StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XVI

I have nothing against most any priest,
They are only preaching what they were taught to believe,
If they actually believe what they preach they believe.

I have a Sicilian relationship with a sitting pope,
He's the Bishop of Rome, a nice old man,
But little of what he says has any application to my life.

Me and Jesus, we get along fine
As long as Paul doesn't try to chaperone
And dominate our conversations.

So I ended up with this agnostic Catholicism,
Disbelieving in miracles and the efficacy of prayer,
But I can argue logically for placing limits on abortions

Even as I believe I have the God given right
To end my life when I'm dying of cancer
Or dissolving into bits and pieces with Alzheimer's.

The Pope believes I'm a sinner,
He has stated such in his many papers,
I will greet him in hell then while we spend eternity
Debating the finer points of Christian doctrine.

I have no pyramid awaiting my body,
If you chain me to a stake, I shall surely burn
After confessing whatever you wish me to confess;
What I have written, I cannot unwrite,
I am not a saint nor have I claimed to be,
I cannot unlive the years that mottle my life.

No scribe has yet produced a working manuscript
Chronicling the slow passage of my days;
No wet eared scholars peruse these lines,
Searching for their perfect topic;
I carry this poor baggage on my back alone,
Unshriven before mankind's honest camera.

There's a meeting here tonight
And there ain't no grave
Gonna hold my body down,
I'll be skillet good and goosey,
Writing poetry 'til the end.

Oh Momma, I'm in fear
For my sometimes life,
The long march of days
Is beginning to slow me down;
My knees are stiff, my back is sore,
The page is blurry without my glasses.

My children are grown, the dog is aging,
We both keep on keepin on;
Someone bring me some water, I'm starving,
And there are light years as of yet
I must trek.

They've closed Baltimore to travel,
No cars, no trucks, no buses, no trains,
And certainly no helicopters or aeroplanes.
I would think bipedal motion
Is included on the forbidden list, along with
Horse and buggies and anything else
Susceptible to the vagaries of snow drifts.
Snowmobiles, however, should be banished
On principle before someone wraps themself
Around a telephone pole or ancient oak tree.
If anyone is keeping track of this winter weather,
The current score is Blizzard 54 and Civilization
Not even on the frakkin' scoreboard.

It's alright, it's alright,
The stars still shine, the moon's still bright,
It's alright, it's alright,
I'm taking my baby out Saturday night.

There goes my darlin'
On her way off to school,
I can see you wavin'
From the top of the porch.

Waiting till she comes home again
In the warm sunny afternoon,
Watching for her from your doorstep.
Counting the minutes 'till she's home.

But
It's alright, it's alright,
The stars still shine, the moon's still bright,
It's alright, it's alright,
I'm taking my baby out Saturday night.

Here comes my darlin',
I can see her down the street,
Knowing that she's yours alone now,
Never again will we meet.

And so I sit here, alone in my car
Waiting for the weekend to come
Then I'll go out, pick up my baby
And we'll go party on again.

Till then
It's alright, it's alright,
The stars still shine, the moon's still bright,
It's alright, it's alright,
I'm taking my baby out Saturday night.

It's alright, it's alright,
I'm taking my baby out Saturday night.
But it's alright, it's alright,
I think I'll just f..fade away ....

So many memories racked up like CDs,
Stacked in my corners, out of the way,
Gathering dust.

This one died young, that one an overdose,
That one in the wash of a Mississippi river boat
Or an assassin's bullet while walking with his wife.

They're all here, safely filed,
Flickering in and out of existence
Line by line, for as long as I can remember.

Caught in the whirlpool of history,
Your only thought is to survive;
As death is falling around beside you,
Life becomes a most precious possession,
A miraculous gift that slips through your fingers
When your attention is focused elsewhere.

We struggle to exist in the midst of a helter-skelter planet,
Seven billion breaths that know they may end the next instant
In one long collective sigh of resignation and inevitability,
An evolutionary experiment that overreached its boundaries
And now falls from the sky like some outer system meteor
Bent earthward by Jupiter's stern gravity,
A shooting star briefly filling the nighttime heavens
Before burning out in one last bright incandescent flash
And crashing evermore into darkness.

Four feet high and rising,
The shoveled berms of yesterday's snow
Strangle the distant sounds of night;
The stars framed in clear frigid sky absent
The background hum of truck and car.

A night of a dozen hours,
No more, no less,
Eight of which are needed
For sleep,
More or less.

The night is long
The moon is bright
The hours slip by
Cuckoo cuckoo
The poet writes alone

A clatter of birds
Making ready their morning's work,
A whine of bus, a doppler of cars,
The low rumble of the paper truck, dogs barking,
As the driver throws the news on the porch;
Blue sky, scattered rain clouds,
Sun barely above the dull horizon,
The high near ninety come late afternoon,
April at its best most confusing,
Daffodils and tulips all a-wilt.