Three Christmas/holiday poems

Snow Globe

Wiry haired Nick on my left,
the one yet to die in a plane crash,
and John, once-lover, now friend, on my right,
hold me in our giddy weave
through the snow bombed Boston Commons.

Christmas Eve… our futures
still stretched out ahead of us
on some gypsy’s palm.
We kiss where the sidewalks meet.
Nick’s mouth tastes of weed,
John’s of some sweet sticky punch.
My laugh slices the dark like a laser.
A star loosens; falls.

I wish this night
might become a snow globe
to take home and shake
on some other Christmas Eve.
I want to see us again,
we three on this holy night
high and shivering,
young and invincible,
as we dance to the last tinkling
strains of Liebestraum.


published in Sketchbook Journal, 2007
and The Dead Mule 2009


christmas crossed

it went up yesterday
that twenty foot cross,
complete with dangling messiah,
lording it over the palmetto saws
and disco-dressed in K-mart lights.
her yearly monument to jesus.

cars troll our street
from twilight to midnight,
bumper to bumper,
while her messiah watches
with tired eyes.

the neighbors protest,
sign petitions,
make late night threats.

she’s ruining the neighborhood!

but the county says no law exists
to prevent an eighty year old lady
from crucifying jesus all over again
in the privacy of her own front yard.

I gather tossed beer cans at dawn.
they bring me a few bucks
for cheap muscatel.

his blood in a jug
my absolution.

Published in MiPo Weekly, 2002
and  The Dead Mule 2009


First Night

The night after that first
hurricane we walked into yards
stacked with lost trees,
wood fences, roof shingles
and somebody’s old lawn chair
and it was dark, so very dark,
like a plug had been pulled
on South Florida and it was
the First Night all over again
before Eve gave Adam the apple
and so black I could see the Milky Way,
the Dipper, and the Man In the Moon’s
grin and so quiet, like Nature
was humming Hosanna in the Highest,
and I was part of the chosen choir.


published in Boxcar Poetry Review, 2006
and The Dead Mule 2010


Thanksgiving haiku

more missing faces
around the table this year...
Thanksgiving dinner

My parents and aunt (to right) in the early eighties.

Poem in Blue Fifth Review, Sam Rasnake, editor

A poem of mine , with art by Mary Hillier, inspired by the poem is in the just released Blue Fith Review. The link opens in a separate window.

I seem to be posting a lot of publications in these recent posts. I want to say I'm pleased and give a heads up to these journals. This has been a very tough year healthwise and it gives me pleasure to know that I can still accomplish something I feel is valuable without being able to leave the house.

I apologize that I've not made my usual blog reading rounds in a while now. I'm just on overload from the rear-ending on our way back from seeing the Miami doctor in Klimas' lab in July, then an infection and back to back viruses.

Featured in The Nervous Breakdown

S.A. Griffin....poet, actor, friend and co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry recommended me to the editors of The Nervous Breakdown, and here's my feature.  Would love it if you at least took at peek at http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/category/poetry/

Thanks!

Pris

They come in fours...

This week and last, I have a poem out in Wild Goose review,The Redheaded Stepchild, and two in Outlaw Poetry. If you're a poet, looking for a good place to submit, I enjoy being in all of these journals.

This is my first time in The Redheaded Stepchild, a journal that only takes submissions that have been rejected elsewhere. Since the rejection rate for Stepchild runs over 80 percent, according to the editorial, it has so many rejections that a new journal has been started (not one of theirs) that publishes 'rejections The Redheaded Stepchild')

I was also featured in The Nervous Breakdown. My poem is HERE and the interview, HERE. S.A. Griffin, poet/actor and co-editor of The Outlaw Bible for American Poetry, gave one of the editors my name, he looked at my work and sent the invite. Thanks, S.A.


Pris

Readership on blog and website

I've brought up this question before as readership on my personal blog (erratically posted to these days) drops to half it was before facebook became so popular. Oddly, I've been paying attention to the stats my pay website sends me every couple of weeks--just part of their service for the 7. 50 a month I pay to be there with my domain name. I have an average of between four to five thousand readers on the website a month. No-one has signed the guest book in years so I have no idea who they are. On a website there's no way of interaction, like on a blog, but that part has dropped, too.

Just an interesting fact to pass on.

I'm still with the cold from hell and no voice going on five full weeks now. My husband is sick, too. Only the dog and two cats seem to be mucus free and racing about the house full of vigor.

My website is HERE. Poetic Inspirations.

Find your passion....

...it'll keep you alive inside.

my hand
grasping the pen...
ecstasy

Keith Jarrett, jazz pianist and his experience with CFS/ME

Renowned jazz pianist, Keith Jarrett, evoking a lot of feeling in me. He was hit by CFS/ME,the same illness I have. He was unable to play the piano at all for two years and still isn't able to perform at his earlier pace,crashing after and between concerts, if accounts I've read about his concert schedules are accurate. Eye hand coordination is very difficult with this illness...just hand coordination with this illness, and the hands grow weak easily. Lights and extraneous sounds are difficult to handle.

Also, according to links I've read, one day when his wife was out, after his first two years ill, one day he felt as if he could play again. He went into his home studio and recorded a simple melody (compared to his power playing) and gave it to his wife as a gift. This is it below.





I have the CD. The other songs are more complex and wonderful, but I'll always love this one. I know what that movement towards getting his life back meant.

Below is the link to one interview about his experience. Please take time to read. It describes how it feels to live with this monster inside you.(This opens in a new Window)

http://listserv.nodak.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9902D&L=co-cure&P=R972,

Below is an excerpt from the interview/article:

Jarrett's uncertain pattern of recovery and relapse is not uncommon
to victims of chronic fatigue syndrome, an elusive, misunderstood
disorder, its seriousness undercut by the apparent triviality of its
label.
"The stupid thing is that the name of the disease is so
lightweight," Jarrett says. "It sounds like somebody whining to their
mother, 'I don't want to take the garbage out.' Well, OK, you've got
chronic fatigue syndrome.
"But some doctors say that if you want to give the average person
an idea . . . it's like the last four months of an AIDS patient's
life -- but forever. I know people who have had this who have wished that
they had terminal cancer."

Note: If any details I've posted are inaccurate, please feel free to correct me, with references, and I'll change that in my post.