StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XI

I have high hopes my son,
When he finally reaches thirty,
Will discover he's the savior of the world.
I suppose all mothers give birth to this hope
As they watch their sons struggle
To become men.  I should be no different
Than the women who have come before me,
Whose sons, one by one, have gone off to war:
We wait each night for the knock on our door
That will tell us we need to wait no more.

We were all so young
When Dylan played Newport,
Liberals not progressives,
Our pride blowing in the wind.

We pretended we were above it all,
Non-commercial purists
Not looking for a buck
As we went
From coffee house to coffee house,
Collecting our stipends,
Playing our festivals,
Hoping for a record deal.

Then Kennedy died,
The Beatles arrived,
And all that mattered
Was the music,
As if there were ever
Anything else.

Forty years later,
The music still exists
Long after we've forgotten
The purity of the singers' intentions,
The solidarity of our solemn causes,
Or how young we were in our naivety.

A winter storm watch
-- Hey it's March!
Where the hell is global warming?

I want my spring breezes,
Daffodils and tulips,
The first rose wouldn't be bad either.

Tomatoes and zucchini,
Some cucumbers and Roma beans
- Where the hell is my global warming?

It is impossible to travel in time,
To get inside someone else's mind,
To be that woman, that poet,
Rather than this one or the next.

I cannot bend space
Or pull the future any closer
Any faster that it comes already.

I do what I can, feel what I must,
If I am her, I am also them,
If them, then me, then you
And every mother's son.

For all of us, every last one,
I write
So we won't forget.

As Whitman wrote, so I,
Ancient mountain and Pacific edge,
Gulf Stream Waters and Northern ice,
From Earth to Moon to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond,
Soul to mind to warm sweet flesh.

I sing, we sing, in counterpoint harmony,
Revelling in Sappho's electric body,
Wielding deadly harpoon and sharpened spear,
Arm and arm across America,
Ages distant and near.

We sing, I sing,
We write and wrote,
Spewing forth a great deluge
Of word and ego: I am,
We are, Walt and me.

My dog is jonesing me to go outside,
Smoozing my hand, eyeing me expectantly,
Stutter step jumping in anticipatory excitement.

I know what he wants, he knows that I know,
We both know he prefers
That his momma Sharon to take him outdoors.

I'm not entirely trusted yet
To be out there on my own,
And when I take him, Cedar hurries,
Rushing through his business
To get me safely back into the house.

So I take him out in bright sunlight,
Never in twilight or late at night;
If I try, he's liable to herd me back inside
And what's the point of that?

How can two women born transsexual,
Lesbian women living as partners,
Married in the eyes of earth and universe,
Be part of the political establishment?

Yet, if the transgender activists
-- The part-time men in weekend dresses --
Are to be believed
-- And who are we to doubt them? --
We are the pawns of Fascist Capitalism,
The spawn of Lucifer and Beelzebub,
Traitors to the cause (whatever that may be).

That may all be true,
But at least we are doing something
Instead of twittering away our lives
In some whiny chat room.

Spring, at last,
The last one was almost
The last daffodil,
The last Lincoln rose,
The last the poet stood
Watching buds turn into flowers.

This morning I look forward
To lingering over
Multiple decades of spring,
Not knowing which one will
Be the very last.

A winter storm warning remains in effect
From noon today until noon tomorrow;
East of the Blue Ridge, up from the deep south,
An upper level disturbance up the seaboard comes.

Accumulating snowfall ahead of the low,
With heavier amounts falling close to the Chesapeake;
A significant amount of weather, including strong winds,
Making travel hazardous to your commuting health.

Film at five, six, and eleven:
Woman assaulted at Falls Church Metro,
Students shot dead at D. C. high school,
Snow, snow, snow, snow; snow, snow and more snow!

The world is all a-twitter
-- What can I say?
Everyone who is everyone
Is using the latest hula hoop.

Why twitter is better than facebook
-- Leave the reasons for
Later and the academics --
As of now, for the rest of us,
It's more than quite obvious
That all God's children gotta twitter.