From My Window

To see a larger version of this haiga, click HERE. The smaller one fits my blog, but the detail isn't as clear.

In Memory

photo taken fall 1958, enroute to Camp Stewart.

Last night, a voice from my old hometown called to tell me that the mother of another childhood friend had died on Sunday--she hadn't been able to get through to me. Mrs. Ferguson was more than Kathy's mother. She was mentor and leader of the youth fellowship group in our town of 2500. We talked, we camped, we had fun. When you grow up in a town that acts as an extended family and continue to visit parents there over the years, as well, the bonds stay strong. The man who called me last night grew up two doors from me. The woman whose mother died was one of my several closest friends from sixth grade on. The fact that we still come together at times of sadness or crisis, in addition to our loose keeping in touch, to me, is beautiful.

Mrs. Ferguson, thank you.

she plans
her next camping trip
stars aquiver

Today....

Today is your day on my blog. I just got back from the two hour trip down to my doc's to see if this lingering infection has finally left my body. Will know in 3 to 5 days. Tired now. Am off to loll and think of scandalous poems to write.

In the meantime, post the best movie you've seen recently and what about it you liked. I'm looking for a few more good movies to put on my Netflix queue.

Pris

The Other Woman

The Other Woman brushes her
hair 100 times with a hairbrush
shaped like a teardrop.
She knows one day her hair
will turn white, but he likely
won't be there to see it.

Alone and unsung to, the moon
implodes. It splinters the old
oak tree and a displaced
wren beats at her windowsill,
brown eyes begging.

She taps polished nails
along the curve of her phone;
lightning shoots from her fingertips.
The clock quivers twelve chimes
but, still, no car arrives
in the driveway.

She slips from satin to cotton, creams
her face, writes yet another goodbye
note she'll shred before sending. At dawn,
window thrust wide, she sighs,
lets the poor wretched wren rush in.

Review by Jack Anders

Jack Anders reviews my blog and poetry in cafecafe (found in my righthand links column) via a link to the Mipoesias blog where the review is actually located. You can either check out his entry, about three down down in cafecafe or click HERE to go directly to Mipoesias. Jack's a wonderful writer and a true life enthusiast. It permeates his writing and the energy he puts across on the web.

Thank you, Jack.

Pris

Roses and Crucifixes

Leon spray paints his name
on buildings all over Manhattan,
LEON...... LEON..... LEON
Adds a crucifix underneath,
the color of the sun's belly.
No-one has ever seen him.
Some call him God's messenger.
Others say he's just crazy.

Sara dresses in black, pretends
she's an artist, flattens her breasts
with duct tape til they look
like IHOP pancakes, thinks this
means she'll be taken more seriously

She paints pink roses.
Pink roses grow out of Bill
Clinton's fly. Pink roses rise
from monkey butts. She sold a rose
poking from Donald Trump's nose
to an old lady in the Bronx, Sara's
price for giving directions.

Sara never meets Leon, but passes
his crucifixes one day. Inspired,
she runs to her flat, paints a crucifix
on her belly in florescent pink,
opens her shades, dances in the window
nightly for one week. Exactly.
The Salome of Greenwich Village.

A man sinks to his knees beneath her window.
It's a sign, he says. Gives up sex for Lent.
Holds onto his head , avoids knives.
His wife soon leaves for her mother's.

Sara closes her shades,
drinks cool tea,
dreams of roses strangling
the Empire State Building.

Leon spray paints the Empire State dome,
finds himself thinking, oddly, of roses,
has strange cravings for pancakes,
lathered in nipple-pink molasses.



Pris Campbell
©2004



This poem was published in the Spring 2005 issue of MiPo quarterly.

Summertime...and the living was easy

Watercolors

My first new haiga in almost two months.

The Making of Eve

Didi Menendez has put out a call in cafecafe (link in my right column) for poems about the making of Eve....
-------------

Spewed out of God's Sixth Day WIDE
open post utero mouth, these zygotes,
twin embryos, now grown, one buried
inside the other, tumblefall into Eden.

