Earth Hour ...tonight between 8-9 pm

This post is going around the world, via the Internet:

It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?

The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.

On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour.

With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement.

*Extract taken from www.earthhour.org

Register yourself at http://www.earthhour.org/user/jDlR to show your support, if you wish!

Pris note: I'm going to do it. While it was symbolic when done in only one place last year, it has the potential to be much more if widespread. We waste so much energy it's amazing.

Vietnam Era music

MARCH 2010 NOTE: THIS SITE SEEMS TO HAVE GONE SOUTH SINCE I POSTED. IT PLAYS THE TOP SONG IN EACH BOX FOR ME NOW AND NONE OF THE OTHERS. WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT.


This site has a selection of some of the best music played in the sixties and early seventies. Look for the playlist section. Each playlist has a down arrow beside it. Click on the song and it plays in the music box on the site. I'm not sure how they're doing this without violating copyrights, but enjoy. A lot of these bring back the memories.

Not just any Hem

My throat is bound by the claws of a thousand crows,
offered to Dracula as a final feast
before dawn cracks the day.
Mute for three years, I scribed
non-sequiters onto tablets, paper scraps,
napkins--once, the palm of my hand.
Bored, my husband tossed what he could,
unread, to the trash.
I still can’t empty my backlog of words,
say all I’ve wanted to say.
Like Roosevelt, I tread softly,
carry a big stick, lest the crows
try to silence me completely again.

I’ve become a rag doll.
My legs wobble this way and that.
I knock over cereal boxes, glass elephants,
trip over unsteady feet.
The room turns; my personal merry-go-round,
but Frodo has pocketed the ring.

I want out from under this giant, want
to slide down the beanstalk with Jack,
dance down the yellow brick road
I’ve taken no nun’s vows for silence
or self flagelation. Chastity, either.
Pass me a hem to kiss.
With luck, I’ll take up this bed and walk.

Humor in Poetry...Lunch With Margaret

A friend and I were discussing humorous poetry recently. I write it off and on and enjoy it but have found that The Dead Mule: School of Southern Literature has been the only journal to appreciate and publish my humorous offerings over the years (Thank you, Dead Mule). The subject serrendipitously came up in two blogs this week. David Caddy , editor of the English print journal, Tears in the Fence, discusses Tom Raworth, an English poet, who was influenced by humor and wrote humor and Ron Silliman in today's blog discusses humor on the poetry of Jonathan Williams. Both are excellent articles.


Lunch With Margaret



Size 40 D's resting
on our fav lunch table,
she dissects
Saturday's date.
'It was THIS big';
arms flung wide.
Tea crashes into
my lap, drips onto floor.

I blush.
Pretend she discusses
the size steak ordered.

'And then he did THAT'.
Harder to stick
with steak story now.
She gestures, demonstrates,
sending fork,
lettuce attached,
to the plate of the
elderly man,
two tables away.

A tornado,
my friend Margaret.

Next week we meet
to discuss Sam.
Her latest..
This time I have
a plan:
Raincoat
Crash helmet
Walkman blaring
1812 Overture into both ears,
earpieces discretely tucked
under helmet.


Published in The Dead Mule

Art: Untitled by Cindy (her publishing name. No last name). She gave me permission years back to use this art with my poem, but her website has since disappeared.

Poetry in Motion

I wrote this in my beginning days of writing poetry. It has sat in the left column of my website homepage for several years now. I've never submitted it. I honestly don't think it's the sort of poem generally accepted for publication, but something about it speaks for me and how I feel about poetry...so it stays.


On midnight's
blackboard
words emerge
fade...

Southerly winds
shift new words
into place.

The rains
plunge
wash
these words
earthward,
staining
your notepad.

Transmuted
by your magic,
a morning
rainbow
returns them
skyward.

By nightfall
a star forms.

Oh Holy Night,
the Virgins sing.


Pris Campbell
©2002

Sam Rasnake/Anne Sexton

You must read this poem by Anne Sexton on Sam Rasnake's blog . He also features two different readings of it by her...very different approaches.

I have been that kind of woman...

A poem to worm its way in through your skin and live there.

Illusions

An illusion
within a delusion
he created me--
my not so secret admirer...
he woos with detailed letters
about glass bottles
discovered in alleys,
his predilection for raspberries,
and, once, described
touching himself
when a funeral procession
passed on his street,
stalked by a crazy woman
waving a white rose.

He said she reminded
him of me.



Published in Verse Libre

I haven't disappeared...

Between my husband painting the office (the fumes) and a bout with the stomach virus going around, I've not been online a lot recently. I apologize for not making return visits to those of you who've been good enough to make comments and will do so soon.

I did just have three poems come out in The Cliffs: Soundings, a print journal, so I can't provide a link. Some of my haiga are appearing in Simply Haiku and in Sketchbook Journal. I've been lax in submitting lately. Push me. Prod me.

Two out of three Ain't Bad....Meatloaf AND ELO with Telephone Line

I still love Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell LP. This was one of the great slow ones. He went into a decline after this peak. I saw him in a small theatre in the eighties, trying to make a comeback, but still singing the songs from that original album.




and another favorite from the seventies..ELO. They made music that was great to dream to.

Sketchbook is online

Click on the name to visit the new issue of Sketchbook, a short forms/haiga journal. Poems, too. Cover by the unbeatable Ron Moss of Tasmania. I've got a few haiga in the issue, too.

Enjoy!