StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XXIV

Mockingbird atop a stop sign,
Looking down as I look up,
Flies higher to a nearby power line,
Yelling at me that I dare disturb
His morning contemplations.

Crane flying low beneath the overcast,
Still rising from the nearby lake,
On his way to more northern wetlands
Or joining his early rising friends
For breakfast down along the run.

Girly Pop  PopPop  PopPop
Girly Pop  PopPop  PopPop
Camel Toe  Camel Toe  Camel Toe
Roma Roma
Camel Toe  Camel Toe  Camel Toe

The Shirelles and the Shangra La's,
They did it long, they did it well,
The Crystals and the Blossoms,
The Ronnettes and the Bluebells,
They rocked as hard as any boy
But rolled just like the girls.

Roma Roma Girly Pop
Poppa Poppa Camel Toe.

A touch of autism,
A flash of inattention,
God only knows who I'd be
Without polio and all that.

If Allah had been willing,
If I'd been born without defect,
Who knows who I'd be
Or where I would be at.

Perhaps a wife with many children,
President of the United States,
Or dead on some city street,
But certainly not starpoet.

Baby, you can ride my car,
You don't have to be no star,
Baby, you can ride my car
And I don't need to love ya.

Just do it good, just do it long,
I like a lover with a slow strong hand,
Kiss me once, kiss me twice,
Slip your finger between my lips.

Baby, you can drive all night,
Don't pretend you want to marry me,
I know the game you think you're playing,
Just touch my cheek as you leave.

I would be remembered with my body young
But the poet middle aged and wise,
In control of her craft, sure of her verse,
Her words tumbling easily to life.

I would be the one, the well starred lover,
A painter of galaxies and wanderers,
Whose ceilings challenged the brightest heavens,
A whisper rattling eternity.

The world and I once more will survive,
The stars will shine, the rivers run,
Morning will rise anew; yet this too will end
as the sun grows red, her energy slowly consumed.

I would exceed the Earth's home system,
My voice surely passed between the planets;
The memory of our race, when our hopes were young,
And our reach was just out of grasp.

South East Asia is west of Hawaii,
Across the Pacific on the other side;
South West Asia is east of Sicily,
Far past the Atlantic, below the Mediterranean;
War is ever present in either location.

Taken on their own, the various Asias,
The East is West, the West is East,
A product of European mapmakers
Hardwired by their status and class;
The ancient troubles continue
Without reference to geographic labels.

My heart is given
  to the woman beside me,
My life, my existence
 is in her hands.
 
She knows her poet
 is oddly wired,
Accepting my strangeness
 as part of the bargain.

I know her history,
 the sometimes messy details,
My silence and my support
 go hand in hand with marriage.

Across the Potomac,
In the ancient marbled palaces,
The Harlequin pirouettes,
Struggles on the steps
To maintain his balance.

The river rushes past,
Falling from Harpers Ferry
To the bay, ebbing and flowing
For two hundred years,
Washing the detritus fast awayy.

The city remains, the country the nation,
The oceans roll on as they have before;
Off stage a newly sparkled Harlequin waits,
Counting the moments until the crowd is his.

Through the overcast, behind the trees,
The full moon rises in twilight's fading grasp;
Summer has arrived weeks ahead of the calendar,
Wrapped in humid air and gray mist;

A handful of fireflies scatter above us,
Twisting this way and that in the darkness;
A month from now, the night will be filled
With ten thousand Romeos in search of Juliet.