History's first birth defect.

That story about the rib?
History's first cover-up.

Nixon, listen up.
God's buds did it, too!

No woman to ride side saddle
for long, Eve sharpens overgrown
nails, aliens her way free
through Adam's wimpy chest.
She flirts with the serpent,
finishes off the apple and tosses
Adam the worm and the core.

Original sin. What fun, she trills.

With a shake of her fuck-me frizzled
hair and one hand lifting an,
as yet uncarressed breast, she takes up
with a horny caveman. Their two dozen
mix-breeded children scope uncountable
later debates about Origins,
birth control, and the true
author of the Kama Sutra.


(c)2005

Of Yore

shimmi-shaking
to an Elvis beat
jitterbug days

Until Lilies Overpower

When we made our pact,
lilies bloomed from my hands.
I laid them on the graves
of dead lovers.

You were to come in the spring,
wade with me in the seas
where Vikings once sailed,
kiss my breasts until the sun glinted
pink off the morning waters, but

I grow old waiting, love.
My legs are pillars of salt.
The lilies have dried up
and long blown away.
The sea snarls under my toes.

Only in my dreams
do I see you, bearing gifts
of pale luminous gowns
and bright bangles to spoil me.

You lay your body across
mine until an early tide moans,
and I wake suddenly, the scent
of lilies overpowering.


Pris Campbell
©2004

Placed third in the 2004 PBL competitions

flying

If I could fly, today I would take off over my beloved ocean again and dive bomb the tourists alongside the sea gulls. For anyone who's never visited or lived near the ocean, the scent of sea air is magic. Sometimes I wonder if it brings back memories buried deep in our inner brains of days when we all were creatures of the ocean.

When she was still..

....called 'Priscilla' and he was called Eddie. Yes, I still have out the old photo album, so decided to humiliate myself one more time. I honestly think this is one of...oh maybe five of the worst photos of all times I have of myself. Those glasses. Egads. This was a newspaper shot. Four of us had been selected for All Clinic Band. I played the clarinet. Two years younger than I was, Eddie played trombone. He was in my mother's first grade so I had known him forever. Now I'm 'Pris' and he's 'Ed' and he teaches creative writing at the University of Colorado. One of the nicest and kindest men I still know. He puts lights on the Chesterfield, South Carolina Hospice Christmas tree each year for my parents and I do the same for his mother. We both continued to love each other's mothers over the years.

Dialing Dialing.....

Click on the below image.



You'll see a larger version of instructions on using a dial-up phone, as taught in 1955. Now, how many of you out there even remember dial up phones?? How many remember party lines? How many remember when you had to place every call through an in-town operator, who usually listened in??:-) (Remember, Windows resizes things to teeny, so click in the enlarge square to see it full size, once open)

Bitch Time

I'm sitting here three hours after my afternoon antibiotic with my tongue and lips on fire again, my throat so inflammed from it that my ears burn. My stomach is puffed out like I'm six months pregnant. I won't even go into the dizzy part. I won't even go into how frustrated my doc gets because I seem to react adversely to every medication created by modern science. How can I blame him? I drive him nuts.

Only problem is that I have no choice with this med. It's been over two months now. An infection that was supposed to be killed in five days by Cipro still left symptoms after an extension to ten days. The symptoms were still there after ten, so I waited to see my CFIDS doc an hour's drive away, rather than go back to the walk-in clinic for this, around the block from my house. Another wider culture revealed a lurking 'resistant' bacteria. Twenty eight days on the med. Nada, though the med killed THAT bacteria. Symptoms still there.

This time my doc ordered a test that covered both arobic and anarobic bacteria, one not routinely done in the labs. Aha, another little bugger surfaced that was resistant to the antibiotic that killed the first one, finally.

