Starpoet Newsletter Vol. IX, No. XXXI

 

 

 

Ozone,
Canine nose,
Restless Intensity.

 

Lightning,
Thunder rolls,

Full metal watchfulness.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

the mirror

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mascara to mascara,
   Face in the mirror,
Twenty-four hours
   Between applications.

 

Or is this still yesterday
   Lost in a fugue,
My mind adrift
   Unstuck from time?

 

There is comfort in routine,

   Repetitive rhythm,
Uncertain of reality
   Or the direction of the arrow.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

folkish humor sort of stuff

 

 

 

 

 

Dead bullfrog in the middle of the road,
Belly up like Biology Class;
I half expected a guy in a lab coat
To be doing his dissection thing,
Pointing out the ovaries and the heart
To students who’d rather be most anywhere
But a classroom cutting up amphibians.

 

‘Twasn’t near any water that I could see,
But it look more froggy than a Mr. Toad:
Its legs flayed spread and still not flattened,
Lying dead center in the right hand lane,
Avoiding all those cars who did not wish
To do the final road kill squish
And confirm the frog had croaked.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

that damn mirror again

 

 

 

 

 

Putting my face on this morning, I wandered back
To when I was fourteen and barely makeupable,
Looking into a mirror and thinking it would be two years
-- An eternity it seemed then – until I would drive a car.

 

This was California, where the only question was always
Whether the car would be new or a parental hand-me-down;
Some of the boys bought old Ford Fairlanes,
Working on weekends to make them run;
The girls, we all borrowed one of our parents
To drive to school or cruise the hamburger stand
After telling our parents we were studying with friends
(I could walk to the library -- the Beach Boys misspoke.)

 

By the spring of my fifteenth year,
The country had survived the Cuban Missile Crisis,
Watched our president taken down in Dallas,
Cried as his mahogany casket was drawn to Arlington;
We lost ourselves in our music, chasing the dream
Across the beaches along the Pacific Highway,
Filling the Sierras with out bright shiny cars
As we scurried between Tahoe and the rocky sands
Where the river slowed, then back through the passes
Above Jackson to walk among the big tree groves
Or down the Calaveras foothills to Angels Camp and Twain,
All the while searching for our prince and finding only
Shot filled frogs who could no longer jump worth a bean.

Eventually both the sixties and my virginity passed,
One very much more quickly than the other;
I left California, returning to visit my only brother.
Some times I wonder what the memories might look like
If, sliding back without pain, the world and I were young again
With everything I have seen still intact behind these poet eyes.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

possibilities unknown

 

 

 

 

 

 

In another world, another planet,
I could have been Joan of Arc,
Well gilled and sleek of body
As I lead the great schools
Against the dolphins.

 

Or the mother of all, generations past,
Whose womb has born ten billion souls,
Whose DNA fills every last cell and vein
With the birthright of all humanity.

 

And yet, I may be the missing link
Between who we are and shall be,
A historian of unintended talent
Fated to drift unrequited
Through spacetime.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

archetypical rant

Take that cake and shove it,
I don’t want to play revolution anymore;
Take all your righteous demands and indignant slogans
And march right back to whatever classroom
You sprung from.

 

We’ve all lived on the streets,
We’ve all been in a war,
We’ve all hated our parents
And been abused as children:
Dysfunctional is the species’ middle name.

 

Get over it.
Wash dishes or wait tables for a while,
Work on an assembly line,
Get your hands dirty
And get a real education.

 

Little that you learn in a college classroom
Has any application to the world outside,
Where bullets fly in anger and people die
Without the right to appeal,

 

And if you miss a suspense date
Or make the wrong decision,
You might be fired, or dead,
Rather than be asked to go see your faculty advisor.

 

The world is not run
As a non profit corporation,
Life is not a federal grant,
Academic honors will not put
An ounce of food on your dinner table

 

Or keep your children from thinking
You are as dumb
As you thought your parents were,
Or as irrelevant
As you think I am.

 

When the sun rises come tomorrow,
I will be here: bring it on if you can;
But always be prepared  to execute Plan B
When you lose out here in the real world
Where all us grownups play.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

light verse

 

 

 

 

 

Gray worm rounding down the tracks,
Slipping through the mist on the curve;
Fog rising over the shallow run
While the sun remains hidden
Between clouds and horizon.

 

Railway Express on the track next over,
Racing the metro train for the Pentagon,
Both of us will stop at King Street Station
Before descending into the District
Across the Potomac River.

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

looping

 

 

 

 

 

 

Golden days before they end
Whisper secrets to the wind
-- Roy Orbison, It’s Over

 

 

I wrote you a poem I never sent,
So I doubt if you have read it;
I published inside my thoughts
And scribble its remains on paper
That I have long since misplaced.

 

I promised you my love forever
Until rivers dried and suns grew red;
Then our paths slowly unentwined,
You went your way, I went mine,
And our love was put aside.

 

Now we sit before our screens,
Passing rigorously neutral notes
That skirt both memory and feelings,
Scrupulously avoiding any suggestion
Of what was and might have been.

 

The music of the bright midway carousel
Still echoes in half-remembered dreams;
Walking away proved far more difficult
Than anything we have ever done
As we surrendered our star-dusted love

 

 

Lisa Jain Thompson
August 2008