StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XII, No. XLIX

If ever I would leave you,
I'd be an idiot, just shoot me;
Take me to the forest
And lay the sod over me
Where no one will find my body
For a hundred years or more.

I'd have to be crazy,
Final stages of Alzheimer's,
Just end it, Darling,
Put me out of my misery
Then scatter the evidence
Somewhere out in deep space.

Today, my body
Has little internal coordination,
Every time I relax,
I begin to stagger and lurch
Like some poorly designed automaton
Until I am forced to take back
Conscious control of every movement;
Luckily my heart and lungs seem able
To carry on without my personal supervision.

Professional women's voices
Are deeper than television might suggest,
Slower and less stereotyped
Than the high pitch sitcom flutter:
They would rather think of us
As frivolous young girls
Than equal to every man alive.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Hot coffee steaming in my cup,
Instant, not ground for only one,
Britney Spears moving in the background,
Criminal, not Toxic or One More Time;
Gathering my thoughts, gathering the day,
Selecting the tools and rubrics
I will use to paint this page
That you and I now share.
What do you think, what do you say:
Is this anyway to write these songs,
Conscious that they are read
One by one, silent and alone
Inside your head with the humble poet
Quite voiceless and never present
To receive your applause
Or duck your rotten tomatoes?

A writer's trick, a poet's skills,
Tease the audience to involve them
In your less than dynamic premise,
Catch hold of their passing interests
As they wait for the burn and crash,
A women in peril, a young child lost,
Sex and naked bodies, a ricochet of bullets,
The hint of lust, the stir of passion,
A crass artfulness that must seduce
The eye to single minded attention,
Create a desire to carry on,
Word and rhyme, read the next line,
Quatrain and couplet, so on and so forth,
To whatever carefully handcrafted
Bill of Catharsis currently being sold
By a desperate and struggling, starving artiste.

I've been the next to die for thirty years now,
Grandma, my father, my uncle, my grandpa,
My mother, my aunts, another uncle, then me;
Funerals and funeral masses, we all buried looking fine,
Wills and reminisces, graves close together at Saint Mary's
Followed by coffees, cakes and bittersweet stories
Around the sofa and kitchen table back at home.

Chicken Tortellini direct from Canada,
You never can tell who's Italian these days;
I'd make my own, but I'm not cost-effective
Nor are my tortellini skills world class,
So I buy my pasta at the neighborhood deli
Rather than spend a day making homemade
That falls apart when I cook it: a plate
Of tortellini is worth seven turned to mush,
Even if I was taught by my grandmother
How to make fresh ravioli from scratch
-- And I make them just fine if I've a mind to --
I have other tasks to consume my waking moments.

Darkness is as darkness does,
Motorcycles rattle and roll,
Shiny trucks and blinking cars,
Fog damp pavement rules;
Washington monument
Crumbles in the distance,
Pentagon in the foreground,
Capitol in back,
Potomac rushing in-between,
Fairfax Stone to Point Lookout.

She Who Brought Great Hector Down


Maud slept with Yeats,
Took his money,
Brought arms to the Rebellion
When Ireland stood alone.

Aunt Maud slept with William
Until Bill stopped giving her
Any money to buy weapons
For the Irish Revolution.

Her love for Ireland,
Her love for freedom
Exceeded her need for the
Love of an uncommitted poet.