StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XIII, No. IV

Won't you lay me down in the tall warm grass
And do your best to slowly unword me,
Free me of these multi-syllable sentences,
Reduce me to inarticulate moans and vowels.

You are the one, you know, who frees me,
Who protects me from the bean sidhe,
Who covers my fears and drives away
My terrors and  my nightmares.

I'm so afraid, the way I feel,
That some day I will awake,
You'll be gone and I'll be left
Here alone slowly dying.

After the revolution,
We will not all be leaders,
After the revolution,
Some of us will do the grunt work;
After the revolution,
Some one will take charge,
Some one must make decisions,
And some of us will not be happy;
Revolutionaries will sell out,
Acquire their well enclaved homes
   And summer cottages
As suits their new positions
   And authorities;
The rest of us will still struggle
To pay our phone and cable bills,
Some of us will still be starving,
Cut off from any menial work,
As we all watch the fruits
   Of our revolution
On our iPhones and iPads,
Now with iOS-5 and iCloud,
But perhaps - and who am I to say? -
When the revolution is finally  over,
All our iPhones and pads will be free.

The gods may create and destroy the world in one day,
You just never know and who is the poet who would claim
To know the minds of the all powerful gods and demons?
If, in the vastness of the universe, each earthlike world
Gives birth to their own non-created hypostasis whose
Power and glory is conspicuous, signal, and noteworthy,
The heavens are filled with billions and billions and
Billions of almighty alternatives to the various gods
Who were born and then ignored during mankind's slow rise
To Civilization, Theology, and the one true God,
The infinitely pure maker of heaven and earth and all humanity,
Who keeps us all in existence on this singular world.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (January 2012)

In the name of love,
   I you create,
Heaven and Earth,
Disease and Pestilence,
   Death and Life
And the promise that tomorrow
I'll make good on everything
If you don't piss me off
All that much.

I am a valley girl by birth,
The Pacific was ninety minutes to the west,
Lake Tahoe a couple hours to the east,
Los Angeles was south four hundred miles,
Mount Shasta two hundred twenty north;
Below me was top soil and adobe,
Above me the moon and the universe,
I lived between two major rivers
On what was the eastern edge of Sacramento;
The State Fair grounds were in walking distance,
Open land was only a few blocks away,
At the end of August, in the weeks before school,
I would slip through the guards to the midway.
Throughout the summer I would ride my bicycle
To the beginning swells of the Sierra,
Or down through the traffic to the city center
Where my mother's friends would recognize me
And tell her what about my adventures;
The valley was small town then and my freedom
Was bound only by the vague limits on my audacity
And the as of yet undiscovered borders of my imagination.

As I write this poem, we have had no snow
With Christmas still a few days away;
As you read this poem, blizzards may have descended
And Metropolitan Washington brought to a stand still.
I run on deadline but on a time line that comes do
Four weeks or more before the particular newsletter
Is posted to StarPoet or sent to your email.
It's a game I play with myself to keep me sharp,
I want at least four newsletters in the ready
If something should come between me and StarPoet,
Say perhaps surgery to remove a bad gallbladder
Or some nasty infection that intends to kill me.
I find it much easier to assemble the weekly poems
Than I ever do writing them; I know how to work
Around writer's block - I have ways to jump start
The poet and then discard the trash - But sometimes
A week might pass before I become myself again
And I need to be much happier than that.
Silence may be golden but a quiet muse is
A pain in a working poet's ass.

Sliver moon,
Horns away from sunrise,
Her shadowed lands clearly visible
In the earthlight;
New moon for Christmas
Ahead of the New Year,
Election looming on the horizon

Words are Inadequate

If I were to find faith, and lose my beliefs,
There are those who would take me in,
And those who would be somewhat less christian,
But god, if he does exist,
Would be copacetic, I think.