I wanted first to thank you all for your notes and also to post a poem written during this time off.
Cora Lee
Rag bound 'round your head,
brown skin dipped in sweat
you washed our dishes
our clothes
ironed starched collars
and fancy blouses
no Cinderella prince
would offer you in your lifetime.
Four years old and precocious,
I corrected your grammar, ran unbidden
down the path to your house,
watched you fry fatback
and flatbread, thought it a feast,
never dreaming, if offered the platter
you might have chosen steak instead,
never saw you sighing at the unjust breeze
or the angry hawks circling over the thick pines
behind your house, day's end, sore feet crying
on the graying planks of your porch.
Grown, I wanted to toss out my sorry's
like a pink net of flowers--like Judas,
to give back the coins, beg forgiveness,
undo the nails, dig out the thorns, but
you stood in your sister's door
a statue, already fading in the twilight
eyes as vacant as a barn after the cows
have been led out to slaughter.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
I won't be posting again until Oct 10
As much as I've tried to avoid taking too much time away from this blog, since I enjoy it, I need to give myself a good two weeks to recuperate from this cold which has almost knocked me flat, not to mention the lingering back inflammation. I think less time checking the computer and trying to post when my head in la la land is the wisest thing to do. Thank you, Michael Parker, for offering me commmon sense in doing this when I didn't have enough to do it myself.
Leave poems, sayings, haiku, words of wisdom, but I won't be responding again till I come back. I'll miss you all.
By the way, in my absence, I have over a year's worth of postings you can feel free to explore, all the way from more poems, artwork, haiga, videos, family/communal living photos, fun sites, and opinions on issues.
Pris
Leave poems, sayings, haiku, words of wisdom, but I won't be responding again till I come back. I'll miss you all.
By the way, in my absence, I have over a year's worth of postings you can feel free to explore, all the way from more poems, artwork, haiga, videos, family/communal living photos, fun sites, and opinions on issues.
Pris
Should the National Anthem also be sung in Spanish---the controvery.
An article in about.com presents a pretty even view of what is becoming a controvery splitting us down the middle again on the issue of the use of English in our country.
Quote from the first part of this article:
On Friday, April 28, 2006 several Los Angeles Hispanic radio stations joined a nationwide campaign to play "Nuestro Himno," which means "Our Hymn/Anthem," as a way to show solidarity for the May 1st National Boycott.
In response, President Bush told reporters in the White House Rose Garden, "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."
Let's hope after those comments that Mexican Presidente Vicente Fox will still graciously invite President Bush to Mexico for continued commerce discussions that can mutually benefit both America and Mexico.
Let's also hope that Presidente Fox doesn't echo Bush's words and tell him, "I think that people who want to conduct business negotiations with Mexico ought to learn Spanish and out of respect ought to speak Spanish during business talks, if they want favorable business results."
- The Idea Behind the Spanish Anthem -
British music producer Adam Kidron, who came up with the idea of the Spanish anthem, shared in a written statement that the Spanish anthem was not intended to discourage immigrants from learning English or embracing American culture. to finish reading this article, click HERE.
Leave your view in a comment. What do you think? Also leave your general location. It seems that people in the states bordering Mexico and residents of Florida where the trend is for the language to become more bilingual (including requirements in many places such as banks that the employees BE bilingual) have stronger views than in, say, Kansas.
Pris
Quote from the first part of this article:
On Friday, April 28, 2006 several Los Angeles Hispanic radio stations joined a nationwide campaign to play "Nuestro Himno," which means "Our Hymn/Anthem," as a way to show solidarity for the May 1st National Boycott.
In response, President Bush told reporters in the White House Rose Garden, "I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."
Let's hope after those comments that Mexican Presidente Vicente Fox will still graciously invite President Bush to Mexico for continued commerce discussions that can mutually benefit both America and Mexico.
Let's also hope that Presidente Fox doesn't echo Bush's words and tell him, "I think that people who want to conduct business negotiations with Mexico ought to learn Spanish and out of respect ought to speak Spanish during business talks, if they want favorable business results."
- The Idea Behind the Spanish Anthem -
British music producer Adam Kidron, who came up with the idea of the Spanish anthem, shared in a written statement that the Spanish anthem was not intended to discourage immigrants from learning English or embracing American culture. to finish reading this article, click HERE.
Leave your view in a comment. What do you think? Also leave your general location. It seems that people in the states bordering Mexico and residents of Florida where the trend is for the language to become more bilingual (including requirements in many places such as banks that the employees BE bilingual) have stronger views than in, say, Kansas.
Pris
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Those Lovesick Swallows
Just when you're sure
the moon isn't going to fall
and no parallel universe
will open, with the indians
and the buffalo wandering beneath
unpolluted skies once again,
he walks back into your life,
spins it around.