Oh, it gets better. Two antibiotics would kill it. Period. That's all she wrote. I tried the one of choice and woke up gasping for air. It was terrifying and I probably should have gone to the Emergency Room, but as long as I could breath and it got better, I chose not to. Unless I thought I was in grave danger, I was more afraid that any med they gave me there might do just as much harm.

One med to go. This one. Now, three days into it, I don't know how I'll last out the next seven days and am wondering, too, if the ten day round is going to do it this time, either.

I feel crazy. The infection hurts enough, but to have the cure hurt even more really sucks.

I also always feel during these times how utterly alone any of us ultimately are in going through these experiences. I have good friends who care and thank god for that. I have a husband who ignored his cell phone all day on the day I had trouble breathing. Of course he didn't check on me. That's not his style. Of course I had the option of 911 if things got worse. My new best friend.

I'm tired. I've been through it all for too many years now. I'm back to pretending I'm a POW and saying 'if they could survive, I can'. A lot of people have it way worse than I do, but i still don't think that takes away my right to say ever so often, 'this is just the pits today'.

If you know how to teletransport, come rub my feet.

Woman On Beach

This shot was taken at the ocean, three and a half miles from my home, about a year and a half ago at the end of the day. During the day, the beach is filled with boom boxes, the scent of coconut oil, and sun worshipers. At day's end, my favorite time, you find runners, walkers, and the occasional person with the metal detector or a few hopeful surfers if it's a windy day.

Friendship

I'm the one peeking from the back, with the glasses, at age sixteen. Amazingly, I'm still in touch with all of the old friends in this photo, except the girl to the left in glasses who died in a car accident right after college and the boy to the far left (from your viewing perspective), who was a friend's visiting cousin. I knew all but two from my earliest memories. That's what comes from growing up in a town of 2500 where your parents have settled for life.

Tribute

Arlene Ang, editor of the Italian Niederngasse, recently lost her father. Arlene, my deepest condolences.

his face
in the moon
lilies rustling

Sara goes flying

She and I were friends for eight years. We spoke on the phone every day or faxed notes. We got each other through the rough times and cheered each other on through the good. She helped me get through my mother's death. I helped her survive a number of disappointing romances. It all ended when her addiction resurfaced.

pumping

sara seeks out
a friend with cancer,
pockets pills when
june is sleeping.
she gulps three down, back
at her place, then binds
her legs tight 'round a stranger.

she dances with the stars
at night, makes bargains
with her demons.
the demons tell her she's
fine; keep pumping pills,
you're bound for glory.

now sarah says she's finally
clean, gone twelve steps, picked
up her chips, found jesus, but
uses people instead of drugs.
still sleeps with any man
who asks her.

her hands, as cold as old
hoar frost, betray her, heart
gone hard as Barb'ra Allen's.

Read this

Read the Tuesday entry on Poet At Rest in my links section in the right hand column. It's a story of my old posting board and the phoenix that rose out of its ashes, thanks to a caring and competent young woman from Wales.

Pixilated

The following little ditty was written by my English friend Geoff Sanderson. Hang your head in shame, Geoff lol. I got even!
Pris



Pixilated Pris

It’s a pity about Pris –
her persona’s lost its fizz
and she’s suffering from shallow
depth of field.

Her ego is deflated
and her image pixilated –
she’s lacking all that strength she
used to wield.

Her face is out of focus
and her legs all hocus-pocus,
her colours are confused and
not so clear.

That’s as good as I can make it
and I don’t know how she’ll take it,
so I’m definitely getting
out of here!


G. (with affection)

Profile pics from the weird unpast

Got a fav? Pick one.

  

  

 

 

 

Eulogy to the Dead

When he was only 27, my friend Denny killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills. He was slightly manic-depressive and had talked about it off and on for the four years I had known him, but never made an attempt. This time he made the final decision. Always a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe, he typed out his note, took off his clothes, swallowed the pills and positioned himself much like Marilyn was found. The shock when a friend does this is overwelming. The question arises, 'why didn't he call'? The answer is so very simple. He didn't want to wake up with his stomach being pumped. I'm not sure we ever really get over losing a friend this way. Well, in any way, to be honest. By his or own hand, no, not expected. Denny, the nights come when I still wish I could've saved you.



