StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XLVII

I am a visitor on this planet,
We are only passers-by,
The world, the universe exists beyond us,
Our gods are only lesser stars
Outshone by space and time.

Our moment passes, stuck on earth
Gazing at our ourselves,
The future lies above beyond us
Moving from world to world
Beneath a billion suns.

Never a victim, never a vulnerability,
At least in public outside of the home,
A limp I do not explain,
A muscular weakness unmentioned,
A stutter that sometimes seizes control,
A cerebral attention that prefers to wander,
Connecting the dots tangent by tangent,
Expecting the world to follow quickly.
Life as an epic poem that ends in death,
Poetry that pulses with life's sweet breath,
I live, awake, eyes wide and unshut,
As my sister before me, as my fathers and mothers,
Until the universe itself can no longer ignore me
And I come full stop to silence.

Afterwards
After the before
After our birth
After childhood
After puberty
After college
After marriage
After children
After middle age
After gray hair,
High blood pressure,
False teeth and arthritis
Afterwards
When the birthdays stop
After all that
Then what?

Too slow, too slow,
Up the up escalator,
To the left, to the left,
Walk up the escalator,
Faster, faster,
Time is fleeing,
Up up the up escalator.
Where were you going anyway
More important
Than the rest of us?

Welcome to the Feste Italiano,
Be sure to buy some one dollar sushi!
No one can tell me the melting pot
Does not still make us more American
Than competing groups of dissension.

Do not listen to those who would
Separate us for political purposes,
Who attempt to set us one against the other
Or believe that the shades of our flesh
Bestow some special difference.

We are Americans, all and one,
Not democrats, not republicans,
We are not defined by our jobs
Or the spices our mother used
To make us Sunday dinner.

Damn them, damn them all to hell
All those who separate us
Into special groups and fragments
To game our votes and voices:
We are more than the sum of our skin.

A few more months,
The snow and ice will be gone,
A few more months,
The heat will be over:
To everything there is a problem
-- Come see, come saw --
And then life goes on
Whether or not we are ready.

Keep Dry


Keep dry and chilly,
That's what my momma said,
Be as smart as you can be,
Don't take no fools to bed.
Momma be what momma was,
Slightly crazy in the head,
Swing & rock and young Dick Clark,
Steak and lasgna, 'nuff said,
Mamma's dead.