StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXVI

My father returned from the Second Great War,
A signal officer in China who flew over The Hump in a C-47,
Only to slip back into civilian life and decades of boredom
Interspersed with two children and a wife still moutning
The third one who died while he was away along the Yang't'ze.

Trading the Himalayas for the Sierra, he lived
The remainder of his years in the Central Valley of California,
Smoking cigarettes and drinking wine and beer,
Not unlike the others of his generation
Who saw things overseas and did things in the war
They spent the rest of their lives trying to forget.

My father never went overseas again
And seldom even left the confines of the Pacific Coast,
Spending the years before his death
Contemplating the comfort of fermented grapes
And wondering whatever happened to the smiling young wife
He left behind in Sacramento after the whole world went crazy.

Bible school teachers,, nurses, moms,
Decorated generals and fighter pilots,
Heaped up in the twist of mangled wreckage,
Side by side on Morgue Tables now lying;
Wives, husbands, sons and daughters,
Wrong place, wrong time, we're gone:
A dozen children left parent and motherless,
Pigtails and tricycles, swingsets and monkeydbars.
Cooked some breakfast, surfed the web,
Perhaps even some light cleaning, then they all
Turned the corner, heading for the metro
WIth a wave and half-noticed, repetive gesture;
And ordinary afternoon for half-bored commuters
Focusing on their paperbacks and crackberries.

Spring rain, again, again, and again,
Gray skies that are never going to clear up,
Blue skies that forever have gone away;
If I had wanted to build an ark,
I would have payed someone to do so
(Although, in truth, I would prefer
A smaller, more nimble ship).

This constant drench of tornado and flood watch
Quickly grows irksome and quite boring;
If you're ever going to drown me or blow my house down,
Just get it over with or I am leaving now.

It's not me, it's you
-- OK, OK, so I'm lying,
It really is about you,
It's always been about you,
Your slow stupid brain,
Your even stupider ideas
And that pouting idiot mouth
Always running on and on and on
About the most insipid,
Uninteresting vapid subjects
That always star only you
And only you and only you.
So it is you, after all,
It's always been you.
Feel better now?

If I were to believe
 What I see in Lifetime movies,
I would shoot any man
 Who tries to get close to me;
The odds seem pretty good
 That nine out of ten
  Want only to rape me
And the other one will first
 Take all my money
   And then begin his assault
  
-- Except, of course, for the good man
 Who sweeps me off my feet
After we spend the first half of the film
 Arguing and runnng off from each other.

This seems to be the way
 Of all true Lifetime marriages
But I'll hold of any final judgement
 Until I see next Saturday's schedule film:
The good looking guy
 Is an independently wealthy astrophysist
   On sabbatical from Livermore Labs
     In California.

 Offtimes I'm little more than a Mona Lisa,
 An enigmatic smile that hints at something
 Other than can be seen on my carefully
 Constructed canvas: a poet for the ages,
 Now she's here, now she's not,
 A twisting line of words and images
 Drawn into her singularity only to be released
 In a burst of dark energy that reveals little
 About her or her inwardly workings.

Odysseus, Caesar, Hannibal, and Ziyadat Allah,
Belisarius, de Hauteville, and Dwight David Eisenhower,
Washington, Jefferson, Ayonwantah, and Tatanka Yotanka:
My Grandfather all, mongrel Mediterranean bitch that I am,
All the way back to the unknown Sicanian who left his art
In the cavern at Addaura beneath the slopes
Of Mount Pellegrino near Palermo.

Their linear inheritor, a jigsawed poet, remembers
And admits them all to her genomic bloodline.
Father, behold your daughter, who honors you
With her poetry, and the endless line of women
Who remain unknown to both poet and history.

Elvis's ex son-in-law passed away the other day,
Morphine and demerol were among the usual suspects;
Nobody could remember the last time he really sang,
All of his testimony seemed to be court or T. V.

Some say that once he was the fairest in the land,
Another that his talent was squandered and dissipated;
Now he's the most well known recent dead rocker,
More famous than that blonde guy who took his own life;

Than Lennon when was shot coming back from the studio,
More so than Presley leaving the building by way of his toilet;
Bigger than Morrison, Hendrix, or Joplin,
Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Richie Valens,
Marvin Gaye, Sam Cook, Judy Garland,
Billy Holiday, Glen Miller, or Robert Johnson.

da do run run da do run run

Even people you don't like
Have to die -- they just seem
To take a hell of a lot longer
For some reason,
Especially if they are your ex.

Imagine a mosquito
That lives forever,
Refreshing itself
On a mainline artery
Promptly at 5 o'clock each day,

How long would you let that skeeter
Suck your blood out
Before you began sketching out
Various scenarios
To kill it good and dead
Once and for all, forever more?