The antibiotic has me so sick now that I'm hanging by my nails on the edge of a cliff. My bed is actually a stand-in for the cliff since we have none in Florida.
I need to do at least one productive thing a day for the remaining three weeks of the med, so will post old poems or pictures or whatever might tantelize the imagination..perhaps a doodle of my nose or crooked finger one of the days. Anyway, this is an early quite short poem based on on T.S. Elliot's most infamous poetic characters.
Prufrock Panned
Gads, Profrock
Stop your moaning
about rolled trousers and peaches.
Who cares whether mermaids
croon songs to you
through throats parched
by seasalt?
(they probably sing offkey anyway)
Take a chance! Eat that peach.
Let Peter Pan be your North Star.
Tug on those green tights and fly!
Pris Campbell
(c)2001
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
Degas' Ghost
En pointe. Center stage front.
Her tutu is a plumed crysanthymum,
delicately balanced on dual stems.
She traces the air with pale fingertips,
as if to memorize it as woman--
not the swan she soon will become.
We flocked to see Nureyev that night,
expected to grow damp with rapture
from his fierce Neapolonic leaps,
head tilted cockily in the fury
of his futile heroic dance.
We only saw her...
This flower. This reluctant swan.
Degas white, pinned
under a dimming spotlight.
Fluttering and rising.
Dipping and lifting.
Then, abruptly, the vacant stage.
Pris Campbell
(c)2005
Her tutu is a plumed crysanthymum,
delicately balanced on dual stems.
She traces the air with pale fingertips,
as if to memorize it as woman--
not the swan she soon will become.
We flocked to see Nureyev that night,
expected to grow damp with rapture
from his fierce Neapolonic leaps,
head tilted cockily in the fury
of his futile heroic dance.
We only saw her...
This flower. This reluctant swan.
Degas white, pinned
under a dimming spotlight.
Fluttering and rising.
Dipping and lifting.
Then, abruptly, the vacant stage.
Pris Campbell
(c)2005
Sunday, May 08, 2005
A Nice Thing..
This morning's mail brought a the following letter from Anthony Pahl, Australian webmaster of the IWVPA. This award, described in his letter means a lot to me and so I thank you, Tony, and I give appreciation for Vets everywhere, from wars past and present, all over the globe, who've put their lives on the line for the rest of us, whether our politicians have been right or wrong.
Pris:
Your excellent poem, Chats With Eleanor, so impressed me with your beautifully succinct verbiage and portrayal of Mrs Roosevelt's well known compassion, and the sad reflection of the consequences of war that you have so very cleverly, and almost unexpected incorporated near the end of your poem, that I have decided that you are deserving of the simple honour of being named the IWVPA Top Poet for May 2005. Accordingly, I attach the graphic for the IWVPA Bronze Helmet Top Poet Award of Excellence and formally announce that you are a most worthy recipient of that title and the award for May 2005.
-----------------------------
(I've posted this poem before, but here it is, in Tony's letter again)
CHATS WITH ELEANOR
Fairy Godmothers with ample laps
and June Cleaver faces slid down the rabbit hole
of old dial-up phones, ten cent colas, Betsy Wetsys,
and scratchy LPs an innocent lifetime ago.
Try strutting about nowdays in tiara and starched skirt,
waving a wand---the madhouse will open its jaws
and swallow you whole, but
my fairy godmother is clever.
She dresses like Eleanor Roosevelt,
talks like Eleanor., looks like Eleanor,
says she is Eleanor, back from the dead.
Each night she brings me hot chocolate, sits,
tell stories about quiet fireside chats,
her husband's withered legs and how much
she thought he loved her before Lucy.
She reminds me to floss every night
and to be sure to carry an umbrella
should sudden thunderstorms threaten.
She emphasizes that one must learn to
be brave in cold emptied beds
ever so much as on battlefields,
littered with the corpses of those
who once called our name.
©Copyright April 2005 by Pris Campbell
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The IWVPA Bronze Helmet Top Poet Award of Excellence cannot be obtained by application. One award is made each month to a poet who has writing(s) published on the IWVPA website. Members of the IWVPA Club may make recommendations for poems that, in their opinion, may earn the Author the title of "Top Poet" for any given month, but the final decision is in my hands as Webmaster of the IWVPA website. Nevertheless, the Award is made on behalf of all member of the IWVPA Club.
I've taken the liberty of attaching a half-size version of the award graphic to the page that displays your poem on the IWVPA website HERE; the graphic is linked to the IWVPA Double Tap Honour Roll located HERE and a new page that displays your poem has been added to that index. Attached hereto is the full-size graphic so that you may, if you so desire, add to any page that displays the poem. Doing so is NOT a prerequisite of receiving the award.