Coyly tucked beneath a virginal
sheet: electroshock therapy on wheels.
Convenient.
Comes right to you.
Pizza delivery techno in
the mental death ward.

Other candles zapped, one by one
it's my go round at the party.

Forgotten memories smother the room,
then burst through a shuttered window.
A woman kneels on the walkway weeping.
She sees an ashen man on an graveyard bed,
leftover pills, stardust,around him,
that note bequeathing me
his Marilyn books still curled
in the crotch of his battered Royal.


Pris Campbell
(c)2005

Verse Libre

The new issue is out. Click HERE to read.

I have a couple of poems in there but, of more importance, take a look at the art/photography of two of my favorite people. Geoff Sanderson of England is the most fantastic photographer I know and he's a good friend besides. He's always there for me. He also makes the best marmalade I've tasted. Yes, he cooks and he and Jill shipped me a batch from England. Jill, his wife, is an excellent artist, featured in last month's Verse Libre.

I'll brag on Jerry Dreesen's work next. Jerry came out of retirement to become Haiga Editor for Simply Haiku and his work sings. He and I have posted haiga together for probably two years now. He always encouraged even my strangest attempts and is convinced I have a flair for unusual creativity.

Thank you Geoff and Jerry for being part of my life. You're the greatest!

Pris

Afterbirth

Told she would die of
this lump growing in
side her--
go karmic
go spirit
go angels singing
from the realms of glory--
she buys a low
cut red shimmy shammy dress,
seduces the Jamaican lawn boy,
mails her husband's mistress
faked records;

Mr Jonas: herpes advanced stage!!
Oh, so official.

She withdraws their savings in ten
dollar bills, spends weeks
hiding each bill separately
in the gardenias
the A/c duct
under the carpets
inside every bra, dress, shoe and book
she still owns.

The lump,
this lump, now
her baby
come full term,
implodes,
a whoooooosh
of after
birth taking her with it,
feet first, flying
away from this strict
overplushed house
away from her faux-porcelain
mouthed husband,
only
that wrinkled
hand-clenched
desparate red dress
marking her shrunken
sad space on the bed.

A Word With Bukowski

(I'm still posting many older poems while I struggle with this infection. A while back, Didi Menendez, publisher of MiPo Journal, threw out the challenge-choose a poem you like and write a response poem to it. Here it is again, with a link to the original poem beneath it.
_____________________

A Word With Bukowski

It's no good.
Me, doing that
mirror, mirror
on the wall thing,
smearing my
wrinkles with Arden
while you moan
about old chorus girls
and the horrors of
ingrown toenails
in prison.

You always could
out talk me, you know.

I tell you I have visions
of Dorothy's shoes,
empty on the yellow
brick road, and that
mid-earth explosions
will destroy our dreams
anyway, hoping
to impress with profundity.

You roll bored eyes,
tap one finger on the countertop.

I wish you could have
come when my breasts
still burned men's hands
and my laugh chased
away all blackbirds of sorrow.

But those days have been
drained, like fine wine,
so yes, let us talk
about worn-out furnaces,
overdue mortgages,
liver spots,
and watch the buzzards
draw straws over who
gets the last rib.

Pris Campbell
(c)2003

Published in MiPo Bonsai Print, 2004


The poem I was responding to can be found on THIS SITE, The Blackbirds Are Rough Today.

Other Days

This was my grandmother when she was a child. This photo fascinates me. A different world back then. What is she thinking, I wonder? Can you guess?

Pris
(I never met her. She died when my mother, next to the youngest of six children, was 13 years old. My grandfather died five years later when a drunk driver drove him off the road. My mother had just started her first year of college and suddenly had no home to return to)