StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. V

The world's newest tallest building
Has opened in Dubai,
A glass and metal spire called Burj Khalifa,
Filled with luxury apartments
And important business offices,
Two thousand seven hundred seventeen feet
Of newly poured, reinforced concrete
Twice the height of the Empire State,
Casting its shadow across the oil rich desert,
Counting each barrel until the money runs out.

Washington Monument, red light gleaming,
A clear winter morning in the Capital
Viewed from the Pentagon across the Potomac,
Low gray fortress of America.

The birds are a-chillin' in a heavy Bob Dylan wind,
A-flying down south as fast as feathers can
Like Grandma's remedy of cod oil and goose fat
Mainlined directly into the winter's jet stream.

It will soon rattle your windows
And send chills to rock your walls,
A great north wind out of Ohio,
A-blowin' across Appalacia
To the Captain's barrier islands,
Everything in its path on the run or a-dying.

The sun teases bright whispers of clouds
That trail its rays along the horizon,
Belaying the snow in the distance
Coming complements of Superior
But trojan'd for the moment
By a few days of threat and shiver.

God may be the dark matter
That holds the universe in place,
The dark energy that eventually
Tears us into sub-atomical pieces,
The great forboding horseman
Who brings the ultimate apocalypse
That kills both the souled and unsouled,
The merciless devourer of a billion worlds
On which humanity struggles to survive;
God may be all of this, if he does exist,
Or he too may be powerless to change
The fate of this physics driven universe.

All our childhoods are all uncomfortable,
Imprisoned as we are in our small, everchanging bodies
All awash with barrages of cascading hormones;
None of us are special, there are no perfect parents,
Only a child's imperfect memory of their parents being human
In the presence of the children.

Here be the Artic Clipper,
A little snow, a lot of cold,
Some joker's idea of a southern winter,
All numb fingers and frozen toes.

Would it be spring tomorrow,
We would watch the wild thyme grow
Along the path behind the rose bed,
Two lovers entwined in but a single soul.

A winter masque of bright white sunlight
Cloaks a bitter chill that cuts through
Flesh and breath, cracking bones and brains,
Reducing all alternatives to I, me, and simple survival,
A hot bath, and a warm cave with the firepit ablaze.

God is steeped in Jesus' blood,
A not so silent co-conspirator
Who demanded humanity put his son to death;
Not the first time he has been involved
In a ritual sacrifice of flesh and blood
To mitigate his anger at the Universe 
When some world refuse to submit
To his every demand or self-centered whim.

I have no truck against God or Jesus,
They have a right to exist as much as anyone,
But I draw the line at some alien species
That attempts to impose their will on humanity
Or threatens to destroy the planet on which we live.

This is my planet,
This is our universe as much as theirs,
And although their magic may work at first glance,
In the long run, our own science will win out
And the gods, such as they were, will be long since gone,
Undoubtedly looking to take advantage
Of some other, less advanced civilization
Who still might find it necessary to believe in them.

The blood seeps slowly between my thighs,
Reminding me of my moist humanity
As it shatters any pretense of an existential existence
Separate from my flesh and body.

If I pray to god, so too do I bleed,
I contemplate eternity only if my lungs still breathe;
I am alive by the grace of oxygen
And the magic of the carbon atom.

Evolution has made me conscious,
And my genome has made me poet:
Yet my blood still flows and spots the floor beneath me
As has the blood of hundred thousand generations before me.

I would live forever,
Yet I know that I must die;
I would run, fleet as the wind,
If polio had not struck at me.

Two hundred billion stars
In each a billion billion galaxies,
But only one world upon which I walk,
The cool green hills of blue planet Earth.

I would visit both Mars and Titan,
Plumb the secrets of Europa's ocean,
Set sail for the stars, bid farewell to Earth,
If a thousand years or more lay before me.

A handful of decades are all unspent,
My brain still guides a skillful hand,
My body resists and easy compliance,
I would not die with opportunities untested.

We would live forever, my darling,
Our love enfabled with pen and screen,
But our bodies age, time's flow holds steady,
We build towards our final scene.

We will wake one day to find the other gone,
Our singular body wracked with pain and tears;
Every day that remains will slowly pass
As the survivor waits out her lonely death.

I would live forever,
Yet I know that we must die;
I would not trade these moments
For an eternity lived without you.