Further details about the Award are located HERE
Congratulations Pris; this is the second occasion on which your name has been added to the IWVPA Bronze Helmet Award Honour Roll and it is again displayed with equal honour with many exceptional writers and writings.
Sincere regards,
Anthony W. Pahl
Webmaster
Pris:
Your excellent poem, Chats With Eleanor, so impressed me with your beautifully succinct verbiage and portrayal of Mrs Roosevelt's well known compassion, and the sad reflection of the consequences of war that you have so very cleverly, and almost unexpected incorporated near the end of your poem, that I have decided that you are deserving of the simple honour of being named the IWVPA Top Poet for May 2005. Accordingly, I attach the graphic for the IWVPA Bronze Helmet Top Poet Award of Excellence and formally announce that you are a most worthy recipient of that title and the award for May 2005.
-----------------------------
(I've posted this poem before, but here it is, in Tony's letter again)
CHATS WITH ELEANOR
Fairy Godmothers with ample laps
and June Cleaver faces slid down the rabbit hole
of old dial-up phones, ten cent colas, Betsy Wetsys,
and scratchy LPs an innocent lifetime ago.
Try strutting about nowdays in tiara and starched skirt,
waving a wand---the madhouse will open its jaws
and swallow you whole, but
my fairy godmother is clever.
She dresses like Eleanor Roosevelt,
talks like Eleanor., looks like Eleanor,
says she is Eleanor, back from the dead.
Each night she brings me hot chocolate, sits,
tell stories about quiet fireside chats,
her husband's withered legs and how much
she thought he loved her before Lucy.
She reminds me to floss every night
and to be sure to carry an umbrella
should sudden thunderstorms threaten.
She emphasizes that one must learn to
be brave in cold emptied beds
ever so much as on battlefields,
littered with the corpses of those
who once called our name.
©Copyright April 2005 by Pris Campbell
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The IWVPA Bronze Helmet Top Poet Award of Excellence cannot be obtained by application. One award is made each month to a poet who has writing(s) published on the IWVPA website. Members of the IWVPA Club may make recommendations for poems that, in their opinion, may earn the Author the title of "Top Poet" for any given month, but the final decision is in my hands as Webmaster of the IWVPA website. Nevertheless, the Award is made on behalf of all member of the IWVPA Club.
I've taken the liberty of attaching a half-size version of the award graphic to the page that displays your poem on the IWVPA website HERE; the graphic is linked to the IWVPA Double Tap Honour Roll located HERE and a new page that displays your poem has been added to that index. Attached hereto is the full-size graphic so that you may, if you so desire, add to any page that displays the poem. Doing so is NOT a prerequisite of receiving the award.
Further details about the Award are located HERE
Congratulations Pris; this is the second occasion on which your name has been added to the IWVPA Bronze Helmet Award Honour Roll and it is again displayed with equal honour with many exceptional writers and writings.
Sincere regards,
Anthony W. Pahl
Webmaster
Mother's Day
In honour of Mother's Day, I'm reposting an earlier poem.
I was very fortunate to have such a good mother and miss her still. It was my mother who taught me my first love for both reading and creative writing. I was a July baby and my mother taught first grade. As Spring arrived, I began to struggle and kick throughout the day. Mother told me, however, that every time she set her class down for story hour, as soon as she said 'Once upon a time..' I became quiet.
That along, would be a neat memory, but it goes further. I had colic as an infant and mother was often up in the night, patting my back, rocking me, trying to comfort me. One night, she said 'Once upon a time...' on an impulse, and told me a story. I stopped crying. After that, each night until the colic was gone, that's how she settled my tears.
Now that, I think is a really neat memory....Pris
Lilies And Headstones
Mother climbs from her grave nightly,
the moon sliding, bone white, along that
fragile passage from day's end to beginning.
She re-arranges plastic flowers, talks
to other coffin-freed friends, polishes
the naked cross guarding the faithful dead.
Lilies once bordered the shrubs
surrounding our house like a moat.
White ones. Yellow ones. Striated ones.
Soft scented sentinels poking their heads
up through the warm soil each Spring.
My mother's pride.
Fake carnations grace her headstone now.
Stiff, like the bodies lined in neat rows
beneath her; cold like her own body
which will never again climb into a warm bed
or scatter the crows that yet steal
from our abandoned cherry tree.
They suck the fruit cheerfully, despite
old clattering pans, and one rotten scarecrow
with eyes picked as empty as the spaces
where lilies once danced with the wind.
