StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XL

Would my priest be gay and queer
And count Lord Jesus among his brothers,
Who am I to doubt God's call
Or challenge the wisdom of the Holy Spirit?

I am neither saint nor prophet
And would hardly be called a true believer:
A poet well taught by ancient Muses,
I speak only the words the Gods may give me.

If I speak truth, it's not mine, but theirs,
And if I offend thee, perhaps you need offense:
For if I were little more than a five dollar whore,
At least I've come by it honestly.

Come Fall, the scent of fresh air and urine
Fills the urban nook and cranny;
River dancing zombies lurk in the corners,
Collecting potential candidates
For the autumn runway;

The latest Disney musicals echo down Broadway
As Letterman admits to being heterosexual and caucasian.
Leaves fall, unemployment rises,
The Presidential Couple waltzes away the night
Before the ancient court of old Europe.

At first I thought
There was a skunk in the grass,
Dismembered by some Freddy Krueger predator;
Then I realized it was only
A pair of white and black skates
Left on the lawn when a small child was called in
To dinner or come take a bath,
Bubbles for the girl and a scrubbing for the boy.
No blood, no death, only typical children,
Nothing momentous enough to write a poem about.

Once passed the early stages
Of ongoing middle-age, all women begin
To resemble the post-transition post-ops
Who work stall by stall beside them
in the trenches of professional D. C.;
The make-up, the careful dress
That says I am a person of some influence
In the 51st layer of the bureaucracy

-- Don't fuck with me
Or your income tax might be audited;
And if you speak, speak nicely,
Let witticisms roll off your tongue
Like some well cut brooding hero
In a a successful romance novel:
You can look, but never never touch,
Not on the bus, not on our way to work,
Certainly not in front of so many witnesses.

Princess, prisoner, queen and virgin,
Elizabeth Regina rises above her century
Like some ancient goddess set on restoring
Olympus to its rightful place and majesty.

More powerful than the Pope,
More victorious than Spain,
She endured both Church and Spanish,
Ruler and Mother of empire and poet.

My atoms, my molecules,
This network of electrical pulses
That is I and not thee,
Congregates with firm intent
Within this dusty flesh.

As I am a woman, I am not a man,
As I am alive, so would I remain;
As I am a poet, I shall not grow silent
Until the heavens themselves grow dim
And claim me for their own.

The morning is the color of orange sherbet and cream
Aswirl against the brown on the horizon
That we pretend is not there after the sun has fully risen;
By noon we will decide the gray-tan muck
Is thin summer clouds that will be blown away
If ever the wind should return to stir the atmosphere
Out of its August doldrums.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong
With fucking like minks,
Raising handfuls of rugrats
And living happily everafter;

It's been good enough for millions of years,
More than enough for most of us,
With little indication that anything major
Will change in the near future.

A few less kids per person perhaps,
A few more children living long enough
To enter the human genetic pool
But the basics will basically stay the same

-- I'm not even sure that lesbian couples
Will reduce the body count significantly:
Women are women are female and women,
And babies, a grand thing to hold to your breast,

No matter what your politics might be.

If I am up, I'm writing;
If I'm writing, I best be up
Than depending on my brain
To remember a dozen lines,
After sleep, come morning
When eventually I wake.

Some girls
Like to dress ambiguously,
You can't tell if they're
A hawk or a sparrow.

That girl,
She knows who she is,
She doesn't play silly games
Or run any cons.

She displays her wares
Like a fish monger
In an open air market,
Loudly announcing
Both her species
And her choice of drink.

She's a good catch
For someone who cares,
But meanwhile she'll settle
For the fish of the day.

Some day
She will finally settle down
And the world will find itself
A much duller place..