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Newsflash:

StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. VII

Sunday, 15 February 2009 01:00 Last Updated on Saturday, 14 February 2009 21:27

The StarPoet Newsletter
Vol. X, No. VII (February 15, 2009 C.E.)

Already February is a memory, taking with it the White Knight who rode in with it. Funny how fast the shine grows dull when face with the reality that is government and real pollitik.

Love, madness
Infinite joy

Life, lost hope
We and us

Downstream the cool air
Blows across
The early evening

The ocean dances
Beneath the moonlight

We return to the river
Both and us, all and one
And continue

— Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2009 CE

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-- Ralph Emerson

moment from real life

The Girl in the Blanket

I was singing as I left the metro station
-- Walk Away Renee less a few or two words --
The girl was laying in a blanket at the bus stop,
Zoned out on ecstacy hours before the crash.
She said she was twenty-one (Looking no more than seventeen)
And gave me a phony name from some B-list hollywood starlet.
She'd spent the previous day watching Obama celebrations
Until a friend grew tired of her and drove away,
Leaving her without money or a way back home from the cold.
She wanted to sleep, to be left alone by the world
And did not want a ride or to be bothered by commuters
On their way to redeem their cars from the metro parking lot.
I did what I could, given her condition and the circumstances,
And called a woman's shelter, staying until they arrived,
Then I crossed the lost girl off my list of responsibilities
And went off to buy dinner at the multi-cultural grocery,
Picking up some fresh bolgogi, some frozen pizza and corn tamales,
Sure in the fact I would be home in time for House and 24 that night.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

Question: How do you make a Democrat pay his taxes?

Answer: Appoint them to the Cabinet.

what it is

Kangaroo in Three Quarter Time

Sometimes, sometimes not:
Do you want to do some Pineapple Slices,
Or would you rather stick to the Kumquat Humidor?
While we're waiting for you to decide,
And we can't wait all night, the second show is at 12,
Here, have some Tuscan Blue, or perhaps you prefer
An orange pipette of Rectangular Sunset.
Youre choice, darlin'; your money, honey,
Choose.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

what do you want to be when you grow up?

Fiddle Dee Dee Dee

The message may not move me,
Or mean a great deal to me,
But hey! it feels so groovy to say
-- Paul Stookey

If I were a rock star,
Poppa oom poppa oom mau mau,
I'd sleep all day and play all night,
If I were a rock and roll star.

If I were a rock star,
Poppa poppa oom pappa oom pappa oom
I'd tune my guitar and sing for my money,
If I were a rock and roll star.

If I were a candidate,
Vote for me Vote for me Vote for me
I'd promise you heaven and ask for your money,
If I were your nominee.

If I were the president,
Poppa oom poppa oom mau mau,
I'd forget what I told you and move to the center,
If I were Commander in Chief.

Papa-papa-hoooo
Doot doot doot
Papa-papa-papa-hoooo
Doot doot doot
Papa-papa-papa-hoooo *

* The Rivingtons Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow
(ahh to be 13 again)

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.

-- William Faulkner

pure StarPoet

The Trouble With Titan

Dark and mossy, the rain continues,
Dropping, twisting through Titan's skies,
Bombarding Delaney Station,
Replenishing her hydrocarbon lakes.
The rain nevers stops, the sky never clears,

Saturn's great rings remain unseen
Except in those joyous, fragmental glimpses
When some grand mother of all storms clears
Even the inmost marrow from our ragged atmosphere
And we breathe deeply the sun and other stars.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

BE SURE TO GRILL THEM

TOKYO - Blowfish testicles prepared by an unauthorized chef sickened seven diners in northern Japan and three remained hospitalized after eating the poisonous delicacy.

The owner of the restaurant in Tsuruoka city, who is also the chef, had no license to serve blowfish and was being questioned on suspicion of professional negligence, police official Yoshihito Iwase said.

Blowfish, while extremely poisonous if not prepared properly, is considered a delicacy in Japan and is consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets. Iwase said the seven men ordered sashimi and grilled blowfish testicles at the restaurant Monday night.

Shortly after, they developed limb paralysis and breathing trouble and started to lose consciousness — typical signs of blowfish poisoning — and were rushed to a hospital for treatment, Iwase said.

"It's scary. If you go to a decent-looking restaurant that serves fugu, you would assume a cook has a proper fugu license," Iwase said, using the Japanese term for blowfish.

Blowfish poison, called tetrodotoxin, is nearly 100 times more poisonous than potassium cyanide, according to the Ishikawa Health Service Association. It can cause death within an hour and a half after consumption.

a belated valentine

Brass Bed Afternoon

The afternoon is bright and bitter,
The air, a chilling atmosphere
Well troubled by a winter gust
That scapels through my unwilling flesh
And sends me shuddering back quickly
To home and your waiting arms.

Given the choice between the antartic
And the adult content inside our house,
I am choosing home,
Always and ever plus a day,
To watch the ravage winter by your side.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

for my wife and lover

Each Together

On a world with ten billion,
We are unique, you and I,
A matched pair of polymaths,
Each with different talents,
Different skills, different brains,

Each together, each apart,
We dance across eternity
Until our dying day
When the universe will weep
And the stars grow dim
And time itself come full stop.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

-- Amelia Earhart

puncturing balloons

Allow Me to Ignite Your Cigarette

Never the world would ever be
As we were before their births:
Darwin and Lincoln in 1809,
A single day in February, the twelfth.

How the earth must have shook,
How the heavens trembled
To greet such men who dared to lift
The veil from humanity's eyes.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

the poet's boast

Long Ears

I have long ears and better eyes
And seldom believe the words of teachers
Who insist that truth is theirs alone.

I have followed the river and seen the ocean,
Gone upstream to where the waters start
And know well both rain and snowpack.

Tomorrow the sun will rise and the earth revolve,
The heavens will fill with moon and stars,
And I will tell you all the wonders I have seen.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

There is no sin but ignorance.

-- Kit Marlowe (or Marlow, Marlo, Marloe, or Merlin as you prefer -- or perhaps you are a Marley devotee)

calendar counting

Tricentennial Rag

Damn! I'm going to miss the Tricentennial,
Post probably, most surely, maybe not
-- A hundred twenty-eight doesn't seem unreasonable
When you are dealing with all of Eternity.

There a lot of Fourths between nine and seventy-six
To celebrate before the three hundreth,
So many fireworks, so many magical cures
Before I can watch the big one.

Presidents will be elected, serve and leave,
Wars will be fought and lost and won,
Even Halley will have come and gone,
But perhaps, just perhaps, not me.

(Or even I)

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

more than history

Neither Marble Nor Gilded Monuments

His bloodstained clothes,
   His stove-pipe hat,
The bullet that killed him,
   The bed on which he died.

Locks of hair, pieces of bone,
   Two half dollars that covered his eyes,
Some Mathew Brady fading photographs
   Barely concealing his pain.

Everything in its place,
   Catalogued in a museum,
A dead memorial
   To our ever living president.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2009)

Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.

--Quentin Crisp