Michael Stephens with a wee help from me:-)

The link for The American Dream on YouTubes is HERE

Michael gave me waaaay too much credit at the end. He located most of the photographs, himself, but I offered what I had and could think of from the net. This is his original composition and him singing. I think he did a spectacular job on the video. Well worth a look. (I just discovered in inserting the vid that if you go to the link, the video is much larger. I'd recommend that and am taking off the code for the vid here)

The video is both timely and timeless.

A collaboration with Geoff Sanderson

...except that I sent him the photo of my cat early this morning and he did all the work. This cat was the stray who brought her babies into our garage before Wilma hit last year. We ended up keeping the whole group until the babies were weaned, then found good homes for the babies and adopted Sabrina. She's truly made this her home now. It's hard to get her to go out. The father of her children comes around every day and she'll go out for a while with him, but not long. Sometimes they lie next to each other on the back patio like two old friends. We finally started feeding him, too, as his sides were sunk in. He's too wild to ever be adopted so better to just take care of him without adopting him (shots, vet, etc) than sending him off to his death at the animal shelter or die of starvation. He was lying on the bench just below the window when this shot was taken.



(click to enlarge)

Smithsonian's People's Choice Portrait Competition

I love seeing portraits of people, whether painted or photographed. The winners have been chosen in the Smithsonian portrait competiton, which are photographs. Now, however, if you click on the portrait of your choice, the People's Choice Award will also be noted. The instructions are clear. Go HERE to the Smithsonian site. I've made my choice. I liked the one the judges chose as number three.

If you like, post the portrait title of your first choice in a comment.

Lisa Pierot: An incredible Woman

I just hung up from speaking to someone at our local paper, The Palm Beach Post, and I'm crying. I'm crying because I just found out that someone I never knew in person but had come to know in her weekly columns has finally died. It's not a surprise. She wrote about her battles with metastatic cancer, which kept recurring and worsening. I hadn't seen the Sunday Post consistently and she did take times off during heavy treatments, so I finally called. She died several months ago.

Many of her columns are linked here on her website,The Metastatic Life.

You would think columns by a woman dealing with a progressing cancer would be depressing. In some ways it was. She didn't sugar coat her experiences. What hooked me on this column was her unrelenting honesty. I admired her. She wrote of her mother's cancer and her wish to have her mother with her at her own death, but her mother died first. She wrote about everyday things and gratitude, pain, her fears, of her love for her children and friends. She wrote about her wish that her friend raise her young daughter after her death since her husband was a short-tempered man, one she would not judge to be a good parent. His reply to her was that he would win custody since 'she would be dead, anyway, and couldn't fight him' (it seems her judgment was right on there).

I'm sharing this because I'd like my readers to get to know her just a wee bit, and to memorialize her in this way, even if by reading only one article.

I still have those tears in my eyes. Lisa, you made an impact on thousands of lives. I don't know if you knew it, but I hope you did.


Pris

The Pianist from the Movie

I seem to be into enjoying excerpts of performances I've found on YouTube. For those of you who saw The Pianist, you'll remember this scene where his family has been taken to the concentration camps and killed, his hiding place destroyed, his help moved away, and he's near freezing in a bombed out ruin with one can of fruit his remaining food. A German officer discovers him and asked him what he used to do. He tells him he'd played the piano. Before the war, he was solo pianist for the city orchestra and played also on the radio. The officer points to a piano that's been abandoned in the ruins and tells him to play. He sits. You wonder if he's still able to after all he's been through. Then comes this wonderful scene and the humanity of the officer is shown, as well as the beauty of this wonderful piece of music. Enjoy.

The Pianist - Chopin Ballade No.1in G minor






*******See Michi Gabriel's moving poem in Lock Raven Review dedicated to the pianist in this movie. She posted the link in comments, but I'm putting it here, too, so others won't miss it. The poem is so very painfully beautiful.

Yesterday's News

They said I'd be back
on my bike in no time
after the knee operation,
but all I could see was a grey haze
stretched out over the horizon
like a Scottish moor or possibly
a giant spider's web, blocking
a future that no longer
included life as I knew it.

You're just nervous, they said,
but who can be nervous about
an eighth inch of cartledge
when you've had your appendix
taken , near bursting, after
a midnight vomit-hurling vault
to Emergency, or your uterus
ripped out of your body
and thrown into the bin
for discarded body parts.

I've never been back on my bike,
never returned to the old life.
Sometimes we sense these things,
know when the future lies waiting
with its sword drawn or perhaps
a soft fog to lull us, but nobody
wants the headlines ahead of time.
Best to wait till they're yesterday's news,
lining our garbage pails, and soft rains
bring only the good dreams again.


(Just accepted for publication in MEAT, edited by S.A. Griffin)

What shows up when you google YOUR name?

A few years ago, I was surprised when I googled my name, out of curiosity, only to find along with expected results, an entry I'd made in someone's GUESTBOOK a year earlier. I knew the search engines crawled sites, journals, etc, but guestbooks?? Good thing I said something nice, eh?:-)

At any rate, I checked the webtracker for my website today for the first time in about a month. My visitors come from almost anywhere imaginable, but google is the main search engine that finds me and usually with the key word 'inspirations'. (My site name is Poetic Inspirations). Today, I found some search results from dogpile and while, of course, this blog has also been showing for some time, I was surprised to find that one search had led to a COMMENT someone had made on this blog last year after Katrina hit.

Amazing, and it also tells you to be very wary what you say anywhere on a public forum. Who knows? I may find these words in a search engine one day.

