StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XXXV

No one aims to be a minor poet,
No one thinks I'll be less than great;
I would shatter, my soul grow cold,
If I would shackle my skillful art
And not attempt to ever reach that
Self-same air that Shakespeare breathed.
If I were only kin to Marlowe,
My career would be quite quickly done;
If I thought I was less than Whitman's daughter,
I would slit both wrist and pen than ever write again
Or have to listen to Sappho's incessant demands.

Memories of war,
Imaginations and bravado,
The rockets' red glare,
The sniper past my ear,
The dense Nam jungle,
The hot Iraqi Air,
The twisting Aftgan mountains,
The faceless endless cold war
Where unknowns died
So Moscow would fall,
The liberation of Palermo,
Normandy, Pearl Harbor,
Berlin and Hiroshima,
Gettysburg and The Wilderness,
Antietam and New Orleans,
Lexington and Concord,
Bunker Hill and Yorktown,
A thousand watch-fires camped,
My uncle's bloody eyes,
My mother waiting for the duration,
We shall die to make men free.

I am a valley girl,
Sicily or Sacramento,
A woman of ocean breezes,
Fishermen and Cioppino;
A woman who needs family,
Generations up and down,
A girl who married,
And had children of her own
Only to divorce when the world
Came crashing down upon her;
I remain a woman of valleys,
Deep waters and Pacific Salmon,
Rivers twisting through the bayou
Until they meet the bay and sea.

A shaggy-haired eccentric with arrested social skills,
A bookish misfit not worth caring much about,
He never went out, his windows were most always drawn,
He was quite solitary but not really a recluse, 
A principled conservative and a member
Of the Federalist Society his 1st year of law school,
A diligent backstage worker, dependable as hell:

Phone calls, texts, e-mails and Facebook posts:
Does anyone know where Lauren is?
Everyone who tried to contact her learned
That no one else could reach her;
No signs of struggle, but her keys, purse
And phone were there -- she wasn’t;

Then thrown in a trashcan, a dismembered body,
Only the torso, everything else is missing,
Head, arms, legs: Six weeks later,
They haven’t been found and the shy boy,
Mercer Law, Class of 2011, he's linked
To a hacksaw found on the property,
A saw with Lauren’s DNA all over it;
Meanwhile back in Bibb County Jail,
Charged with murder and dismemberment,
The shy, awkward boy isn't talking,
Safe behind his 5th Ammendment Rights.

From cradle to grave,
The government promises,
Takes our money,
Promises us everything,
Confiscates our labor,
Returns little or nothing;
We are the country,
We are the people,
We are the nation,
Not the government;
Raise high the roof beams
And shout out loudly,
"We are America!"
And take back our country.

Two Tears in a Bucket


The world is peopled with ghosts and memories,
Stories of ancestral greatness,
Whispers of tribal wanderings,
Primal myths of primate anxiety,
Ancient gods and all too real snakes,
Tigers that walk in dark-filled jungles,
Full flighted raptors with the remains of our children.

Church hymns rumble, shake our bodies,
Capture our souls, ensare our hearts,
Brick by brick, gold and ivory,
Lungs full of incense and stale perfumes,
Burials, bondings, births and bereavements,
Flowers strewn carefully on our graves,
Hopes and fears and everyday dreams,
Promises of bottomland passed down
Station to station.