Home planet
About StarPoet
- The Poet, Herself
- FAQs
Poetry Road
- Poem Cycles
Fiction Stories & Such
Prose Opinion & Reviews
Starpoet Newsletter
Outside Universe
- Poetry RSS
Index Find It
- Site Map
- Power Search
Contact

Newsflash:

StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XV

Saturday, 09 April 2011 22:00 Last Updated on Saturday, 09 April 2011 23:16

The StarPoet Newsletter
Vol. XII, No. XV (April 10, 2011 C.E.)

no work, no pay, only useless congress and indifferent president

sunlight has turned to rain
starless night falls
around us
morning might well
delight the eye
but tonight
we are the cosmos

isa Jain Thompson c. 2011 C.E.

round and round the congress goes, each one chases the weasel, the senate thought it was all in fun, pop goes the president.

starpoet full thrust

Fifty Billion Chances

Fifty Billion planets,
Five Zero, zero zero zero,
Followed by six more zeros,
Write it out: the number of worlds
In the Milky Way Galaxy
Suitable for carbon-based life.

The only way we are alone is if
Some Destroyer of Worlds has killed off
All the other sentient beings in our galaxy
For fear they may raise questions
He is not yet ready to answer
About his less than omnipotent godhead,
An angry deitific purge of every race
That refused to bend their knee
To his advanced technology.

We are not the center of creation,
Nor should we expect we should be;
Look up at the clear night sky,
The Milky Way is but one
Of a trillion galaxies we can see;
Gaze upon the stars,
Imagine if everyone one out there
Is looking back at us looking at them
If they can see our pale sun
And even paler blue globe.

We are not alone, children,
And soon we will have to learn
To deal with it.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

Baseball men agree with the philosopher that perfection—which means a pennant to them—is attainable only through a proper combination of opposites. A team equally strong in attack and in defense, well-proportioned as a unit, with, of course, those intangibles, morale, enthusiasm, and direction—that is the story of success in baseball.

-- Moe Berg

the last of winter

That Which Exists in Numerous Sins

The world never looks near so perfect
As that first morning after a heavy snow,
Before the road splatter browns the white drifts,
Before the sidewalk is shoveled and the car dug out.
Perfection is an ofttimes fickled mistress,
Often willing to show you an ankle or a bit of cleavage
But reluctant to actually have you touch her;
She recoils at the suggestion of human interaction,
Humanity threatens her carefully edited reality.

Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

poets

23 April 1616

A part of me died in 1616
As surely as I leaped from the cliff
Two thousand years before;
While my bones can still be identified,
Wrapped in my face and aging flesh,
There is no need to undig my resting place,
Neither ocean nor dark earth yet hold me;
Nor have I plans to exit quietly
Like some bit player come and gone,
I live a well documented and examined life
As permanent as any moon tugging gently
On the tides.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

Good fielding and pitching, without hitting, or vice versa, is like Ben Franklin’s half a pair of scissors—ineffectual.

Control, natural or acquired, is a prerequisite of any successful pitcher: he must have direction, not only to be effective, but to exist.

-- Moe Berg

when i am unfurloughed

Rail Line

Pentagon City, Crystal City,
Braddock, King Street and Van Dorn,
Back and forth, forth and back,
Shuttling home to work.

Ronald Reagan National Airport,
Franconia-Springfield and the Pentagon,
Dropping out of the Old Dominion
Into the yaw of Washington.

The Examiner and the WP Express,
Whatever's on our smart phones,
Sending emails, sending texts,
Keeping touch with the day ahead.

- Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

Many times a pitcher without apparent stuff wins, whereas his opponent, with what seems to be a great assortment, is knocked out of the box in an early inning. The answer, I believe, lies in the bare statement, ‘Bat meets ball’; any other inference may lead us into the danger of over complication. The player himself takes his ability for granted and passes off his success or lack of it with ‘You do or you don’t.’ Call it the law of averages.

-- Moe Berg

politics

Perhaps He Cannot

I have been engaged, damn it!
I've made multiple speeches,
Appeared regularly on television,
And even been on a trip to South America

-- I ask you --

Don't I still look good on a poster?
Don't you still get wet when I speak
In all those friendly Democratic forums?
And still you question whether I can lead?

- Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

traditional starpoet

The Wayfarers

The sand rolls against the city walls,
Billows up over the ancient gate and empty guard towers;
Inside we wait for our world to end,
For the golden ships to disgorge their creatures
Once the storm has passed.

Dropping from heaven like a sun god's chariot,
Two days ago they landed, only to stand silent,
A gleaming monument, to taunt us with their presence
And drive endless speculations over their planet of origin,
The purity of their intentions.

Tomorrow the wind will grow quiet,
The sands recalm to deceptive stillness;
The question asked will be unquestionably answered
As they emerge from their wondrous ships
To speak and walk among us,
Bug-eyed little green monsters as they might be.

--- Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

With Montaigne, we conceive of Socrates in place of Alexander, of brain for brawn, wit for whip. And this brings us to a fascinating part of the pitcher-hitter drama: Does a hitter guess? Does a pitcher try to outguess him? When the pitching process is no longer mechanical, how much of it is psychological?

-- Moe Berg

don't cry for me california

A Shadow in the Sun

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into a world uncaring
For its odd and strangely formed children:
I have always been lame,
A gimpy legged daughter who chose
Life over death or paralysis.
A cherry lip, a goodly eye,
I have always had a pleasing tongue
And tread a path without return
To live with patience, as prisoners must,
Caught tight within this sometimes reluctant flesh.
I have always played hurt.
Do not blame my angrier angels,
Their secret mischiefs little bother me,
A nuisance I have grown use to;
All in all I've had the better draw,
Almost run the table with seldom more than
Brain and pen and a tendency to come through
In the clutch.

-Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

life begins in a drizzle

Diamond Rain

There are no good adjectives for drizzle,
Neither rain nor sun but only gun metal gray;
Would we a thunderstorm I would watch enrapted,
All rumble of windows and bright lightning strike;

Were we a Nor'easter, a deluge would follow,
Great sheets of water and windy loud rattles,
But Opening Day greets us with damp, gloomy drizzle,
A soggy, well groomed diamond and shivering fan.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

The catcher squatting behind the hitter undoubtedly has the coign of vantage in the ball park; all the action takes place before him. Nothing is outside his view except the balls-and-strikes umpire behind him—which is at times no hardship.

-- Moe Berg

starpoet's vision

Cactus Flower

A wild cactus stalks my dreams,
Pricking my sleep with images
Of Joshua Trees and red Martian plains,
Needling my sleep to finely honed visions
Of empty spaces and starlit nights
That swallow me whole, pen and poet,
Then spit me to disrupted wakefulness
And the long slow walk to dawn.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

cherry blossom time

Festival

Here come the cherries,
Here come the tourists,
Fireworks and Potomac cruises,
Parades and winding traffic;

The slow steady sludge
Of couples and families
Walking languidly around
The light crimsoned basin
Shrouded by the cool gray sky
Of an unforgiving northern sun.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2011)

The players are not interested in the score, but merely in how many runs are necessary to tie and to win. They take nothing for granted in baseball. The idea is to win. The game’s the thing.

-- Moe Berg