Pris

Brightman and Banderas do Phantom of the Opera

This is a tiny excerpt from a dvd special I just rented. A presentation in England of Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest's songs. A wonderful DVD. Everything from music from Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, to Phantom.

The Piano

A friend posted this in the bulletins on MySpace.

Yup, today be the day!

Then...

Here I am at my fifth! I'm the one clutching the presents for dear life :-) My cousin Dee, scowls beside me to my left. What a party! We even had a homemade cake!



and now:

I did this with my camcorder. Need a new one. All those pixels showing....

Mipo Radio Weekend Show

Hope you'll enjoy. Among a group of good poems on the show, you'll find my reading of 'Innocence' next to last.


powered by ODEO

Haiga Collaboration with Geoff Sanderson

Click to enlarge.


I took this shot about a year ago late afternoon over at the ocean, after the sunworshipers had gone. I was struggling for a good haiku for it and Geoff came up with one that totally resonated with me. Here tis.

Contacting a U.S. Senator

This list of U.S. Senators with their mail message addresses is very helpful if you want to get a message through. On a recent Senate issue, I wrote the Senator who represents me. I'm sure the message I got back was canned, with so many people writing, but what I've been told in the past is that records are at least kept by Senate aids of the positions of people writing or calling. For me, this direct contact is a lot more meaningful than many (not all) petitions that circulate and, I suspect, often don't end up getting sent anywhere. Most don't even have instructions re where to send so they just disappear into the Internet.

Pris

Enya

I enjoy Enya's music and her videos. Find them restful. This one shows her performing on Larry King Live a while back. Here are the printed lyrics to the song she sings, May It Be, that was the ending song for Lord of The Rings:
May it be

May it be
An evening star
Shines down
Upon you

May it be
When darkness falls
Your heart
Will be true

You walk a lonely road
Oh how far you are from home

[quenya: darkness has come]
Believe and you
Will find your way

[quenya: darkness has fallen]
A promise lives
Within you now

May it be
The shadows call
Will fly away

May it be
You journey on
To light the day

When the night is overcome
You may rise
To find the sun

[quenya: darkness has come]
Believe and you
Will find your way

[quenya: darkness has fallen]
A promise lives
Within you now

A promise lives
Within you now...

My Last Love Poem

I want some swaggering,
cock-sure man
to write me a love poem,
to say thou and thee
and cliché up phrases like
breasts like ripe melons
and eyes bright as stars.
I want him to rhapsodize
about love everlasting
and throw in some lust, but

I think those love-sodden
days have swept past me,
the gate short-ended and barred.
My face is a road map for aging,
breasts, a compass pointing south.

Do I settle for rambling
about the old days, drag
out photos of past lovers, list
how many ways we did it
to bored cat and dog?

There must be another John Alden out there,
saving himself until now.

I'll put an ad in the paper,
search noted bottles at sea, perhaps
take out a pen and write
that sweet poem, myself.

I'll dig out some Schumann, slip
on that special silk dress,
lather chartreuse onto nails,
both fingers and toes.

I'll tape the poem
to my bedpost, carve
it into my headstone,
where bluebirds can gather
and remaining friends sigh
she was adored to the end
when my body makes love with the worms.

.

The Face of a country rarely seen

By now, regular readers have discovered that I enjoy many of the interesting sites Kim Komando sends in her newsletter. Another recent one featured a link to North Korea. As she describes it:

The real North Korea
One of the things I like most about the Internet is the ability to see new things. Since I love to travel, I often look at pictures of different countries. That's how I came across today's Cool Site. It's a photographic tour of North Korea. In case you're not up on geography, North Korea is a Communist country. It is radically different from its high-tech neighbor, South Korea.

The photos were taken by a Russian Webmaster. He took photos of forbidden subjects. That is to say, he took photos that contradict those published by the government.

The photos paint a bleak picture of life. The sense of isolation is overwhelming. Photos usually make me want to visit a place. In this case, I'm not sure I'd go there, but the photos sure make me glad to live in America!

End of quote.

Click HERE to see some truly interesting photographs! Note that when you reach bottom, there are more pages. It just depends on how much you want to see.

Cirque Du Soleil - Hula Hoops

From Kim Komando's 'cool site' letter for today:

Flexible Elena Lev
There are few things as engrossing as a good show. And in case you think I'm talking about television shows, think again!

I saw Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas a while back. It was amazing. If you've never seen Cirque du Soleil, you're missing out.

That's why I'm recommending today's site. It's a video of Elena Lev, a member of Cirque du Soleil, performing.

At YouTube, you'll see a video of Elena performing her famous hula hoops dance. I know – hula hoops? It is much cooler than you think!


I used to know how to hula hoop, but not like this! The woman is amazing. Well worth a looksee.

You can either go to this youtube link:

www.youtube.com

or play it directly here:

dream (a haiga)

Click to Enlarge.

Apple Pie

In one of my past lives
when I wasn't busy being
Cleopatra or Ivan the Terrible,
I sailed with the Pilgrims
to the New Land. Only eight,
I watched dragons lift nightly
from frothing seas, fins
flared magestically like a
fat lady's fan, hissing
and slapping their tails
till the sun gods rose red
with rage every morning,
driving them back under.

My mother called me a liar,
washed my mouth out with soap,
but I'll say this:
there was no Plymouth Rock and
Priscilla never married John Alden.
She ran off with a good-looking Indian.
Her grandson snatched Custer,
made him skin and cook buffalo
for the entire tribe till he died.
The army generals made up that story
about Custer's Last Stand to force Congress
to do more about the 'Indian Problem'.

Now, if I were a liar, would I come clean
about all that stuff and mess up
everyone's apple pie vision of history?