woman
Striding along the shoreline
Beneath a full and rising moon,
A multi-tentacled singer
Howling my words
Against a dying red sun.
I am here, a moments catch,
Before eternity.

The sun is shifting,
   The birds are later,
The darkness lingers
   A little bit longer.
  
The sliver crescent
   In the eastern sky
 Is bright and still
    Well shadowed.
 
Twenty degrees below,
   Venus clearly dims
Before the sunrise
   Now in progress.

I think I wore this blouse this week
To work last Monday morning,
But it's the only one
That goes with this skirt
And I could not find another.

This Monte Carlo chain that is my life
Unsurprisingly continues to surprise me;
No matter how well I plan and anticipate,
There is always something new for me to learn,
Some previously unknown frontier
To visit and make my own.

I'm certain my last thoughts will be
A litany of questions I want to answer
— Why is that happening?
— What do you suppose that might mean?
Ending with one last fading objection that
I need much more time if you expect me
To piece this all together.

Proper women neither spit, nor burp,
   Nor make rude noises,
Not even in the safe confines
   Of a bathroom stall.
  
A proper woman does not show her anger,
   Pound the table to gain attention,
Or shout obscenities
   When she does not get her way.
  
We have men enough for all of that
   Without adding women to the list
Of those who refuse to ever grow up;
   Someone, after all, has to provide
      The adult supervision.

Go forth and multiply,
Said God to the H1N1 virus,
I give you dominion
Over all the earth,
At least the part now filled
With hairless, mewling bipeds.