StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XLIII

Muammar is dead,
Too bad, so sad,
In with the new,
Out with the old.

Qadaffi is dead,
Absolutely dead,
Shot in both legs,
Once in the head.

Different faces,
Different chairs,
Change management
Is everything.

All the sad young men who stagger and drift,
Aimlessly looking for their misplaced manhood,
Finally surrendering to some sitcom caricature
Of partially socialized masculinity,
Men of good heart but underweight, stumbling intellect:
I want my men to match my dreams,
George Clooney's charm, George Carlin's brain,
The courage of a dozen brave Navy Seals
And a long term commitment to fatherhood.

The trouble with panties
Is that they sometimes fall off,
Even when you had no intentions
When you left your house that night;
A touch, a kiss, a swell of flesh
And even the most virtuous girl
Must sometimes get naked;
A glass of champagne and a diamond or two
Might even lead to a more permanent arrangement.

Ten million years ago,
The great apes were one,
Our single primate ancestor
Inhabited a forest garden;

And then God said,
Divide and multiply,
And chimp and man,
Gorilla and orang,
Began our slow steps
To humanity.

We are brothers under the skin,
Sisters in our genes,
Gathered around the holiday table,
We share our common blood.

I have seen the Angel Gabriel
Walking the streets of Memphis
Searching for some lesser saint
Working tricks in the church vestibule
And watched the Devil in Old Sacramento
Draw down on gamblers who held
One too many aces up their sleeves;
But I cannot tell them from your
Average alien species come visiting
Or Wyatt Earp, for that matter,
Enforcing the ruleset after Tombstone.

Every three weeks, sometimes four,
I have my nails done, color and fills,
My eyebrows waxed back into cooperation,
And catch up on life with Anh who I've known
For ten years or more at this point;
Once every month or two, we do my feet,
Ugly, callous growing creatures that they are,
Clipping back the in-growns, scrubbing the neglect
From soles and heels while I squirm in the seat
Suppressing the urge to extract my extremities
In response to the ongoing tickle.
Some would consider all this indulgent pampering,
A needless conformity to the demands of the patriarchy,
The expenditure of money that could best be spent elsewhere
On a politically correct properly progressive cause,
But they haven't seen my weak, frail nails, have they,
Or when I've tried to do them by myself?

A Failure of Reflex


A simple mistake
A failure of reflex
A touch  a kiss
An airborn life
Twisting towards the fence
Tumbling towards death
And cessation