StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XXXIX

I am outlier, passerby,
No more, no less,
I can be nothing
But what I am
Nor choose
To be something else:
A dusky black swam
Among a flock of
Pristine white feathers,
Unable to change who she is,
Unwilling to slip gently
From the landscape.

Cough after cough,
Spasm after spasm,
White flashes on the retina,
Shudders in the lungs,
Choking breaths uncontrollable,
Deep inhales triggering more;

Five minutes, ten,
Perhaps a half hour,
Time loses all meaning
As the body implodes
And then, finally,
Shakes itself to silence.

I want to be old enough
That no cause of death is reported,
Ninety five or a hundred sixty
And the choice to stop be mine.

I am not one to worry about leaving,
The time will come eventually,
But I would like to be involved with the decision
And have the final say when I stop fighting.

There are more wonders in the universe
That there are stars in our milky galaxy,
Given my druthers, I would see them all
Before I slip into unconsciousness.

But gene and evolution have not made it so,
That we would live forever and a day,
We fill the world with brief lives and bodies,
Then, one by one, our candle dies
And we are out and gone.

1.


Twinkle, twinkle, little neutrino,
How I wonder how fast you are;
Are you quicker than Einstein's equations
Or has someone really mucked up the experiment?


2.


We cannot explain the observed effects
In terms of systemic uncertainties;
We are not attempting any theoretical
Or phenomenological interpretations
Of the events and only wish to indicate
The neutrino appeared to move transluminally
Without explicit explanation

By the time I entered Sac State,
The first wave of 'Nam vets had returned
To use the G. I. Bill to attend college
- They seemed decades older than the guys
Who graduated with me from high school,
Although the difference at most was
Five or six years, to me they seemed men
Well muscled with life and experience:
They were not the boys I sat behind in prep.
The faraway look that sometimes slipped
Into their eyes only made them more
Attractive to the girls who were torn
Between our need to hold and comfort them
And our desire for carnal knowledge,
Instinctively realizing that both
Could equally calm a grown man's psyche.

Somewhere Outside of Guyville


Mid-morning, the men run off for coffee
While I remain behind and stand watch in the office
-- They're off doing their man thing and the rules require
That I not query them on their return;
I'm not worried about what they may be "hiding" from me,
What masculine pursuits are discussed or intra-office politics,
And I'm not young enough to think I must pretend interest
In whatever happens to be going on in Guyville today:
They have their secrets and I have mine.