StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XXVII

When I was 17,
It was a very confusing year,
Dressed for my prom
In clothes that were all wrong,
Graduation in a cathedral
Whose faith I no longer believed,
And, come next Fall, after my birthday,
A college with 12,000 more students
Than attended Christian Brothers.

I was, as far as I knew then,
The only one of them in the wrong body,
Perhaps the only one alive or ever born.
I stayed silent, hid behind my intellect,
Did what needed to be done
To meet everyone's expectations.

What could I have possibly told
My parents or any of the Brothers
That would not have ended up
With my semi-permanent residence
In some poorly run state hospital
Where I would be subjected to
Long term medical experimentation?

That world is not this one,
This earthworn woman is not
That confused child who buried herself
In class work and then a church marriage,
But what alternatives did she have?
-- She was not gay, she was not a boy,
Church, Shrink, and family conspired
To construct a well fabricated world
In which there was little place
For a girl who knew all too well,
And all too soon, who she was.

The domes of the capital spread out over the horizon,
Universities, memorials, libraries and the Capitol;
As far as the eye can see Roman architecture
Dominates the skyline interspersed with Gothic cathedrals
And the ever present thrust of the Washington Monument.

In the foreground, The Pentagon, where my bus
Will soon empty out, looms large,
The nearby Potomac River only a hint;
Traffic flows across the 14th Street Bridge,
Its slow herk and jerk triggered by the D. C. stoplights.

Our life is a world of post card photos
Grown yellow and faded by their constancy
As the background to the grunt work of government
And the twice daily comute.  Behind the glib scenic tours,
The bright museums and the media glitter,
The city lives a damp coal dust existence,
Scurrying to placate Congress, some general
Or the President, and subject to the everchanging whims
Of passing vagrants who think they have real power.

Nay, nay, cried the snarkly id,
The world is only what I say it is,
An earthquake today, an oil spill last week,
Tomorrow a president who still disappoints me.

For the moment we will worship Lady GaGa
-- Britney Spears is so last year --
But we reserve the right to change our minds
As easily as we change our clothes and pronouns,
-- Constancy is such a patriarchal concept,
Science is only a white man's lie
That must be suborned to our political considerations.

Blue Jays, Mockingbirds, Turtle Doves, and cardinals,
Sparrows, seagulls, black crows and white cranes,
A handful of finches, a few darting hummingbirds,
A stray woodpecker or two echoing in the distance;
Squirrels, 'possum, and the occasional varmint,
Dogs and cats and a whole passel of primates,
Some full grown, others not so much, just starting,
Cars, trees, hot asphalt and aging track housing;
Lake and wetland a few miles distant,
Aircraft and satellites passing overhead,
Freight train in the background, engines and whistle,
Raptor above us, floating along the updrafts;
Poet, eyes wide, brain and pen keeping track,
Exchanging mocking whistles with the songbird.

Fireball
Explosion
Curling Black Smoke
The Rumble of Building
The Barrage of Air
Bursting distant windows
Drawing fume and fire away

Alive
I watched
Still alive
I left
Flames and fuel
Rolling one way
And the rest of us
Out the other

What shall we hear
If we see only what we wish?
What knowledge, what art,
Only recently born shall we miss
If our eyes are closed to everything
But what we've already seen?

When I was a girl,
I thought as a girl,
My mind all pinks and Barbie;
But now I am a woman,
Strong and independent,
Drifting in and out of fashion.

Our narrative is lost in our demand for contemporanity,
Insulating us from reality in exchange for spontaneity
And getting real.  The magnitude of our enterprise falls victim
To our inborn need for quick fixes and feel good resolutions
Punctuated by dramatic intensities and careless plot twists
That play upon our unspoken fears and aspirations.
If we were to have it otherwise, we would not be human,
Subject to our emotions and the predations of politicians
All too willing to manipulate our imperfections and insecurities
To further their own, self-serving, limited ambitions.

He is lost, adrift on a sea
He never knew existed,
A violent, uncharted ocean
Unseen by his scholarly philosophies:
He cannot be saved
Until he knows he is drowning
And allows that the world
Is something other
Than his academic theory admits to.

Change is uneasy,
Discovering your assumptions
Are flat out wrong is difficult;
The country struggles after electing
Still another minimally prepared, slow study
Who must learn his job as he does it,
However poorly.

If you touch me,
When you touch me,
My body shivers and trembles;
When you kiss me, I disappear,
In your arms, time stops,
As does my breath
Until the whole world beats
With the echo of our hearts.

This
Is the way
The world begins:

A bright
White heat
Come afire
From the nothing at all;

Then everything
Else
That ever will be
Follows inevitably:

Sun
Sweet Planet
And the Big Man from Afar.