He kisses your mouth,
suckles your breasts
and carries you to where
pain can no longer follow,
to where those crazy lovesick
swallows from Capistrano
fold wings around you,
and the juke plays oldies
all night.
Pris Campbell
(c)2006
(Thanks everyone, for your concern. I'm better, but still really weak and goofy with this cold)
the moon isn't going to fall
and no parallel universe
will open, with the indians
and the buffalo wandering beneath
unpolluted skies once again,
he walks back into your life,
spins it around.
He kisses your mouth,
suckles your breasts
and carries you to where
pain can no longer follow,
to where those crazy lovesick
swallows from Capistrano
fold wings around you,
and the juke plays oldies
all night.
Pris Campbell
(c)2006
(Thanks everyone, for your concern. I'm better, but still really weak and goofy with this cold)
Friday, September 22, 2006
The Abuse Can Continue
Click on the title link above to see the irony of in this Washington Post article next to my poem in the post below.
I now have either a bad cold or the flu and am feeling a bit nuts with one thing after another. All I can say again is 'I shall return'. Right now the screen is a blur and I'm keeling over. I'm missing my blogging and visiting all the blogs I enjoy!
Pris
I now have either a bad cold or the flu and am feeling a bit nuts with one thing after another. All I can say again is 'I shall return'. Right now the screen is a blur and I'm keeling over. I'm missing my blogging and visiting all the blogs I enjoy!
Pris
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Will The Last Living Saint Please Stand Up
It was only after my brother-in-law's visit,
two years past his time in that slaughterhouse
we called Vietnam, that I saw how the war
had affected my first husband,
safely riding out his own two year bloodbath
in a supply ship off the corpse
free green waters of this once beautiful,
but troubled, land we were sent to burn, tame,
napalm and slaughter.
God Bless America, land of the free!
Teach the young our enemies are subhuman
then send them frollicking on their way.
My brother-in-law spoke of sheared-off ears strung on belts,
Cong flung like basketballs or mortars
from our copters,
the rapes,
the heads on posts,
the torture.
Oh dear God, I had to leave the room.
From the kitchen, I heard them both laugh
about one gook who begged for his life,
his screams like those of a dying hyena.
These stories brought more hysteria
than Carson
or sock it to me Hawn on Laugh In.
Civilian or Cong? If dead, he was Cong.
That was the rule.
Women clutching their babies, stabbed
raped, and shot counted as ten, no make it a hundred...
ten counts for each of the ten men who raped her.
These counts, 'proof' of our
successes in taming these noble savages.
Count 'em.
Count 'em double.
Count 'em triple.
That was the unofficial official word given these teens,
some still not needing a shave every day,
some with their mother's mailed cookies still
stowed in their rucksack.
My husband's spirit had fled along with his brother's.
This explained his long silences, the indifference
that had crept like a dark shadow over
our young marriage.
His friend, best man at our Pearl Harbor wedding,
raped me one night.
Out of the navy by then, too.
Me sleeping on their sofa
enroute to a meeting.
Told his wife, my close friend,
it was consensual.
Maybe he was dreaming I was a bar girl
waiting for him in Saigon again,
legs spread wide for a dolla'.
This was the war we were to learn from.
the war more men died by their own hand
from, than were killed by the Cong in those
searing, orange-coated, gateways to hell.
The bones of the dead rise in my dreams,
dress in their cast away coats of skin.
They are us, they say, and we, them.
They pull on their faces and it's my face I see.
May those without sin cast the first stone,
they chant.
Glass houses weren't safe havens, anyway.
No more than battlefields, home fronts,
or shivering behind the backs of wannabe
saints claiming they would've never done the same thing.
I'm still waiting for the real saints to rise up.
Turn on the house lights.
Toss away the crosses.
Sing hymns of praise.
Feather the ground with rose petals.
Perhaps glass houses will yet
be habitable again in our lifetime
and condoms, not war,
the preferred way to manage
our burgeoning population overload.
two years past his time in that slaughterhouse
we called Vietnam, that I saw how the war
had affected my first husband,
safely riding out his own two year bloodbath
in a supply ship off the corpse
free green waters of this once beautiful,
but troubled, land we were sent to burn, tame,
napalm and slaughter.
God Bless America, land of the free!
Teach the young our enemies are subhuman
then send them frollicking on their way.
My brother-in-law spoke of sheared-off ears strung on belts,
Cong flung like basketballs or mortars
from our copters,
the rapes,
the heads on posts,
the torture.
Oh dear God, I had to leave the room.
From the kitchen, I heard them both laugh
about one gook who begged for his life,
his screams like those of a dying hyena.
These stories brought more hysteria
than Carson
or sock it to me Hawn on Laugh In.
Civilian or Cong? If dead, he was Cong.
