StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XIII, No. XVI

Friday is dress-up at the Pentagon,
The Army's all blue, white and yellow;
Upstairs, near the snack bar, people gather
To honor wounded warriors, limping and rolling;
Afterwards we will lunch, peruse the snack bar,
Buy a drink, pick a table, talk with friends
As the wounded move elsewhere, out of sight
But burned forever into memory.

I am a mustard seed
Spreading across the internet,
Eat my words,
Wrap these lines around your tongue,
Taste my heart and soul;
I am the poet unstuck from time
To walk the world wide wilderness;
I am both past and future,
The fire burning fiercely before you,
Swallow me whole.

I am that that separates
The darkness from the light,
The whore and the holy one,
The wife and the virgin;
I am she who cries out
Along the barren shoreline
And casts herself upon
The desert wind.

All my secrets lie before you,
Naked before the sun and stars;
I am the knock upon the door,
The half-heard whisper in the night
That wakes you from your sleep.
Open the door, I bear true poetry
Given me by my mothers, seed by seed,
Who bid me write.

— Lisa Jain Thompson (April 2012)

I am as tall as Sharon Stone,
A few pounds heavier (!),
And not as crazy, but we both
Fit in that natural selection
The world knows well as woman.

We come in various flavors and all sizes
And as many body types as there are
Ethnic groupings to pigeon us;
But at our core we're more the same
Than all the grains in all of the beaches
Of all of the planets of the solar system.

Is the carpenter from Nazareth,
The one we were expecting,
Ah, there's the question, isn't it?
Some say yes, some say no,
Some don't seem to care at all,
Others say the end is near
And he will soon return.

Still there are those who have their doubt
And quite honestly believe we are waiting
On a mistaken case of improbabilities;
By the moment the universe finally ends,
If such a thing could actually happen,
Time enough will have surely passed
To allow for a multitude of saviors
To redeem the many, many worlds of all
God's Children in all the bright galaxies
That light our earthly heavens as they spin
Madly through the ever that is spacetime.

Text me a river,
Google me a circle,
Tweet me some characters
And follow me on Facebook;
But whatever you do,
Don't call me on the phone
Or visit me face 2 face,
I simply don't have the time.

The wet grass, the airy chill,
The sun just rising above the eastern hills,
The world is filled with birdsong
That stirs the poet to staggering lyric
As she contemplates the spring rituals.

Let us easter the earth to breath once more,
Rattle all the windows and open the walls
That hold the good land at rest,
We shall have asparagus, artichoke and tomato
And feast at the table on lamb.

Who are we that should live to see the spring,
Who are we that will die tomorrow? Our small blue planet
Orbits a changeful star from which all things come,
The birds of the air, the fish of the deep,
The bipedal ape watching the seasons change.

April Outside

The daffodils are gone,
The tulips have followed,
The forsythia and trees have turned green;
Easter is passed,
Summer is coming,
Cardinals and robins are safe in their nests.

There's deer in the forest,
There's eagles in the air,
Gray squirrels are leaping limb to limb;
Young children are playing,
Their parents are gardening,
The sun rises higher by the day.