Pris Campbell
©2004
This poem took second in the December 2004 IBPC
Comments from the judge:
How could one not read the first line of this poem and not wantto read the next? Lilies and Headstones had me from the beginning, and took me places I never expected. The poem could’ve easily slipped into sentimentality, the poet telling us how they feel instead of showing us that marvelous scarecrow at the end, eyes picked empty. --David Hernandez
I was very fortunate to have such a good mother and miss her still. It was my mother who taught me my first love for both reading and creative writing. I was a July baby and my mother taught first grade. As Spring arrived, I began to struggle and kick throughout the day. Mother told me, however, that every time she set her class down for story hour, as soon as she said 'Once upon a time..' I became quiet.
That along, would be a neat memory, but it goes further. I had colic as an infant and mother was often up in the night, patting my back, rocking me, trying to comfort me. One night, she said 'Once upon a time...' on an impulse, and told me a story. I stopped crying. After that, each night until the colic was gone, that's how she settled my tears.
Now that, I think is a really neat memory....Pris
Lilies And Headstones
Mother climbs from her grave nightly,
the moon sliding, bone white, along that
fragile passage from day's end to beginning.
She re-arranges plastic flowers, talks
to other coffin-freed friends, polishes
the naked cross guarding the faithful dead.
Lilies once bordered the shrubs
surrounding our house like a moat.
White ones. Yellow ones. Striated ones.
Soft scented sentinels poking their heads
up through the warm soil each Spring.
My mother's pride.
Fake carnations grace her headstone now.
Stiff, like the bodies lined in neat rows
beneath her; cold like her own body
which will never again climb into a warm bed
or scatter the crows that yet steal
from our abandoned cherry tree.
They suck the fruit cheerfully, despite
old clattering pans, and one rotten scarecrow
with eyes picked as empty as the spaces
where lilies once danced with the wind.
Pris Campbell
©2004
This poem took second in the December 2004 IBPC
Comments from the judge:
How could one not read the first line of this poem and not wantto read the next? Lilies and Headstones had me from the beginning, and took me places I never expected. The poem could’ve easily slipped into sentimentality, the poet telling us how they feel instead of showing us that marvelous scarecrow at the end, eyes picked empty. --David Hernandez
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Cultured
Well, the culture came back to my doc and the bacteria still lives! I have to go onto 28 days of what is usually a five day dose of Cipro to hopefully kill the little buggers this time. Only problem is that I don't do well with antibiotics, so this 28 days isn't gonna be fun. I'm already dizzer and nauseated from the first dose last night. Who knows what may turn up in my blog over these next days...This was meant to be a poetry/graphics/haiga blog but it's turning into a personal journal in the last post and today. Oh what the hey. Variety is the spice of life, right? On the whole, I think I'd prefer Rio, though, as they say.
Here's how the Page Transformer site sees me this morning. (Link to right of my blog)
or maybe...
and....here's a poem I just finished (I think) a few days ago.
Song of the Primroses
...and so it is
Damien Rice
I still keep that old photo you snapped.
Eyes just past childlike; china masked by steel.
The edge of one breast peeks from my half-
zippered jumpsuit. Primroses cluster
beneath the far rail.
Men hustled me then,
hard as street side gamblers
when the dice were red hot, but
I chose you--you with the Bob Dylan eyes,
wraith-thin legs, white cotton socks
peeking furtively from beneath
your creased jeans. Gold ring,
third finger down.
You loved us both.
You never said it, but I knew.
That day. So heady with sunshine,
bright colored birds swooping down
to the grass for plump lazy worms.
That day. You fell from your straight arrow
ways and finally bedded me.
I settled for a man from Peoria
with legs thick as an oxen's.
We lasted eight years.
The birds are slower these days;.
too many worms get away.
The sun swells like a heartbeat.
Sweat runs down my back.
I plant extra primroses along my porch rail,
sometimes imagine a westerly wind rising
to carry their scent out to you.
Last month your name lept from a magazine-
some obscure article about spiders, so
I ventured a note.
Your hair has gone gray, you write back.
Work still goes well. Your jeans don't fit, anymore.
You enclose a photo of your grown daughter
and your eyes stare at me from her face.
'I never forgot you', you add, 'but isn't that
how life goes??'
Pris Campbell
©2005
Here's how the Page Transformer site sees me this morning. (Link to right of my blog)
or maybe...
and....here's a poem I just finished (I think) a few days ago.
Song of the Primroses
...and so it is
Damien Rice
I still keep that old photo you snapped.
Eyes just past childlike; china masked by steel.
The edge of one breast peeks from my half-
zippered jumpsuit. Primroses cluster
beneath the far rail.
