StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXIV

A woman's life, a woman's day,
Healthy foods that aren't,
Skip the diet, still lose weight,
Fifteen minute meals and recipes;

New cancer fighters, don't burn your leaves,
Test your home for any leaking radon,
Look out for melanoma, check both your breasts,
Schedule your annual mammogram;

Take time to assemble a stainfighting kit,
Go from blah to bliss in an instance,
Look great, feel cool in a summer sundress,
Shorts, skirts and that cute new suit;

Get a glowing complexion, a French manicure,
One easy exercise with great results,
Laundry myths your mother thought were true,
Things to do with petroleum jelly;

Bread baking, Christmas clubs and cloth diapers,
Everything old is new again,
Grow your own food, canning and preserving,
Lose five pounds by the very next weekend;

The terrible twos, a baby's skin is different,
Feeds five unless we're talking teenagers,
Beauty is being comfortable inside your own skin,
Either that or a kick-ass red lipstick.

1.

Fallen soldiers, military veterans,
Bands and aging troops
Marching on parade.

Silver star, Bronze star, purple heart in Nam,
The veterans' slashes into the ground,
A gash across our collective memory.

Yorktown, Antietam, a thousand others,
Our bloody multitude watches clear eyed,
Their lives unforgotten.

At the end of Memorial Bridge,
Near the great statues of Valor and Sacrifice,
The ten thousand bikers of Rolling Thunder,
Tattooed and leather clad grizzled sentinels
Of the American Flag and all those others
Who did not come back, ride head and tail light,
A spectacle of stars and stripes, chrome and denim,
Sunburned arms and still firm handshakes.

Five thousand more, maybe six,
Back from the sandbox through Dover Air Base;
Flag draped coffins, silently flown,
Iraqi Freedom, Desert Storm,
And the cold reality of the Afghan,
Women and men who did not hesitate,
Returning home one last time
To parents and spouses, friends and children.

2.

Lay the wreath slowly, play the pipes lowly,
Have six politicians to sing me a song;
We were once where they are,
Roses and poppies on the gravestones,
Row by row by row.

We once grew strong, raised our families,
We loved and we were loved,
A nation's true sons and daughters,
And now we lie, sister and brother,
In the bright alabaster hills of Arlington.

Written on Memorial Day 2009

The current luxury of the genders
To pick and chose their roles in life
Is a recent artifact totally dependent
On the glossy thin veneer of civilization
That declares our mutual equality
And the unintended consequences
Of medical advances that make an option
Out of making babies.

Strip away the passing flash of science,
The constraint of social orthodoxy
And a lingering pretence of modernity,
Our underlying rhythm no longer lies hidden
Beneath our best believed, bi-conscious aspirations
And our ancient ancestory, male and female,
Imposes the persistent necessity of the savannah
Upon our own fragile, unheeding decisions,
Reminding us of bloodlines we would rather forget.

As I am a Sicilian,
The Blood of the Prophet runs in my veins;
This I do not deny anymore than I would deny
The Greeks, the Romans, or the Carthaginians
Who still live within my genome.

I come from a long line of virgins
Who have surrendered to their conquerers,
Including my mother to my father, the American
Who shot me full of British Isles, wandering Moors,
And the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois woman
Who gave herself to my eventual creation).

I am an instrument of humanity,
The current culmination of all we have been
And all we might be;  the ink of ages
Stains these pages, echoes along my words
For God, for Allah, and all mankind,
But especially the women who have given so much
To make me who I am.

The young blond gunfighter sits in his room,
Eternally cleaning his fourty-four
While the confederates retreat outside
In dusty, bloody bandage parade.
Sombrero sneaks in through the open window
While the gunman shoots three compatriots at the door;
God intervenes and cues the music
As the film continues playing with the archetrypes
Until the Good Guy, as close as we ever get,
Finally brings the film to a close,
Spanish desert beneath the end title.

Who would not still bed the young Eastwood?

You may ask me why I believe so fervently in science,
I have a dozen and more whys and wherefores:
A hundred years ago, a century and a half,
Both Sharon and I would be dead by now

-- Gangrene, Scarlet Fever,
Polio, fire, infection, knife and bullet,
Pick one, and we'd be gone without the inventions
Of science and medicine.

My oldest daughter would be two decades dead,
Joining my older infant brother in the grave;
I would be gone for any number of reasons,
Keeping my body from this afternoon's suntan.

If I had prayed in the Nineteenth Century,
My prayer would have been true but short;
Even if I had said novenas for most of the Twentieth,
I would have left last year most painfully.

I owe my continued presence
To generations of scientists who labor in obscurity
Doing the grunt work that kept me alive: 
God bless them all, every one.

A single siren shriek rising in the darkness,
A close encounter of the police kind;
Some D. U. I. or stop sign roller
Called over to the curb for interrogation,
Or a break and enter caught in the act
With the officers wondering about semi-automatics.

Not another sound, not a bullet's crack and echo
Or a fast tire's extended squeal;
A million stories in the extended naked city
But I've lost the plotline on this one
And turn over on my side and fall back asleep.

I awoke at four A. M.,
A border collie by my bed
Pointing out the thunder storm,
Asking if he could come up beside.

With a leap and a bound
And a graceful ten point landing,
He lay between us, carefully fit,
Without ever waking my lover,

A woman deeply slept and unaware
Of the storm's bright rattling rumble;
Checking them both,  my eyes reclosed,
I slipped slowly back into slumber.

If Wyatt would return today,
Who would he run out of Dodge?
Who would he gun down at Tombstone,
Who on a chase through the States?

If Arthur returned to Parliament
To claim the Scepter'd Isle for his own,
How many great Britons would greet him,
How many would rise up in revolt?

If Caesar crossed back over the Rubicon,
Ten Legions behind him to command,
How far down the Italian Peninsula
Would Caesar march without opposition?

If Sitting Bull still lead the Lakota
With the Cheyenne at Greasy Grass Creek,
Where would he send Crazy Horse and Red Bear,
Whose hill next would be the target of his wrath?

If Einstein had been a folk singer,
A Minnesota boy with lyrical intent,
Would we still have discovered relativity
Or leave it just blowing in the wind.

If Elmer had been a grand elocutioner,
Shotgunning words instead of scattershot,
Who would have sung "Kill the Wabbit",
Would Bugs have died without great cause?