StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XII

I find God's purposes obscure
As does he, I suspect, find mine;
I chose not to deny his existence
And he, in turn, does not seem
To interfere with mine.

I am alive, of course, here on Planet Earth,
And he is not; busy, I supose
With some other distant world
Of more import in the Cosmic Schema;
Perhaps even one in some other galaxy,
He has so many to chose from, afterall.

If he would like, we could do a coffee
Or a lunch someday, using the the time
To discuss our mutual plans,
Where they coincide and where they diverge;
Who knows, we might even decide
We actually like each other.

But, in the meanwhile,
Until he and I can meet in 3D,
Would I profess to believe what I do not,
I would surely be damned,
And he would be the first of all creatures
To tell me so.

Jain, not Jain,
Not Christian not Jewish,
Not Buddha, Not Mohammed
Not Tom Cruise's Scientology;
Neither Pope nor Mullah,
Or any flavor of Rabbi,
Not a pagan or a treehugger,
Or Hindu, Druid, or Mother Earther:
A human creature living her life
Who thinks she would enjoy it more
If all the preachers would just shut up, go home,
And leave her alone to contemplate the universe.

I ain't never been
A party girl from Fort Worth,
Never running with the rougher sort
One step over the wild side.

I was a wide-eyed innocent
Who covered her cultural deficiencies
By being quick on the uptake,
Dimples and good bone structure
Didn't hurt much either.

Oh look, it's dark outside,
Someone's been screwing with the time again;
Spring forward, fall back, who can remember?
Even my dog has trouble for a week or so
Figuring out if his dinner is really, really late
Or if the sun has gone askew again.

Every move the sparrows watch,
Hoping for a stray crumb of stale dry bread
Or a hand scatter of sunflower seeds
Spread over the accumulated snow.
Three days after the record snowfall,
Three feet covers the ground, aging white,
With another storm blowing up and across
The eastern seaboard from Cleveland.
The well produced country music videos
Still sing of love and rusty pick-up trucks,
Whille the birds of the air huddle and scurry
For any food and warmth and shelter the humans
In their midst might inadvertently provide
From inside their well feathered townhouses.

When my grandfather stepped off that ship
In New York Bay near the Jersey shore,
Two world wars lay before him in nineteen oh four,
The twenties and the depression were only possibilities,
and Neil Armstrong was three decades from being born.
If Grandpa had not boarded that ship in Palermo
Half a year before he turned eighteen,
If he had not left his parents and his friends
To take that westering voyage into the unknown,
The world would be short one American poet
And Sappho would still be whispering in vain.

The sharp crisp sounds of would be trannies
Walking the streets in their well dressed heels,
Going so far and no further:
The surgeon's knife muffles that,
Separating the men from the women,
Stilling the loon's faint lonesome cry,
"What about me?  What about me?"
With the pragmatic reality
Of finally getting on with your life.

Every time, on every world,
They break every bone in my feet,
Every toe, every arch,
Taunting me with each blow.

Phalanx, metatarsal, cuboid, cuneiform,
Lateral, Medial, and intermediate,
Navicular, Talus, and Calcaneus,

One by one, sometimes two or three,
Fifty-six bones in total, all in all:
I am acutely aware of each downstroke.

Talk damn you, tell us what you know,
Are you the one they say you are,
Whose presence whispers through the darkness
And wreaks death and destruction on our brothers?

The hammer falls again
And I hear the crush of bone:
I no longer allow myself to feel.

A rifle butt, that one a club,
A dozen hammering curses
Demanding that I answer.

I scream and tell them to fuck off,
Daring them to continue and do their worst,
Knowing I will return and kill them one by one.

We are the slowest,
Most weakly muscled primate on the planet,
But the most broadly brained and adaptable;
We survive by the grace of our neurobiology,
Having conceded the battle of tooth and claw
When we chose to stand upright and leave
Our foot trails across the great African plains;
Six billion of us born from handful of hominids
Who would not even recognize their children
As their own, strangely hairless ape we've become,
Although they might give us a kiss if we asked nicely.

Something violent has wreaked havoc here,
A whisper darkness in the deep undercurrent;
What is this I see slouching towards Beijing
Gaudily dressed in my forefathers' clothes?

An ancient spectre walks along the waterfront,
A-rattle with chains and unproven mettle,
Pretending to be the linear descendent
To that title once held by our betters.

The fog of politics and hidden agendas,
Carefully closeted, boxes within boxes,
Ripens like some gangrenous cattle flesh
That fouls the air when the refrigeration fails.