Hair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kim Komando featured a site today that allow you to upload a photo of yourself, full face, and 'try on' hairdo's that different celebrities wear. I was in a mood to do something inane, so here I am even with a Brad Pitt cut!

Go HERE to try for yourself.

Okay...any preferences??:-) (click to enlarge)

...and my final three.

Surreal



(cartoon of White Rabbit as sung by the irreplacable Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane. A must see!)


Passion



Libertango by Yo Yo Ma with clips from 'The Dance Lesson. This man's music stirs my blood. I heard him on a simulcast on the educational channel live at Carnegie Hall in the eighties and stood up alone in the room after screaming bravo! What can be more passionate than his music combined with the tango?? Wow!


Aging



Both Sides Now, with clips from the movie, Love Actually. I love this later version of this song.



I didn't get in the sensual sexual per se. Next time:-) Think Amy Winehouse's F**k me pumps vid, which I found thanks to Collin.
Now, if they will accept the challenge, or have time to do it, I tag Lee Herrick, Ray Sweatman, Jim Knowles, and Iri ..don't ask me to bungle the spelling of her last name. It's Finnish and too complex for this early in the morning. Nomiker..Blue Skies Over A Redhead, a poet who posts most of her beautiful poems on MySpace.

Continuing with Nick's challenge (see post below this one)

Okay, I was going to do this in spaced out installments, but got carried away and picked more that represent attributes of my poems or myself as poet. Two up today. The last three up tomorrow.

Disillusionment



(Diamonds and Rust..Baez) I remember how moving this song was when I first heard it and it still gets to me until this day. One of the themes that runs through my poems is the falling in/falling out of love and the disillusionment that comes after more than one major love has passed by.

Intensity



(You're beautiful..James Blunt) When I first heard James Blunt sing, I had to buy his CD. The intensity of first times, be it love or anything else. It's a feeling we should never lose.

Nick Bruno has thrown out a challenge.

I'm going to take a shot at it on the installment plan. I originally found his link on Sam Rasnake's blog.

This is the essence of the challenge, but go to Nick's blog entry on Thursday, January 24 for the full skinny and his choices:


If you were to liken your poetry to a musical genre and match it in its intrinsic elements of poetry to a specific form of music, artist or even song(s) what might that (those) be? So let's say for the sake of comparison that if you were to choose 5 songs; pieces and/or artists which would best approximate your poetic sensibilities and style which would they be? If possible post them in You Tube form.

Here's my first one.

Tell It Like It Is

The all interview issue of Mipoesias is out.

Courtney Campbell, a talented poet living in Brazil, interviewed me for this issue and I interviewed John Sweet, a poet I much admire. Enjoy the issue! (my pic and bio are at the bottom of the interview with John)

Go to www.mipoesias.com to read it. This link opens in a new window.

EDIT: A new issue is out now at that link. Go to the drop down box on the opening image , hit down arrow, and choose 'all interview issue' to see the above. Thanks. I'm also in '2007 poetry' in the list.

For Martin Luther King

I wrote this poem last year and may have posted it here before. I've honed it some since then and am reposting in honour of his day. I heard Martin Luther King give his I Have A Dream speech during the March On Washington. I was working that summer in Manhattan and rode down with members of a Black church in Brooklyn, where I worked, in a chartered bus that day. Make no mistake. King was a special leader. For that day, skin color was forgotten. We gathered around that long wading pool and believed in his dream. It's been a long time, but I hope it still will come true.


Martin Luther King: MIA


We're looking for you, Martin.
We're searching Selma,
back-row bus seats,
crowded lunch counters,
Dylan's guitar,
Hoover's files,
your I Have A Dream speech.
We're combing back through days
when protest and love
beat in the same heart chamber;
days when we thought black
would meet white
and white would meet black
in a role reversal melt
down of ivory keys played
on a Sunday organ in churches
pouring Christ's blood
into silver chalices
for whoSOEVER believed.

Show yourself, Martin.
Do you sit, unseen,
in laps of the homeless,
the disenfranchised,
beaten and raped women,
molested children
and sad,jobless men,
telling them love
can still rule the world
and no hand will then ever be raised
with whip,chain or fist to innocent backs?

