StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XIII, No. VII

Perhaps the gods are texting me through coughing
And if I just would jot down the pattern,
What they said would be more obvious to me;
Perhaps Saint Paul was able to work this way,
And Saint Joan of Arc knew something,
I am just a poor girl unused to revelation
And the gods will need to talk more plainly.

We live in the fragile moment of performance
A shadowstep outside of sunlight,
Our voices raised full whisper;
Time moves on and we're alone,
Moon, Pleiades, and night.

I have been stalked any number of times,
I don't recommend it,
I have been hit on in various bars,
Grabbed and harassed,
And avoided drunk attempts at assault,
But I've never killed a man
For being under the influence,
Although a few may have been close.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (February 2012)

The bad old days when everything went,
Not like the current situations
Where everything turned out peachy keen;
The bad old days them's the cause
Of all our trials and tribulations,
But if we plays our cards just right,
This soon will all be over, won't it now.

Our gods have always existed,
Some as lightning, some, volcanoes
Or flooding rivers and storm-filled oceans;
The old gods do not die
But they are quite often ignored,
Replaced by the very latest incarnation.

The uncertainty of the emerging environment,
The bloody persistence of the killing ground,
The necessity to maintain and build resilience
Sets the conditions of our existence;
Coordinate and support, execute and synchronize,
How shall we source what needs to be done
When the world is all North Face and smart phones?

These are the killing grounds,
The slow decades long descent into footnote and essay,
For here once stood the last, best hope of planet earth.

We have been at war as long as I have been alive,
My father knew war, The Great Depression, war, and then war,
My grandfather also, and my great-grandfather, the Civil War;
We have fought on the side of truth and justice,
Won our independence, overthrown English kings who thought
We should kiss their rings until they learned better:

I do not expect to die on a world at peace.

We are still an experiment in free will and consciousness,
The verdict is still out on our long term viability as a species;
If I were a betting woman, I would bet on the human race
And take the points: we might just win on a last minute field goal
But the odds are good we will lose to a walk-off homer
By some obscure player in some distant angry country.

There Are Rules For These Things

The gods said "We have rules,"
"Have you now," said the poet;
Working from separate assumptions,
Compromise appears quiet distant,
For the gods will not bend
And I will not surrender my liberty.