Men hustled me then,
hard as street side gamblers
when the dice were red hot, but
I chose you--you with the Bob Dylan eyes,
wraith-thin legs, white cotton socks
peeking furtively from beneath
your creased jeans. Gold ring,
third finger down.
You loved us both.
You never said it, but I knew.
That day. So heady with sunshine,
bright colored birds swooping down
to the grass for plump lazy worms.
That day. You fell from your straight arrow
ways and finally bedded me.
I settled for a man from Peoria
with legs thick as an oxen's.
We lasted eight years.
The birds are slower these days;.
too many worms get away.
The sun swells like a heartbeat.
Sweat runs down my back.
I plant extra primroses along my porch rail,
sometimes imagine a westerly wind rising
to carry their scent out to you.
Last month your name lept from a magazine-
some obscure article about spiders, so
I ventured a note.
Your hair has gone gray, you write back.
Work still goes well. Your jeans don't fit, anymore.
You enclose a photo of your grown daughter
and your eyes stare at me from her face.
'I never forgot you', you add, 'but isn't that
how life goes??'
Pris Campbell
©2005
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Prisons Within Prisons
More than ever, beginning last fall, my house feels like a prison, my body an additional prison layered within that outer one. It's been 15 years now, with small breaks when I was clearer and could do more things. I've again not been able to drive and the knee injury from that last fall refuses yet to heal. Inflammation in my body limits my activities and wakes me at night and the dizziness is quite bad again.
My closest friends, one by one, have moved from Florida to other areas. Most of my family is dead, now. Those few close cousins who are still alive live a distance away and their own life circumstances have made it impossible for them to visit, except for one, in nine years now. My husband has long wearied of the CFIDS and my life restrictions, just as I have, even though overall I'm better than I was for nine years when I couldn't have even typed this post onto a computer.
Where does courage come from, I ask myself? Sometimes it's there, but I lose it again so often, esp days like today when everything is blurred, everything hurts and my head roars.
I shouldn't complain, I tell myself. I don't have AIDS. I don't have cancer. I don't have a degenerative disease, yet I have an illness that's still not easily understood or accepted by many doctors or the general public. I have an illness that's still questioned as being re its validity by some doctors since it can't be measured neatly and without doubt by a single test, or cluster of tests.(I won't even bring up how doctors viewed tumors and ulcers before ways were found to directly observe causes). So, for right now, I deal with the doubt and, sometimes, redicule, by others along with the profound changes in my life. I try everything from mental to physical, from medical to experimental, from attitude changes and meditation to acceptance.
And as I've said, I know other people face much worse than I do every day. I tell myself that, but it's not helping right now. When I'm clearer, perhaps I can write a poem again soon. Perhaps one will come to help carry my spirit to new places and help me grow my wings back again.
My closest friends, one by one, have moved from Florida to other areas. Most of my family is dead, now. Those few close cousins who are still alive live a distance away and their own life circumstances have made it impossible for them to visit, except for one, in nine years now. My husband has long wearied of the CFIDS and my life restrictions, just as I have, even though overall I'm better than I was for nine years when I couldn't have even typed this post onto a computer.
Where does courage come from, I ask myself? Sometimes it's there, but I lose it again so often, esp days like today when everything is blurred, everything hurts and my head roars.
I shouldn't complain, I tell myself. I don't have AIDS. I don't have cancer. I don't have a degenerative disease, yet I have an illness that's still not easily understood or accepted by many doctors or the general public. I have an illness that's still questioned as being re its validity by some doctors since it can't be measured neatly and without doubt by a single test, or cluster of tests.(I won't even bring up how doctors viewed tumors and ulcers before ways were found to directly observe causes). So, for right now, I deal with the doubt and, sometimes, redicule, by others along with the profound changes in my life. I try everything from mental to physical, from medical to experimental, from attitude changes and meditation to acceptance.
And as I've said, I know other people face much worse than I do every day. I tell myself that, but it's not helping right now. When I'm clearer, perhaps I can write a poem again soon. Perhaps one will come to help carry my spirit to new places and help me grow my wings back again.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Egyptian Mysteries
Look in my links section to the right and find Michael Parker's blog. Besides being a fascinating blog in general, in his current entry he describes the amazing discovery recently made in Egypt. He also features my poem about the discovery--a very nice thing for him to do.
Pris
Pris
Saturday, April 30, 2005
A Passage
I just received a call that cancer finally took my cousin-in-law, Marion Uldrick, this morning. I was flower girl in his marriage to my cousin, Virginia, shown in the photo below This post is for you, Marion. Thanks for making an awkward teenager girl feel special.
