'Lost': 'Kate' Expectations

INVOCATION FOR THE NEW SEASON OF LOST
A poem, by reader Tom Holland

May Lost be all you hoped for with answers swift and sound;
May the hours ripen quickly and joyfulness abound.
May Juliet not have died in vain with the pounding of her rock
Let Sawyer live free of pain and survive the coming shock.
May Jack and Kate deal with the things that frustrate us so much
And Sun and Jin share a time that allows them love's fine touch.
Provide us with more moments that shine on Daniel's mind
Oftentimes these are the clues the viewers need to find.
May Hurley break the ''curse'' that follows him around,
Let his spirit salve the cuts our Losties may have found.
Give Sayid a solid peace he so desperately desires
Shield him from the evil plans that Ben tried to inspire.
Let us know where Claire has gone and how she stayed alive
And lead her back to Aaron's life so motherhood survives.
Help us to remember Charlie's sacrifice
Let it have more meaning than simply tumbling dice.
Give us a bright future for Desmond and his Penn
If a reboot is in store, let them find their way again.
Protect our dearest friends, the lovely Bernard and Rose,
Explain the young Walt's powers before the end of shows.
Know we have a special place for Vincent in our hearts
Keep in mind our knees are weak from all the stops and starts.
Tie up the big loose ends like what happened to John Locke
Let us know what happens to the shepherd's misled flock.
Inform us on the feud that has stained the beach's soil,
Is Jacob the white light or just the loophole's foil?
Does the Man-in-Black represent all that is so evil
Or does he just protect the island from upheaval?
But all these questions pale to one from our Lost designers
Are the eyes of Richard A. really natural or guy-liner?

MY MIND IS A POOL OF LAVA!
A Terminator-enhanced reflection on last week's season premiere of Lost.
PLUS: Meet my new relative, Auntie Narrative!
A parallel reality with a sunken Island. An ancient temple with an enchanted spring. Man In Black = Fake Locke = the Monster, a brutal realist deeply disappointed in humanity and who desperately wants to go home...wherever home is. Wow!!! And...huh??? ''LA X'' went inside my brain and turned the monolithic mountain of thought that is Lost into a volcano. With a head-splitting KA-BOOM, the red hot magma flow of the show's new ''Sideways'' storytelling device blazed down the slopes of Lost knowledge and incinerated whole forests of theory and certainty, leaving behind a steaming new landscape of mercurial mystery that is still churning and popping with gas as it cools and hardens into a final, concrete shape that I and we can see and go, ''Holy crap! It really IS Purgatory!''

Or something like that. Put another way, last week's season premiere did to my mind what the hard-ass tag-team of Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger did to morphtastic Robert Patrick at the end of James Cameron's Terminator 2.

NEXT PAGE: 10 need-to-knows (maybe) for tonight's episode: ''What Kate Does''