StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XXXIX

There are 7 billion miracles
Orbiting along with planet Earth,
7 Billion lost souls looking for
Meaning and self-worth:
Half that many have come before us,
Half that many have died.
We've grown from small hunting bands
To villages and great cities
That strain to reach the heavens;
We have overfilled our birthplace,
Outgrown our lush green world
And must prepare to leave
Our once and ancient home,
A well loved child who realizes
She has grown beyond the safety
Of her mother's well intentioned walls.

Time steals muscle and bones,
Causes breasts to bloat and sag,
Hurries the joyous rush of love
And sours the taste of once loved kisses;
Time corrodes the best intentions
And slows the mind if you let it:
The poet's lot is to see it all,
Record the happiness, the tears and pain,
The intricate mysteries
Of the human pair bond,
And not allow our brief fleeting lives
To slip out unnoticed by the continuum.

Her hand slips within me
Shuddering my flesh,
Arching my back,
Flaying wide my legs;
My mind tumbles, disrupts,
Falls timelessly through space
While the world rolls and quakes;
Lips meet, tongues caress,
Heart hesitates, then shudders
Back to life as she starts anew.

How much of this is real,
This world I create around me,
The trees, the children playing in the grass,
The sun, blue sky, and white clouds?
Close my eyes and it all disappears,
Close my eyes and a universe awaits;
Whose fingers, whose whispers,
Whose kiss touches me tenderly?
I hold fast to sunset's warm colors,
The fading remnants of the passing day;
I breathe full, count my heart beats,
And wait for the full moon to rise.

I've lived in valleys all my life,
Watched the stars through farmland haze
And the distortion of the city lights:
Burning fields and plowman's dust
Redshift my heavens as much as distance.

The Milky Way is a high plains memory,
A splash of light across a planetarium ceiling,
But I have seen worlds as yet unexamined
And pointed to the spot our sun would shine
If its fire was not lost in the cosmic glare.

But here, beside the Sacramento,
As the waters work their way to the bay,
All possibilities are still open and available
To the bright young poet atop a fine horse
Nervously winding her way to the coastline.

Whether the cat is dead or alive
Matters little if it still catches mice;
Rameses II, millenniums gone,
Still dominates the Egyptian sands.

Whether my skin is olive or light ebony
Does not change my genetic ancestry;
That I live now, on the cusp of a cusp,
Will not set my foot on Europa's shoreline.

The fires burn on the galaxy's edge.

In pairs, alone, in gangs of five,
The high school collects around the bus stop;
A gathering of tribes, the milling students
Re-enact the ancient rituals and protocols.
Their transportation is minutes upstream,
Yellow of bus and bright flashing red lights;
One by one, they will slowly stagger aboard,
Impressed into classrooms for the duration.

Last night I watched a Bertolucci flick
About some pretty girl having sex
   in some ancient villa in Tuscany;
It was all quite inscrutably pleasant
As she plotted to lose her virginity
With various of her dead mother's
   neighbors and friends.
There was so little relationship
To the world I've lived through,
   I found it best to treat it all
As some director's pastoral fantasy
Of how young women truly behave:
   I hate to disappoint him but
I was much much younger than nineteen
When I began making test runs
   with various egar boys.

It is not that I can't color between the lines,
But I can't see lines most times at all,
And when and if I do notice one,
I seldom find a line that connects.

It seems to be a problem in my wetware,
A loose synapse that refuses to be tightened,
That prevents me from seeing any boundary
Until after I've crossed well over them.

So, if you see me wandering beyond some rule
Or otherwise identified social convention,
Be patient, be kind, and wave, if you can,
So I'll have some clue where I am.

Who am I to even talk of posterity
When even Ozymandias' fame is fleeting,
More known for freshman English compositions
Than granite monuments and mighty conquests;
How should these words and lines survive
When great sandstone pyramids crumble
Before the sun's steady rise and set
And bright heavens'eternal gaze?
Both stars and universe will someday pass,
Long after my ink fades to quark and space,
The light that teases my eye and brain
Will soon grow cold and dissipate,
But the poet must strive to persevere
Or the world will grow silent and all breath cease.