That was the rule.
Women clutching their babies, stabbed
raped, and shot counted as ten, no make it a hundred...
ten counts for each of the ten men who raped her.
These counts, 'proof' of our
successes in taming these noble savages.
Count 'em.
Count 'em double.
Count 'em triple.
That was the unofficial official word given these teens,
some still not needing a shave every day,
some with their mother's mailed cookies still
stowed in their rucksack.
My husband's spirit had fled along with his brother's.
This explained his long silences, the indifference
that had crept like a dark shadow over
our young marriage.
His friend, best man at our Pearl Harbor wedding,
raped me one night.
Out of the navy by then, too.
Me sleeping on their sofa
enroute to a meeting.
Told his wife, my close friend,
it was consensual.
Maybe he was dreaming I was a bar girl
waiting for him in Saigon again,
legs spread wide for a dolla'.
This was the war we were to learn from.
the war more men died by their own hand
from, than were killed by the Cong in those
searing, orange-coated, gateways to hell.
The bones of the dead rise in my dreams,
dress in their cast away coats of skin.
They are us, they say, and we, them.
They pull on their faces and it's my face I see.
May those without sin cast the first stone,
they chant.
Glass houses weren't safe havens, anyway.
No more than battlefields, home fronts,
or shivering behind the backs of wannabe
saints claiming they would've never done the same thing.
I'm still waiting for the real saints to rise up.
Turn on the house lights.
Toss away the crosses.
Sing hymns of praise.
Feather the ground with rose petals.
Perhaps glass houses will yet
be habitable again in our lifetime
and condoms, not war,
the preferred way to manage
our burgeoning population overload.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Thought this was beautiful...
A friend shared the below with me, so I'm passing it on. The vids have pushed my right hand column down to below everything, but it's worth it. I'm still struggling but hopefully will soon be back in good posting form again.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Update
I was tested for a compression fracture yesterday since my bone density scores had fallen so, and don't have one in my low back (though old ones further up the spine). I'm grateful for that. I'm still inflammmed and in a lot of pain so all I can assume for now is that it's a fibromyalgia flare like I get in different parts of my body at different times. It's still almost impossible to sit, so....
I'll be back.
Pris
I'll be back.
Pris
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Off for a few days
I'm having a major flare with my back and can't be at the computer right now much more than to answer a few email, so will leave my blog in my reader's good care. I shall return!
Friday, September 08, 2006
We continue to attempt to wipe out our planet!
(the following is quoted from this National Geographic Site, which includes more photos, one of which moves in for a close up shot of the poachers): Will we EVER learn??
The remains of slaughtered elephants lie amidst the trees near Zakouma National Park in southeastern Chad. Mike Fay, a Wildlife Conservation Society biologist on a National Geographic Society-funded expedition, spotted the animals in early August—two of about a hundred dead elephants seen during a recent aerial survey just outside the park's borders (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society).
Although international ivory trade has been banned since 1989, elephant tusks are hot commodities on the black market. The tusks are actually elongated incisors. Since about a third of their length is inside the skull, the tusks cannot be fully removed while the animal is alive. Poachers therefore shoot into an elephant herd, cut off the trunks of any fallen animals, and hack out the tusks with an axe.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Friday, September 01, 2006
Fading
Celibate for longer then Rip
Van Winkle's nap, it seems,
Sara dreams in technicolor,
breasts like round hills again,
legs wrapped like thunderbolts
around some sexy man's waist.
Sean Connery maybe, or
Denzel Washington.
She wonders if sex works like
heartbeats in animals, if
she used up her quota in her
too many men too little time
communal days.
She remembers when her face
blazed a fire in men's hearts.
Between their legs, too.
Now she's forgotten what an orgasm
feels like with a man still inside her.
She climbs out of bed, puts on her
Give Bush a Blow Job PLEASE sweatshirt
does not go near the airport
but joins other graying ex-hippie
women who wander the streets
and coffee shops after midnight,
minds still alert and longing,
bodies fading like ghosts
between every streetlight.
Van Winkle's nap, it seems,
Sara dreams in technicolor,
breasts like round hills again,
legs wrapped like thunderbolts
around some sexy man's waist.
Sean Connery maybe, or
Denzel Washington.
She wonders if sex works like
heartbeats in animals, if
she used up her quota in her
too many men too little time
communal days.
She remembers when her face
blazed a fire in men's hearts.
Between their legs, too.
Now she's forgotten what an orgasm
feels like with a man still inside her.
She climbs out of bed, puts on her
Give Bush a Blow Job PLEASE sweatshirt
does not go near the airport
but joins other graying ex-hippie
women who wander the streets
and coffee shops after midnight,
minds still alert and longing,
bodies fading like ghosts
between every streetlight.
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