We need you, Martin.
Take up your staff.
Strap on your sandals.
Lead us from temptation
and forward into a salvation
of arms outreached in an endless ballet
where princes remain faithful
and trapped swans are set free
by long journey's end.


(c)Pris Campbell

A youtube slice of the event:



Peter, Paul and Mary...Baez and Dylan perform before the speech.

Splatter

                                    for Jackson Pollock

Tell about the demons you archetyped
into those paint splattered canvases,Jackson.
Clattering paint cans and feet ablur,
you whirled around your emerging images;
a shaman.
The wind couldn't pace you.

Now, art critics fractal your paintings,
see equations in your shifting Scheherazades,
your Rorshachs for 1001 nights.
Their theories impress Berkenstocked art lovers,
confuse curious tourists up from Orlando.
Your dance was cut far too short.

Unlike you, I hold my own dark dreams close.
Short-shadowed by the noonday sun, they puddle.
You were the brave one.
You flew headlong into treacherous skies
where not even Superman could save you.




photo of Pollock in action.



Splatter

Fake Orgasms (from Harry Meets Sally)

Someone posted this at MySpace. I think it's one of the funniest scenes in the movie:-)

Ablaze (revision of one written in 2005)

Cocky, he thinks he can kill giants with his slingshot.
He tamps powder deep into bombs, spews hate
as his evening prayer, tells himself
those who aren't like him are evil, laughs
when the world mourns.

This terrorist...this upcoming star
of Dante's Ninth Circle;
his feet are already ablaze.

The memories we keep

A friend (Al Winnans) just wrote about the high winds out in San Francisco just now and this note just poured out back to him....

On my boat trip, we anchored in Nantucket, planning to stay only 2-3 days and see things and move on. We had to go at a certain pace to beat winter down into warmer climes. (didn't succeed...we were still in the Carolinas at the beginning of November).

Anyway, the anchorage area was protected from all directions but one...wide open to the jetty leading west, back into the Vineyard. Fifty knot winds hit that last night. It was pitch black and ,one by one , under that black sky, we heard boats slipping ahead of us and dragging back tangling over other boat anchors and uprooting them. It was a mess. We started the engine...a little outboard to keep the heaviest pressure off our line and used it to weave to one side when we saw a big shadow floating back towards us...just praying it wouldn't get our line. That was one night when I asked myself if I was crazy doing this (one night of many, as it turned out:-).

The next morning it was bedlam. We were the leading line of boats. the others were jammed in behind us. A few found spots in the marina. The winds stayed up for seven more days. we ran out of ice and food but couldn't leave the boat. The chop was too high to row in so we beeped for the marina boat service...a big dinghy with a motor that picked you up for a buck for shore. I went in since R was better with the engine if it kicked out, took my backpack and came back with loads of food.

We tried to leave one morning when it seemed calmer. Were halfway out the narrow jetty when a big fishing boat flew by us and hailed us telling us it was still too dangerous out there for a boat our size and to turn back. As we started to turn , a coast guard boat went by really fast leaving a wave that rolled us from side to side. I was in the process of securing things inside but hadn't finished since this was a last minute go. Everything flew all over. The cat,terrified,lept onto my lap and dug her claws in. I soon felt something warm and knew she'd peed on me. Then I realized I was so scared that I'D PEED , TOO!! Gads.

We got back in, anchored, cleaned up the boat, cleaned up me and were finally able to leave the next day.

The two times remotely that scary were when a huge storm hit us in the Neuse river and when we had a long run down the Jersey Coast all night with the winds and seas so high behind us that we were surfing with just the storm jib up. It was whoosh, and up went the boat and then down the side of the wave. Get broadside to one there and you'd roll.

It's a wonder I survived. but those are the times I remember the most. Odd about how memories work, isn't it. It's not the mundane. It's the thrills, the chances we take.



This is R's back on Little Adventure before the stormy days. Look closely and you'll see Monster, my cat, inside, unaware of what was yet to come!



This was on the Neuse River, North Carolina. We were traveling temporarily with the other boat and both of us set out two anchors when we saw the storm approaching. The trees and shoreland in the distance kept the chop down, but both boats tugged ferociously on their anchor lines when the worst of the winds hit.