Newsflash:
Sunday, 08 March 2009 01:00
Last Updated on Sunday, 08 March 2009 00:31
| The StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. X (March 8, 2009 C.E.) |
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| Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2009. Back issues are in the Newsletter Section of the StarPoet website. Visit my contact page and get in touch. |
| Appalachian Spring, echoing through the sterero, is still before us. The Shenandoah are still covered with snow. Even the crocus and daffodil have paused their upward thrust while we wait out winter's last graspings. |
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The sea comes and goes We shall watch the sunrise Afterwards we will sleep |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson c. 2009 CE |
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| Poems, but what did you expect? If you want something different, you might try this column I wrote over at TS-Si: Lamplighter, Kemble's Cascade, and Life. |
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| connections |
| Low Earth Obit |
| Sepsis, viral encephalitis, Esophageal and pancreatic cancer, Stroke, respiratory failure And multiple myeloma: Such are the manner of our passing. Prostate, ovarian, We are just names on a printed page, |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| [The poet must be equipped with] the historical sense ... nearly indispensible to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyone his twenty-fifth year ... a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence ... [For] unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living. -- T. S. Elliot. |
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| grunt work |
| Between Dimensions |
| When I am in the world, The world is mine; When I unanchor, I drift From universe to universe Until I resettle in my body, Molecule by molecule. If you find me away, Please leave me a note And I'll try To get back to you Someday When I Am better focused. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| waiting until May or June ... |
| Welcome to Iraq |
| So many faces, so many names I just can't remember; So much time has passed, So little since my classmates in Viet Nam. Another quick death in the Sandbox, I know I knew him, worked with him; We probably went to same promotions -- I probably went to his -- Stood in line at the Pentagon together. And yet, when I hear his name, I don't remember anything But emptiness And think of my son Still stationed in Iraq While I've been here. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| Bad poets borrow, good poets steal. -- T. S. Elliot |
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| winter hanging on |
| With Nasty Little Birds |
| A broken bone cold rales the morning air, Enumerating each scar and bodily insult, Daring the still dark sun to rise To the occasion and do its February worst. We are to be winter again this week, Undoubtedly confusing the eager forsythia Just beginning to form its yellow buds: Spring needs wait for some less curdling month When branches are filled with brightly colored cardinals Fighting for space with squadrons of hungry squirrels And Red Tails make their nest high atop the treeline Only to be vanquished by a formation of angry crows |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| Letters From Earth Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal ... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately. Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh -- not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court. -- Mark Twain, Letters from Earth |
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| thumbing through Spring |
| The Lighter Side |
| The spring fashions are in the catalogs, Reminding me I should lose twenty pounds; Easter is over forty days still distant, We still might have another winter storm. I could use another new swim suit, Something with overall slenderizing control, Fifty-six percent Lycra, forty-four Spandex, A shirred bodice and midriff to shape me. But there is still that twenty pounds And probably ten or more afterwards; Life would be oh so much easier If someone would invent a magic pill. Then I could worry about the shape of my nose, The bags under my eyes, the arthritis in my hand; Maybe do something about the attention disorder And the rest of the laundry list in my head. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| historical perspective |
| From Indenture to Poet |
| I knew my father, he knew his, Two generations back, my living memory; Three generations, we fought a Civil War, Five generations, we remember the Revolution. Such a short chain, a handful of family, So many people lost, so much more to do; I would not forget them, nor would I be forgotten, We've made our mark on this western continent And forged our future with our lives. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| You are the music while the music lasts -- T. S. Elliot |
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| recursion |
| The Recursive Poet |
| This poem was taken out of context, I never really wrote any of this; I may have mentioned the "the" in this sentance, But there is no way I would have used it twice. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| what the men don't understand |
| The Vaginal Vault |
| The path on which the girls were attacked, The sidewalk at night, unlit and alone, The parking lot outside the mall, Searching for your car, The corner of your street some sunny afternoon: The difference between male and female Written out large in the life of the world; A world not beholden to academic theory, A world not bound by political correctness Or the outrage of preachers and planeticians; A planet where random men assault random women And our neurobiology and physical realities Devise cultural structures and explanations; A planet where women are seldom entirely safe From the fantasies of young men acting out. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| I wish I were close To you as the wet skirt of A salt girl to her body. I think of you always. -- Kenneth Rexroth's translation of a poem by Akahito |
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| bits, pieces, this and that |
| Gut Check |
| I would give up pork, If the universe would reveal itself; Maybe even red meat For the grand unified theory; Fish for the answer to why, Dairy for eternal life, And I would still have chicken left To buy my way out of hell; I would be more righteous Than a ballplayer on steroids, If I would meet William Shakespeare. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
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| telos |
| A Just and Honourable Cause |
| God has created the perfect cloaking device, One that conceals him from everyone outside, -- His presence cannot be seen, His handiwork can be evolved -- What once was God's is now an engineering problem For some industrious scientist to work out; Perhaps his children have grown all too old For childhood stories to seduce them. God has created the perfect cloaking device, One from which he cannot escape; Our creation continues without augmentation While God can only watch from the outside. |
| — Lisa Jain Thompson (March 2009) |
| Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause. It is what the majority appear to do, like people groping in the dark; they call it a cause, thus giving it a name that does not belong to it. That is why one man surrounds the earth with a vortex to make the heavens keep it in place, another makes the air support it like a wide lid. As for their capacity of being in the best place they could possibly be put, this they do not look for, nor do they believe it to have any divine force, but they believe that they will some time discover a stronger and more immortal Atlas to hold everything together more, and they do not believe that the truly good and "binding" binds and holds them together. --Plato, Phaedo |
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| Copyright © Lisa Jain Thompson 1948-2009. Back issues are in the Newsletter Section of the StarPoet website. Visit my contact page and get in touch. |
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Starpoetby Lisa Jain Thompson.
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