Dangerous Places

(an older one)

I must take care not to peer back
through that gray slant of time
to when we lay arm against arm,
bodies flushed and moisture still seeping.

People I love march into places
I'm not yet ready to go.
They do not return in this lifetime.

My body has grown cautious,
fearful of high curbs and large dogs,
irritated by the squeals of small children.

I avoid mirrors,
magazine articles on aging
and women who dwell on their bladders.

Outside, my husband weeds.
Gray hair sprouts from his cheekbones.
He swats at it, as if a pesky fly.

My heart does not leap when
sweat draws his shirt tight
or his pants slip to show cleavage
I once traced with my forefinger.

He senses I watch,
glances upward, then away,
his gaze falling like autumn rain
onto the waiting weeds.


Pris Campbell
©2002


Published in Blackmail Press-2003

From My Window

To see a larger version of this haiga, click HERE. The smaller one fits my blog, but the detail isn't as clear.

In Memory

photo taken fall 1958, enroute to Camp Stewart.

Last night, a voice from my old hometown called to tell me that the mother of another childhood friend had died on Sunday--she hadn't been able to get through to me. Mrs. Ferguson was more than Kathy's mother. She was mentor and leader of the youth fellowship group in our town of 2500. We talked, we camped, we had fun. When you grow up in a town that acts as an extended family and continue to visit parents there over the years, as well, the bonds stay strong. The man who called me last night grew up two doors from me. The woman whose mother died was one of my several closest friends from sixth grade on. The fact that we still come together at times of sadness or crisis, in addition to our loose keeping in touch, to me, is beautiful.

Mrs. Ferguson, thank you.

she plans
her next camping trip
stars aquiver

Today....

Today is your day on my blog. I just got back from the two hour trip down to my doc's to see if this lingering infection has finally left my body. Will know in 3 to 5 days. Tired now. Am off to loll and think of scandalous poems to write.

In the meantime, post the best movie you've seen recently and what about it you liked. I'm looking for a few more good movies to put on my Netflix queue.

Pris

The Other Woman

The Other Woman brushes her
hair 100 times with a hairbrush
shaped like a teardrop.
She knows one day her hair
will turn white, but he likely
won't be there to see it.

Alone and unsung to, the moon
implodes. It splinters the old
oak tree and a displaced
wren beats at her windowsill,
brown eyes begging.

She taps polished nails
along the curve of her phone;
lightning shoots from her fingertips.
The clock quivers twelve chimes
but, still, no car arrives
in the driveway.

She slips from satin to cotton, creams
her face, writes yet another goodbye
note she'll shred before sending. At dawn,
window thrust wide, she sighs,
lets the poor wretched wren rush in.

Review by Jack Anders

Jack Anders reviews my blog and poetry in cafecafe (found in my righthand links column) via a link to the Mipoesias blog where the review is actually located. You can either check out his entry, about three down down in cafecafe or click HERE to go directly to Mipoesias. Jack's a wonderful writer and a true life enthusiast. It permeates his writing and the energy he puts across on the web.

Thank you, Jack.

Pris

Roses and Crucifixes

Leon spray paints his name
on buildings all over Manhattan,
LEON...... LEON..... LEON
Adds a crucifix underneath,
the color of the sun's belly.
No-one has ever seen him.
Some call him God's messenger.
Others say he's just crazy.

Sara dresses in black, pretends
she's an artist, flattens her breasts
with duct tape til they look
like IHOP pancakes, thinks this
means she'll be taken more seriously

She paints pink roses.
Pink roses grow out of Bill
Clinton's fly. Pink roses rise
from monkey butts. She sold a rose
poking from Donald Trump's nose
to an old lady in the Bronx, Sara's
price for giving directions.

Sara never meets Leon, but passes
his crucifixes one day. Inspired,
she runs to her flat, paints a crucifix
on her belly in florescent pink,
opens her shades, dances in the window
nightly for one week. Exactly.
The Salome of Greenwich Village.

A man sinks to his knees beneath her window.
It's a sign, he says. Gives up sex for Lent.
Holds onto his head , avoids knives.
His wife soon leaves for her mother's.

Sara closes her shades,
drinks cool tea,
dreams of roses strangling
the Empire State Building.

Leon spray paints the Empire State dome,
finds himself thinking, oddly, of roses,
has strange cravings for pancakes,
lathered in nipple-pink molasses.



Pris Campbell
©2004



This poem was published in the Spring 2005 issue of MiPo quarterly.

Summertime...and the living was easy

Watercolors

My first new haiga in almost two months.

The Making of Eve

Didi Menendez has put out a call in cafecafe (link in my right column) for poems about the making of Eve....
-------------

Spewed out of God's Sixth Day WIDE
open post utero mouth, these zygotes,
twin embryos, now grown, one buried
inside the other, tumblefall into Eden.

History's first birth defect.

That story about the rib?
History's first cover-up.

Nixon, listen up.
God's buds did it, too!

No woman to ride side saddle
for long, Eve sharpens overgrown
nails, aliens her way free
through Adam's wimpy chest.
She flirts with the serpent,
finishes off the apple and tosses
Adam the worm and the core.

Original sin. What fun, she trills.

With a shake of her fuck-me frizzled
hair and one hand lifting an,
as yet uncarressed breast, she takes up
with a horny caveman. Their two dozen
mix-breeded children scope uncountable
later debates about Origins,
birth control, and the true
author of the Kama Sutra.


(c)2005

Of Yore

shimmi-shaking
to an Elvis beat
jitterbug days

Until Lilies Overpower

When we made our pact,
lilies bloomed from my hands.
I laid them on the graves
of dead lovers.

You were to come in the spring,
wade with me in the seas
where Vikings once sailed,
kiss my breasts until the sun glinted
pink off the morning waters, but

I grow old waiting, love.
My legs are pillars of salt.
The lilies have dried up
and long blown away.
The sea snarls under my toes.

Only in my dreams
do I see you, bearing gifts
of pale luminous gowns
and bright bangles to spoil me.

You lay your body across
mine until an early tide moans,
and I wake suddenly, the scent
of lilies overpowering.


Pris Campbell
©2004

Placed third in the 2004 PBL competitions

flying

If I could fly, today I would take off over my beloved ocean again and dive bomb the tourists alongside the sea gulls. For anyone who's never visited or lived near the ocean, the scent of sea air is magic. Sometimes I wonder if it brings back memories buried deep in our inner brains of days when we all were creatures of the ocean.

When she was still..

....called 'Priscilla' and he was called Eddie. Yes, I still have out the old photo album, so decided to humiliate myself one more time. I honestly think this is one of...oh maybe five of the worst photos of all times I have of myself. Those glasses. Egads. This was a newspaper shot. Four of us had been selected for All Clinic Band. I played the clarinet. Two years younger than I was, Eddie played trombone. He was in my mother's first grade so I had known him forever. Now I'm 'Pris' and he's 'Ed' and he teaches creative writing at the University of Colorado. One of the nicest and kindest men I still know. He puts lights on the Chesterfield, South Carolina Hospice Christmas tree each year for my parents and I do the same for his mother. We both continued to love each other's mothers over the years.