StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XIV

Buy the ticket, take the ride,
Don't complain
About the bumps and bruises;
Life is not a rollercoaster
Or a brightly colored carousel,
You can't get off and ride again
After your stomach has settled.

There's no money back guaranty,
No refunds or second chances
Once you have spent your golden ticket;
This is it, the whole magilla,
Lying bittersweet on your tongue,
Swallow or go hungry, no never mind,
The big wheel keeps on churnin'.

The still low sun
Cannot overcome the chill
Blowing across the mid-Atlantic;
Clear bright sky
Requiring sunglasses,
Cold enough to send us shivering
Quickly back towards home
To share cups of hot tea
While you work on our dinner;
I check the internet
For any comments on our website
That went up while we were gone.

The sun rises,
The sun sets,
The rivers flow
From the mountains
To the sea.

The moon passes,
The stars twinkle,
The four winds blow
In turn
Through the valley.

Rain falls,
The clouds move on,
The sun breaks through
To dry the land,
The poet writes.

Should the Pope be held responsible
For the scandals rocking his Church,
The abusive priests and child molesters,
The failure to defrock a priest who defiled
Twenty deaf boys?

The Holy See waited four hundred years
To express its regrets for the Galileo Affair,
The church remained silent, tacitly supporting
The German war machine and the Nazis,
Something they still deny.

A half Millenium may pass before the Holy Spirit
Convinces the Pope that there is political advantage
In coming clean about the roving hands of his clergy
And the crimes against humanity they have committed;
Until then the seal of the confessional covers everything.

During Easter Week, the halls of the Pentagon
Are filled with little boys in baggy shorts and tee shirts
And skipping little girls  in pretty springtime dresses,
Their parents, one or both employed by D O D,
Treating their children to a day at the office
And the rest of us to joyous happy squeals
Echoing down our otherwise beige corridors.

Desperate for recognition, the idol singers
Run up and down the American Songbook
From A to B and back again.
Ain't nothing wrong with any of the kids
That a good dose of soul wouldn't cure.

The internet is a great beast
That devours its young if they tarry;
Survival requires the top of your game
And one who rests is soon surpassed
By the idol most favored by this year's gods.

By book and crook and slight of words,
Starpoet rides above the au currant;
Forward and back the poet encompasses
Everything she finds useful, bending it to her purposes
With a wave of her pen and her muse's approval.

At this point in a week or so of poems,
I begin to feel more than a little guilty
That I haven't written a single line
That might possibly be considered softcore
By those who might be looking.

But you can't just stick a cunt in anywhere,
A superfluous tongue is little better than none;
A soft kiss or two here, a lusty bite there,
Means little if the context is wrong,
Even if you mention breasts and clits.

Dinosaurs roam the Discovery channel,
Tyrannosaurs are busy making love,
Sauropods rock the ancient planet
While pterosaurs dominate the sky.

The mammals, if there be any,
Are quite small and insignificant,
Hiding in dark nooks and crevices,
Scurrying to get through the night.

We are the unlikely beneficiaries
Of the dinosaurs unfortunate demise,
The heirs apparent for the next collision
Scrubbing clean the dominant lifeform.

My father loved my mother to the end,
My mother, in the end, I believe disliked him;
They hadn't slept together for years,
Not since her hysterectomy, if I had to guess.

He talked about her, at times, after too much wine,
About how much he loved her as tears filled his eyes.
And how he was at a loss to make her happy again.
I suspect she was not nearly the same woman who watched
My older brother die in infancy while my father was overseas,
And he certainly was a different man than the one
Who left her to fight a war he never spoke of.

As I watched him break down and cry,
I was a helpless as he to recapture the young lovers
Who died sometime during that war.
There are times I can't stop wondering
How it all went so wrong so quickly,
And what I could have done to change it.