StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XLVI

Inhale deeply, blue sky, crisp sunshine,
Fall's last gasp before winter sets in;
The holidays loom, the turkey's ordered,
Dinner is planned for family and friends
As unemployment rises, the government spends
And bullets fly freely in the heart of Texas.

A quarter orbit distant, spring awaits,
Rebirth, rehype, and racial hypnosis,
An annual promise somewhere in the new year,
Daffodils and tulips, new homes and bull markets,
A good job for us all and money in the banks
With no mention of weeds or higher food prices.

What Allah should want of a poet,
I cannot fathom,
But would not question His wishes
Should He choose to speak through me.
But if the Gods won't talk to me,
I'm certainly not going to ask
Or let Their silence blot a line
I have written or you have read.
On this planet, nobody is innocent,
Not even the Gods..

My life, my bed, my body,
You have entered me
And I have bore thee poems
That stand good chance
Of outliving us both,
Should the gods permit
And the rivers don't rise.

"... male and female created he them"
Genesis 1:27

Small
Hormonal
Monthly
Vaginal

Designer birth control
With only a few minor
Side effects

Pelvic inflamation
Life threatening infection
Discomfort
Expulsion
Perforation

Cysts
Blood
More Blood
Cancer and death

But at least you aren't pregnant
Or have to remember
To always bring a condom with you.

Women everywhere live on the Red Carpet,
Judged by men, fetish by male fetish:
Longer hair!  More Boob!
Do something about your make-up
And don't you dare wear that same dress twice!

Life on the runway is the price for being female,
Subject to examination by every probing male eye,
A target of his scorn if she does not measure up
To the personal standards he first framed
During some prepubescent fantasy.

I would gladly walk the runway for my partner,
Wrap myself in the red carpet if she asked,
But she makes no demands I do not make myself,
Accepts all my imperfections and yet still loves me.

Monday morning,
Our bodies are struggling to remember
Why we find ourselve on this bus,
What lies in waiting at the end of the line,
What lingers still from last Friday,
What waits anew to leap upon us
And crash our transitory existence.

I am married to one of Heinlein's Women,
The last of the polymaths, lethal with her both hands:
She can wring the neck of a noisy rooster,
Butcher a hog or field strip a deer,
Cook a pie you want to die for,
Roast a turkey you will talk about for years;
She can fly a jet, repair a tank tread,
Not curse me in a good dozen tongues,
Ride her chopper through the black hills of Deadwood
And send me tumbling humble skelter when she loves me
While watching the wire for the bad guys in the background.

The poet is a radio talk show host
With the universe as her only guest,
A mainlining native dream catcher
With the volume turned up high;
A scourer of carbon fragments and epithelias,
Sifting through the tattered memories and glass shards
That form the undercurrent of everyday life,
An ever vigilant bloodsucker always hungry for more.

Run to her,
Run to her arms,
Let her love wrap you
In bright coloured stars,
Galactical blankets
She will encircle you,
Suns and comets
And gracile nebulae,
For now, for eternity,
For this white fire
that burns within us,
For love, for all of it,
For us.

Life is scary, life is joy,
High tide, low tide,
Tears and children;
The interrupted paths
Of private lives,
Marriage and love,
Flow and ebb:
Are you not happy,
Are you not happy now?