StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XIX

Clasping talons over Alaska's Prince William Sound,
The eagles spiralled towards the waiting ground,
Rolling and somersaulting in a ritual mating dance,
A feathered Romeo to her white haloed Juliet;
Shutting out the world racing towards them from below,
Lost in the hormone rush of courting and pair bonding,
They slam beak-first into the hard winter snowbank,
Crashing headlong into two feet of crunchy snow,
The male dead, the female traumatized and injured,
Testimonies to the singlemindedness of species procreation.

Now I understand, I'm a replicant,
Implanted with the soul of an ancient poet,
Her memories, my memories, our emotions and skills,
So she may walk this blue dot planet
And I give voice to what we feel and know:
The scent of honeysuckle adrift on night,
The warmth of sun upon our breasts,
The slip of finger between our lips,
Love undying and worth dying for.

Inside a crowd, my senses speak,
Begin to overload unless I dampen down;
My nerves twitch, wanting to flee,
My eyes dart quickly forth and back,
Searching for unknown assassins,
The child who teased me back in third,
The monsters in the closet
When the lights are turned off;
I breath slowly, deeply,
And look for the nearest exit.

I've never killed anyone that I know of
-- mosquitos, flies, and ants, of course,
Cockroaches and onery rodents
And those green hornéd worms
That like to devour tomatoes;
Fleas on my dogs and cats,
Heartworms; viruses and bacteria
That invade my body or my children --
Doesn't mean I wouldn't though,
All depends on the circumstance.

A seagull storm straight from The Lakes,
All gray and damp hanging over the earth:
Seabirds float on heavy air that settles
In lungs already challenged by pollen and pollution;
Time slows until each body movement and breath
Deintegrates into individual deployments
Only vaguely related to the operation plan.

The sounds of mourning do not suit
a house that serves the Muse:
they are not wanted here.
-- Sappho

When I see the old photographs,
An ancient technology as fading as my memories,
I see a young woman, a poet learning her craft,
Sitting on the Dead's front door steps,
Jerry behind me, Grace and Janis to the left,
Using the music to spark her verses.

On the day we were all snapped and iconed,
With little thought to History or commemoratization,
Sappho and I had only recently become acquaintances
-- I was already a familiar of Shakespeare, Ginsberg,
Ferlinghetti and the rest of the West Coast canon,
But Sappho I found myself in a Tower Books store.

In a world long lost to myth and politics,
We tested our talents as hard as our bodies;
Rock, of course, was always a young male's game,
All the girls were ornaments, a fuck, or a singer,
And I, a stumbling poet with flashes of greatness,
Chose not to be randomly laid much.

If I had known,  if I had written,
If the unknown gods had chosen different,
I might have taken the more travelled road
And burnt myself out before I was thirty,
A string of glowing possibilities quite forgotten
Outside of a small circle of aging friends.

Instead, in the world of all the worlds, I am here,
Storm tossed but considerably better mused,
A darkly lit rose falling endlessly through space;
I escaped the slow collapse of love and Haight
To weave bright garlands of honey-tongued poetry:
My name is Lisa Jain, remember me.

In the beginning, there was no beginning,
For time itself did not exist,
There was only is, or not,
Without a suggestion of any being.

No darkness, no light,
No void on which to breathe,
No word, no mystery,
No ghost within the machine,
No begin without the be,

And then ... we are here,
Every thing of us discontinuously,
Matter, energy, space and time
As far as our clever brains can see.

One by one, we lose our past,
Voices buried, families gone,
Until the past becomes what I say,
Where I went, what I've read,
Losing the precious time line
That bloods our planetary struggle;

I first stood up at Olduvai,
Gazed at the stars from the African plain,
Followed Alexander to India,
Marched beside the Romans
From Carthage around to Hispania,
Sailed with Vikings and found a New World,
Set foot with Armstrong for all mankind.

But whether I attended
That first Stone's concert in Sacramento,
Fucked both Morrison and Marty Balin
That Sunday at Golden Gate,
Marched with the the Panthers
The morning after Martin Luther was killed,
Fled to Canada with my boyfriend,
Accepted the fate of Oakland Army Base,
I alone can say,
And afterwards, when I am gone,
My body dissolved once more to starstuff,
Only these words will remain the truth,
Such as they may be.

I distrust rubrics, enjoy an artful spectacle,
Viscerally dislike the regimentation of organization,
But enjoy a High Mass, goodly scored and performed.
I would listen to the discipline of Johann Sebastian,
Soar with a well executed scherzo and joyful chorale,

But my natal language remains rock and roll
And the chaos of creative rebellion,
My fortunes have always clashed havoc
With the current canons; but so it goes
And in the end,  it's life and life only that we lose.

Looking out the fifth floor window
Over the roof of the Pentagon,
The tip of Washington visible
In the mall across the river;

The people down in center courtyard
Hurry to their lunches and meetings,
Detouring around the tour groups
Lagging below the speed of staff.