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Newsflash:

Starpoet Newsletter Vol. VII, No. XXXVIII

Monday, 18 September 2006 14:52 Last Updated on Monday, 18 September 2006 17:25

The

Starpoet

Newsletter

Vol VII, No. XXXVIII

Time yellows the trees
Curls the leaves

Of tomato and pepper plants
Winter whispers
In the soft fall breeze
That cools the night
And doubles
The morning pleasure
Of finding you beside me

Lisa Jain Thompson C. 2006

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<><><><><>

The new theory is that Republicans want to lose the House,

because two years of Nancy Pelosi in the spotlight

can only help their chances in 2008.

Democrats have caught wind of this

and are now deeply paranoid

that they're getting set up.

Which tells us that Democrats still think,

after Abramoff, the war, and everything else,

that the Republicans are smarter than they are.

-- Shailagh Murray
Washington Post

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A little late this week ... some minor surgery and such threw me off for a couple days. I'm fine now.

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just another love song

My Lover

My lover,

Who watches over me,

My wife,
In states other than Virginia,

Worries that her erratic poet

Fluctuates between well and less so,

Sometimes disconnected from the slipstream

Of the world around her.

So anchored, I try
To remain coherent
And not drift through spacetime

Lost along some distant rim of thought;

Whether I succeed or not,

She loves me,
Having made her bargain

With the poet
Who loves her more
Than her meager skills can portray.

Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2006

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more introspection

Alien

If I were normal,

We would agree I'm crazy,

Since obviously I wander
Well outside the norm

-- I have never been much

At staying inside any lines

But those of my own devising.

The world deviates

From my reality

And I cose to believe

My own observations

Rather than those
Imposed by Divine Right

Or force of arms.

Would I be otherwise,

I would not be a poet.

Lisa Jain Thompson

September 2006

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Constitution Day with George W. Bush

You have the right to detention without charges.

You have the right to remain unidentified.

You have the right to be refused legal representation.

You have the right not be told the nature and cause of the charges against you.

You have the right not to be informed who your accusers are or to confront them.

You have the right to a secret trial at the time of the President's chosing.

You have the right to be refused a jury of your peers should the President so decide.

You have the right to cruel and unusual punishment.

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politics

Thimble Theatre

I’m W the President Man
I’m W the President Man
I’m strong against tribals
Cause I reads me bible
I’m W the President Man

I’m one tough fundamentalist
Which hates all terrorists
Wot ain’t on the up and square
I biffs ‘em and buffs ‘em
And always outroughs ‘em
And none of ‘em gets nowhere

I’m W the President Man
I’m W the President Man
I’m strong against God’s rivals
Cause I reads me bible
I’m W the President Man

Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2006

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The Star Chamber

The Star Chamber (Latin Camera stellata) was an English court of law at the royal Palace of Westminster that sat between 1487 and 1641 when the court itself was abolished. The power of the Court of Star Chamber grew considerably under the House of Stuart, and by the time of Charles I of England it had become synonymous with misuse and abuse of power by the king and his circle.

James I of England and his son Charles used the court to examine cases of sedition, which meant that the court could be used to suppress opposition to royal policies. It came to be used to try nobles too powerful to be brought to trial in the lower court..

Charles I used the Court of Star Chamber as Parliamentary substitute during the eleven years of Personal Rule, when he ruled without a Parliament. Charles I made extensive use of the Court of Star Chamber to prosecute dissenters, including the Puritans who fled to New England.

On 17 October 1632, the Court of Star Chamber banned all "news books" because of complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years' War in English newspapers was unfair.

In the Star Chamber the council could inflict any punishment short of death, and frequently sentenced objects of its wrath to the pillory, to whipping and to the cutting off of ears. ... With each embarrassment to arbitrary power the Star Chamber became emboldened to undertake further usurpation. ...

The Star Chamber finally summoned juries before it for verdicts disagreeable to the government, and fined and imprisoned them. It spread terrorism among those who were called to do constitutional acts. It imposed ruinous fines.

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the surgery bit

The Price of Admission

Watching my heartbeat
Track across the screen,

Steady, even peaks

From here until eternity:

My life on a monitor,
Pulse and blood pressure,

The amount of oxygen

Flowing in my veins.

So many signs, so many tracks

Just to ensure I don’t check out
While the doctors all focus
On the slowly growing lipoma

That invades my person
To cling annoyingly to my back.

Minor surgery, minor sedation,

Out for the moment,

Awake in minutes

With the body snatcher thwarted,
The skin remolded,
And the hospital totaling the bill.