To Grand Old Men
Lift a glass
for what has passed
and what will come,
as roses preen
and white mums sigh
their soft goodbyes
around us.
Once you kissed
a hundred lips,
raced horses wild
through midnight fields,
sang drunken dreams
to kith and kin,
til aging skin and worn-out heart
dragged sweet sung words
to mounded earth
before the stanza ended.
Pris Campbell
(c)2001
To Grand Old Men
Lift a glass
for what has passed
and what will come,
as roses preen
and white mums sigh
their soft goodbyes
around us.
Once you kissed
a hundred lips,
raced horses wild
through midnight fields,
sang drunken dreams
to kith and kin,
til aging skin and worn-out heart
dragged sweet sung words
to mounded earth
before the stanza ended.
Pris Campbell
(c)2001
Yesterday's Kiss
Our bodies play
hide and seek.
Your tongue probes
my mouth, searching
for yesterday's kiss.
You know
how to ask for sex
in six different languages.
I wish you were as
proficient in love.
When you leave,
I bury my head
in your pillow,
dare not breathe,
lest your scent
take me captive again.
Later, your voice crawls out
of my answering machine
'I want you'
Using that red dress
you bought me,
I smother your pleas.
Pris Campbell
11/17/2001
Published Blackmail Press 2002
hide and seek.
Your tongue probes
my mouth, searching
for yesterday's kiss.
You know
how to ask for sex
in six different languages.
I wish you were as
proficient in love.
When you leave,
I bury my head
in your pillow,
dare not breathe,
lest your scent
take me captive again.
Later, your voice crawls out
of my answering machine
'I want you'
Using that red dress
you bought me,
I smother your pleas.
Pris Campbell
11/17/2001
Published Blackmail Press 2002
Friday, April 29, 2005
Pectoral Control and Hawaii
It's been a rough spot for me, healthwise for a bit now. Sometimes, when that happens I think of a happy time in my life and imagine myself there. I see it as if it's here again right now and I'm transported to easier days.
So here's one of those times...when I lived in Hawaii in the late sixties, I visited the Big Island with the psychology chief, also a friend, who was consulting there for the weekend. He always stayed with a Hawaiian man who ran an open bar (no walls, just the liquor part locked up) in the woods.
There were tons of bedrooms since his entertainers stayed there too. Now THAT was some house...bedrooms and kitchen all at one end...built on the point of a black lava cliff with the two ocean sides seen by full length panes of glass along both walls of a huge room with indoor outdoor carpeting, an indoor swimming pool and patio furniture. A woman who twirled torches on her boobs was staying when I was there. She gave an (unlit) demo for us before the night's show and I have to say, I've never been so impressed with muscle control in my life before or since.
So here's one of those times...when I lived in Hawaii in the late sixties, I visited the Big Island with the psychology chief, also a friend, who was consulting there for the weekend. He always stayed with a Hawaiian man who ran an open bar (no walls, just the liquor part locked up) in the woods.
There were tons of bedrooms since his entertainers stayed there too. Now THAT was some house...bedrooms and kitchen all at one end...built on the point of a black lava cliff with the two ocean sides seen by full length panes of glass along both walls of a huge room with indoor outdoor carpeting, an indoor swimming pool and patio furniture. A woman who twirled torches on her boobs was staying when I was there. She gave an (unlit) demo for us before the night's show and I have to say, I've never been so impressed with muscle control in my life before or since.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
Letters Not Sent
There were ten of them,
skin the color of desert dust.
We culled them from cells
the size of barbwired closets
into that courtyard where
we laughed , watched
them strip, toss off torn rags-
discarded cloth fluttering
like yesterday's butterflies, made
them spread their cheeks wide, enter
the next man down the line,
made our own chain of daisies
like the ones made in childhood,
took photos not attached to letters
or sent (Son, I'm so proud),
knew we were showing
those terrorists who was
boss and serving our
country too, but oh mom,
I still smell their fear and
their sex on my hands.
It's been weeks now.
Pris Campbell
©2004
skin the color of desert dust.
We culled them from cells
the size of barbwired closets
into that courtyard where
we laughed , watched
them strip, toss off torn rags-
discarded cloth fluttering
like yesterday's butterflies, made
them spread their cheeks wide, enter
the next man down the line,
made our own chain of daisies
like the ones made in childhood,
took photos not attached to letters
or sent (Son, I'm so proud),
knew we were showing
those terrorists who was
boss and serving our
country too, but oh mom,
I still smell their fear and
their sex on my hands.
It's been weeks now.
Pris Campbell
©2004
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