Lisa Jain Thompson
September 2006

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surgery bit 2

Depainment

Percocet is not as good as Vicodin,

Both are less engaging than Oxycotin;

Morphine works wonders

To magic pain into oblivion;

Heroin I have not tasted
And I find it too soon for death,

But I hear they both work well

When living hurts worse

Than the alternative.

Lisa Jain Thompson

September 2006

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Bush Not Changing Minds

I think that Americans have pretty much stopped listening to him. One reason is that you don't have to listen to get a sense of what's going on. He does not appear to rethink things based on new data. You don't have to tune in to see how he's shifting emphasis to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there is no new data, only determination.

He repeats old arguments because he believes they are right, because he has no choice--in for a penny, in for a pound--and because his people believe in the dogma of the magic of repetition: Say it, say it, to break through the clutter.

There's another reason people don't listen to Mr. Bush as much as they did. It is that in some fundamental way they know they have already fully absorbed him. He's burned his brand into the American hide.

The Democrats' mistake--ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush--is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They've been sucker-punched by their own animosity . . . They heighten Bush by hating him. One of the oldest clichés in politics is, 'You can't beat something with nothing.' It's a cliché because it's true.

-- Peggy Noonan

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This Just In

HOUSTON (AP) - When the "Katricians" rise up in violence, Houstonians had better be packing some serious heat.

That's the inflammatory message of a new gun-shop commercial on the radio that gives Hurricane Katrina evacuees a vaguely alien-sounding name, and advises Texans to take up arms to defend themselves against crimes committed by the newcomers.

"When the 'Katricians' themselves are quoted as saying the crime rate is gonna go up if they don't get more free rent, then it's time to get your concealed-handgun license," warns the radio ad by Jim Pruett, who co-hosts a bombastic talk-radio show and owns Jim Pruett's Guns & Ammo, a self-styled "anti-terrorist headquarters" that sells knives, shotguns, semi-automatic rifles and other weapons. As Pruett describes the dangers posed by "Katricians," glass can be heard shattering, and a bell tolling ominously.

Though evacuees seethe over the generalizations, they are no longer surprised to hear them expressed. This month, Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, a cigar-chomping humorist and musician running a populist campaign, joined the chorus of anti-evacuee sentiment.

"The musicians and artists have mostly moved back to New Orleans now," Friedman said. "The crackheads and the thugs have decided to stay here. They want to stay here. I think they got their hustle on, and we need to get ours."

But at Jim Pruett's Guns & Ammo, in a strip mall on the northwest outskirts of town, the staff said business was booming, thanks in part to Pruett's ad.

The store has always sold its gear with a sense of humor: Its website plays "Bad Boys," the theme from the television show "Cops," and advises, "Be polite and courteous, but have a plan to KILL everybody you meet."

"The storm washed up a lot of people who live off crime and getting the loot," he said. "The people who are here and have gotten jobs, that's a wonderful thing. They're Houstonians now. But the people who are still unemployed a year later, who are just sitting around doing nothing, they're 'Katricians.' That's the way I see it."

Survivor

The siren of disaster
Sounds over and over in my dreams;
In the narrow window
Between the plane and the siren,
I see the passengers aware
Of the briefness of their lives;
I watch the nose of the airplane
Burst through the Pentagon walls
Where my friends are in conference
Then continue on to the empty office
Where I worked only three weeks before.

I see faces,
Then have to check the lists
To see if they are alive or dead,
Faces in the hallway,
Faces in the airplane,
Faces in the street
Running from collapsing towers.
Firefighters,
Emergency techs,
Policemen and green-suited soldiers
Scurrying over the smoking rubble,
Searching for bodies,
Searching for pieces,
Searching for voices
To lead them to survivors.

I survived not of my own doing,
I survived by luck and chance,
I survived for no reason than I
Was here and not there
Where the plane struck,
Veered left not right,
Sliding its broken hull
Through the old asbestos Pentagon,
The post-war cement and pillars,
The ancient leaking windows,
That contained the flames,
The explosion,
The burning fuel
That snaked through our corridors,
Destroying all and everything,
Building and airframe,
America’s innocence,
And my memories.

I know all the answers,
I’ve listen to all the therapists,
I’ve talked to veterans
Of other wars and bloody lanes,
It doesn’t help;
The war rages on,
My friends are alive,
My friends are not
And I am here,
Trying to remember
What they looked like,
The last words they said to me,
Wishing them no pain and keeping mine
Tightly partitioned inside my mind.
The war goes on
Until I crumble to dust
And join my friends at last
In the arms of mother earth.

Lisa Jain Thompson
September 11, 2006
Arlington, Virginia
Outside the Pentagon

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My corpse, if all goes well,

Will be used and wasted,

An aged wreck,

Sucked dry by years,

Exhausted by adventure,

Love, and romance.

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PEACE

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